Something i like to do on a lot of nights is sit at my kitchen table and make strums on the guitar and turn on the microphone and then wait and see what comes out of my mouth.

Tonight it was all hillbilly accents and poorly folkish porch songs, but they have punchlines and are not overblown so i even feel like i can share one without dousing with reverb and blushing, plus there is a swearword.

Last Friday, i paid off my student loans. I gave Federal Student Aid a fifteen-minute-long middle-fucking-finger. So now i am free of the bonds of endless indebtment for my choice of education, which was totally all wrong for me, except for the fact that it allowed a sort of career which in turn allowed me to pay off my indebtful student loans in less than a decade. Wicked circles.

I am still needing to pay mom and dad their contributions, which equal lots of dollars per month until we are all dead, but at least that debt is cordial and we share blood and there is not thousands and thousands of dollars in horrific interest. My RIT-infested prime-grade education will haunt me forever, and now it is too late for me to ever be a graphic artist or a historian or a hiphop phenom.

Tragedy abounds.

But then i still had money left, Somehow, so i am giving large sums to Air Canada, and more large sums to a dude named Fernando, who lives in Argentina. The idea is, Air Canada will fly me to Argentina, on Christmas Day, because avion precios are a cool eight grand one day earlier or later.

And once in Argentina, i will wander los caminos looking feliz naviDECREPIT, peering into frosty summertime Latin American windows, as un-gringo families exchange truly heartfelt gifts and greetings de la estación. But no one will want to have their holiday disturbed by a creepy gringo, and so i will make a sword and helmet out of wood, and run down the vacant main caminos shouting “¡Soy el amo de Buenos Aires! ¡Escuche mí, a los dioses y a diosas!”

And then Fernando will send his “representative”, and i will join in with a group of amigos, or perhaps just conocidos, and we will have large backpacks and we will wander the mountains and conquer glaciers and streams, and all of Patagonia shall be laid waste, figuratively, with our feelings de elación. And we will do this for three weeks even though i am bound to be tired of it after one.

And then we will reach the southern tip of the southern America – the end of the world! Unless you want to carry on to Antarctica, which would mean you are a asno mudo maldecido. Which also means that you would be a goddamn jackass.

The southern tip of South America will be a grandiose place to have conquered, because i think that it is the most significant sharp point that any of the continents have, except maybe for that wicked jagged part on the north shore of Australia.

If the continents were made of wood, then South America would be the easiest one to wield like a club. That is something that tha S.A. gots going for it, bitches.

And by the time i get back home, i will be thirty and there will be razón muy pequeña de la continuar con vida.

In the future, the phantom of Orville Redenbacher shall visit me in the middle of the night. He will be floating at the foot of my bed, soaking himself in a phantom hottub.

Orville Redenbacher will disclose to me many secrets of botany, although due to my tendency to be scared shitsless of phantoms floating at the foot of my bed in hottubs, i shall recollect only one secret of botany, which is the one about growing a perfect corn, each grain having 100% effective pericarps. Which means that there are no “old maids”, which is what popcorn experts refer to unpoppable kernels as. Which is weird.

Even more impressive: when bagged and buttered, and placed into a microwave at high power, all of these “new technology” kernels will pop at exactly 2 minutes, 53 seconds, 634 milliseconds. This means that there is no more burnt popcorn, because you will set your microwave for 2:53:634 and then all of the popcorn will be popped, with no old maids. The drawback is that you will need to wear hearing protection like the people who direct jet airliner traffic, since due to the physics of noise, each kernel of popcorn will be worth approximately 60 dB of noise, and since noise can accumulate on top of itself, all of the kernels popping at once would be worth an amplitude of sound pressure which will burst the microwave oven and your neighbors’ childrens’ eardrums, so there will be the hearing protection and the hulking cast-aluminum microwave ovens which need to be anchored to the floor.

But the important part, again, is that all of the popcorns will pop at the same time, and there will be no unpopped corns, and the populations of the world will have something to all be thrilled about in unison, and so everyone will forget what they are angry about, and there will be peace, and everyone will put on their ear muffs at 2:51 following microwave activation, and smiles will abound as the popcorn bowls are passed person to person.

Thank you in advance, phantom of Orville Redenbacher.

