i was gonna go see the messiah this morning but i slept in

it's as if god doesn't want me to go to church anymore. my mom's birthday was on monday, and of course you know i called her to say "happy birthday mom, i love you, do you wanna drive down to road that parallels the interstate and has all the staples of 21st century america, you know where you sit down and have a cute delta gamma sister write down your orders for sweet tea and loaded cheese fries before slamming down a 1500 calorie meal which is followed by the entire staple's staff singing--or better yet, chanting--some clever variation of 'happy birthday?" my mom, bogged down in grading papers, declined, instead asking me if i would attend the methodist church's rendition of handel's messiah. although i haven't been to church in three years, i said "sure mom, i'll do it," fully intending on doing it. so where did i go wrong? a friend of mine is moving, and i attended his going away party (appropriately and cleverly titled "john voyage!") on saturday night. i needed to wake up around 10:00 in order to make it to the service on time, but i set my alarm for 9:30 so that i could sneak in the first half of the arsenal-chelsea fixture before watching the legion of virtuosos virtuoso their baby off. i limited myself to one shot of tequila and maybe six or seven offerings of beer, and i even left the party before closing time. fell asleep around 5:30 and somehow woke up at 12:15, completely missing the performance and probably completely dashing my mom's confidence in myself as a human being. i called her later in the day, and we both exchanged instances of "well, it happens," and i guess her confidence in myself as a human being isn't completely dashed.

if i start updating this regularly, maybe people will read it. maybe i'll upload more albums, too. people tell me i should write. hopefully they're not lying? if so, i'm gonna kill myself repeatedly. metaphorically, of course, and a little bit at a time. listen to satan-affirming sludge metal riffs and be happy that artists can play god in order to create satan.

skullflower - exquisite fucking boredom

First release in 7 YEARS from mighty UK heavy/drone/psych gods Skullfower. Matthew Bower (Sunroof!, Total) resurrects his slumbering free-noise behemoth with this gorgeous blast of hypnotic, pummeling, droning crush, equal parts shimmering skree, damaged motorik rhythms, murky and druggy psych-rock riffs and swirling fuzzed-out guitars.

Exquisite Fucking Boredom's core is the epic, expansive and never ending, four part suite 'Celestial Highway', a sludgy sabbathy seventies rock riff, repeated adinfinitum, a dangerously unstable entropic jam whererin the riff slowly drifts apart, sinking into a churning tarpit of abstract whir and hum, gradually mutating into a drifting, throbbing pulse, as warbly synths, chirping birds, and thick washes of dreamy sonic turbulence overtake and subdue any traces of the original riff. Mesmeric and hypnotic and totally otherworldly. Like UK mantric rockers Loop, on repeat play, while your boombox runs out of batteries, or a sweeter, prettier version of Dutch minimal metal gods Gore, or imagine Steve Reich or Terry Riley composing for Black Sabbath.

The remaining tracks retain their Krautrockish propulsion but drift closer to Sunroof! territory, loosening the psychedelic electronic riffscapes from their moorings, letting them float lazily through a gauzy soundscape of buzzing melodies, luminous shards of shimmering feedback and rumbling waves of drowsy, druggy drone. Like Neu! or Kraftwerk, doped up and drifting off, run through a bank of cheap effects, and broadcast out of an underwater leslie speaker, the lo-fi rhythms suffocating under a thick blanket of gossamer guitars and sonic detritus.

Hypnotic and savage, dreamy and otherworldly, quixotic and godlike! -tUMULt records

get it here

lol

guru guru - ufo

Guru Guru's debut album shows why the band, even if it never reached the levels of appreciation and influence the likes of Can or Neu! did, still maintained a healthy reputation over the moons for its early work. Opening number "Stone In" has a quite appropriate title for a starting track -- it is wonderfully tripped out, to be sure, and if Manuel Gottsching was more of a guitar god, Genrich kicks up a lot of frazzled noise. The principle of the Trepte/Neumeier rhythm section seems to have been "find loud weird grooves and then play them, sometimes chaotically." Again, they aren't Can's wickedly effective combination of Holger Czukay and Jaki Leibezeit, but they're not just falling over themselves either. The title track is the most memorable song, almost entirely eschewing conventional rhythm for an inward collapse of feedback and noise that sounds either like the Stooges' "LA Blues" even more strung out or early Main with a conventional band lineup. "Girl Call" and "Next Time See You at the Dalai" (a classic example of a just-groansome enough Krautrock pun that only Germans seemed to love) makes for a good combination, the increasing freakiness of the one leading into the start-stop chug and explosion of the latter. Genrich really gets to show off a bit on both, demonstrating that there is such a thing as technical ability that doesn't equal pointless fret abuse. "Der LSD-Marsch" is actually the most conventional of the tracks -- while a good-enough slow burn up to a freakout (mostly provided by Neumeier's drum solo), it's too short to be truly epic and not otherwise distinguishable from many similar songs by the likes of Amon Duul II, say. For all that, though, it ends this enjoyable effort well enough.

