Oh yeah baby. I'm playing out. I have a show. I'm on a roll. That's good, because my real gig is shrivelling up my balls like two plum pits in a vacant lot.

You remember those kids in high school who were super fucking assholes and still weren't popular? A lot of them go into food chain retail where they can finally look at their own pus ridden souls and say, "Fuck it! I have a key to the front door!".

Many sayings come to mind like: "Shit rolls downhill" or "A fish stinks from the head down" or "You're a myopic sack of shit" or "Somebody pisses on your head long enough and you'll begin to smell like them" or "I own this place so fuck you"  Most of those came from my same old boss who once said to a prospective new-hire, "I'd rather nail my nuts to a stump and jump off backwards than hire you!"

I loathed him at times but I always knew where I stood and could always go right to the top. Plus he was fun to drink with. And he gave me a key to the front door.

Yep. Or nope. I'm moving in a few days. I've put in my time at the farm. Got a lot of stuff going on and I just have to move. The economy left me without house mates and the landlord's portfolio took a dive so he couldn't hook me up. And I'm gone. I'm in love and I'm all making music again and shit. So fuck it. More to follow. Meanwhile, I'm doing a thing called Pigbarn with a friend from days passed. We have a show tentatively scheduled for July. Details to be determined. I may have some solo shows coming up. I'll keep you posted. And I'm available to play now. Y'know, just in case you need somebody like me to round out a bill and you were afraid to ask. And now off to slumber so I can be well rested to crush dry ice with my face at 6:00am. Oopah!

At work yesterday I he-manned a pallet a few feet through the air to land atop about a six foot stack of pallets. It was one of those "this is a good angle and I know I can land this fucker from here" judgments that made me feel both rugged and precise. This kid standing nearby said, " Yeah, I'm gonna start bulking up. I wanna get so huge that I can't even wipe my ass." I responded, "Why bulk up? Just quit wiping your ass." 

I've just emailed all my contacts a copy of my song "Ode to the Vernal Equinox". I've done that every year for the past eight or so years. I do this as a sort of celebration, pagan as it may be. At least it's not Wiccan.

This is the time of year when I feel most optimistic and thankful. I'm usually all done with my winter depression. The grass has a tinge of green to it suggesting that any day I'll arrive home from work and the yard and pastures will all be lush, verdant and welcoming. On my drive into work the sky has a pre-dawn glow that promises actual daylight for that same drive in just a matter of weeks. And that's it, the promise.

I suppose it's not really a promise so much as a guarantee. The same basic thing happens every year. I've just been making note of it more in the last decade. Perhaps assigning it a larger meaning with each passing year.

But how can I not? Right now there are crocuses popping up in my neighbor's yard. I know the wild chives are not far off. Soon I'll be happening upon people picking fiddlehead ferns by the river. And the sheep will all be wandering down in the back pastures with no need of the hay I currently offer. It's a spectacle I get to watch.

With that I will say that I'm a happy man. I've posted "Ode to the Vernal Equinox" up here for everybody to listen to. Oopah!

 Jack it up, flatten it out, digitize it, it doesn't matter. About ten years ago a group of artists collaborated with a physicist and developed a way to make and play vinyl video discs. And that was that. They even said that they didn't know what to do with it. They had no content, just a new means of delivery. Good effort.

February 17th or 18th, maybe it was the 19th, has come and gone without the mandated switch to digital TV broadcasting. I'm glad for that. I still use rabbit ears. Hell, I still watch a 13 inch black and white that I've had for over twenty-five years. Antiques Roadshow, Jacques Pepin, Smackdown, Judge Judy, and Hell's Kitchen couldn't be any better all digital and vibrant. They just have to be there. A friend of mine once came over and saw me watching some snowy broadcast of a repeat of Soap. His exact words were, "I guess any flickering image will do." He wasn't way off.

What I don't understand is the inclusion of giant fucking TVs in diners and restaurants. They always seem to have CNN or Fox News blasting at me like it's some sort of an added bonus to my dining experience. I want a pepper and egg grinder, not the latest dish on Bobby and Whitney running over each other before the Grammy awards. One diner even has two TVs that play different things, ten feet apart from each other. Streets of San Francisco and Money Watch blasting along while some Bosnian trucker bellows Gaelic into his walkie-talkie cell phone is not what I seek  to accompany my Greek salad and iced tea.