Currentlies: “Physical Graffiti” is on the boombox, it is Friday night, and i am in my bedroom alone doing gibberishes. It is just like i am fifteen again.

(‘Gibberishes’ does not mean ‘masturbating’. You have a dirty fukked mind.)

OH! The Rover! It feels like there is hope for the world, if we could just join hands!

-

I have spent three hours napping, for lack of sleep.

Last night i made travels to Buffalo, which was seeming dark and dreary. On the north side of town, there is a dive bar called the Sportmen’s Tavern, and this is where the Kamikaze Hearts played. I do not know why they got stuck playing a dive bar.

(By the way, thankfully i go to see bands, or apparently i would have nothing to write about in my blogs. )

Despite a clever plea to the hipsters of Buffalo on the thoroughly unheeded craigslist, the crowd was totally blue collar, totally obese, totally forty and fifty-something, totally Nascar-tinged BUFFALO. Blue collar city-zens.

Don’t get me wrong, i have an increased empathy for Buffalo. I used to scorn Buffalo, back when all’s i knew was the Walden Galleria and Transit Road and nothing else. I would champion Rochester, and then badmouth Rochester too. But now i am knowing Buffalo geography, and Buffalo citizens, and i feel more valid in light of me always saying over the years “I am from Buffalo” when people who are not knowing the WNY ask me where i am from, which was done for simplicity’s sake, and also out of my aversion to follow-up questions, such as “Uhhh… Where is Medina?”. Plus, i grew up watching Buffalo television, so that had been my validity up until recently.

You are from where your television stations are from.

But yeah, the Buffalo architectures are grand, the edifice is feeling old and tired, unjustifiably browbeaten, with sore backs, the rust belt city which has lost and lost more than the rest, more than the rest combined, did you know in 1900 Buffalo was one of the biggest and most prominent cities on the planet? The city of the electric lights. The one that tethered NYC to the midwest.

But now it has been stumbling for a couple generations, and has lost half of its population, and it is poor and mismanaged, and it is not ripe for a comeback, but you really would like it to be. And you would root for it, if it were.

So it is the downtrodden who show up to be the audience for the Kamikaze Hearts, definitely having had no previous inclinations except for thirstiness. There is a man who is at least 83 at the bar when i order my beer, and he was squinting out of drunkenness yes, but mostly out of being ancient, and he begins to brag about how he ‘protects the whole fuckin neighborhood’, because he charged inexpensive prices, and he had been protecting the whole fuckin neighborhood since WWII, and no further details were asked for, nor disclosed. My first impression was that he was the inventor of the Buffalo accent. A little Brooklyn, a little Chicago, and a lot of something who knows what.

Another patron was at least 65, walking slowly and bowlegged, superbowlegged, ridiculously bowlegged, like his legs had ceased to be legs and had become pontoons, and he had a cane, and was fully prepared for sleeping at any given moment, in that he was totally dressed in his flannel pajamas. Get OUT!

Out at the bar, in your flannel pajamas! When does the shame vanish, i want to know!

And the characters filling out the background were your typical potbellied dudes with beer bottles, with ill-advised twenty-year-old Bills jackets with dirty white sleeves, and dirty twenty-year-old white Reebok hightops.

None of the six Buffalo hipsters had shown. It was to be expected, i guess.

The Kamikaze Hearts did not seem to mind, and even acted as if this was their ideal audience, and maybe it really was. By the end of the second song, the chatter had died, the whole bar was quiet and had turned around to face the band, and was waiting for the third song. It was surreal.

I only know the Kamikaze Hearts because the mandolin player is Matthew, who is a fellow that i have known on the internet for five years but never met until last night. He was a friend of Emily, and was the only one of Emily’s friends who did not spit on my grave after that was all done, which means that he still talked to me, still was nice, and i will not forget that. It helped me to realize that perhaps i was not actually the most callous boyfriend that had ever been, leaving legendary victims in my wake, ruined people in need of as much sympathy as bypassers could possibly spare. How dramatic.

I sort of ordered the first Kamikaze Hearts CD as a favor to Matthew, just like how you come to own just about any other self-released CD that you never listen to. But after a few months, i found myself going back and listening to it again and again. It was truly very good, and they had a unique sound, and i felt like they were extremely worthy of recognition in indie circles, and they were only an album away from getting it. And then they did not release another CD for four years.