(allmusic guide)

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Amon Düül II - Yeti

hey i can be hip and awesome and post psych and kraut and weed albums too!!!

The second album by Amon Düül II (not to be confused with the more anarchic radicals Amon Düül), 1970's Yeti, is their first masterpiece, one of the defining early albums of Krautrock. A double album on vinyl (most CD issues have squeezed the two discs onto one CD by cutting three minutes out of "Pale Gallery"; the Captain Trips CD restores it to its full five-minute length), Yeti consists of a set of structured songs and a second disc of improvisations. It's testament to the group's fluidity and improvisational grace that the two albums don't actually sound that different from each other, and that the improvisational disc may actually be even better than the composed disc. The first disc opens with "Soap Shop Rock," a 12-minute suite that recalls King Crimson's early work in the way it switches easily between lyrical, contemplative passages and a more violent, charging sound, and continues through a series of six more songs in the two- to six-minute range, from the ominous, threatening "Archangels Thunderbird" (featuring a great doomy vocal by mono-named female singer Renate) to the delicate, almost folky acoustic tune "Cerberus." The improvisational disc contains only three tracks, closing with a nine-minute stunner called "Sandoz in the Rain" that's considered by many to be the birth of the entire space rock subgenre. A delicate, almost ambient wash of sound featuring delicately strummed phased acoustic guitars and a meandering flute, it's possibly the high point of Amon Düül II's entire career.

(allmusicguide)

get this shit here!

more will come :)

war exists and AIDS exists but not in my first-world

the last ten moments of pure, unadulterated joy:

1. being pushed in the pool by soccer girls at a team dinner
2. walking through sam's club with my buddy's kids while he and his wife shopped
3. finding wart-ish objects on my genitalia three nights after a drunken, blurry one-night stand (i think?)
4. defeating chivas of mcminnville 8-2 in adult league soccer action
5. completing a new york times crossword for the first time
6. consuming unhealthy amounts of alcohol before previously mentioned one-night stand-ish type thing
7. riffin'
8. wikipedia search results for: fordyce's spots
9. "is that fuckin' putnam county? holy shit! that's so cool, man."
10. "are you rolling a cigarette...?"

what is my life coming to? or, better yet, to where is it diverging? is my consciousness splitting? can this happen? please? i'll do anything? i'll do anything to be cool again? but i'm already somewhat cool, right, if i can have a drunken, blurry one-night stand-ish type thing? at least being attractive to 46 year old women is somewhat cool, right? right? right? left?

i wore a new t-shirt one time before staining it with burgundy-colored vomit

if ever a sentence describes my life, the one above might be it? sorry, housekeeping service in holiday inn express room 327 in athens, tennessee. my bad.

what's to care when to care requires energy

humans have a daily allowance of energy to expend. society provides hundreds of methods by which humans can unload their energy, and some might be just a little more fun than others. for instance, i'd much rather bareback a hooker than whip myself with a cat-o'-nine-tails. although masochism is probably an effective--and spiritual--outlet. and hell, barebacking a hooker could be viewed as masochism, too; i, however, see it as my attempt to establish my masculine dominance.

for your amusement, a list of vignettes. or really, less than vignettes, but soul-damning lines uttered in my direction.

"out of all the guys i've dated, you've been the only one who was halfway decent," she said, choking back tears. "this guy i've been sleeping with, well, i found out that he was still sleeping with his ex...so i moved all of my stuff out. WHAT DO I DO NOW?????"

"you should probably get tested, and soon...i think i might have an STD."

"god is telling me that we shouldn't be together anymore."

"fuck you! fuck you! i can't believe you hate the sight of me so much that you would [play french horn on the top of mount everest]!* what the fuck were you thinking? did you seriously think that [creating that unholy atonal sequence]* would do anything to put you in my good graces again? fuck you. i can't believe you!"

regarding the asterisk, do you really think i'm going to list my transgressions in that quote? of course not, for i was right and she was wrong. plus, listing such actions would make me look bad, and the commentary i would be forced to provide to clear my good name just wouldn't be worth the effort. so you'll have to trust me here. and since you are here, and you know that i am a good guy, you'll trust me, right?

other men say it better than...

i.

but maybe i'm not a man. masculine? sure. i haven't shaved in a day in a half, and i'm the victim of a shadow of five o'clock nature, and then some. i'm watching football on the television, and i really don't care about either team, but it's a man's sport, and it's also a man's sport to watch football. does this make me a man? i think of women solely as vehicles of sexual gratification, and i like getting my dick sucked. all of these characteristics make one a man, but for some reason, i don't feel like one.

