Category: general

Nothing beats listening to Black Sabbath – the song Black Sabbath, the title cut to their first album, when the weather is shitty and you’re half awake and not running at full steam. It’s that righteous depression that Henry Rollins is always talking about – not the kind that makes you think “I’m so sad, she left me” or whatever, but the kind that makes you think you ARE Iron Man, and your heavy boots of lead are pulling you down, which explains why you overslept by two hours and couldn’t get out of the shower in under a half hour. What really rules about the CD I’m listening to – this new Ozzy Osbourne compilation – is that this particular version of Black Sabbath is one that was recorded live at a rehearsal, before their first album came out. It’s heavier than fuck, like the album version, but the sound is really raw and the vocals are not as refined as the album. There’s also a version of War Pigs on here that has different words to it.

Last night, I thought I almost blew the whole night away – right after work, I hit the phone and made four calls that lasted about four hours, plus dinner in there, the tail half of Frazier (which was just background noise as I cooked), and Seinfeld. By 11:30, I felt shitty and knew I wouldn’t get any writing done. I sat down and took about four or five pages of notes about the first couple of chapters in Summer Rain. I’m on a weird rewriting program where the first few chapters will collapse down into one or maybe two chapters, because I piss away almost the first third of the book talking about one weekend that doesn’t have much to do with the story. After the notes, it was almost 1, but I sat down and started chopping at the first first chapter. I’m learning how sloppy my writing is, and it’s letting me seriously change things, but it’s slower than hell. I’ve always considered the first part of the book to be the best writing, since it’s what I edit most. I start with grandiose ideas to edit the whole book and I quit by chapter 3. So chapter 1 has been rewritten like 200 times, but when you get about 40 chapters out, that stuff hasn’t even been read since it was laid on the page in 1995.

This version of War Pigs with different words is just fucking eerie. I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times, plus the cover versions by Faith No More and whoever else covers this song. I seem to remember being on church with Jim Manges and his parents (maybe this was a hallucination, or something we talked about) and turning to him during the service and saying “Satan laughing spreads his wings” in the most Ozzy-like voice I could perform in a half-whisper. Jim originally got me going on Sabbath, on Paranoid and on old Ozzy stuff like Bark at the Moon.

I just did a search, and there’s a Black Sabbath web ring….

Sometimes, I get into a fit about finding information about something, and I spend forever doing web searches and reading through endless pages of material for no reason. Right now, I’m in the middle of searching for the name of the doctor that invented flouride. He died on 11/27/96, but I don’t know his name.

I’ve been on and off sick all weekend, and I’ve been buying more CDs. I finally found a copy of the Queensryche “Sign of the Times” single, which I wanted for the Japanese-only track, which it turns out, sucks. I did get the new Ozzy CD, which is noteworthy for its 1970 rehearsal tape versions of 4 old Black Sabbath songs, including a verion of War Pigs that has different words. It also has some multimedia stuff on one of the discs, and I tried that out yesterday. I think this is my only enhanced CD.

Okay, I’ve given up on the fluoride search and I’m just listening to the White Album, eating applesauce, and doing what I do every time the sun is out and I’m sitting in my office – thinking. It’s cold and shitty outside, and there’s some pretty thick and high clouds; when I got out of bed thismorning, it was like some weird lighting effect – the sky dark, but sun poking through my blinds and illuminating the bed in thin strips.

I’m thinking about what to do beyond work today. I wandered into a music store yesterday and looked at all of the basses and drums and guitars and minidisc 4 tracks and keyboards and wished I played SOMETHING. I’ve learned my lesson about buying musical instruments and trying to learn – I don’t have the discipline. But I want to be in a band and write music and record stuff, and I’ve felt like this for a long time. That’s why I bought and sold a drumset, a guitar, several bass guitars, and a cheap synth in the last 10 or 15 years.

And when I think about this, I think maybe writing is my substitute for that. I know Mark Leyner talks about that a lot, and I’m sure other writers feel that. I can’t keep a beat, but I can fill up 500 pages without too many problems. So if I say “okay, I’m a writer. Instead of another Electric Ladyland, I’ll produce another On the Road” or whatever. Well, this begs another question: what am I doing with myself right now?

Writing takes as much skill and dedication as playing guitar in a band. You spend hours a day practicing or writing or rehearsing or whatever. And right now, I’m spending a few seconds a day writing. I should be writing 3, 4 hours a night, but it’s always some excuse. Granted, being sick all of the time is a convenient excuse, but even if I’m sick, I can at least sit in front of the computer, put in a CD, and press the B key for 45 minutes, just so I’m used to being in front of the computer. I keep thinking about musicians like the Beatles, who produced about 79,000 albums in only 10 years, or people like Zappa who produced 2 or 3 albums a year, toured a few hundred dates, produced other albums, wrote soundtracks, etc etc etc. I need to be working like that, and I’m not.