I'm not asking for clever conversation. What I really want is to not be bombarded with somebody else's idea of entertainment or information. That's why I go to shows or clubs, not diners. I just want a little peace and quiet, maybe some fries.

And yes, I am a complete hypocrite. I love TV. That black and white set is one of three that I own. I use another TV as an alarm clock because it's the loudest thing I can find with a timer on it. We have a TV on the porch. Watching wrestling on Friday night with some beer and a cigar is  a real treat for me. So I will be purchasing at least one converter for the switch to digital in June. My television will be converted, not revolutionized.

I've reached my fill line on the whole ADD thing. Or maybe I reached it a long time ago. I dunno. It's hard to pay too much attention.

Basically what it's all come down to is people who act stupidly claiming that they have ADD. Fucking retards. "I can only focus on one thing at a time. I have ADD." "I need to be asked to do things because I won't think to do it myself because I have ADD." "I left my car running all night because I have ADD." "I can't satisfy my girlfriend in bed because she doesn't ask me to do things and I don't remember because I have ADD." "I was bungee jumping and I forgot to take the three pound weight off my scrotum so my balls got torn off and crushed through my jaw because I have ADD."

I know one person who was actually diagnosed with ADD. He's super sensitive, highly creative, very hard working, and never brings up his Attention Deficit Disorder. He was given a prescription but stopped taking it because it made him feel dull. And, when you call him on some lame brained move he just made he apologizes then never does it again. Another friend's wife told him that she believed he had ADD. His response was, "Yeah, so? What? Am I supposed to do something about it?"

Everybody else just sort of shrugs and declares that that's just the way they are so there's no use getting mad at them for not trying to modify their behavior. When a former house mate's girlfriend broke up with him she said that he "couldn't use his behavior to justify his behavior". I like that line.

Meanwhile, most of these shitheads who blunder around claiming not to know how to focus all seem to know the various torrent sites, free download sites, current movies, current TV shows, current gizmos, and current music fads. Some even religiously follow sports or fashion. But using a directional signal eludes them.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I work at a grocery store. I'm sort of management, sort of not. Kind of King Shit On Turd Island. That's another post for later, after I give my notice. Maybe in six years.

Anyway, what I'm all bent about is these self-absorbed, instant gratification motherfuckers who walk through the store eating stuff. I'm not talking samples of cheese spread and bullshit infused olive oils. I'm talking packages of cookies, fruit, salads, sandwiches, bottled water, cake, basically everything. And the parents who give their kids cookies and whatever to shut them up absolutely drive me up a wall. I've felt this way all my adult life, not just since starting my current job three and a half years ago, especially when I shopped at the hippy-dippy stores.

If you ever tried to eat something in the First National, A&P, Rhodes' Market or Michael's Market when I was a kid they'd try to have you arrested for shoplifting. You just didn't do it, anywhere. And my mom, forget it. She wouldn't even let me have a grape while we were shopping.  I started whining about wanting something then guess what. I got nothing, n-o-t-h-i-n-g. And I enjoyed it. Or at least I learned not to whine.

Funny how all my mother's rhetoric about my grandmother being strict and stoic seems, in retrospect, to be a sort of advice. Not that my mom is stoic, but she has lived in an unfinished house for twenty-five years. I may be stoic. I work in a freezer and I hate to open up to anybody until I've known them for six years. But I'm working on it.

So I see these fucking people stuffing their faces with all manner of treats and  prepared foo-foo foods and I want to ask them what their fucking problem is."Hey, Fucko Bazoo, you gonna pay for that?" "If they unplugged you right now you could live a year off that blubber." "Excuse me. This is a grocery store, not a brothel." NOW QUIT WALKING AROUND AS THOUGH YOU SOMEHOW DESERVE A BREAK TODAY! YOU DESERVE NOTHING, ASSHOLE! Well, maybe a punch in the mouth. The societal contract when you enter a food store is that you pay for something and then eat it.

