Giving You the Finger

Stagnation.

I’ve been a little twisted up inside of late. Holding a lot of stuff back. Suppose it’s for the best. Dunno. Verdict’s still out.

Let’s start with the inane:

I bought a new computer keyboard. The old one was four years old, and after the two hours of cleaning I did on it last Saturday, it was less a rubber membrane and the key action went from bad to very rough. I got seriously tired of having to communicate through keys that didn’t want to go down. With the anger I was feeling over the last weekend, not being able to express it added fuel to the fire. So Tuesday I bought a new keyboard, and I’m so loving it. Typing is a pleasure. A finger orgy. Party at the computer.

I bought a wireless access point for the apartment a week ago. Got it configured with encryption (weak, as it were) and access control. Got my laptop to work with it, and my roomate bought a wireless card for his laptop so he could take advantage of it as well. We’re all configured now. Everyone happy. Party in the street.

Remember the journal entry I made a few months back listing people I went to college with? One of them randomly emailed me last weekend with my message gateway. It was excellent to hear from her. She said that she was looking up some data on her family history, and her full name appeared. She followed the link to my site, and was astonished to hear her nickname. See, that’s exactly why I made that entry. I banked on the gamble that someone from that list, some how some way would search for their name and find that entry and the message to them. And it worked. We’re emailing each other, catching up. Is good. Party in the email client.

Work is picking up, slowly but surely. I’m still not so happy with the job, but it’s work, it’s a steady paycheck, it’s security, it’s something to get me away from the drama that follows me. Tomorrow looks to be a busy day, which is completely within the Friday idiom. Much happiness. A party in the bindery room.

‘Scuse me, but I really like Digital Gunfire. You don’t like industrial music? You can suck it. Wait, you do? Go there. Love it. Caress it. Put it in vinyl and whip it. It’s your choice. Party in the dungeon.

I made some strides with one of my ongoing programming projects last weekend. It works. I’m happy. Party in the login script.

Maybe this weekend will be less, um, shitty. Party in your pants.

Notes from Denny’s #6656

Transcribed from an offline journal entry written on Sunday, July 4th:

I do hate coming home for the weekend.

Same story. I get stuck in the house, for usually no good reason, and then go out a bit late in the day to plan something usefull. I dunno.

I’m currently sitting at Denny’s waiting on my meal. First meal today. And it’s 6:40pm. I should’ve called around to some of my friends, see what’s up and what’s going on. Today is the Fourth; no sense in wandering around aimlessly, but it looks like an eminent possibility.

Coming home is fine sometimes, and a drag other times. I was all gung-ho about visiting on thursday and friday. Around 7pm friday, things just wound down, and I wasn’t so interested, but I went anyway. And I’m here. I saw the town fireworks last night. Meh. About as interesting as any other town’s fireworks display. Getting into the park was little trouble. Getting out was the bitch and the bastard. Took me 45 minutes. Senseless. I was two city blocks from the interstate. Bleh.

But I left and drove around. Went out to Phil and Sandy’s place, cruised pasted to see if their pool party shindig was still happening. Didn’t see much of anything, so I drove on. Wandered around, stopped at a quickmart to pick up something to quench my dehydrated self, and went to see my core group of friends. As expected, they were all congregating, but they were congregating to throw a going-away-to-Japan party for a friend of theirs who works for a defense contractor. Got to meet him in real life for once; nice guy. I didn’t leave that clump of houses and their hospitality until around 4am. Snoozily drove myself back to my cousin’s house after grabbing something to eat and crashed out on the couch, light on, tv up.

Slept hard until 12:30, a half-hour before I had planned on waking up. And, as usual, I sat on the couch and watched TV; got suckerpunched into watching “Highlander”. Bleh. I’m sure the movie was good back in the day. I’m sure of it. But this whole pre-digital effects thing is so, um, 1980’s. But I finally got my ass up and moving, took a shower, got dressed, and around then my mother came home from work, so I hung out and chatted with her. That’s always a good thing. Got to see her room out back. Interesting. A one-room shack is where she lives. The shack’s been in the family for decades now, and after two uncles and two cousins, my mother now lives there. The rent’s cheap, which is good enough for her. She’s a real trooper.