But now here it is! They have a new one called Oneida Road, and i bought my copy last night. It is here. It sounds amazing, the songs are earthy and porchy (meaning ‘rural’) and clever as always, but now the Sound is Crisp, the instruments have good separation instead of mushing together, and any sound engineer who knows their stuff would be excited.

The 8.0+ Pitchfork review is only moments away, i am convinced.

Oh yes, i said it.

They played for two and a half hours, so many songs, everything i knew and loved and then some. They even played a Neil Young / Danny Whitten song.

At one point they played this amazingly soulful epic tune, like The Band circa 1969, it went like this: “If it weren’t for her I’d be another smalltown hardcore burnout I’d be living at the city mission eating soup and drinking sterno I’d be leeching like a hippy, lying like a lawyer I’d be losing like a family man I’d have drank so much by now they’d have had to take my stomach out be the father of six children by five women in four different towns got a good friend travis couldn’t kick the habit till the insides of his face caved in good friend John couldn’t carry on and he drowned himself in the bathroom sink and I look to them and look at you and thank Jesus Christ you’re here I could be leeching like a hippy, lying like a lawyer I’d be losing like a family man.”

And i just found out that this song belongs to another Albany band called Beef. But if i could have only recorded the KHearts version, oh my. They employ four-part harmonies (which No One Else Does Anymore), they use slide guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin or banjo, snare drum cymbal and bass drum, and bass guitar. Everyone should see them. Plus they are very humourous.

At one point, Matthew engaged the distortion pedal on his mandolin. I was totally looking around for Angus Young, it sounded like a mean electric guitar was being shredded somewhere on stage. It was surprising when i figured out it was coming from the mandolin, and Matthew’s face was aping Angus Young.

I feel like i am becoming distracted, which means it is time to stop writing.

What i have meant to put across is that i enjoy these guys a lot, and i am hoping that they get the recognition that they deserve. Very soon, because they are Broke.

Every mix cd will have eleven songs. Every time, the disc will end with this song. It is the song that Johnny Cash forgot to write, or maybe he did not forget, and channeled it with ESP to Pall Jenkins.

It goes like this!

(SIGH)
i am the one
who has disappeared
and i’ll reap my rewards
when you look through me
i know i’m the one
who has disappeared
when i write my name
no words appear
and in your heart
i will appear
and when i turn
i turn away
and i am the one
who’s disappeared

this one’s for forgiveness
so they say – i’m that one
i am the one
who has no name
i have no name

and i am the one
who has disappeared
the way you look through me
i know i’m the one
who has disappeared.

I forgot that Linus only has one mischief related to food, and that is bread. Linus is crazed for the bread.

I have had half of a loaf of Italian bread zipped into a tidy bag, and i have toast or something every night, because a monstrous loaf of italian bread is $1.69 and feeds me for a week, except that now that Linus is around, i notice shredded holes in the bag, and gnaw marks on the bread, which means i cannot bring myself to eat the rest of the bread, which means my cost per dinner amount is soaring way past $0.25.

Which means that now i have to purchase a breadbox which is shaped like a griffin or evil dragon, which would guard my breads while i am away at work, and screams like Cthulhu at Linus when he is getting brave.

I imagine that the only places that i will be able to purchase such a breadbox, which is shaped like an inhibiting creature and also makes utterances like disturbing creatures, are in hard-to-find mythological places tucked into the Himalayas, which would require months of adventure and travesty, and by the time i get back Linus will have eaten all of the bread, so maybe i should just put the bread in the fucking cupboard or something.

There are three or four uncharacteristic things that i have been pondering about doing, lately. Since i am tired of working, i will list them here.

Number one, and most important:

Consider tracking down the full and detailed recipe for pizza, by the nowadays defunct Marlene’s Sub Shop, who made the best pizza in the universe from 1981 through 1997. The highlights of my high school lunches, which usually consisted of a bag of Doritos and a Hawaiian Punch, were the Mondays when Adam would foolishly hand over his cold Sunday Marlene’s pizza slices, and would not even ask for sexual favours in return. Amazing!

Details are yet to be determined, but chances are that the owner of the recipe is a Medina resident, which means that their standards of living are comparable to those of a third-world country, meaning that i could nab the recipe for maybe ten dollars and fifty cents.

