Filth Mound
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Unintelligent design" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
|
12:31 pm
[Link] |
A Christmas poem
The Bite
The wolf's laugh eerie cracks the humid night air
The rabbit freezes the box in his lair
The owl hoots shrilly searching the dark
The moon white fangs through the trees tall and stark
Who would emerge on a night like this
Who would loose his bonds and greet the air with a hiss
The battered Christian bows his head in despair
The crown of sharp thorns revealed 'neath his hair
His scrawny body worn thin by the trial
Stands taut and painful on the pilgrim's last mile
A million fleshy things converge upon the spot
His eyes retort the atmosphere is hot
Aah
The wolf sniffs ivory fanged he bristles up his spine
The fox smiles knowingly but dares not step out of line
Through the twisting crashing silence the broken Christian creeps
Each footstep like a thunderclap amongst the trunky deeps
No bird makes sound no creature moves to break the gripping air
And the Christian he raises his hands up to his mouth for a
Whisper he cannot dare
La-la-la-la-laa...
The Christian wakes trembling with sweat
The cell's dark walls stony and wet
Metallic echoes as the bolts are drawn back
The door swings inward dull light through the crack
The jailer looks indifferent to him
A routine morning martyr's death for him
A misty cold sad morning greets the Christian's haggard grin
The rope is slung and the noose is tied and the Christian's neck is thin
The block is raised he stands erect the rope beneath his chin
They pull the block and the Christian drops he hangs above the sin
-Comus (First Utterance)
Current Music: Comus - The Bite
|
|
03:57 pm
[Link] |
My fucking soul
Finally bit the bullet and spent a bunch of money on a new computer. 2,000,000,000 hertz or so of processor, and the thing I would call the processor has two processors in it! 2 gigabytes of RAM, half a fucking worldbyte of storage, and a video card faster than my entire previous computer, with its own god damned fan (I hear that's common nowadays). Plus a DVDR/W. Jesu fucking Cristo!
I even sold my soul and invested in a CDR of Windows XP so I could play a game or two. I haven't used MS Windows since Windows '98. XP is like NT kind of, except with commercials all the fucking time. And there's some sort of snakeoil Gen-U-Wyne thing going on to let you know if you have a pirated copy or not, which strikes me as strange, because for one, who the fuck buys windows? And for another, I god damned well know it's a pirated copy. Who the hell doesn't know when they're installing pirating software? I suspect some sort of sleight of hand going on in Redmond. Yeah, I know, which sleight, which hand?
So I spend all this time borrowing a CDR and putting together this nice new system with some kind of fancypants case made out of body armor that fell out of the back of a truck bound to Iraq or thereabouts, and the thing keeps crapping out on me. During the install. After the install. When I'm running around ruins killing giant antlion things, surrounded by zombies, with just some kind of retarded magnet gun to defend myself. So many times during the install, I decided to flash the system CMOS (which helped). I have a fancy Abit KN9 thingamaboard, and the CMOS was version 1.0. I didn't even know they made version 1.0 nowadays. So that helped. And shutting of ACPIC or APIC, or whatever the fuck it's called, that helped. And I did all sorts of driver reconjiggeration, but still the fucked and dreaded BSOD pops up every 20 minutes or so, and now and then it forgets I have a fucking keyboard, and the middle mouse button (it's a god damned wheel!) all the sudden quit working in my Windows Internet Explorer Firefox Mozilla interbrowser fuckthing.
God, Windows is depressing. The Media Player is the ultimate in depression. I've been using Loonix for so long as a desktop I forgot that using Microsoft products feels like watching network TV back before Tivo. It's like listening to 107.7 the BONE non-stop. It gives me a headache. I'm sitting there, half-buzzed, trying to listen to a radio webcast of a great band (and one thing is for sure - it's easier to do all this multimedia, viral commercial crap on Windows), and being in a half-buzzed state, think it'd be fun to fuck with skins and whatnot, and all the skins on the sites I find are all somehow linked to something you can buy - the Batman Returns skin, the McDonalds Urbanburger Skin, the Britney's Unmentionables skin. Ugh.
Yeah, so I sold my soul and put windows on my system, and thought for a couple minutes it might become my default OS, but I forgot I gave my fucking soul to the devil years ago, back in high school, as a joke, so of course windows won't work for shit, and now I'm going to install Redhate Loonix and see if maybe it works better, or if the kernel panics continue, perhaps at least manages to log a little bit of what happened, since windows has worthless shit logs, and loves expressing everything in fucking hex codes you have to look up on Microsoft's website. And that always creeps me out, because I know they know I yarrred their OS, and they know I know they know.
Current Music: Grandaddy - Chartsengrafs
|
|
04:08 pm
[Link] |
fucking nowadays stuff
Every autumn, as the leaves turn golden and the hot days of summer recede into memory, the fucking spammers think of some new fucking tricks to make my life miserable. Fucking fucks!
And 90% of system administration in nowadaysland seems to involve hitting enter at a prompt something like:
Jizzwarbler::Flickit .6.1.0.4 conflicts with Christmunch::toenail::speckled 2.5: install anyway? [yes]
because otherwise you just click around at search.cpan.org going crazy and doing exactly the same thing as above, but manually.
And the whole time, that motherfucker who won't shut up about my meat size is out there in internetland, laughing.
Current Mood: AAARGH!