I’m currently listening to the new Skinny Puppy album. Picked it up thursday. This weekend it’s been my salvation; a link of sorts with the larger world. I stacked a good mp3 collection on my laptop for the driving jukebox, among them is a cdrom full of industrial, futurepop, and rivethead-ambient songs ripped from Digital Gunfire. All of this has been my salvation, this angry, dark, and socially-disgusted music. The sun is out, the days are getting brighter, and my soul is inside, getting darker. Feh.

There went my Goth moment of the week. Heh.

But I can’t help it to not laugh or sneer when I look at all these little people in this little town. I used to think they were something, and they WERE something, but I left town. I saw larger things, larger places, larger people. These people aren’t so something anymore. And I can’t help but look at them as if they were like the cattle that they raise. A lot of good, decent, life-affirming “salt of the earth” folks here, and I can’t see them for anything special because this town has nothing, nothing to offer but chain restaurants, chain stores and chain smoking.

Sure, these are the people that make up 60% of this country. I’ll accept that. Grass-roots working folk. That’s no problem. Our country needs them. But it’s just impossible for me to see them as being anything but shallow, non-evaluating people who see only to the immediate needs of tending to their job first, their families second, and their future third. Their potential is just not considered at all. Potential is just not even on their radar. To them, potential is something only their “smarter than yours” children can possess; potential is just not for them because they have to work. And that’s how I see it all here. Just cattle.

Save me from this narrow-eyed mindset.

On the Road: AUS2TXK 2004/07

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

Shawn Thomas (Nasdaq ticker: SHAT), the cult of personality that brought you Miniflims(tm) and “Johnny the Original Greek”, and innovator in computer advertising with the “Your Mother Loves my Wang!” campaign, announced today his intent to relocate business operations to the city of Texarkana, Arkansas for the weekend of the Fourth of July, a federal holiday. The move and change of venue is to begin on the evening of Friday, July 2nd, 2004 and is expected to extend in duration to the afternoon of Monday, July 5th. The corporate office is currently in Austin, Texas.

All vested interests, and those related to or affiliated with Shawn Thomas, are requested to make note of these temporary changes and to provide suitable accomodations and business arrangements. Of greatest note is the length of stay intended; due to the federal holiday, Shawn Thomas has the unique opportunity to maximize this business transition through the singular capability of spending three days instead of two days to pursue his business and personal interests. It is expected that this extra day will be invested in mutual stocks with short-term dividends and long-term gains, with focus on strengthening ongoing partnerships with affiliates, contacts, and related businesses.

Shawn Thomas is a privately-held sole proprietorship in business since March of 1972. This press release contains claims and forward-looking statements which reflect intentions that may change at any moment, and are not intended for use as nor replacements for professional investment advice. For further information, please contact Shawn Thomas at his Office of Public Relations at http://www.phaysis.com/email.cgi.

###

On the Road — Twice in One Weekend

Please, have a gander at where I went last night:

Skinny Puppy ticket
…and it was so nice…

If not for my friend Ernie alerting me, I wouldn’t have known about the show. Hell, I really didn’t know Skinny Puppy was still around. I had thought that the band dissolved after the release of 1996’s “The Process” (one of their best albums to date, imho). But, as I learned, Ogre left following a label struggle, and did his own solo and collaborative work with other bands. He and keyboardist cEvin Key later made amends and revived the dead Puppy. And you-know-who got to see them. Heh.

Suckers.

