Listening to the newer mix cd I've been making this week -- adding a couple songs here and there after work in the mornings and whatnot. It's pretty much all over except for the editing and level-adjustments. Yes, I am the most anal mix-maker ever. I once made a girlfriend of mine COMPLETELY REDO a mixtape because the level fluctuations were too erratic. In all fairness to me, half of the songs were recorded too hot, and were distorted as all hell, while others were coming from a cassette source and barely audible. The remade mixtape was much improved, but there was astill at least four bad songs, including one by Slapshot and some weird Albany band.

I've been so disenchanted lately with sitting in front of this computer screen. It makes me feel trapped when I am inside this room. I'm so obsessed with finally moving across the driveway that I feel as if the downtime between here and then should be a magical time filled with an internet fairy allowing me access to do all sorts of crazy things from the comfort of wherever isn't this room. Of course, I have yet to buy my Apple Powerbook laptop, and with Sallie Mae breathing down my neck and charging me a late fee for loans that started incurring debt 12 years ago, which I find just a trifle ridiculous, as they've been charging me interest since about 6 months after my graduating a SUNY school with a degree that I have barely put to use in the 8 years since. I think college loans should only be paid back when it is truly appropriate -- as in the case of certain nameless friends of mine who make 6 figures a year, as opposed to my barely making poverty level for 2002.

As some of you may be aware -- my job schedule is killing me slowly but surely, ensuring that I will never see my friends on the nights I am off, for they are scheduled to be off on the days I work, and vice versa. My friends really mean the world to me, and not seeing them (especially when I feel as low as I did last night) really takes its toll on me. Otherwise, there are things to rejoice about... I am currently in the throes of fixing-up the little house on the other side of the driveway with the intent to move in before the end of this month. There will be a 80's movie-type painting party (probably next weekend, say Saturday the 17th -- Shauna should have a handle on the deets), with the obligatory Howard Jones songs, paint-splattering fights and ensuant make-out extravaganza, all done-up montage stylee, and culminating in Demi Moore's character (parts to be auditioned, but you'll have to be out Cassie for it) christening "The House" (or should I just be ridiculous and name the house "The Boat" in honor of the best teen movie ever (if you don't get the references by now, you are not invited. Sorry, them's the rules)? I will need one of my more contact-friendly friends to call Mr. Goldthwait's agent to get him and to show up as Egg Stork (I think I can send someone else to scour the streets to look for Tom Villard -- maybe some village's Prodigal Idiot hath returneth from whence he came hither).

In other fun news, Nico has added me to her group of blog-buddies who can post on her "team" as it were, alongside others, some known to me, others not. Should liven things up a bit around these bloggy depths. I would ask people to be part of this blog, but I am selfish. I would like to find a way to add a comments dealy, though. Because, I am selfish and egotistical. Yet I have unhealthy bouts of self-doubt. Nothing ladies love more than an insecure egocentric with delusions of adequacy.

Did I mention that "The Boat" has little secret compartments in the faux-wood paneling that my crazy grandfather made? It's true. I also am somewhat expecting an oven/furnace thingy on par with Dr. Klopek's. However, the basement in question is one of those "enter through the trap door in the backyard, not really connected to the house, but merely underneath it and dug out of the ground almost as an afterthought to the modern age once the well ran dry (yes, there is a shaft/empty well in the backyard, where water was once actually supplied for my great-grandparents...I can show you the hole), so it's really, really, really, really, really (we're talking John C. McGinley, aka Dr. Cox on "Scrubs," quick, machine-gun-like, repetetive "really"s here), really, really, really, really, really, really musty and creepy down there, I'm sure. I mean, there USED TO BE a washer and dryer down there. I think it got eaten by something. Considering the eerie shadow of the former Kings Park Psychiatric Center that my neighborhood falls under, nothing would surprise me. After all, I HAVE A DRIED-UP WELL HOLE IN MY BACKYARD!!!! And did I mention the other random hole in my backyard? There is a random hole, about 6 inches in diameter, in the center of a concrete circle, itself about 4 feet in diameter, in my yard, that we used to use as first or third base, depending on which direction we were hitting the balls. The covered-up well-hole was third or first base, accordingly.

Well, I must say that, although I was hoping to not stay up until 8am, that I am feeling much better having typed whatever the hell it is that I have typed, though I would dare say I'd be happier still if plans ever worked out the way they should for once. Such is life. Therefore, I recommend you all pick up the long out of print EP "What Is There To Smile About?" by the Close Lobsters, for the song "Let's Make Some Plans." (The Wedding Present did a smashing cover of it for the Hit Parade series, if you prefer that). If you can't find that, I can always burn it for you, along with the full-length "Foxheads Stalk This Land" which I stupidly bought INSTEAD of the import version of "In Utero" by Nirvana for $7 used at Music Den in Port Jeff, and later returned my domestic copy of said title to Tower, only to go back to Music Den and have the import be gone. The opposite of "bonus." As if the Close Lobsters cd wouldn't have been there from that moment (in 1996), until recently, when Music Den closed its doors...Ground Control to Major Dumbass...

I finally purchased an import copy of "In Utero" at one of those outlet stores in the Tangier Outlet place while unemployed this past winter. The dumbest part of the whole saga is that I've owned "Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through The Strip" on the 12" single for "Heart-Shaped Box" since the day WNYO received two copies of it in the mail, and Keith Schroeder and I immediately pulled out one copy and placed it on the office turntable, and set the needle down gently, as we heard the first "official" new Nirvana song since "Curmudgeon." I have to say that it was one of the last moments of my life that I've remembered being so excited to hear a brand new song by my favorite band. Some things have come close, but I think Kurt Cobain took a little of that excited eternal youth with him to his grave that day in April of 1994. I actually ripped all of my strings out of my guitar when I heard the news.

My Grandpa Elliott died exactly a year later, one month before my college graduation. He and my Grandma Muriel bought me my first guitar when I was three. It was too big for me, and I was only three years old. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I was wearing a ski-cap on my head (pre-pre-Grunge, mind you), often shirtless, and prone to sticking my tongue out like Gene Simmons (even at three I was cognizant of KISS, somehow). Years later, the decaying carcass of my first guitar could be seen in my grandparents basement, near the out-of-tune upright piano that I always will associate with time spent at 762 Durham Rd. Of course, by the time my grandfather passed on, I had searched for this relic of my past, but found nothing. Sadly, when my grandmother eventually sold the house, I was in Seattle, and could not save the piano, either. Mind you, I am not a piano player by any means; I am no Dudley Moore, to be sure...but there are calming effects brought on when I tickle the ivories. Well, maybe not for those unlucky enough to hear my butchering of the language of music...

That's enough of that...sorry for the rollercoaster ride. So much more I could say, but so little desire to cry.

n.p. Destroyer - Thief