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Environmental death metal band

I’m listening to U2 – Achtung Baby right now, but I’m not entirely sure why. I guess it seemed like good music to have in the player while this beautiful, sunny day poured through the open windows and I stood in front of the stove, only wearing a pair of levis and too lazy to put on a shirt, making grilled cheese sandwiches. U2, and this album specifically, remind me heavily of my ex-girlfriend Tanya. I was very anti-U2 during the relationship, and even more when we split. But two years later, after I moved to Seattle, I gave the album a try and discovered that it was like a time capsule of memories about her. Even though I never listened to the songs with her, the words made me look back and re-examine a lot of our time together and find a lot of missing pieces and hidden messages. Maybe I’m insane, but it reminded me so much of her. It also reminds me of the summer of 1992, the year before we dated. That’s partially because that’s when all of the singles and videos were getting spit from the Island Records marketing machine to saturate the airwaves. But it’s also because my friend Meg kept setting her process name to “Achtung Baby” and because the sounds just seem to work for that period of time. If I ever made a Hollywood movie out of Summer Rain, the song “Acrobat” would be on the soundtrack. And no Puff Daddy remixes.

Last night, I saw this environmental death metal band called R.I.P. on the public access channel. It was pretty cool – they were sort of a thrashier version of something like Rotting Christ, but not as well-honed yet, and they all wore corpsepaint or other King Diamond-like makeup, with costumes and stage props and everything. The show was sort of like an infomercial, where they talked to the band, then showed live footage and these videos. They sang about the destruction of the Earth (I believe their album was called “Save Mother Earth or Die With It”) and mixed live footage with video of polluted factories, clear-cutting, Cheronobyl, polluted waters, etc. It was all very rough and not totally professional, but it was very entertaining and unique. At the end of the stage show, the lead singer took out a prop knife and slit the throats of all of the members, and then himself, and they all fell over and were bleeding all over the place. I’d like to find out more, but searching for R.I.P. on the web would generate a billion hits.

I’ve been sort of sick for the last few days. It’s not horrible, just the start of a cold and I’ve been doing every remedy possible to get it to subside before Thursday. I’m eating vitamin A, ecinacea, zinc, goldenseal and other vitamins by the pound, and drinking gallons of water. I’m not getting worse, but it’s still there. I stayed home on Friday to sleep and take it easy, and that helped. I didn’t do much yesterday, and today looks like it will be more of the same.

My new way to eat up my time and keep my brain busy until Marie arrives this Thursday has been Halberstam’s most excellent book on the 50s. I read this book when I took Murray Sperber’s class on youth culture in the 50s and 60s in the spring of 95 (by far the best class I took in college) and now I’m crawling through it again. It’s 800 pages, and I figure if I mentally race myself into trying to finish it by the time she’s here, I will relieve some of the nervousness and get totally involved in the Korean War, the birth of fast food, Harley Earl’s giant-finned cars, and everything else. But don’t let Newt Gingrich fool you – the fifties were terrible. They were full of labor disputed, inequality, brainwashing, racism, conformity, and governmental atrocity. That’s why the Republicans want them back.

I guess I haven’t written in here for a bit, and I forgot to mention my flying trip on Thursday. This guy at work is a private pilot and is trying to get his hours up, so he invited me and another guy for a short day-trip in a small Cessna. I’ve been up with him once before, in a big loop around Seattle where I got to look around and see everything. This time, we went to Friday Harbor, which is in the San Juan Islands.

The trip started at Boeing Field, which is a huge airport, but it’s mostly for big cargo jets (UPS, Fedex, etc), corporate learjets, Boeing test planes, and private planes. You can’t catch a United flight to Chicago from here, just like you can’t land your Piper Cub at SeaTac (well, I guess you could, but it would cost a lot.) Me and Chris stood on the tarmac while Jon checked out the plane. I saw a Virgin airways jet take off about 100 yards away from me, which was an awesome sight – I thought it was going to rip all of the bones right of my body as it left. It’s cool to see all of the planes there – some rental businesses have rows and rows of identaical Cessnas tied down like soldiers in formation, and the next lot over, you’d see all of a TV station’s news choppers. On the other side, a big DC-10 getting loaded up would sit there, and a Boeing test 747 would be across the way, maybe getting worked on to try out some new electrical fix or something. It’s a very odd and disparate situation.