Current Music: Blood Feast - Vampire
|
|
12:10 pm
[Link] |
Lessons learned
My first live set was interesting. I'm not much of a ham, so playing out is kind of stressful, I discovered, as I'd expected. The set felt like a disaster while it was happening, with all sorts of technical difficulties. We never did get decent volume on the guitar amp, which was frustrating as hell, since I felt like I played pretty well. Except where I changed riffs a bar short on two different songs. Time was moving remarkably fast throughout the set, and I don't remember much, specifically, of it, other than the problems. I couldn't let go and just fucking play, unlike practice, which has been getting better and better as we tighten up as a band. We have another show in hopefully about a month, maybe a warmup sooner. I'm thinking the second one will be much smoother and 10 times as fun. Which isn't to say the whole experience wasn't incredible, because it was.
I also learned a lot about the realities of playing a live set. Stuff that's pretty obvious, and that seems easy from the audience, but was hard to recall in the midst of everything. I've included those lessons below the fold.
( Read more... )
|
|
04:59 pm
[Link] |
Indoor/outdoor
During the great ARGH crisis of 2005, a woman temporarily moved in to the apartment below us. The emphasis here is on "temporariliy" not "a woman", who would be named if I could remember her name. With her was a cat, purportedly a lynx still in late kittenhood. It was a wild creature, and it didn't get along with the regular occupant of that apartment. I loved that cat, but she didn't like me much. I would reach under the bed where she hid most of the time and (gently) drag her out. She would sit nervously in my arms, and take her skritching. For a wildcat, she was very gentle. But supposedly, she went into raging fits and tore shit up late at night. I can believe that, seeing as she was still a kitten. Those fits got her kicked out of the house regularly (I had nothing to do with the training or care of this cat). Her caretaker ended up moving out suddenly, never to be seen again, during one of these exiles, and never did find the cat.
Several months later, I realized that one of our neighbors had taken the cat in. Basically, she trapped the cat, took her inside, and didn't let her outside again for a couple weeks or so, until she was used to her new home. Now, she's an indoor/outdoor cat, very shy around anybody but Melissa (the neighbor). She lives in the first floor. We are in the second floor of the house across the alley. Melissa gave her cat a nice window seat. You can look down from our couch into Melissa's cat's window seat. Hopey does this a lot. The two cats stare at each other for hours. Sometimes, Hopey growls down at her. I enjoy watching Hopey watching her nemesis/neighbor. The cat never did grow bigger than a housecat. I don't think she's really a lynx.
Current Mood: yerba!
Current Music: post-Fear Toots M(aytal?)
|
|
03:38 pm
[Link] |
Notes from the underground
It's June. The show's in October. We are to open for a band from out of town and a continent or two away. I think it's their first US tour. We're minus a drummer, but we have several leads. I'm the new guitarist, and I've spent the last two months learning the set plus some songs for the new album (the ones that have been written - about half).
Drummers are gold. You find a drummer, you hold on. I recommend taking beloved family members or pets hostage.
Candidate one is young. Full of bad ideas. And a guitarist at heart. Great grasp of music, learns fast, hits the drums a little harder than our gray tabby would. Has all the swing of Louis Armstrong - Louis Armstrong now, not when he was alive. Yes, you need swing to play primitive black/death with lyrics mostly involving the murder/rape of our lord and savior Jesus H. Christ and the destruction of His followers.
He teaches me a new game - Blame the Guitarist. If you can't get the drums right, the guitarist must be fucking up. Closely related to Blame the Whiteboy, but less fun. Candidate one goes on the backburner. Hopefully something else will come up.
Now it's July 1st.
Candidate two is a friend of a friend. Just moved to town. Been playing 12 years. Gets stuck on the second riff of the first song. See, the first cycle through the riff has an extra beat - it's five total. Subsequent cycles are four beats. You have to either feel the riff or have minor technical skills. Candidate two discovers a fondness for the Blame the Guitarist game. Candidate two goes over his beer limit. That'd be two mild beers, the limit. By the middle of his third beer, he's ranting: "do your fans like that?" (the five beats) "Why would you do that?" He wants to jam on some Metallica or Maiden. The bassist refuses to play anything but this squeaky horn thing that you squeeze. Bassist's response to jamming: "Err-ee! Err-ee!", shaking his head. Candidate two passes out on the floor.
We're coming up on August pretty quickly.
Candidate three is a friend of a friend and a cool guy. Another guitarist at heart. He's got his own band that he digs. He likes us, and wants to help. We practice twice together. He's got an obvious love of Lombardo (who doesn't?), but that second riff catches him up every time. Second practice, we three exit to a nearby bar to discuss privately - should we try to go on with this guy? We don't want to hurt his feelings. He shows up at the bar (everybody shows up there, eventually), tells us not to worry about hurting his feelings - he doesn't know if he can cut it. It's a bittersweet end.
Middle of August, and now we're talking about cancelling the show. Ancient ex-bandmates are called to duty, but they have no duty with that prefix in front of their titles. Should we cancel? What else can we do?
I know another guitarist. He can drum. But I don't think he wants to. I call. He's stoked. It's been a dry summer, playing-wise. Tried to break out of the metal box, started missing it's confines. He'll do his best.
End of August, first practice. That second riff - tries it, fucks up. "Hold on, let's do it again." Hits it. Never misses it again. Whips through the first two, plays the third, one very unpopular with previous drummers for its speed and chaos. Before learning each song, upon listening to a recording: "Oh guys, I don't think I can do this. I'm not (previous drummer). This shit's too much." Puts down the drumsticks. Gamely picks them up to at least try. Nails it.
Middle of September. We've got half the set down. This is starting to feel like a bad reality show. We've got just over a month to get a set down and play it in front of a potentially large audience. We will destroy.
|
|
05:00 pm
[Link] |
Worst Comicon ever?