After obtaining the sacred recipe, i would either simply make myself a Marlene’s pizza every day for the rest of my life, or else i would consider opening an establishment where i would direct the manufacture and peddling of these unique pies. The name of the establishment would somehow subsume the words “pizza”, “orgasm”, “greasy”, and “tim’s”. Such as: “Tim’s greasy pizza orgasm”, which would definitely make folks want to come in and buy my pizzas.

Marlene’s pizzas are fantastical, because the cheese is at least three times thicker than the crust. In the most prized specimens, it is four times thicker. The crusts are soft and succulent where they have been endowed with tomato sauce, and delightfully floury and firm on the bottoms, and the circumference crust is a sizable roll of the finest bakery-fresh bread, giving a positive topography to the fingers as they gaze into the valley of cheese and pepperoni below. The circumference crust has a pleasant shell, with very soft bread in the middle which can melt in the mouth.

The cheese is hard to explain. I am sure that it is some sort of mozzarella, but it is quite firm and almost rubbery, in the cooked form. This is not gross, it is delightful. There are solidified bubbles and nooks and crannies in the cross-sections of the mozzarella, if you were to perform a biopsy. As mentioned before, the cheese is always the thickest part of the interior pizza, rivalled only by the circumference crusts, which forms a very thickly-rolled border, i went over this before didn’t i? Anyways i guess the cheese isn’t all that different from any other cheese on pizzas, it’s just that it is goddamn thick, alright?

The pepperoni is just wide and thinly sliced, nothing special i guess.

Anyways, i am tired of describing pizza, and i probably won’t buy the recipe or ever taste Marlene’s Sub Shop pizza ever again as long as i live, which is very depressing.

I forgot the other things that i was pondering about, but i think one of them had to do with becoming a singer for a Radiohead cover band. And once the cover band became wildly successful, i would quit my job and we would tour and make one thousand dollars per week split four ways, which isn’t so bad, and i would live a life on the road that was different from what i did before, and i would get neurotic about it and then later i would write a book about how i was a Thom Yorke mimic and i was a social outcast and nothing seemed quite correct about anyone in the world or anything and how i would constantly be having panic attacks and downing medication and not feeling sorry for myself as a strategy for garnering selfpity in a subvertive sort of fashion, which is the highbrowest way to go about doing all that. But i guess i would start it all off with an ad, so that is what i just did.

Maybe the third thing i was pondering about was something about how i would like to go to Bills and Sabres games this year, fuck the Leafs.

Linus had spent the previous two hours hollering at me, bombarding me with meows. I was content to meow back at him, mimicking how pathetic he was sounding, but then that was getting old after about twenty-thousand meows and i had to ask him what his fucking problem was, and then it took the rest of the time to figure out that his food was gone and perhaps he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours.

I am so unqualified for cat ownership, but i am doing it anyways.

Food and water are pretty much the only things you need to keep on a level for maintenance of catss, and i seem to be able to not even do that much, sometimes.

My behavior is acceptable for the time-being because Linus is eighteen goddamn pounds, after all.

–

I know that it is the autumn now, because i am no longer in the mood for exercising or maintaining cats or myself or anything else, but i am constantly in the mood for sleeping and eating pasta, or chocolate, or other things with sizable portions of unburnable carbohydrates and refined sugars.

Also, there are a lot of grey skies and cool days and malaise about working and feelings of monotony, and i think that these are also signs of autumn. Although those last two might be signs of the other three seasons also.

–

The Roncesvalles Polish Festival taught me that i would like to own a singing bowl. If not a Tibetan singing bowl, then perhaps a Polish-Canadian singing bowl. If i were to own a singing bowl, i want to be able to keep on wearing dumb jeans, and not monk robes.

The Roncesvalles Polish Festival also taught me that it is totally alright to smoke pot while hanging out at the local bar or walking down the street or while shaking hands with policemen, which is sort of surreal to an irreparably browbeaten American such as me. There is so much potsmoking going on compared to anyplace i have been before. I am usually ashamed to admit that i have never partooked, even though it is dumb to be ashamed. It was mostly because i am from a smallish town and did not have friends except for Adam, who did not have any friends except for me, pretty much, but also because i was never very intrigued probably because i was brainwarshed by Nancy Raygun. Nowadays i am old and completely indifferent to the pots, and i write the whole process off as youngins being kooky and wanting to force a point with society and be nonconformists, which i empathize with, but maybe i am wrong and it is more that they like the ‘high’ feeling that it gives them instead, whatever the fuck that is who knows.