The plane checked out, and we had to pull it to the taxiway, which is sort of funny. The plane weighs about the same as my Rabbit, and even with 40 gallons of fuel and 3 adults, it probably weighs less than the average bone-dry and empty sedan. The interior of the plane is about the same size as the Rabbit, but it has much better seats which make it a bit roomier. For the flight up, I took the back seat and gave Chris shotgun, and we agreed to switch on the way home. I had my camcorder with me, and wanted to get some good shots of the Seattle approach.

We all piled in, and Jon went through the last of the checklists before firing up the engine. I learned on my last trip that I’d never be able to fly a plane – there’s so much to remember and do. There’s the checklists, and the gauges, and the air traffic control stuff – I’d forget something and crash into a schoolyard full of kids or something. But Jon seems to be pretty good at it, and talked to the tower and got us all ready to go. While we waited, I saw a biplane land – it was red and looked exactly like the Red Baron’s plane, with open cockpits and everything.

Then it was our turn. We hurtled down the runway into the air very fast – it’s nothing like being in a 737 where they have to shuttle down thousands of feet of runway before they slowly rise. The Cessna bobbed right into the air, and reminded you of the tradeoff of such a small plane – it really shimmeys all over the place on takeoff. Maybe it was because I was in the back and had more of a fishtail effect, though. I had the camcorder out (you can use electronic devices during takeoff in this plane) and got the whole thing on tape, the skidmarked concrete falling away from us, and the surrounding Seattle turning into a model train diorama. I only wished I could’ve captured the headset audio onto tape – we all wore headsets with microphones so we could hear each other talk over the prop noise, and this also piped in the air traffic controllers and other planes. I haven’t watched my tape yet, but I imagine it’s just got prop noise in the background.

It’s weird and cool to see Seattle at 3000 feet. Our northbound course took is right through downtown and over Elliott bay, and I got a good view of my apartment on the way up. It’s the kind of height that’s damn high, but low enough that you can really see everything below you. I followed the landmarks on the way up – the UW, I-5, Northgate Mall, Fred Meyer in Lynnwood. Pretty soon, I ran out of familiar sights, and we were on our way to Everett. The plane cruised at about 100mph, so it only took a few minutes to get up there. We heard a lot of air traffic chatter, telling people to move to different headings and altitudes, because a group of 4 Navy jets were doing a ceremonial flyby somewhere in the area. I didn’t see them, though.

Pretty soon, we were over the islands and heading west. I had a map and followed along, but didn’t know any of the features on the ground, since I’d never been up there. It was beautiful though – some mist, but it only added to the incredible views of the Cascades and Mt. Baker – it made them more mysterious. I looked below – Chris said he thought he saw a whale, but all I could see were the ferries and the occasional boat. I didn’t film much of this, because I knew it would just look small and unmajestic on tape. But I did enjoy the show.

Before I knew it, we were making our approach in to Friday Harbor. Jon had to circle the plane around in some weird manuvers, and I got the whole thing on tape. There were many boats and ferries below, and we circled in to the airport. The touchdown happened fast, and we taxiied into the transient parking area. This airport was not much more than a single strip and some parking – there was no tower and no other dramatics. We pushed the plane into a spot, and hiked toward town.

The town was one of those very laid-back, touristy places – it reminded me a lot of Seaside, in Oregon, but much smaller and with less traffic. There wasn’t a lot there, but everything had to do with tourists – gift shops, restaurants, bed and breakfast places. And everything was CLEAN, like a Disney attraction. But it was cool, and I hope at some point Marie and I can catch a boat there and spend a weekend in a nice hotel or something. It looks like a good way to forget what’s going on, and it’s only like 100 miles away. We ate at the slowest fish and chips place in the world, but the food was okay and it was nice to just sit by the window and watch the beople go by. After eating, we took the grand tour of the city (i.e. walked around the block) and then headed back to the plane.

I had shotgun for the way back, and got the whole takeoff on film, which was cool. I also got to see some weird islands on the way back, with lots of very eclectic houses sitting on giant plots of land. This one house was built on maybe 25 acres of nothing, and sat on a giant artificial bluff that overlooked a huge manmade kidney-shaped lake. There were lots of light-aqua swimming pools shimmering in the sunlight, too. It made me wish I could’ve bought 50 acres there back in the seventies, so I could now sell half of it and use the money to build a mansion.