This year we almost skipped Comicon. It all started when hotel rooms sold out in less than an hour the day they became available through whatever dealie Comicon does. The event grows and grows. Every year a larger crowd, every year more The Industry, every year less comics. At least the number of comics at the convention seems to be shrinking much less rapidly than the number of The Industry Whores is growing. If the speed of the decline of comics at Comicon matched the rise of The Industry, there'd be one lonely small press table left, probably shoved in the back of the main lobby men's room (by far the stinkiest bathroom this side of a packed show at a dive bar, though you could argue alcoholic rocker pee smells better than the excretions of comicon attendees). Five years ago, the Con was, I believe, about 1/3 the size it is now, but it was mostly comics and collectibles (what they used to call toys). When the Sci-Fi Channel got a booth, I didn't mind so much. Same for Cartoon Network. They are both part of nerd culture. Now, there's a Warner Channel booth, and I saw a huge CSI banner, and I dunno, it was hard as hell to walk through the non-comic part of the con, but I'm sure there was an NBC, and an ABC, and a CBN booth packed into all that flash and crap. Yeah, so we almost skipped, because after all the growth-of-dubious-quality of the past few years, the instant hotel sellout seemed a bad omen. And as I gave away in that digression just a minute ago, bad omen it was.
But we didn't skip it. Jen clicked obssessively for days, until we got a hotel room at the Sheraton Suites, with a view overlooking Balboa Park and the airport, so we went. I took our Buick LeSabre, Monstro, to a mechanic who exchanged fluids with the car and told us all was well, and we could (and should) drive the monster all up and down the coast at will, willy nilly even. We declined to fix the air conditioning because we're tough. And, causing one of those rare moments when I furrow my brow and wonder if maybe there is a god, and it's the God I learned about in fundie sunday school, the entire fucking world was hit by a heatwave during San Diego Comicon. But we left for San Diego at 6:00am, fleeing before the wave of heat like a little dog in an action movie jumping out of an exploding high rise. We were in San Diego by 3:00pm, the Central Valley a distant memory of rotting live cowflesh and squeaky LA refugee girls.
I notice the citizens of San Diego have become much enamored with the aesthetics of the characters from the television show "The O.C."
Yeah, so, it was the worst Comicon ever. But you have to remember, even in the midst of a fit of depression because sometimes things change for the worse and don't live up to your vaseline-coated-lense memories, that you're sitting in a booth with a bunch of people you only see at cons, and talking to fans and friends you only see at cons, and even if there are 99,000 idiots milling about the con, there are still 1,000 worth talking to, so of course it was, once again, well worth it.
I didn't find a lot of great new stuff. I bought Lost Girls, all hardcover with dust jackets and lots of smut, written by Alan Moore, painted by Melinda Gebbie. Also picked up the new Renee French book, The Ticking. Lastly, the find of the con, Tony Millionaire's graphic novel(la?), Billy Hazelnuts. Awesome. I love Tony Millionaire. He was signing, but the line was really long and I can never think what to say to artists I dig. I thought of trying to talk like one of his characters to him, because I read him say somewhere once that he was going to punch the next person who did that, but that's the kind of joke that falls flat when it leaves your head. I'm trying to let less of those jokes outside my head. Though it would be cool to be punched by Tony Millionaire.
So I bought four or five books, but I spent $115, because all the books that come out nowadays are hardcover and one even had what someone at Top Shelf insisted was gold leaf on the cover, though I'm pretty sure she was just drunk.
I also picked up a copy of the new compilation by Young American Comics, BIZMAR (which stands for "Bunny Insect Zombie Monkey Alien Robot", and which you can currently pick up here, but I can't find a permanent link). Jen and I are in that, or some art that Jen drew from a script that I wrote is in there, anyway. Our story involves a cage match to the death, a frequent fantasy of Jen's, wherein her and the Cat (the Cat is always Hopey) battle, and which always ends in tragedy. To be sure I'm clear, the frequent fantasy is Jen's, the story I wrote does not involve Jen or Hopey, though it does involve all creatures from the title BIZMAR, plus a cat.
YAC has been around for about five years now, I think. They have been supportive of Jen and I from the start, going so far as to invite us to parties and stuff. We've participated in, I think three compilations - Captain Preposterous, Unseen on TV, and BIZMAR. It's always fun and short - two to four pages - with a simple, usually ludicrous, theme. BIZMAR marks the first super fancy, actual graphic novelesque release of YAC's, and I think it bodes well for their future. They also publish Snakepit, which is a great comic strip diary of a punk rock dude from Austin, TX.
On the last day of the con, we happened to see Ira at a hostel. I hadn't been able to find his booth, so I thought Champions of Hell was missing from this year's con, but fortunately, I was wrong. I picked up a Zombie Jesus shirt, a DVD of zombie shorts, and the latest comics from Ira and Robin.
So, what else happened in San Diego? We ate tacos. I bought new shoes because my old tennis shoes (sneakers, whatever) were causing my foot to grow strange nodules. Jen bought a pair of non-denim pants because the heat was driving her to homicidal rage. We drank mexican mochas at Pannikin every morning. We ate slices from Ciero's most days. We slept in a very comfie bed, and I got about two hours more sleep every night than usual.