Why do I think about this when the sun is out but it’s cloudy? That part was a lie – I think about it a lot, regardless of the weather. This weather makes me think of Indiana winters, to some extent. I should take back what I said – the sun doesn’t appear to be out anymore.

An aside – I just found out that as of last Saturday, I have been journaling on paper on a mostly daily basis for 4 years. Maybe when I get home tonight, I’ll pull out my old spiral notebooks and take a look back through them. It’s weird, because on a related note, I’m trying to fill a notebook before the end of the year, and I don’t think I’ll make it. I usually fill two notebooks a year (120 page, writing on both sides), but this year has been slow, mostly because I seldom write when I’m at Karena’s for the weekend, and on my weekends alone, I’ll write more on those days then I do during the whole week. So I’m trying to double up my writing volume. I’m a few pages shy of the 2/3 mark. I might make it if I break out into a short story one night or something…

I’m getting all of this mail from people I knew a long time ago, which is both cool and weird. I’ve been writing a story based on it, in an odd way. Some of it is my fault – I have a habit of sifting through my old mail and finding people that vanished off the face of the earth. It’s an interesting way to spend a Friday afternoon, anyway.

Last night was like Day of the Clumsy Jackyl at my apartment. I knocked a glass of sprite on the floor and the only thing that saved my paper journal was that my bed comforter was half on the floor and somehow absorbed the whole glass without letting a drop hit the floor. Hail satan. I then had to wash all of my stuff, and this all happened at like 11 at night. I got to bed by one, amazingly enough. Also happening that night – I spilled my garbage, spilled a bag of aluminum cans, spilled some sprite on the counter, and went to answer the phone and somehow grabbed the receiver but not the cord, saying hello several times before I realized I had to untangle the handset cord from that fucked up mess where the cord gets twisted around itself a million times. That happened twice.

Nothing else is going on here…

Thanksgiving is a week from today, which is pretty weird. To me, it’s still the beginning of November for some reason. That lost time in Indiana threw off my internal clock.

I got no work done on Summer Rain last night, but I’ve been doing my scheming for the next issue of Air in the Paragraph Line. I’m trying to line up interviews with people – I have some good ideas, but I don’t know if any of them will work. I’m also thinking about other stories, writing, and ideas that might come together by the end of the year for the next issue.

The Beatles are still in the player, although I’ve wavered a bit and listened to everything from Saxon to ZZ Top over the last couple of days. I counted last night and I have 250 CDs at home. That might be the most I’ve ever had, but it doesn’t seem like that much to me. I’d like to have an even 500. I’m trying to buy up all of the CD versions of tapes that I have from high school on up, before they all disintigrate. Unfortunately, some of this stuff is impossible to find, but I’m having some good luck in finding old stuff like Saxon and Gary Moore on (expensive) import reissues. I just need the money…

I’ve been amazed at the number of dreams I logged in 1996 and how I’ve only remembered a few in recent months. I thought maybe it was because I quit caffeine and it was somehow supressing REM sleep or something. Last night, I left a pad of paper right under my glasses on the nightstand, and managed to write down two dreams that I don’t even remember right now, but I know they’re on paper. I’m hoping to get all of these down into a web page.

Last night, in a fit of research for Summer Rain, I found some old attempts at journals dating back to about 5 years ago. I put them on here [long gone now, sorry] for people to check out, even though they’re weird and don’t make a lot of sense to anyone but me.

The oldest journal talks mostly about the tail end of my relationship with Cheryl. After scanning some old email last night, I found that I first met Cheryl five years ago to the day yesterday. It’s strange to think it was that long ago, but even more strange to think about how much I’ve changed. I feel like I was able to work with people much better back then – I worked in the computer labs, had more friends, and was more “socially honed”. If I were single today and someone like Cheryl crossed my path, I wouldn’t be able to say word one to her. I know I was depressed back then, and upset that I couldn’t find a steady girlfriend. But hell, I was pulling em in like Jerry Seinfeld on a good episode. Why the hell was I depressed?

(Don’t answer that.)

After wasting most of the evening, I started some heavy work on Summer Rain, and I feel like I’m making progress on the first book. I’ve identified that most of it sucks, and there are some really bad dynamics problems that need to be fixed. The first book is about as long as the second and third books put together. There’s a short detour in the first book where I go home for a weekend and it turns into 11 CHAPTERS. Out of FIFTEEN. A third of the damn summer is that weekend. There’s lots of work to be done.