The ride back was also pretty quick, and I got more shots of Seattle on the way in. Landing was a little hairier, or at least there was a lot more chatter on the radio. The airport gets busy in the afternoon, and there are wake advisories after those big FedEx 757’s start hurtling in for the afternoon pickup. But we got back, touched down, and I made it back in time to go to work for a little bit. Overall, a very cool trip.

I guess I’ve been babbling for a while – it’s time to either get some cleaning done or leave the house for a bit…

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Weird depresso days

It’s one of those weird, depresso days. I’m worried about my car. Paranoid might be a better word – it has a small coolant leak that’s probably just a hose or a hose clamp, but even that’s a pain in the ass to fix. I know if I bought 3 replacement hoses and 6 replacement clamps and drained all of the antifreeze and swapped the hoses, it would probably still leak, 6 hours and $30 later. I want to bring it to a shop, but then you’re talking lots of cash. I hope this thing can hold together until January, and then maybe I will buy a semi-new Toyota or Honda or something.

I’m still counting the days (8) until Marie shows up. That means more cleaning, preparing, and waiting. The apartment is pretty clean right now, but there are a bunch of things I need to do right before she gets here, like buy some food, do some laundry, etc. I’m trying to keep busy with the book, but it’s hard to keep focused. I’m still picking away at some stuff, like dialogue, but it’s been a real pain in the ass. On my last read through the material, I marked about 250 things in 15 chapters that needed to be changed. And some of those changes are giant – I have a lot of holes to plug. But I hope to get some of this done in the next couple of months.

Tomorrow, I’m going flying with a guy that I work with. I guess he needs to log hours with passengers or something. I went with him a couple of years ago and it was great – he rented one of those small Cessna planes, basically a VW with wings, and we circled around Seattle at 4,000 feet. It was an incredible view – high enough to get an incredible view but low enough that you could make out the buildings and streets. This time we are going to Friday Harbor in the San Juans and back, and I’ll have a camcorder with me.

It’ll be nice to have many distractions between now and a week from tomorrow. I have the flying, and the boat trip the day Marie arrives. Plus with all of the shopping and dusting and cleaning and mopping, I have some stuff to keep me busy.

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Rupert Thomson’s Soft!

Rupert Thomson’s new book, Soft!, is here. I’m only a few pages into it, but it’s pretty decent. And only about $20 in hardcover, which was a relief.

I fell asleep a bit before 9, and now I’m groggy and mistyping. I don’t have anything else substantial to say, so I’m going to start working on the book.

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Ramones and nachos

Listening to the Ramones, eating a Nachos Belgrande, hoping the next 14 days fly past. I can’t control my fingers, I can’t control my toes.

I’ve given up on about all of the web sites and journals I regularly read during lunch, except for CNN, which I read obsessively. Now that I watch CNN on TV and read it on the web, I can see how much news falls flat without the visuals. It’s all a bunch of shit anyway. They have a ton of crap about the Clinton scandal, and not a word about anything else. It sounds like things are getting wonky in Quebec again, there were these embassy bombings, and let’s not forget the dumb bitch who had her baby at the prom and killed it. While I commend her for ending the kid’s life instead of bringing yet another person with fucked up parents into the world, I cannot support her going to the DJ afterward and requesting a Metallica song. (So, you think her date got lucky? That’s the great thing about bringing a pregnant chick to the prom – you know she’s not waiting until she gets married.)

Marie has been forcing me to remember very obscure stories and facts from my childhood. Not forcing – she mentions some ancient toy or a story about her brother and I’ve instantly found some snippet of long ago to counter with. It’s been a blur of weird stuff from the Six Million Dollar Man toy with the bionic chips in his arm to that horrible meatloaf everyone’s mom makes with the crunchy onions inside and the red sauce on top. (I’m of the opinion that no human being should pay money for meatloaf – it’s a dish typically forced upon you, either by your mom or a dorm menu. I know you can buy it at Boston Market, which reinforces my theory that 97% of humanity is idiotic.) I led an odd childhood since I had a stay-at-home mom that wanted me reading Tolstoy before I went to kidergarten, and I lived in the middle of nowhere with almost no other kids around. Also my family didn’t have a lot of cash, so I didn’t have the latest of everything. I did have some legos and a lot of books, and some other toys like Micronauts and a GI Joe, but I didn’t get into the big fads like KISS toys and bell bottom pants and Peter Frampton records and all of the shit that’s now being re-sold to the Microsoft generation at primo prices. I didn’t even see Star Wars until its second theatrical run. So I guess I grew up fast on one hand, and didn’t grow up much at all on the other hand. It’s weird and I guess it’ll become a book someday.