We decided to stay for Sunday, cutting out at 1:00. See, even the worst Comicon ever is still fun. Hell, we'd probably even go back to the Las Vegas Extrosioncon. Managed to leave San Diego around 2:00, stopped at Juanitas in Encinitas for carnitas, then started making our way up the coast. Around LAX on 405, the heat started getting to me. I'd checked weather.com at the hotel before we left, so I knew it was going to be around 110F in Central Valley, and I wasn't stoked. LA was kind of hot, but on the way up into the Grapevine, shit got really bad. Another car every mile or two, stopped at the side of the road, overheated. All the way up the Grapevine. Fortunately, the sun went behind a huge, pink cloud about half way to the valley. Then, as we're starting down into the valley, I realize the cloud is a cloud of smoke, and the slopes of one of the hills/mountains is on fire. Apocalyptic. We stop along with everyone else at the first rest stop past the Grapevine. Jen gets a cappucino at Starbucks (hot coffee for a hot day), and gets me a cold drink. The gas station is full of grumpy folk, semi-panicked from the heat. Or maybe I was projecting. A flashing sign just before the rest stop warned that the highway was closed 143 miles down the road. Exactly at Cowschwitz, it turns out. So now I know that Cowschwits is 143 miles north of the Grapevine. Hurray. Somehow, there was no smell. Usually I have to roll up the windows and turn off the vents while we drive past that hellhole, but there's no way, no matter how strong the stench, we're sitting with the windows up and the vents off in 100 degree heat. We can almost touch the cows. Jen hears them mooing sadly. But no smell. A moment when I know that fundie god doesn't exist or died long ago. Long, hot, sweaty story short, we stopped at Anderson Pea Soup, which was closed, and ate in a nearby truck stop, mainly for the air conditioning. I sipped syrupy Jarritos to stay awake as we turned the corner onto 580, into the flowery, herbal smell of the outer east bay hills. We hit 13, less than 10 miles from home, and rolled down our windows. The inner bay air feels like air conditioning, if air conditioning was fresh and piney. Home at 12:30am, the cats regaled us with meowy tails of life without Mommy and Daddy.
Current Music: Masacre - Mas Alla Del Dolor...
|
|
11:21 pm
[Link] |
morboso y alcoholico
During practice, I fuck up some time between the end of my second beer and the beginning of my third. I am happy to continue playing one riff, maybe five or six times instead of four, or maybe three times instead of four. Depends on how much I like the riff. Or sometimes I play with great feeling until the second riff, when my mind blanks and I stare stupidly at the bass, hoping to pick up the next riff, but too stupid to translate left to right.
This is not good. I can be sure that if I ever play in front of people, it will take more than two beers to get me on stage. Our bassist, his first show (three or four years ago) had enough beers that he played the entire set not realizing his bass was not plugged into his amp. I intend to make a less hilarious story of my first gig. So tonight I attempted an experiment, with demon rum. Without the distraction of ban-dmates/ter, I played each song I must learn, observing where and why I fucked up, and played again until I could go through each song in its entirety. Besides, for tomorrow's practice I have a tough audience to impress, at least to the point where they say "eh, he'll do."
Current Music: Ulver - Hymne II: Wolf and the Devil
|
|
10:53 pm
[Link] |
Luck of the Devil
Second night this week with no obligations, and the second night of fun cut short due to wacky server hard drive antics.
Bought a bottle of Texan vodka at Trader Joe's tonight. Prescient, that was. Tomorrow will be sloshy.
Current Mood: Yar
Current Music: Possessed - Satan's Curse
|
|
10:35 am
[Link] |
Polyamory
We've managed to take on the care of two sets of cats (two cats per set) and one set of plants. One set of cats for four days, one for two weeks, and the plants for a month. But the plants only need watering twice, so I'm more concerned about forgetting them than working the watering into my schedule. I may make a cron job to remind me about the plants.
Two of the cats we've watched several times before. Our friends are often in Germany or some other degenerate country outside the US border, usually it seems for about two weeks at a time. Their cats (Ming and Thing) no longer seem too bummed when they are gone. And they've got a great back yard to hang out and drink beer in on a sunny day. Lots of shade, and the cats love getting out. Both of them are about five pounds heavier than our cats, so they are giants to us. Not that they are particularly fat. They're just big. For one thing, they're male and our cats are female. For another, Jen picked out our cats, and she has a thing for runts (whatever you're thinking, it's not funny, buddy).
Thing is almost doglike in his loviness. Except for the occasional excited love bite. He's an orange tabby. Ming is aloof. He's jet black. He often sits under the dining room table, under a particular chair. Sometimes he runs out of the room when I try to pet him. Sometimes he allows it, happily. Sometimes he allows it, but only for my sake, and will start biting if I don't lay off soon. He doesn't hold back a whole lot in that case. I've learned to judge his moods over the years.
Yesterday afternoon, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jenscrowl and I went over to Ming and Thing's place to drink (coffee for Jen, beer for me) in the back yard. After about 10 minutes of good catedness, Ming climbed the fence and jumped into the neighboring haunted house's yard, disappearing amongst the two foot tall blades of grass. He didn't come back. Eventually, Jen went from worry to near-panic. We decided to leave and come back later. Twenty minutes later, Ming was sitting next to the garden, looking smug. Nothing worked to lure him in, not even the mysterious wet food that we don't think we are supposed to feed them. I carried his enormous catty self into the house, improperly (I hold him under the forelegs, away from my body, like something toxic, gross, or liable to turn around and scratch half your face off in a fit of pique). Usually he hisses violently without moving his body. When I set him down, he stands in front of me for the make-up petting. Yesterday, maybe to disappoint Jen's morbid curiousity, he complacently (smugly?) let me carry him in. Still got the make-up petting, though.
The other cats in our care are newer to us. They were rescued as kittens by our friends. Our cats (Hopey and Chi) were rescued, as well, but I think Jack and Possum had it worse. Jack's only got one eye, and Possum is pretty much scared of everyone. We've become better friends slowly, but all that means is Jack will flop around just out of reach, occasionally allowing a quick pet or two, but no head skritching, and Possum will stand firmly in front of an escape route, watching us intently. They are not used to their buds being gone, and I get the feeling they'd be harrassing 911 with missing person reports if they could figure out the phones.
