the shower scene

a few days ago my friend chris sent me a link to another youtube video of a giant centipede in action. write one song about centipedes and you're branded for life as the centipede guy. too bad i didn't write a song about hot fudge sundaes. anyway. this one wasn't as awful as the last one because it spared the gore, but it still was enough to give me nightmares. in this one, the thing just pulls a son-of-a-bitch fruit bat out of the goddamn sky. a flying creature! is there nothing grosser in the world.

this morning i pulled back the shower curtain after a nice shower. and i grabbed my towel and i started working on my flowing locks. and i felt something on my leg. could just be a water drip. but it was moving up. water drops don't move up. so instinctively, before i even looked down, i jerked my leg to jaunce whatever evil-incarnate was traversing my limb. and then i saw him, flying from my leg, out of the tub, and onto the bathroom floor. he hit the ground running and was gone in a flash. but it was unmistakable. that was a centipede. boy howdy. straight out of the nightmares i've been having since i watched the video. only smaller.

we meet again, old friend. not if i see you first.

in other news, i'm dropping the axe on "doctor, these headaches." it will not be on the record. because i haven't even started it yet and i'm still not sure how it's going to go and because thematically it'll fit better with the newer stuff i've been writing anyway. so it's not disappearing, it's just going back into the incubator. that leaves one song to finish before i can say this record is done and just wash my hands of it. and it's close, friends. oh so very close. and it's about time, since i just realized i started talking about it over a year ago.

much ado about something

so i started work on "doctor, these headaches" today. so far i can tell you this much: it will be recorded at roughly 110 beats per minute in the key of G major. it will have 2 guitar parts, and a drum part that kinda reminds me of "where the river goes" by stone temple pilots (but don't worry, i will never rock as hard as them). of course there'll be a bass in there too somewhere but i have no idea how it'll sound and i'm sure it won't be anything special since i'm clueless.

if i manage to do it right, it'll be the best song on the record, but i probably won't manage to do it right. i might be seeking a guest vocal, or i might not. it's probably really going to test my voice. as it stands right now it's also going to test my guitar skills. i'm uncomfortable with both of those tests. i'm unduly nervous about the whole thing, and working very, very slowly.

it only has 4 chords.

i am a big baby.

were they all just lost in the flood?

i've spent all day so far today listening to old vinyl records. i have a totally sweet turntable that i never use and a really warm sounding old hi-fi amp that i probably paid about $10 for at a yardsale because some yahoo got himself an alpine. old speakers, etc.

the point is that everyone who says rock and roll sounds best on vinyl is 100% right. i have all these records on cd and vinyl. and they all sound better on vinyl. and if it totally doesn't break my bank, i am going to make some vinyl versions of "they're more afraid of you than you are of them" when i finally finish it. from what i hear vinyl is a specialty thing, but is affordable in small quantities. of course i haven't really done much homework on it yet.

but let's talk a bit about the record, since i don't feel like i do much of that anymore and as i've been recently reminded, that is why i started all this writing in the first place.

it's coming along. not without its share of frustration (i just shitcanned all but the drums for "a viking's funeral" so i can redo it in a different key that i can sing better), but it's coming. a song is done when i am still proud of it 2 weeks after the last time i tweaked it. and by that measure, 4/8 songs are done. of course one of those is the centipede song and it doesn't even belong on the album and it's been done for years and it'll probably just be a hidden track but who the f cares? the other three that are done are "if these walls could talk," "i spin forever," and "new york city." i haven't even started "doctor, these headaches" or "triple deke" yet. that leaves "the loudest man on the laugh track" which is the one i earlier intimated might end up sounding like a william shatner song. at this point that is still possibly the case.

in a drawer here at my desk i have about 10 rolls of undeveloped film dating as far back as my sophomore year in college (which is like 5 years ago) and some recent introspection has made me decide to get them developed. for all i know they've expired or something, but they've all been in lightproof cases and all that so i'm just going to hope for the best. the point is, there's going to be a lot on there that's going to hurt to see. but probably a lot also that'll be really nice. and since none of them are labeled, everytime i do one it'll be a surprise. i hope whether nice or not they'll move me forward with this record and with life in general. not that i'm living in the past or anything (not that far in the past anyway) but these film rolls represent to me a lot of shit i've avoided confronting for a long time. i guess i'll keep you posted.

lastly, i know i've linked you to the ex-girlfriend project about a million times by now, but he mentioned the other day how "mary, queen of arkansas" always reminded him of "kara" (who so far is unquestionably the most interesting of his ex's) and that just came on while i was typing all this. on vinyl the way it should be.