Am I the only person who saw that most of the Jedi religion was based on Catholicism? “May the Force be with you”/”And also with you”

It is, of course, raining like hell and dark outside. It is winter! I am not a believer of this El Nino bullshit, so I won’t take any excuses about a late winter this year. I think El Nino is an excuse made up by some corporate fuckheads to give a more PC explanation for global warming. Not that I care either way, really. If the icecaps melt, I will gladly sell my winter clothes and move to the Idaho-Pacific coast.

How do you remaster a two track master? I could see running it through some kind of filter, or digitizing it and using some weird electronics or computer programs to “clean” it. Maybe there’s something I don’t know about mastering and remastering CDs.

I’m babbling because I went CD shopping last night, and one of my picks was the new version of Hendrix – Electric Ladyland. No complaints about the mastering at all – and its cool that it all fits on one CD without any problems. The new artwork is cool, especially the hand-written letters inside. I like it because I had this album on vinyl, an old copy from the sixties that had warps and skips and problems, but I listened to it anyway. I still have a tape that I practically memorized, along with the skips and problems. Today was the first time I heard Little Miss Strange without a giant gap in the guitar solo, where my needle would always go airborne and jump past a good 20 seconds of the album.

This is the kind of album I like. It’s got lots of different types of music, and it is LONG. You can put it in and sit back or work on a book or some cleaning or whatever, and it plays out for a while. One of my biggest pet peeves about the death metal scene was that all of the albums were like 28 minutes long. By the time you put it in the player and sit down in your chair, its halfway over. Ladyland is an awesome album to put in on a rainy day when you don’t want to get out of bed. Actually, the song Rainy Day, Dream Away is the perfect Seattle song to play when you’re pissed off about the weather. It lets you chill out, and then from that, you go right into 1983… and everything is cool.

My other purchase was The Beatles (aka the white album). As a long two-disc, this is similar to the above. But the white album reminds me of a different period of time – I think I talked about this before – but about five years ago, I knew nothing about the Beatles, and just decided I had to own all of their albums. So I started buying stuff and reading books, and worshipping the Beatles. Because of this, all of my friendships and memories and problems and stories from 1992 are somehow set to a Beatles soundtrack. All of my Beatles stuff went when I sold most of my CD collection in 1995 (which was stupid). Listening to the CDs now is like some kind of time machine, which is both good and bad.

I’ve been thinking about only buying CDs that are older than me for the rest of the year. Of course, that isn’t too long – 3 paychecks, I think. I’d like to start collecting James Brown stuff, but that’s a lot of stuff…

I wanted to write today, but I spent my time doing, well not much. I should try to belt out a few words before lunch is over…

I’m at the point where I’m thinking more about the novel than other trivial things when I’m in the shower, eating, driving, etc. Today, I brushed my teeth, and then rushed to the spiral notebook for a pageful of ideas. Now I need to do the same with my amount of writing.

I used to tell people I would write for three hours a night: from 9 to midnight, and maybe more. It’s a romantic gesture stolen from Charles Bukowski’s fiction novels, and one I tried to live by. It never worked – I would eat dinner late, get in a phone conversation, go to Denny’s, shopping and Barnes and Noble, whatever, and not get started by 9. And I’d screw around on the computer, get distracted by CDs, and otherwise avoid the writing sometimes. But some nights, I’d burn away and write until dawn. I tried to write 2000 words a night back then, and I’d usually make it. My mistake was that I never wrote 2000 good words. I read so many books that said ‘get your first draft finished, no matter how bad, and then you can edit it). It doesn’t work like that – I can’t edit for shit, especially the jumbled mess I wrote two years ago.

Now, I’m lucky to get an hour of writing done during lunch, and maybe an hour later at night. I’m working on improving that, but it takes work…

I really liked last night’s episode of ER – I’ve always felt that the gutsy surgical bullshit got in the way of the human emotion behind the characters, and not the other way around. I guess I like the medical stuff to an extent – it’s better than exploding rocket launchers and stuff. ER is an addicting show, and aside from the dramatics, the writing really hooks me. It’s also how a show like Seinfeld can drag me in every time. For a show about nothing, it sure is loaded with a bunch of really catchy plots full of self-referential material.

I found out that if you put four whole apples and a whole lemon in a juiceman, it makes a kick-ass lemonade. The apples sweeten it, but the lemon’s taste overpowers it. It’s sort of slushy, like a smoothie. I think I might get some strawberries and try adding them, too.