We've been watching "Strangers with Candy" episodes while hanging out with Jack and Possum. Jack flops around on the floor, eating the treats we give him but refusing to sit between us on the couch, despite repeated invitations. He is strangely reckless for having one eye. He likes to flop next to the coffee table, then jump up. Often, he hits his head, hard, against a leg of the coffee table when he jumps up. You'd think he'd have the whole area mapped out in his head, and maybe remember that he doesn't see so well from the left side of his head, but nope. Bam! He doesn't seem to notice too much. Cats have tiny heads, but they are very hard.
After an hour or so (three episodes), Jack leaves the room, Possum is nowhere to be seen, and we start to feel we've overstayed our welcome, so we pack up and go home.
One of these days, Possum's going to sit on my lap.
Current Music: Dylan
|
|
12:21 pm
[Link] |
Nursing Wounds
The outings continued this weekend, but I caught up on some sleep, as well.
Nurse With Wound was first, Friday night. The Great American is a nice place to see shows. Not enough beer selection, and too expensive, but the sound is great. Met up with some folk at Edinburgh Castle first for a couple beers. Some band was playing, members of which were friends with one of the folk I was meeting. The band sounded pretty interesting - self-described as post fusion, which sounds terrible, but described by a friend as an instrumental version of early Eno or (some other similar bands that I can't think of right now). They started playing upstairs before we left for the Wounds (as all their biggest fans call Nurse With Wound*), but through the floor they just sounded like rock 'n roll.
Showed up at GAMH a little over an hour after the show started, hoping to avoid the opening act, which from all accounts was horrible. Came in supposedly two minutes after Nurse With Wound started their set. I wasn't sure what to expect, but got exactly what I'd hoped for - eerie ambient music with occasional harsh noises. They provided some artsy visuals to keep people from falling asleep. For a first SF date ever, it was a short set - 45 minutes. Worth it, though.
Saturday was the first day of Tidal Wave. I'd decided to go to the Burnt Ramen for Insanity and some bands with names that suggested they'd sound like very early grindcore. Instead, I wimped out completely, and stayed at home drinking beer and watching CSI with Jen. In the land of my people, 95 degree Farenheit weather with 80% humidity is pretty common. But I have lived in this Mediterranean Eden over a decade, and it has made me week. I sweat grumpily, clad all in black, and drink lagers. And avoid sweaty warehouses.
Sunday was the second day of Tidal Wave, and since I'd missed Insanity Saturday, I had to make it out. Another day of sun and lagers, with metal bands playing in the sun. Passive Aggressive is still improving, and seems to be settling on one direction more than in the past. I really dug the new song they played. I caught a little of Potential Threat's set. Very traditional thrash, with a little crossover feel to the vocals. I guess the dude is very enamored of Hetfield's early style, but it sounded more like the punkier thrash bands to me. Some band in particular, but I couldn't remember which, and everyone I was with was not into crossover or punky stuff at all.
Learned a new Spanish word Sunday - gorron. Means something like "freeloader". There were a bunch of gorrones at our cooler all day on Sunday, so we ran out of beer two bands before the closer. I remembered a liquor store near the park, and a few of us took off. Turns out, it was about a mile away, maybe. That almost killed Leon. We managed to snag a ride back to the venue with our friend Yesenia, who lives nearby, so Leon is still among the living.
Insanity played a drunken, sloppy set, which perfectly fit the mood and feel of the entire event. I don't know the names of either guitarist, but one of them (the one in Population Reduction) gives great onstage banter. He's pretty funny. Problem is, Insanity is fucking evil, dammit, so I was wishing he'd shut up during the set. Spoils the mood. Of course, the fucking sun was doing a bit of illusion-shattering, evil-wise, so it wasn't that big a deal.
After, we made our way to some sunken tourist bar in Jack London Square for a final beer before Tomas and Guillermo, who'd on a whim, spent Friday night driving to LA and Saturday night driving back, made their way home to presumedly collapse at their doorsteps and sleep a good 14 hours.
Then I got a page, and went in to work to reboot a customer's server.
*They don't.
|
|
03:42 pm
[Link] |
water/beer, food, shelter
Tonight, jenscrowl and I are off to beautiful and hoppy Anderson Valley, for a microvacation. One night at a hotel, dinner about a mile from Anderson Valley Brewery, pack our things up tomorrow morning and head back to Oakland for a half-day's work (non-paid, at home work for Jen). Yay for beer.
Current Music: Root - The Temple In The Underworld
|
|
11:24 am
[Link] |
Get this wick out of my ass
I'm always tired. Too much going on. Jen's got a job that gets her up just late enough that the beautiful stench of the second pot of coffee wakes me enough that it's hard to turn over and go back to sleep. Particularly since lately, I'm out a lot of nights, and the hour in the morning is one of a couple we'll be able to hang out. So I'm on time to work, often even early. This is a first for the last. . . decade, I guess? I'm not a punctual fella.
So yeah, too much going on. Some sort of band practice twice a week, and it's the season for touring, so there's some show I just can't stand missing at least once, usually twice a week. And Jen and I have started a weekend program of finding brew pubs, then finding a national, state, county, or regional park nearby, taking a hike, then going for late lunch and early beer (diet coke for the lady). Unlikely that'll happen this weekend, as the temporarily reformed Demilich is playing in LA Saturday - the closest they'll be to the SF Bay. How can I miss this historical event?
Burning at both ends. Can't say it isn't fun, though.
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: David Bowie - Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family
|
|
12:42 pm
[Link] |
The universe as drtcentric
Four shows this week, three of them surrounding the True Christmas. Or maybe the Antichristmas. Either way, they are well-timed.