I am only intrigued by psychedelics, nothing else, because the only thing i value is epiphanies. Maybe i will store horseshits in my bathtub so that i can make my own psychedelics mushroomss and find euphorias and be weird in very enigmatic new ways and be in epiphenets, except i bet that the stench would be awful but maybe it would still be worth it.

I actually read up on the LSD a few months ago and it doesn’t sound as risky as everyone was making it out to be, so i guess that if i run across a natural bag of LSD, replete with shoulder strap, while driving to work or walking to the coffee shop, i will pick it up and take it home and put it in my refrigerator and consume it on a Friday night, or however you do the storage and timing, but otherwise i am too jaded to bother with asking people after it and spending money for it, especially since it will doubtlessly catalystize my fucked brainmatter and claim the remaining forty years of monotony that life owes me, for sure. I do not want to go to the mental patience place yet because i want to see Fight Club II first.

But maybe fuck all, if you’ve got the Jack and Tanqueray.

-[-

I am tired and am going to carefully insert myself between a mattress and a comforter, which is a cute name for a blanket, which i use to suffocate myself which is necessitated by avoiding Linus’ noses and tongues at 3:00Am.

written Sunday afternoon:

Jandek is performing in Toronto tonight. I am going to see, because this is unheard of. For twenty-six years, no one knew who Jandek was, or where he was from, or what he was about, but the albums kept appearing, attributed to a post office box in Houston.

Still no one knows anything about Jandek. But now he is making some performances.

The music is almost unlistenable. It is extremely eerie, and can put you into a trance. The guitar is not in any sort of known tuning, and the voice is a soft scrawl, sounding defeated and ruined. It sounds like nothing else at all. It is dissonance. I am guessing that every song is off the cuff, nothing determined beforehand, which basically means that everything is improvised, maybe just a small batch of cryptic words.

To be honest, i do not enjoy listening to Jandek very much. It is even too dark and detached for me. But as an impossibly analytical fan of both music and enigmas, this is something that i must see. Jandek is the most famous active outsider musician. Outsider musicians are often mentally disturbed and have no training, no connections, sometimes no aptitude.

–

written now:

Wow, that was terrible.

There was definitely the feeling of anticipation from the crowd. This is a guy who has built of a sizable cult following and constructed a huge impenetrable shroud of mystery around himself and everything that he does. The entire theatre was silent for 4 minutes prior to Jandek coming out. You could hear the footsteps of the band walking to the stage. That’s how quiet it was.

But then it was just bad.

It was Jandek and three other guys, and they improvised with guitar, upright bass, percussion, and Jandek on keyboards. And if it had just been the other three guys, it would’ve been alright as far as improvisations so.

But Jandek’s keyboard playing was so inane, pointless, just up and down the white keys, over and over and over again, and the synth voice was GOD FUCKING AWFUL. It reminded me of a twenty-dollar Casio i owned at the age of eleven. Even John Tesh would have thought twice about using that particular synth voice. So goddamn cheesy, relentlessly cheesy, unforgivingly cheesy.

And then there were the semi-improvised lyrics. Which were just Bad. Like unthoughtful and not nearly cryptic enough stream-of-consciousness meanderings. Jandek was talking the words more than the dissonant singing that he is known for. It was almost entirely lame, a lot of talkings about being a disillusioned old man in the working world, being upset, being in a sick bed, a lot about rain…

It is hard to describe, but suffice it to say, there were a lot of those moments where you are blushing out of embarrassment because of someone Else being a haughty pretentious jackass, and also feeling that you would laugh a lot if no one would notice, but everyone would and so instead you are horrified.

For me, this whole depthless and shapeless enigma was ruined a little into the second song. Such misguided pretense. I guess that when being extremely pretentious, good choice in instruments and a lack of vocals are pretty much mandatory. I would have left midway through, but i wasn’t sure if Jandek had garnered enough power through desolation to be able to strike people down with his eyes, which incidentally never glanced at the audience, so i guess i shouldn’t have been worried. Never once was the audience acknowledged, which was to be expected, i guess.