I haven’t mentioned it for a few paragraphs now, but the Ramones really do kick ass.

I watched about 10 minutes of Friends tonight, and I’ve realized it’s completely unbearable. I guess I used to watch it as a way to kill time between the syndicated Seinfeld and the new Seinfeld. But it’s horrible now, like going back to your old elementary school and realizing you were stupid when you were 9. Now the TV diet is old-school: Conan and Seinfeld reruns, with an occasional piece of something interesting like Weekday Wings if they have cool planes on (I hate when they have episodes about cargo planes or some obscure RAF helicopter. Why do they paint targets on the side of their planes? Their aero industry is about as formidable as their music industry, except for maybe the Tornado. The good Harriers, the ones Ahnold flew in True Lies, are built stateside, you know.)

I should probably try to write. It’s suddenly very hot, but maybe it’s this horrible food eating at my insides. Have a better one.

Gabba gabba hey! Gabba gabba hey!

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Rotting Christ

I’m listening to the new Rotting Christ album, and I’m simply floored that death metal (“extreme metal”, whatever) has taken on such a clean, thick, produced sound while still retaining a good edge. I think this is what bands like Paradise Lost were trying to do a few years back, although they failed. I like this CD a lot, and I’m only on track 4. Too bad the bonus CD is the same one that came in Metal Curse – it’s a great CD, but it would’ve been cool to get another sampler or something. Or a CD with some live tracks or unreleased material. I can’t complain too much, it was a completely free CD at the $16 price point.

In unrelated CD news, I’ve completely given up on Tower Records. All of their CDs are like $18 except for those perpetually on sale that I have no interest in. I guess if I was a top 40 zombie, it would be nice to get the new Smashing Pumpkins CD for “only” $16, but I don’t see that happening soon. Seattle really needs a Best Buy to come in and start up a CD price war.

A busy day today, and I was sleepy for most of it. It turns out that my team at work will be going on a boat cruise as part of our 1.0 release celebration, and it’s the same day Marie will be coming into town. The party is from 12-3, and her flight arrives at 6:30, so there should be no problems. We had another one of these parties, and it was very cool – it’s relaxing to cruise around Lake Washington, watch the shore, and get into long, involved conversations with coworkers that don’t involve Java. I will be a nervous wreck that day – my few hours before I meet Marie, but maybe the distraction will be nice. Better than sitting in front of my computer, anyway.

What kind of soda is Green River, other than green? I can’t seem to describe the flavor. It’s not a lemon-lime, it’s – green. I bought a 6-pack of it the other night, but I can’t drink much more than that. It’s too intense of a flavor to drink on a daily basis.

I should get some work done now.

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Feels like fall

It feels like fall today. It’s almost chilly out, and the clouds are making it look less like August and more like October, which I think is cool. I like the fall, the time when it isn’t hot out anymore, but before the weather goes to hell. It’s very lazy and subdued. I don’t want to sound like a goth wannabe, talking about the leaves and running through the forest in sorrow, or whatever. I guess I just have positive memories of the fall semester, of returning to campus after a summer of laziness to meet the new bumper crop of freshman women. I used to love taking new classes, meeting new people, spending my time in new buildings. I guess most of my relationships started in the spring, but many more attempts happened in the fall. I think my best semesters academically were in the fall, and I know many of my best memories were then.

The slippage of time has taken on a new meaning now that I don’t know how to handle. The division of time into semesters and breaks and vacations made things a little slower – I was always working toward finishing that one semester, like a long-distance runner trying to get in that one last mile before exhaustion. Now time free-wheels and I have no reference point. Someone asked me if I was depressed that summer was almost over and I hadn’t realized that it had started. Remember back when summer was that three-month sabbatical where you rode your BMX bike hundreds of miles a week, playing army and going to the mall to play video games and stealing candy from the corner store and building forts out of old packing crate lumber?

I never stole candy from the corner store. I stole change from my stepdad’s spare change box, and used it to buy candy. And I mowed lawns.