If you've read this far you can probably guess that I judge every single person I see eating their way through a grocery store. I assume that they are selfish and have no self control. They feel unloved and need instant gratification to attain some sense of self worth. Either that or they're arrogant assholes with a bloated sense of self worth, which is basically the same as  a fragile ego. I could be wrong. Probably not.

Like Harry Dean Stanton's character in Repo Man said, "Ordinary fiuckin' people, I hate 'em."  *POOF*


 If you're one of those people who eats in the store I'm really not talking about you. You're awesome and I would never have a problem watching you graze at the granola bar.

One potential show in the offing. I haven't decided and it's not a guaranteed show. But, I may be playing a Devo tribute night in February. I love Devo. My old band, Stringbean used to play a Devo cover. I was also on a Devo cover compilation tape. I never did get a copy of it.

Indie pricks often seem to feel that they're shelling out so much money that they shouldn't also be expected to provide their artists with any copies of whatever is being released. At least that's been my experience with about half the compilations I've been on. "Oh man, I'm doing this in my parents' basement. I might be able to send you one copy, but not two."  I may as well have been working for Wal-Mart. One asswipe even re-released the tape compilation on CD a few years ago. I was the first track, the lead off track. I never got a tape and then I never got a CD.

I was warned of that when I researched Runt Records after they approached me about releasing a full length CD. Sharon from God Is My Co-Pilot told me that Runt, in Italy,  had done everything they said they would whereas Knitting Factory, across the city, had totally screwed them.

This doesn't have anything to do with the potential show coming up except that the Devo cover show reminded me that somebody's always looking to make a buck off my efforts. But I love Devo and I'll get to play with Rich so I'm probably going to do it. What the fuck.

Day three out in the pig barn on a borrowed amp. I've been playing a lot again. A couple of hours a day. The barn is fucking cold. My landlord keeps it just above freezing, or just below freezing. Or maybe I just think there's some kind of heating going on. When I get started the first half hour is painful. My right hand freezes from whipping it through the air while I'm strumming. My left hand freezes from hanging onto my icy guitar. Chords and picking are all from muscle memory until the fiery coldness subsides and I start to actually warm up. It beats the hell out of wrestling boxes at 10 below in the freezer at work. That makes me want to put my head through a wall.

I leave the barn when one a couple of things happen. 1)I break a string. By the time it's changed I'm cold again and warming up will take too long. 2)I get cold again. Same as breaking a string but without the equipment failure.

Not sure what I'm getting ready for. I don't have any shows lined up. Maybe when the red menace attacks or the revenuers roll down the driveway I'll be able to defend the property with a series of feedback solos pumping through my Morley. Whatever it is I'm ready. I've got earplugs, fresh picks, and spare strings to last until the spring. I've even started working on my singing. I always forget that it takes about a week to get my vocal chops back.

If anybody wants to come play in the cold then let me know. And remember, that's not a still. It's an experiment.

Today I finally made something with clay, again. It's been a while. About a year ago I signed up to do an independent study at my old school. I didn't finish a single piece and then disappeared after two weeks. Two years ago I set up a little studio in the basement and started making some pots. I started about twenty and never finished them. A few  months before that I started a small sculpture of my then current boss. It was way more accurate than the first one I made and it started driving me nuts. All I had to complete were the hands. Then I was going to make a mold of it. Yep, never finished that, either.

Today after work I drove over to my friend Greg's place and we made some face mugs/cups. He kicked ass and built one with all these wooden looking features. Damn good work. I managed to finally put together a sloppy piece of shit that made me laugh. But I finished it. At least I finished it.

My skills are quite rusty and my touch has deteriorated but the old sensibilities appear intact. Greg has challenged me to help him fill a kiln. I know he can do that himself. And that is the best part.

 I was the teaching assistant for his intro ceramics class. We were also in a few other classes together. I got to see him start taking his art and his talent seriously. Now he's kicking my ass to make some art again. It feels good. It feels really good. I'm sure I'll have some images to post when the firing is done.