Trust no one especially me

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Twenty-one gun salute

Yes, the marriage to the SBH is now old enough to drink. And drink I shall.

Riddle me this, Adam West

Being around others is exhausting.
Being by yourself is draining.
Solve for x.

CRACK. 



Nod.

This show's overdue for a reboot.

The League of (the same ole) Nations

♪ Predictions, predictions, roly poly predictions, eat them up, yum ♫

The first week of the fall semester: nothing is a finer reminder of just how much I really loathe other humans man you fuckers are annoying. How about doing something for yourself, disorganized space cadets. Now, on to more important things, namely humans I don't have to interact with, ever.

Disclaimer: if you're looking for analysis with depth, I'm sure there's an expert who shacks up with the devil in the deep blue Marianas Trench.

A: Anyone-But-PSG, & all former Yugos suck, thus Porto & Dynamo Kiev.
B: ARSENE! &, since Giroud's gone, a Raul-less Schalke, I guess.
C: Milan is lucky. Them & Zenit, especially if Hulk bixbys over.
D: HA HA CITY HA HA. Fucking Madrid & Borussia.
E: Fucking Chelsea & a sack of cheaters (everyone in the Oakland Raiders of footie leagues cheats)
F: FC Hollywood & Valencia.
G: Celtic, you're fucked. Enjoy the cash. B & B.
H: If Man U fucks this up, time to toss SAF in a peat bog.

This year's APOEL: bet there ain't one.

WE SEEK PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE

I warned ya. Though the official anniversary isn't until September, officially. Yet, since I do indeed have nothing else & I'd much rather talk Trek than the toxic strains of both news feedery & personalized jibber-jabberwocky interesting to no one, I present the wonder years & her slow creep of understanding: the world is a beautiful box sadly overstuffed with fuckers hemorrhaging cataracts of yellow & black bile, so let us hike away to the pleasant melodies of tunes, teevee, & trashing troglodytes. Some old geeks swear by TOS; a worthy choice, but for us not-entirely-greys, it was Gene's second (third, if we're counting the aborted Phase II) stab at interstellar futurama that fit the playbill.

To counter every

Space Irish

Space Beethoven

or The Worst™ introduction of an alien race in the history of science fiction either televised or in print go on find something more wretched I challenge thee [ed. note: you'll notice that I left out Flying Troi and The Where Are Yous, you're welcome], dig this baker's dozen plus one. A few favorites, yes. The best, perhaps, perhaps not. Hate them? You've got a blog, use it.

The Measure of a Man. Is Data one of us or no? This could have been so fucking heavy handed. It wasn't, & wouldn't work with Kirk who'd take a swing at Maddox, missing due to an uncomfortably crooked girdle, unable to do anything but watch helplessly as Starfleet trekked the android away to disassembly.

Accept the superiority of The Picard & move on.

The Best of Both Worlds, parts I & II. Once upon a time, I was a geek with skill. Now I'm just a geek with slack. Anyway, during the summer twixt junior & senior year of high schoolin', I was enrolled in a three-week computer class at Ohio State (stick your The, as tired as this guy using SOMETHING IST KRIEG) where, when not getting figuratively slaughtered by kind Middle Eastern kids at footie [ed. note: a clever ploy at imposing Sharia law I'm onto you] & hanging out for hours inside Magnolia Thunderpussy dissecting the merits of A Farewell to Kings & Show No Mercy, we butchered at birth bits of Fortran.

That Cramps poster was spooky, but their tunes sure as hell weren't.

Whilst my roomie was off somewhere making out with the RA assigned to the chick half of our gang, us less handsome devils, including Pink Floyd (no one, no one, boomer or otherwise, was as obsessed with that band as much as this guy) & Lou Reed (cool dude, especially since he, unknowingly, introduced me to the vast overrated-nesse of his last great American whale. Belated thanks) & some of the young ladies who weren't totally repulsed by us, gathered in our RA's room to watch the season three cliffhanger. The return of the Borg, manly man Riker poker faced by a woman, & Locutus? Game, set, & match.

After coming down from a rousing chorus of holy fuck what the fuck just happened, we preceded to watch Major League & drink beer.

Sins of the Father. I never kill anyone at the supper table, either, Kurn. Season one Worf was merely a vehicle designed to alternate growls & overreactions. Now he's the coolest mofo around.