---
The first show, Monday, was more fun to attend than to hear. Toxic Holocaust, Bloodwolf, and a couple local bands of ill repute. Bloodwolf, I am told, worship at the altar of GISM. I am also told we should all be bowing down before the mighty GISM, and from what I've seen of their shows, and heard of their releases, this would be true if the Pacific Ocean didn't separate us from their tiny, earthquake-beleagured system of islands. Bloodwolf, on the other hand, was entertaining but pretty obviously a tribute band. Any time punks play metal, they invite catastrophe.
Which brings us to Toxic Holocaust. A one-man band with backup touring bands scattered throughout the world (one in Europe, one in Japan, and one in Australia, that I know about). He made a lot of people happy with his early releases, due to the very 80s production (tubes and analog recordings) and his 84-era Sodom-worshipping riffs. Live, though, the band's weaknesses glare. You can't have a song called "666" just for the sake of being metal. Personally, I didn't get much of a Christ hating vibe off the songs or the set - more like a happy revel in metal's ancient past. Bands like Black Witchery, Morbosidad, Krisiun - I believe their vitriol spewings. Toxic Holocaust, like Bloodwolf, felt like dress-up.
I was able to grab the latest Bone Awl tape, though, and that made me happy. A split with The Rita, a noise band I haven't heard of. Lots of ambient static noise, fading into feedback and Bone Awl playing, back into The Rita's noise, back into Bone Awl, etc.. The second side in particular is great. Bone Awl is sneering punks doing metal right. Which is weird, because they break most of the rules while they're doing it.
---
Last night was Krisiun, Behemoth, and Morbid Angel. All three bands share a common trait - they have spectacular drummers. Two of them share also a sound very inspired by Morbid Angel. Krisiun and Morbid Angel both have jaw-droppingly great guitarists, as well.
Krisiun came on first. In addition the Morbid Angel influences, they (unsurprisingly) have a very South American feel - with the pummeling drums that Sarcofago perfected years ago. Unfortunately, their riffs are very Brutal Death Metal, which is kind of boring, but the guitar leads are insane and strange enough to make up for it, and they have a very anti-religious bent. Unfortunately, I was near the back of the venue for their set, being a lazy bastard.
Behemoth, from Poland, used to be a black metal band. Now they are death metal, and take some pretty obvious cues from Morbid Angel. Another anti-christian band. Pretty eh for most of the set. They played a very old song (from a '92 demo, I think they said), and it was better - more epic and more rocking. But I was waiting for them to finish so Morbid Angel could start.
For some reason, I wasn't expecting much from Morbid Angel. David Vincent is back doing vocals, which is great, and they only play songs from when he was in the band, which is also great, but their performance at the Fillmore last year (opening for nu metal band Soulfly - the horror) was just okay. I forget what they opened with, but it was old. I was at the front, and stayed there the entire set. I couldn't get enough. They went through a lot of classics - "Maze of Torment", "Lord of All Fevers and Plague", "Evil Spells", "Pain Divine", "Where the Slime Live", and others, ending with "Chapel of Ghouls", which has some lyrics of the type for which I'm a total sucker. After that final song, Vincent said "Let's have a beer", and walked off the stage, through the crowd, to the bar, where he had a drink and chatted with everyone. I walked away from that show stunned - completely amazed and awed, and that's not an exaggeration. The entire audience seemed to be grinning ear to ear as they left.
---
Tonight, Anvil Chorus and Ulysses Siren are playing at the old CW in SF. Both bands are from the Bay Area and broke up in the 80s - Anvil Chorus was a pre-thrash metal band that kind of died when Metallica exploded. Ulysses Siren was a thrash band that never managed to get a record deal. But they were great. Along with them, Stone Vengeance is playing. They've also been playing since the very early 80s, but they're just kind of eh. Lastly, Embers of Euphoria, a newer band that plays traditional metal, but features the drummer from Weakling, Sangre Amado, and Saros.
And tomorrow, if I make it that far, the mighty Slough Feg, possibly the best metal band in North America, is playing with yet another band from SF from the very early 80s - Brocas Helm. And some seemingly hipster/smirk band, Bible of the Devil. At Bottom of the Hill.
Current Music: Iggy, baby
|
|
01:05 pm
[Link] |
cat sitting, cat yowling, and the tunnel of stink
A couple friends have left town for the desert. Two weeks of road tripping and serial relaxing. I'll be feeding their cats and drinking beer in their garden with the cats for those two weeks. The sun came out last night just before sunset, and it's supposed to mostly stay that way for two weeks. What beer should I drink?
---
In unrelated news, a strange grey tabby got into the house this morning. Jen found her in the living room, near Hopey's skritch post. Hopey was hiding under the bed at the time. I was sleeping in the bed. The strange cat's only feasible exit was the window not too far from the bed.
I was awakened by a flurry of sound and activity, enough so I had a vague idea that there was a feline intruder in the house. A grey tabby ran into the bedroom and hopped up onto the chair next to the window. "Hopey?" I queried, blurry-eyed. "Hey Hopey. Watch out, there's a cat in the house." I got suspicious, then tsked at the cat, which prompted a low, angry growl.
Something in all that got Hopey riled up, and she shot out from under the bed, toward the cat on the chair. A lot of yowling ensued, and that weird spazzy thing cats do when they're not really ready to fight yet, but they're feeling each other out. Hopey managed to catch a claw on the chair, and was unable to extricate herself, so she and the other cat had a stare-down with occasional hissing.
Jen was stressed about the whole thing, worried that freeing Hopey would hurt her claws and cause an even bigger fight (Hopey never believes that Jen would hurt her, so she focuses her anger at the nearest object when it happens - in this case, the other cat, and since most cats are tougher than Hopey, Hopey would probably get her ass kicked if she attacked). I got dressed, walked over to the cats, and gave Hopey a pat on the head. She gave me a loud "meh" to let me know she had a handle on things, but wouldn't mind if I were to maybe start beating the other cat with a lead pipe. I tried lifting Hopey out of the situation, and as soon as her claw came free, she ran back under the bed. At which time, the other cat noticed I was about three feet away from it, and took off out the window.