About fall – this time around, I’m thinking about 1991, which is the only fall when I had my old VW. I didn’t have it at the beginning of the school year – the rings went out and I had to limp it back to Goshen at like 40mph (a 250 mile trip, do the math) so this old German guy could fix it since nobody in Bloomington knows what the fuck they’re doing with water-cooled VW’s. But I had it later, and it reminds me of working at Lindley hall, spending late nights in the C335 lab (I had to stop working at 9am and drive my car home so it wouldn’t get ticketed), and everything else that happened in late ’91. It was my first semester back on campus, and I went from working in labs with armies of Leading Edge Model D computers (the Yugo of PCs), Panasonic 24-pin printers that jammed every 3 sheets, a PRIME computer, and almost no networking, to a campus filled with ethernet, laserprinters, nice Macs, SparcStations, a whole fleet of DEC miniframes, and lots of other people into computers. I hung out in the “orchard”, a student cluster of Sparc IPC machines. The machines weren’t bad, but I spent my time there because of the cool people. Whenever I got stuck on a new hack, I could ask someone else about it, and we were always playing pranks, joking around, going out to eat or get a drink, or playing games. It was a really tight, communal environment – probably one of the best I’ve ever seen.

Marie will be here in 16 days. It seems like an eternity, but then again, my place is a real hellhole and I’ll be lucky to get it in shape by then.

I forgot to mention that I ran into Anita at the new/old Safeway on John st. on Sunday, buying light bulbs and trash bags. I just wanted to mention that so you non-Seattle readers will think there’s some kind of Seattle journal mafia where we run into each other on a constant basis. Jealous?

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TRS-80 internet connection

Trying to get back in the swing of things with Summer Rain. I wrote last night, knocking little pieces of a few chapters around, but it’s not like it was last spring. I couldn’t stop writing every day, and I had dreams about the characters in the book. I’ll get back up to speed.

I called Ray last night, and he finally found a 5.25″ floppy drive. He’s trying to publish the first four issues of Metal Curse in some kind of weird half-legal-size digest, which would be cool. (I guess I’m supposed to write an intro, so I better work on that.) While copying source files to 3.5″ floppy, he found a bunch of old poetry, stories and letters. Some of the stuff was about the tail-end of his last relationships, all of the fights and double standards and problems and frustration. He also told me that he wasn’t sure if he wrote all of that stuff 10 years ago or yesterday. I hope he can find an escape this this one, because I’ve tried to talk him down many times, and it’s too messy of a situation.

And since I tell Ray everything, I had to tell him all about my current situation. I didn’t want to tell him how optimistic I felt about this whole Marie thing when he was depressed, but when he met his girlfriend, I was on an all-Pink Floyd diet, writing ultra-dark stories about being the last person on the earth. It’s weird how we’re sometimes on the opposite ends of our cycle – you’d think after more than a decade, we’d be in sync.

I need to go before my TRS-80 speed connection dies.

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junk

I guess I didn’t mention this yesterday, but Ford tried to fuck me out of $83 – tax on a bill that was already taxed. I called them this morning, and I think I got out of it, but they got the last laugh – I was on the phone forever, forced to listen to Celine Deon. It really pisses me off that I thought this whole chapter in my life was over when I shelled out all of that money and handed over the keys. And I’m not a betting man, but I’d put down my pink slip for the VW on then sending me some vague invoice in 6 months for a few hundred bucks, based on their clerical error. Sometimes I just know the Unabomber was right.

I didn’t get any writing done last night, but I started reading this book, I think called The Invisible Circus, and I don’t remember the author’s name, but I think the last name was Egan. [Jennifer Egan] Anyway, it’s an interesting book about this girl who is coming to terms with her father’s death. Also, she had a sister that was a few years older who was perfect and the center of attention, and she went to Europe and either died or committed suicide, and nobody really knows (she fell/jumped from a building). It’s an okay book, but the main character reminds me too much of Abby McBeal, and I really fucking hate that show. I won’t get into that now, but the book is moderately entertaining. I like the prose – you don’t notice it, and yet, you see the details around you. I wish I could write like that.

I’m bored. Go read this page.

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Pizza discussion

I just made some pizza out of the box, and it’s not bad. It’s a pain in the ass to make, with the dough and all that shit, but some AC/DC in the player helped that. (_High Voltage_, required listening for everyone, especially my neighbors.) I am not supposed to eat pizza, but when I make my own, I know it won’t have that much fat or grease, and it doesn’t bother my stomach. Most other pizza really kills me, except feta cheese pizzas, and when we get that at work, it usually has mushrooms and other toppings I don’t like. Under controlled circumstances, I love pizza.