Sarek. The title character cried during a performance of Brahms' sextet in B-flat. So did I, but then I'm not a Vulcan. Nyah nyah nyah. Good on Angry Wesley's dig at Angry Geordi being the most hapless guy around the ladies this side of M-33.

Family. As everyone knows, Patrick Stewart owns. When he's paired with a supporting actor who can match his intensity, that's happy fun Halloween candy.


 

Redemption, parts I & II. A situation that required a more Klingon response. Not entirely sold on Sela's backstory, but fisticuffs, Romulan intrigue, righteous Klingon rage, the return of Gowron & Kurn, Data putting the command smackdown on a punkass Timothy Carhart? Let the good times roll.


 

A Matter of Honor. Speaking of Klingons, let's practice our growling. Saved Riker's bacon, & it'll save yours during that next staff meeting.

 

All Good Things... If Not Fade Away is the greatest series send-off ever, & it is, this is a close second (probably along with this I don't care about Newhart or The Wire, thus). Oodles of all-over-the-map, Q, & though emotion-chipped Data grates, this is how you do a finale.

Yesterday's Enterprise. Yeah, it's on every goddamn list, & for good reason. Time travel is incredibly easy to monkey wrench, but when you don't, & toss a hefty dollop of emotional sprinkles on top, delicious & nutritious.

 

Conspiracy. More X-Files than Kolchak ever was, just as ridiculous as the latter, though stumbling across the Horatio's remains so soon was pretty unsettling. Dig those alien FX, a Satanic, melted Fraggle goof-thing but lordy, that hideous death yelp. But [SPOILER ALERT] what a missed opportunity in never following up.

 

The Offspring. Data builds kid, The Man wants kid ['cause Data ain't human, pay attention], kid dies. Maudlin? Try moving, you heartless sack of rocks. Fuck off.

Chain of Command, parts I & II. I'm not gonna do the THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS schtick. Shit. Still, Ronny Cox does dueling superiority/inferiority complexes with gusto, & David Warner's suavely sadistic.

Q Who. Once upon a time, there was no spandexed Jeri Ryan, no B-movie Borg Queen, only the bleakness of technosingularity robotnik circuiterianism.
  

Elementary, Dear Data. Yeah, yeah, easy to potshot the very notion of the holodeck, but I like Data, I like Sherlock Holmes, & this is a fun 45 minutes. Plus, Pulaski's a curmudgeon & that always gets bonus points with yours truly.

Live long & prosper far off my lawn.

Just keep telling me this is life and we didn't miss it

Season two is good, lemmings.

We're trudging, scuffling deep in the valley twixt twin peaks of heat. Fire walk with yourself, bub, I'm sweaty [ed. note: figuratively as the Slab's air's conditioned in addition to asbestosed] enough as is, thus, this, meandering rivulets of passivity, all reading + listening, all the time, but the pen remains dry as Charlemagne's bones, assuming of course there's no bathtub mildew wherever his pieces-parts lie; Aachen, the McDonald's in Aachen, Otto's Irresistible Dance Emporium.

[read read read ---> half-ass'd ponder]

This place is vinyl with the needle stuck, isn't it.
Tweaking the tweaks of last month's piece, la belle vie.
Place is more than this place.

Tonight only!

Oh sure, to reinforce geek cred everyone's gonna pick this --



or this -- 




but the true acting aficionado no doubt holds this most dear:

Dream a little dream

Slow burn

Once upon a time, this began with a seemingly-left-field-though-not-as-much-as-you-think introduction to such serious business, the yeah-right apocalyptic stylings of an in-character Charles Nelson Reilly. But if we, & by we I mean me, don't look for an explanation each time there are symbolic volcanoes in vein, seven-headed dragons landing on, cracking the frame of our gas-guzzling rustbucket hearts, what, then?

Sympathy, in the earliest strain of meaning: A (real or supposed) affinity between certain things, by virtue of which they are similarly or correspondingly affected by the same influence, affect or influence one another (esp. in some occult way), or attract or tend towards each other. Obs. exc. Hist. or as merged in other senses. There are two reasons why we don’t talk about something: either it means nothing, or it means everything.

So we let others with that affinity speak, & what the fuck does the above collage have to do with the new Worm Ouroboros album?  