It’s Friday. Time to finish up the work day, and get out of here for the weekend…

I’m already hitting various mental roadblocks during this new rewrite of my first book, Summer Rain. My new outline is not much more then a mental recollection of how the book is supposed to work. The problem is – sometimes I forget. And when I go back and try to reference the old draft, it corrupts things and I go from creating this new, more functional structure to just rehashing all of the old shit that’s in the book.

I read pieces of a year-old draft, and the amount of work ahead of me is overwhelming. Writing shifts from bad to poor, the story drags with no real ‘hook’ to it, and everything is sloppy. It goes from describing everything too much to having no descriptions at all. I like bits and pieces of it, but some of it is pretty corny. I’ve tried editing it, but I think it would be easier to just start over.

I got my stupid checkbook from Seatac airport. It cost me $2 to park there for 20 seconds and get the thing. But I was able to balance everything and pay another round of bills last night.

Does a cross-section of celery look sort of like an MRI, or is it just me?

I got a kick-ass Camaro catalog in the mail – I must’ve put my name on a list a few months ago. It’s mostly stuff for 67-69, and mostly original with some repro stuff. So it is all expensive, for people who want to pay $175 a tire to get the original Firestone red-wall tires for their totally restored 69 Z-28. Anyway, it’s got me thinking more about buying another Camaro after I unload this piece of shit Escort. I’d need garage space, though. We’ll see…

I had a weird dream about my ex-girlfriend Tanya. I was at some unknown house watching Apocalypse Now with Simms, Andrea, and this guy who lived down the street from my parents. He was on the phone with someone, and then hung up. I asked who it was, and he said it was Tanya and that they were going out. I told him that I dated her a while ago, and he started telling these stories about how they slept together on their first date and how she was really wild in bed, and I was getting insanely jealous about the whole thing. It was like being a Giants fan back when they totally sucked, and you give up on them, and then they get incredibly good. I woke up and thought it all was real, and I was still all jealous about it. I don’t think jealous is the word for it – I didn’t want her back or anything. It was more like a betrayal. I don’t know – maybe it was because I ate right before I went to bed, who knows.

Did I mention that Anton LaVey died? I guess he actually died on the 29th, but his birth certificate says the 31st, which is the major Satanic holiday, aside from your own birthday. His family didn’t report it to the public until this week. Pretty weird.

(For those of you who don’t know – Anton LaVey was the founder of the Church of Satan, and the author of the Satanic Bible, among other books. No, I am not a Satanist – I consider myself more of a Humanist, which in itself is not much more than a label saying I think man is responsible for his own problems. I’ve read The Satanic Bible, and I own a copy, and it has its moments. It isn’t based on killing cats and wearing little red horns, but then it isn’t for everyone, either.)

I’ve been working on an outline for the new and improved Summer Rain. There are many changes in the new version, mostly structural. It has a new ending, and I’m trying to change the pacing of the whole thing a bit more. I don’t know if I will ever write or rewrite anything based on this work – I usually quit after a bit of the outline and continue on some other project. But I’d like to get a decent-enough outline based on all of my old notes – an infallible outline – so that even if I quit, I will have details for later.

I should work on that outline now…

My new 28.8 modem works now, so downloads from home might be a bit more painless. I still need to mess with the dialup script a bit, because it isn’t perfect. I also have a 14.4 internal modem in /dev/modem and the 28.8 external in /dev/mouse. If I had two phone lines, I could run with both. I think I’m just going to wait until I get a house, and then I’m going to get a minidish with internet service on it.

Today I started writing a new outline for my first book, Summer Rain. It’s a frequently recurring project, but maybe something with come of it. I’m designing the book to be a series of short stories that are glued together by chapters that wouldn’t make sense out of place. So it will start with writing a short story, then another, then… In a worst case scenario, I will have a handful of bad short stories. Well, in a worst case scenario, I will have nothing done.

That book has been haunting me, and I’m stalled on Rumored to Exist, so I’ll toy with it a while. Some of it was being in Bloomington, and some of it is the need to write a solid novel of that size. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I just need to work out a cohesive piece of work that weaves together all of the feelings and surroundings from that part of my life. I don’t think my first pass did justice to that summer, and I need something with more depth to it. We’ll see.

I had lunch with Bill, Marc, Todd, and Chris Wilson – we went to Chang’s and I actually made Mongolian food with almost no meat in it. Todd and I got in a giant discussion about PC upgrades and what I should get for my ailing Linux box. I’ll eventually install a new monitor, video card, sound card, and CD-ROM. I need a power supply in there, too. All of this will be a slow process, though. I can’t afford to dump a grand into this thing just so I can play cool games or whatever.

It’s pitch black outside, which is my clue to leave…