Very exciting.
---
And very stressful for Jen, who made her first bicycle excursion through the Posey Tube to her job in Alameda. It's a pretty terrifying ride through the tube, especially the first time, but she made it half-way, until a homeless man with a shopping cart necessitated her getting off her bike so they could get by one another.
Hopefully, she'll tell the story when she gets back from work.
Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: The Cure - Cold (live)
|
|
05:07 pm
[Link] |
Scrowlie 15
Just finished Scrowlie 15, the final issue of Little Scrowlie in one four hour marathon. Four hours isn't much of a marathon, I know. But I'd already put a lot of time and effort in the outline, and the previous 14 issues, so once I started with Page 1, and got past that initial weird mind block, it was smooth going. Now I await Jen's arrival home from work for final approval.
|
11:31 am
[Link] |
APE 2006
APE was a lot of fun this year. The SLG booth was less packed with creators, which meant a lot of people I'd have liked to see were not there, but it also meant more room for everyone, so a less stressful time for all. Double-edged blade, cuts both ways, ouch, dammit, put that thing away, and all that. I experimented with an all-whiskey convention, and was quite pleased with the results, except that I ended up maybe a little more tired at the end of the day.
Some trends I noticed at this year's APE:
Last year's (and maybe the year before's?) merch-before-comics trend threatens to utterly consume the Press aspect of the Alternative Press Expo. I foresee a future APE (2008?) that is comprised entirely of cute handbags, fuzzy toys, and the occasional screen printed artwork, eventually turning into handbags and fuzzy toys ONLY. I somewhat understand how the tiny exhibitors came to the Fuck Comics conclusion - Jen and I discovered at our second or third convention, way back in the 20th century, that merch is the only way a self publisher will ever make back booth money. Think about it - a booth that costs $150 will be paid for by the proceeds from 50 $3 comics or 10 $15 t-shirts. Make two or three cute t-shirt designs, and you'll be gold plating your teeth before you've finished unpacking (seeing as Jen and I still haven't entirely unpacked from Comic-con 2002, those more neat freaky may find that to be not entirely true). Three t-shirt designs will take, what, less than a week of drawing to come up with. One comic, on the other hand, takes about three months if you don't have a job (and what self publisher doesn't have an outside job? Other than the two or three you can think of off the top of your head). So, if comics aren't going to make you any money, why bother with them? The answer is that you draw comics because that's what you want to do, not to make money, but that answer isn't sufficient for, I guess, a growing number of APE exhibitors. Yeah, so APE cost me less money this year. I didn't have to buy much at all.
Mall goths are almost entirely a thing of the past. Maybe it's the lack of certain mall-goth magnets (no fault of theirs), who haven't attended APE in a while. Jen and I have zero "Is Jxxxx going to be here?" to report. Jen, however, did get one "is Emo Boy going to be here?" Which brings us to the next trend - "Emo" kids. There were a lot of them. Exhibitors and attendees. I hate to report I had a hard time looking at the comics of the more I-Weep-As-I-Lay-Dying-At-Your-Feet looking exhibitors.
If tension continues to escalate in the Feinberg/Nakamura situation, we may have a cage match to the death by Comic-Con this summer.
Not a trend, but I found one comic by a guy who lives on a street in Berkeley that I ride down on my way to work (when it isn't raining, that is). He lives on the section of that road I call "Cat Boulevard", because there are five or six cats that live off and loll about on that street, including one I've nicknamed Dead Cat, due to his way of lying in a dead-looking ball of fur just in front of or behind a car's rear tire.
|
|
01:28 pm
[Link] |
lazy sunday
I'm sitting here not wanting to leave the house, but knowing I should. This is the apathy I develop when I haven't been outside, usually due to inclement weather. Well, the weather's been sucking for a few days, again (I cringe a little when I write that, thinking of the sub-zero weather with which I grew up). Rain, rain, rain. Friday night to Saturday morning it pissed down in sheets. Nothing like the drizzle typical of SF Bay rain. I half-expected to awake to find the house floating gently in the bay, surrounded by our neighbors' houses and crackheads paddling their shopping carts around, shouting into our windows in search of spare cigarettes. But the gutters did their jobs, and we stayed put.
So I need to go out on a ride, to justify sunday beers, and to drive away this nagging bleh feeling. jenscrowl is on her second day of 12+ hours away from home, working (yesterday was a 13 hour shift with 1 hour BART commutes on either side, today is 11 hours, with the same commute). After my ride, and during my beers, I will attempt to bake her a chocolate cake. I'm better with lentils, but I can always try.
Saw "V for Vendetta" last night. It wasn't bad, actually. I hated Matrices 2 and 3, but the first was great. I wasn't expecting a whole lot, just an exploding monument to death and dismay or two. Funny that the first Alan Moore-based movie that he actually disavowed was one of the more successful translations of his work into movies. "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was horrible. The biggest problem with the movie was a lack of time to fully develop. My memory of the graphic novel (and it's been over 10 years since the last time I read it) was that it was very emotionally effective. To stick to the 2 hour time limit, the movie ended up having to blast through some of the character development, and the growing sense of helplessness and frustration barely had time to develop before the audience was supposed to cheer the destruction of a symbol of western democracy. And my views of humanity have changed since, say, the very late '90s. When I see a marching crowd of masked people, all dressed in uniform, taking the lead from a charismatic leader, I feel more distrust of mobs than elation at unity. But boy was I ready to see some government buildings explode.