Anyway. Afterwords i just craved loud rock songs in 4/4 time, with thunderous drums and lyrics that alluded to Robert Plant having sexual intercourse with underage girls, and of course with mindnumbing riffages and extended guitar solos.

Sorry, Jandek. I am disillusioned with you.

Last night i watched a docudrama about Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh is not pronounced “van goe” like i had been told, or had been assuming, all of this time. It is pronounced “van gogh”, and if you do not know how to pronunciate the gh’s, then it is maybe a very quick choking sound.

When i was young, i liked to draw, and sometimes i was good at it. In the sixth grade, we had a contest for drawing Warren Towne, who was the oldest man in our community. He also used to be a well-regarded local school system superintendent, and our elementary school had been named after him. My portrait was weird, because i was not too hot at drawing people and faces, but i guess it was intriguingly weird enough to win the contest, and the art teacher said it reminded her a little of van goe, whoever the fuck that was.

And in the web of interconnected coincidences, the prize of the contest was a large boombox, and within a few months i had mowed enough lawns and pulled enough weeds and fed enough ducks to own The Joshua Tree, The White Album, The Beatles ’62 to ’66 and The Beatles ’67 to ’70. All on cassette. There would be a lot more to come.

-

Eleven years later (everything in elevens!) i would buy a print of “Wheat Field with Crows”, not because i was a connoisseur, but just because i liked how it looked, and it seemed gloomy, and i was drawn to gloomy things. Last night i found out that it was Vincent’s third-to-last painting before shooting himself in the chest, and that it was meant to be gloomy, and foreboding, and to make you want to shoot yourself in the chest.

Here is Wheat Field with Crows. Mine is still packed in a box. I framed mine in “Oxford Black”, which was the classiest black frame we had at Prints Plus, in my opinion. I used to frame pictures for hours and hours, when i worked there. It was a job which allowed me to meditate on my chakra while keeping busy, which was great. I should write about it sometime, the angled circular saw, the frame joining machine, the glue sprayer, the cutting of plexiglass and foamboard, and the pneumatic stapler. I would write about it all now, but that would be off topic, and i am trying to be better at avoiding that unless it feels right.

I am still not a connoisseur, but i really like Van Gogh, because by default i am attracted to completely overlooked artists who self-destruct, or intensely looked-after artists who self-destruct (KCobain), or artists with a respectable amount of recognition who self-destruct (Ian Curtis), and i guess that covers all levels of exposure when paired with self-destruction.

Also, i really like when he paints things in the sky, especially stars, which have Huge, Blurry Halos.

Van Gogh does the best stars. Even if he did not do them that often.

I guess that some people think that Van Gogh had very swollen retinas, because he drank absinthe a lot and had plenty of lead (from paint) surging through his bloodstreams. And his swollen retinas made everything nice and blurry, especially at night. This effect is to vision, what Loveless by My Bloody Valentine is to the aural spectrum.

And, probably due to the xanthopsia, which was maybe brought on by the epilepsy medication, yellow was the most intense colour. All other hues bowed to yellow. And so maybe it was that blue was a pleasant yellow, green was also a good yellow, red was the least good yellow, brown was a very respectable yellow, orange was a gorgeous yellow, and yellow was just fucking brilliant.

-

Anyway, the docudrama was really well done. It was just a lot of footage of Euro-country, as may have been seen through Vincent’s eyes, and then zooms onto the finished and unfinished works. And it was John Hurt reciting Vincent’s letters to Theo, and there was no dialogue but what was written to Theo, and John Hurt can read like he is channeling spirits, like he is the official Vincent Van Gogh séance medium, and it is very affecting. And it is up to the viewer to read between the lines in the aftermath of the angry left ear removal, and in the prelude to the gunshot. I like when films make you read between the lines.

Another one of Van Gogh’s specialties are sunflowers, which are very yellow. There used to be acres filled with sunflowers on the south side of Maple Ridge Road when i was young, and they seemed gargantuan because i was only three feet tall, but then they did not grow them anymore, and they built stores that no one patronizes, and now i do not remember the last time i saw a sunflower.

“You may know that the peony is Jeannin’s, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine, in a way.” – Vincent van Gogh (to Theo), Letter 573, 22 or 23 January 1889.