Needless to say, it was the loudest show I’ve ever been to. Some of the set was an exercise in ear-splitting white noise. An aural and visual treat. Ogre is a crazy maniac on stage, dancing, jumping, twisting and contorting in a way that would make Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland look tame. He had various props and things to keep himself occupied – one of them being a gas mask filled with a clear, viscous goop that he’d slurp and spit out at the throngs at the front of the stage. Also in his arsenal, being the man-with-a-message that he is, was a bucket of stage blood that he grabbed by the fistful. He’d hold out his arms in a cross-like stance and let the blood drip down his arms before he slung the blood from his hands. Totally tripped out.

I don’t know every song they played, but I do know that they played: “God’s Gift (maggots)”, “Worlock”, and “Sleeping Beast”. After their hour and a half audiovisual sledgehammer, they came out for a double encore and did two songs, including “Smothered Hope” for the second encore. I say “audiovisual” because of the video screen behind Ogre which played a ton of eyecandy, flashes of religious symbols, shots of mutilation, graphics of things obscene, computer images, footage of war, politics, Bush, Iraq, and so on. Seriously thought-provoking stuff. The screen polished off the show.

The first band was Tweaker. They are a good band, in their own right, but they’re not for “tweakers”; they’re obviously named after something like “knob tweaker”. The guitarist also played keyboards and lap steel, lending to a brooding, moody sound. The lead singer was good, but reeked too much of Clay Aiken in vocal style, singing stance, and clothing. The bassist was strong and used effects in a well-fattening way, and the drummer was a badass. Interesting stuff.

Ernie and I left Austin around 4pm and made it to Houston in decent time. Luckily the maps that I had drawn from Yahoo maps were accurate and clear; we made the right exits and found the right spots. The entire “Theater District” of downtown Houston has a two-level parking garage underneath; we drove around looking for the venue, couldn’t pinpoint it, so we ducked into a nearby garage entrance to park and walk around. After paying our $5, we walked up the nearest stairwell to the topside above ground and voila we were right at the venue steps. We basically parked underneath the front door.

We walked around in search of dinner before the 9pm show, and settled on the nearby Hard Rock Cafe for lack of anything else (that was my first time to eat at HRC, and I have to confess something: no club sandwich is worth $10. That is all). When dinner was done, we walked straight over to the show, stood in a very short and moving line, got searched, handed over our $35 ticket, and made our way inside to enjoy the show. We left the venue hot, sweaty, and tired, at 11:45, lazilly made our way for the car, and headed out for home.

So, outside of the brief slow-the-hell-down downpour we got halfway to Houston, the whole trip, every bit of it, went without a hitch. It was kinda nice to be walking around a new city, just looking at everything with new eyes and getting caught in the buzz of a set of good bands. The energy there in that show was something else, and we were there. The drive back was smooth and easy, and he dropped me and my tired ass off at my apartment at 3am where I went to bed a mere 30 minutes later.

Ernie stated as much, and I agree with him: we need to travel to more cities and do things. Random things. Things we’ve wanted to do for a while. Hell, get a group and rent a hotel suite or something. I dunno. Got to make life interesting, and this weekend, with the two trips to two different cities to see two different shows with two different people is the injection of life I really like.

On the Road: Rush

The Rush concert friday night was excellent beyond expectations. After trudging through the heavy rains, the rush-hour traffic, and the hour and a half drive to San Antonio, my friend Nolan and I made it to the amphitheater an hour and a half before the show, just long enough to grab some food, do some requisite merchandising, and find our seat to watch the crowds accumulate as we dried off.

The lights went out and Rush came on at 7:40. Their show started out with a video on the jumbotron featuring Jerry Stiller in a Rush concert shirt. The video starts with Mr. Stiller asleep and snoring on his easy chair. He stirs awake, scratches his head, and says, “Oh, man, what’d they put in my tea? Ugh. Is the show over?” He looks around and notices the audience outside of the screen, and he exclaims, “Hey! What’re you guys still doing here? Wait, it hasn’t started yet? Huh. Where are those guys? Hold on, let me get them out here.” He looks to the left, off the side of the backstage and yells, “Hey guys! Get out here! You have a show to do! C’mon!” The band comes out, the crowd roars, and they tear into a 5-minute instrumental medley of songs from their 30-year history as the jumbotron shows vignettes of Mr. Stiller “rocking out” to the camera and a video montage of photos of Rush throughout the years. Yep, the show has started.