I like how some right wing pundits have declared this movie near-treasonous, and anti-Bush. Bush, of course, was off snorting massive amounts of coke and drunk driving into Texas Steers back when Alan Moore wrote the comic. Any resemblance to Bush or his administration is merely a reflection of his pseudo-fascism.
In exciting cycling-based news, the loose headset on my bicycle that was threatening my sense of well-being above 30mph going down hills has been fixed. The Doranado, recovering at home after an unclipping accident thursday that left him with road-rash on his ass and one foot dangling by a tendon, figuratively speaking, walked me through the incredibly simple task of tightening my headset, so I think it'll be a ride through Montclair and up Butter's Canyon today.
And in comic-related news, jenscrowl and I had late-night coffee with bratty_princess and crypto_sapient, during which many things were discussed. I gave them a rundown on the comic idea [Unknown LJ tag] and I are developing, and their response was very encouraging. I have a very hard time determining whether my own ideas are good, bad, or just plain bleh. They even liked the title, which I thought may be too strange. Now to finish the last issue of Scrowlie, so I can start working on the next story in earnest.
Current Mood: apathetic
Current Music: n/a
|
|
05:14 pm
[Link] |
Volcanos and bicycles
I'm pining for Lassen today. Snag Lake, specifically, at the edge of the most deathlike scenery I've been near since maybe the Badlands long ago. We were there in September, just after all the bugs were gone from what we heard, when there was almost nobody out there because summer's camping season was over and skiing season hadn't nearly begun. Some of the easiest and pretties high(ish) altitude hiking I've ever done. It was a three day stroll, every night ending at a lake*, with TastyBites, tortillas, and whiskey. The last day, on the way out we stopped at an isolated, crystal clear lake and took a swim. The water was pure and cool, but not so hot you couldn't stay in once you got used to it.
At least I've got my bike.
Which I've been fucking up lately. I decided I should use it for its purpose (it is, after all, called a crosscheck - it's meant for pavement and trails). Tangentially to that, as jenscrowl and I were riding the Bay Trail in Richmond, through the Marina, I decided to try some cross dismounts, took one too fast, and fell onto my handlebars and front wheel. I managed to sheer the valve off my front tube, twist the top and bottom of the front fork, and twist my handlebars around. Plus I have a nice big bruise just below my right nipple (sexy). All in one fall. I completely failed at catlike nonchalance after the fall, mainly because I was so surprised at the whole thing. Because our local bike shop (repair annex) is so wonderful, I had my little Surly back the next day, all fixed up.
Aside from all that, though, once this storm passes through I'm starting off on the hills again. I've been riding flats all this past month or two, increasing my time in the saddle so I can hit Redwood, Cull Canyon, and other nice-smelling, unpopulated areas just outside Oakland. And yesterday I splurged on the bike shoes I've been looking at for the past six months or so (Sidi Mega). I wore them on the work commute today and rode like I was a little kid in brand new Keds.
*Okay, it was two nights, but we could've stayed at least six days camping at a new lake every night.
Current Music: Bathory - Storm of Damnation
|
|
12:37 pm
[Link] |
surprise fun
I accidentally attended a great (mostly) local show last night. The Golden Bull in downtown Oakland has early shows most sundays. Doors at 6, bands at 7 (more like 7/8 in reality). Booking seems to usually be Alcoholocaust or Pyrate Punx, and the bands playing reflect that. Lots of crusty or hardcorish punk, and the occasional mostly-metal show. Last night was one of those mostly metal lineups, and I went because I thought it'd be a fun bike ride, and because I'd never seen one of the metal bands (Embers of Euphoria). I was tired from a weekend taking advantage of this spring kittenish weather, riding as much as possible, so I almost skipped the show. Glad I didn't.
Embers of Euphoria is a very traditional metal band. Vocals are actually sung, a nearly dead art form (outside of boy-band oriented "metalcore" style bands, but those clean vocals are a whole different trip). EoE's vocalist seemed heavily influenced by Geoff Tate (Queensryche) and Bruce Dickinson (Samson and some other band whose name I forget). And probably Halford, since he is the blueprint for that vocal style. Aside from the traditional vocals, the band is very tight, without a single weak point. That kind of professionalism is pretty rare in nowadays, particularly among small bands without much hope or chance of "making it". Honestly, my favorite style involved pretty poor musicianship - gleefully so, even. But it's still good to see a band that aspires to rise to Metal God status.
The middle band was a punk band from Vancouver - A Textbook Tragedy. A bunch of kids with maybe an average age of 23/24. All of them were jazz-good musicians. They played a math rocky kind of punk/hardcore/metal hybrid. Mostly punk/hardcore, but occasional doomy, thrashy, or even deathy riffs. Lots of time signature changes, funny chords, and, during the last song, some kind of free jazz section thrown into the middle with some pretty spectacular jazz guitar noodling and great, seemingly improvised drumming.
The last up, 100 Suns, is another hybrid (it's hard to find metal/metal-like bands in the SF area that aren't strange hybrids). From what I've heard, they started out more punk/death with doomy bits, and have recently come under the influence of Darkthrone. I've only seen recent sets, so I don't know what the old material is like, but the new stuff is pretty great. They have three guitarists, which is normally not at all a good sign, but the recently added third is important. He ups the metal quotient, and adds some extra darkness to the sound. Though mostly, the three guitars just add up to even more smashingness in the doom and death parts. The three vocalists - one shouts, one screams, one growls - work together well. The shout/scream dichotomy is pretty common (from Carcass to Deicide and beyond), and I dig it.
On top of all that, it was a balmy night (for February), and Telegraph was mostly empty as we rode our bikes back home, allowing us to take a whole lane to ourselves. Or maybe we were pissing off everyone behind us. I don't know. It was a nice ride, though.
|
[<< Previous 20 entries] |