i drank eight beers last night, and i also smoked a joint. i masturbated. i fell asleep on my couch and woke up at one o'clock this afternoon. narratives as such piece themselves together to form a synthesis of consciousness(es)--most people refer to this as life, but what i just described is hardly living. i drank the eight beers while sitting at a laptop and typing meaningless combinations of letters and numbers into cells on a spreadsheet, and i smoked the joint shortly before passing out on my couch while an episode of the simpsons i've seen dozens of times already ran its course on my twenty-inch television that i paid eighty bucks for at the big box discount retailer on the edge of town. back in my glory days, a girl and i exchanged emails while my band was on tour; she fell in love with the fact that i was out doing something with my life instead of sitting around drinking eight beers and smoking a joint before passing out on my couch with the simpsons on the tube. granted, her perception of "doing something with life" probably didn't take into consideration the fact that "doing something with life" consisted of getting redneck drunk on a nightly basis, putting cigarettes out on various parts of my body, hooking up with cute curly-haired blonde girls from fort collins, and (if the reader hasn't picked up on it already) general decadence. but hey, i was doing something with my life! [i'd footnote this if i could, but i can't, so i won't. i got back to town from tour, and the aforementioned girl and i went on a date. we held hands and went to a park and did some other mushy stuff, but maybe i came on too strong or something? for we never saw each other again. who cares? she lent me the perks of being a wallflower, which i guess is a favorite book of popular girls, and popular she was. i guess these girls just feel a stirring in their soul for the "shy person," and they wish that they were able to associate themselves with that idea, but they can't because they have to live up to the rules that society dictates: type a drinks like a fish and makes out with three hundred guys per year and sleeps with six of them and can't find one to fall in love with because all of these guys are also type a and most likely douchebags. fuck it.]

at least i woke up this morning without a hangover. except i didn't even wake up this morning--it was 1:07 past noon. at least i have that going for me, nowadays that i don't have any type a girls thinking that i'm "doing something with life." you know, i'd do something with my life, but it would mean giving up drinking eight beers by myself and smoking a joint before passing out on my couch. and i don't think i'm ready to do that.

toby keith urban legends

it's 2:30 in the morning, and i'm "working." i put that word in quotes because i've been here for two hours, and i haven't done a lick of work. i'm all alone in my cubicle, all alone in the office. out of sheer boredom and laziness, i figured i should start a new blog. my last blog, the summer of sabbath, failed miserably. actually, i was just too embarrassed to update it after my last entry, since the girlfriend i had so affectionately discussed in less than two sentences dumped me shortly after i clicked the orange "publish post" button at the bottom of the screen. these things happen. it also happens that the girlfriend-no-longer still pokes me in the eye with needles at every opportunity (for those who might think i'm a masochist, the previous sentence is to be taken metaphorically, duh). i'm not sure she means to do this, but it happens anyways. i generally do what i can to avoid her, but encounters are inevitable, as we share the same group of friends. actually, i quit hanging out with my friends so that i wouldn't have to be around her. am i a pussy or what?

in any case, i've fallen in lust with girl x, so why should i care? not that i have a chance with girl x, but man, she's hot. sexy. she knows it, and she uses it to her advantage. flamboyant-yet-naturally-colored hair, eyes ablaze with intent to which most discerning folks would hesitate to attach the word "good," and a vagina that i'm sure features little more than a landing strip for the smallest of passenger planes. her face is approximately three inches from mine when we converse. she knows. the sad fact about this situation is that it's not about confidence or intelligence or good looks. i possess all of those--in varying quantities, of course. i just don't have a chance with girl x, and that's all i'm gonna say about it.

i'm not sure if anybody reads blogs like these. i didn't go to school for creative writing like some of my friends did, but maybe i have what it takes to capture one's attention, to gain regular readers. i certainly have a catchy name for my blog. black magic carpetbagger. i live and die by the before and after: toby keith urban legends, big game cock block party of five, beer-battered women's shelter...yeah, i could go on. do people like cleverness? i do. would i read this blog? probably, but then i might say, "oh dear, what a mess." or maybe i wouldn't. maybe instead it would be more along the lines of "HELL YEAH HOLY SHIT THIS GUY IS MORE INTRIGUING THAN BUKOWSKI." god, i really write like bukowski, except that he was a badass, what with his eight thousand women and eight thousand whiskeys and coke and eight thousand dollars debt at the horse racing track and my eight thousand reasons as to why bukowski was a badass. i have zero women, but my fridge is full of beer, and i have an unopened bottle of evan williams at my disposal. maybe i'll get drunk. in any case, i was originally discussing my audience before i went all finnegan's wake...maybe i'll upload hot freak folk or sludge metal albums and people will find my blog that way. worth a shot, i suppose.

my conscience is telling me that i should start working. but where did listening to my conscience ever get me? or, for that matter, what did it get me? you cannot win in this type a world as a conscientious human being (in layman's terms: a passive nice guy), which should be dictionary.com's second or third entry for the guy with the halo who sits on your right shoulder and bickers with the guy with the pitchfork-shaped guitar churning out soul-crushing stoner riffs on your left shoulder. but tonight, i will listen to the good guy and i won't have sex until marriage and i won't drink until i'm 21 and i won't drive faster than the speed limit and i won't do drugs and i won't lust after lustworthy figures of femininity and i will read my daily scripture and all the other things the good guy tells you to do that i would probably hear and remember if i actually took the time to listen to him instead of trying to one-up mr. mephisto on my left shoulder in the guitar-off at the end of the world. good guy, you win. this time. but beware...