I got into a huge pizza discussion with Marie about pizza tonight. She’s from NYC and every pizza place there is “real” pizza and incredible. She’s never even been to a Pizza Hut. I guess that’s kindof cool, but I’d hate to go from NY to a place like Goshen, IN where Pizza Hut is a delicacy. I’d rather do the other way around like me; even the shittiest fast food seafood at Ivar’s in Seattle is probably better than the top of the line stuff in Indiana. All pizza discussions boil down to this: I miss Garcia’s in Bloomington. I still have a Garcia’s plastic cup on my computer table, holding my pens and pencils and telling me about the Monster Slice. (“Great 1/2 Pound Slices Under 2 Bucks!”) Although Garcia’s had good pizza with a unique taste, I really miss the atmosphere. I loved it on the Fridays when I had only a morning class, when I’d skip over there for a slice and drink, sit around with a friend, play their Tetris machine (which had a high score of like 19 trillion) and just hang out. They were the absolute closest place to campus that served beer (I went to an allegedly dry campus. As dry as a fucking brewery.) and that meant some great drinking experiences there. I know everyone reading this will think I’m insane for fawning over eating a greasy, undercooked, overpriced piece of pizza and tipping back a $2.50 bottle of Bud Lite, but man, those were the fucking days.

I don’t know if I should talk about it in public, but I’ve decided to go back to Summer Rain. I’ve started reading the drafts – I need to get the story in my head before I can start writing. I figure the second book – chapters 16-30, will require about 35,000 words worth of new material and lots of editing. I probably can’t finish that before Marie gets here (9/3) but maybe before her next visit.

Oh yeah, Marie bought tickets to visit for the first week of October. I’m not taking off of work though – she’ll be spending the day hanging out here, reading some of my non-internet writing and working on her own stuff. And I’m going to buy tickets Friday to go there for the first week of November. Does all of this sound crazy? If you think I’m sane, you must be a new reader.

Listening to Santana, greatest hits. It gathers dust most of the time, but I guess I’m in a Santana mood. Stop me before I break out the Cheech and Chong. Actually, Santana is a great Hendrix gateway drug, so maybe I’ll have Band of Gypsies blaring away by this time tomorrow (if not later tonight.)

I’m reading a book about the Zodiac killer. (It’s the Grayspoon? Graystein? book, the most popular one.) I hope this doesn’t lead me down the true crime road again, because I have a ton of books I bought but didn’t read back when I thought me and Larry would write a book about the Unabomber. I have a brand new, unopened copy of Helter Skelter. I read it back in high school, but it would be fun to read it again now that I have a vague knowledge of west coast geography.

Shit, it’s 11:30 and I’m just finishing supper. Time to get some real work done.

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Jack in the Box is great

Listening to Rotting Christ, which started as a really underground band that Ray and I used as the example of the most extreme end of the sickness spectrum. Now they’re on Century Media and have the most incredible sound of a death metal band ever. A lot of variety, a lot of depth, excellent production, just great stuff. I thought the metal scene was dead and rotting, but I just got Ray’s latest issue of Metal Curse, and it comes with a sampler CD from Century Media, which is totally filled with mind-blowing new metal from Tiamat, Sentenced, Moonspell, Rotting Christ, Lacuna Coil and more. It’s so great – I thought all black/death bands were stuck in this eviler-than-though pissing contest, stagnating away, but this stuff sounds so new, great, and incredible – it’s like when it was 1992 and I was DJing and listening to all of this new and incredible music. It’s time for me to start spending on new discs.

I went to a journal gathering today to meet a few locals and see Scott, who is down from Vancouver. I’d like to list everyone and link them to their pages, but I’m in the middle of eating dinner, and my bookmarks are at work. But trust me – I met some people, and I’m sure Anita’s page has photos and links and all that jazz – she’s much more self-documented than I am, at least on the web.

Speaking of self-documented, I was working on my biography all night last night. I’m up to the fall of 93, and it’s like 57K words long. I was cleaning it a bit so I could email it off to Marie in NYC. Oh yeah, Marie is the person visiting me next month. I have been thinking about that a lot, and I’m really excited, to put it mildly. I should probably be cleaning and organizing and planning and everthing else. I’d mention more, but I need to play my cards close until she’s here, when I’ll know what’s up with the whole situation.

Jack in the Box is great. I wish I could rent a tape with all of their commercials. That would rule. It’s too bad the food killed a bunch of people. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.

Okay, speaking of clean… I have dishes left over from the Truman administration in my sink. More later.