Set list:

  1. instrumental medley, featuring photos of the band from over their 30 year history
  2. “Spirit of Radio”
  3. “Force Ten”
  4. “Animate”
  5. “Subdivisions”
  6. “Earthshine”
  7. “Red Barchetta”
  8. “Roll the Bones”
  9. “Bravado”
  10. “YYZ”
  11. “The Trees” (with “Day Tripper” interlude)
  12. “The Seeker” (cover)
  13. “One Little Victory”

    14. INTERMISSION:

  14. “Tom Sawyer”
  15. “Dreamline”
  16. “Secret Touch”
  17. “Between the Wheels”
  18. “Mystic Rhythms”
  19. “Red Sector A”
  20. “Rhythm Method” (drum solo)
  21. “Resist” (acoustic)
  22. “Heart Full of Soul” (acoustic cover)
  23. “2112”
    • Overture
    • The Temples of Syrinx
    • Grand Finale
  24. “La Villa Strangiato” (with strange diversion: Alex cuts loose on the mic)
  25. “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”
  26. “Xanadu”
  27. “Working Man”

    28. ENCORE:

  28. “Summertime Blues” (cover)
  29. “Crossroads” (cover)
  30. “Limelight”

Yes, that’s “Xanadu”, “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”, and “Between the Wheels” you see there. Been ages since they’ve played those on tour; a real treat. And Alex, on the song “La Villa Strangiato”, was given center stage, to which he stood at his mic, played some odd songs as the other two tried to follow along, and sang, in a most lunatic falsetto, things like some kind of military song and stream of consciousness stuff like, “Oooh, I like to siiiinng, like to siiiing a looottt.” We were rolling in the aisles.

After the final encore song, Rush thanked us and left the stage, the stage lights stayed on, and the house lights came up. After a few seconds, the jumbotron roars back on to show Jerry Stiller again. He looks at the audience, many of them yelling for more, and he exclaims, “Hey, what are you still doing here?! The show’s over! Go home! Go away!” He looks at the bed behind him, walks over, takes off his shoes, and lays down, “Ah, bedtime. Good night, everyone.” He falls asleep as the video fades to black and the stage lights spell out, “Bye Bye”.

The stage setup was fairly impressive. Saw some new things I’ve not seen before on stage. Above the band were two semicircular rows of multicolor light bars which faced the audience; interlaced between those bars were strobe lights. It appeared to me that those light bars were made with high-output LEDs. Truly innovative. Small packages, surprisingly bright, instant color change. Behind the band was a jumbotron the size of the back wall, built with blocks of LED displays. In the center was a full size 16:9 screen, and to either side was a row of vertical screen bars each about three-feet in width and tapering in length from taller than the screen to about 10-foot tall at the outer edges. These strips had three-foot gaps between them, and they were configured to make the image evenly spread across the elements, really stretching the image out to a unique effect. And, of course, there was the usual over-the-top collection of varilights, lasers, smoke machines, and flame bars to go with all this high technology. It was a stage lighting candyland. Impressive. See-Factor, the stage lighting company that has toured with Rush for years, has done it again.

The show was over around 11. Just over 3 hours in a show. Not bad at all. We managed to eek out of the parking lot around 11:45 or so. Decided to just chill out at the car until the traffic jam eased off. Happily, this time around, I was able to leave the parking lot and head straight for the interstate, unlike last time where I was sent around the county on a farm to market road before I could even reach the interstate. Much happiness there. We reached Austin around 1:30, just in time to greet our friends at our usual friday-night gathering.

Overall, it was a good night.