The thing: the letter-of-the-law heavy has mostly vanished. The vast, undulating faux-climax riffs found on Winter, Riverbed, pretty much all of the self-titled debut, are fewer, mythic towns keeping desert highway rumor alive. On Come the Thaw, Jessica Way & Lorraine Rath (with new skinsdude & rarities god Aesop Dekker) drive that horizon-defying road at three a.m. when there's nothing but the sound of constellations & an interior dark continually brought to the fore by the flap of an empty wrapper in the open breeze, the call of a stone flung by a rolling tire, the response of a breath. Or is it through treading the blinking neon grit of sleeping suburbia, a back laced with sweat in the uncomfortable black. Only Withered breaks gravel from nearly front to back with an evident power chord, but to say this album isn't heavy is to confess that you never listened. The spirit is colossus.

Take the opener, Ruined Ground. Expanse built upon the bassline, the mimetic beat of thought, and when the frost on your fields/has claimed its prize/after it's gone/I'll wait for you, alternately sweet & oppressive vocal interplay layer before sparse, plucked guitar drops like a rain that threatens to become a storm, dead as quickly as it was born.

Further Out, the weeds discard broken concrete for the field, the band, as so often, playing with dimension, the notes spaced further apart then returning, the recapitulations never obviously in motion, meandering with the hours because something happened. That undercurrent of grey flows throughout, discernible but out of reach like the mirage of a note you swear you heard. The hypnotic, bass-dominant taciturn throb of Release Your Days nevertheless grasps for a solace in the dark found when alone, among a crowd.

When We Are Gold truly pushes the low high, Rath's bass taking lead the way a pulse does when the only other noise is crickets, a passing car, shuffling feet. Doom jazz for heshers? Perhaps, but the finest moment might be the last, the denouement of the will-o-the-wispy Penumbra when the instruments fall away, all that remains being a vocal whose final measure shifts heavenward in a moment of longed-for hope. Hildegard could have sung this.

Through all six sprawling suites, the sense, not of simple, direct loss, but of distance, more emotional than physical, is palpable, the looking glass abstraction that mirrors the aural physicality of the album. Fingers are nimble, as are voices & the gently pointed lyrics, less Browning, more Dickinson, laced with folk sadness & weeping torch song bravado. Our apocalypses, & we all have them, are little. So sit back, take a drag, a sip of bitter, have a listen, & let the end burn slow. Living lives of quiet desperation, all is well, for here's the required elixir of quiet intensity to get us through the next moment, & the next.

Hot for teacher

The SBH & I have had our disgruntled goat moments with educators &, mostly & unsurprisingly, bean-counting admin types whose time would be better spent counting actual beans, affiliated with the classrooms the lunatic offspring spend their days doodling in, but in the interest of fairness & in ending this run-on more awkward than my usual fare, must now offer great praise to a pro-Misery Chick teacher who shall remain nameless for reasons of national security.

Apparently, there's a running extra credit gig in Offspring the Younger's English class, but it's mainly used to encourage shorties to pen stuff 'cause not every parent(s) is as yay! literature! as yours truly. Long becoming short, our genetic offshoot turned in previously-written, as angsty black-clad teenage chicks are wont to do, angsty black-clad teenage chick verse that, instead of generating a phone call flush with Columbine-isms, instead proffered yay! literature! post-its & a suggestion to check out the yay! death! of Emily Dickinson.

Yay! (some) teachers!

Time & date

Should've iPhoned & uploaded. Get with the times, slacker.

Yesterday began the neo-bimonthly-or-so ritual of marathoning my favorite non-Simpsons telenovela, & I found yours truly internally smirking at how even timelessness is timestamped: strings of rehearsed words flush with jargon, cant or out-of-favor portmanteaus; the processed-or-not sound of a snare hit; tube amped chords; bibelots & people, always the twain shall meet on the tip of the tongue, whether concrete landmarks or whimsical fancies, stark documentaries or haze-induced beautiful comas.

The left side of the brain long ago accepted an incontrovertible logic: the immutability of the aftermath of lost or never available opportunities, dissatisfaction with a planetary circumference of choices both ancient & avant-garde that invariably lead to frustrations mercilessly perpetrated by the maniacal puppets of biochemical processes. Here, passing the buck's the killer bee's knees & legitimate.

Which brings us to the drunken fuckery half of the skull, all the mutant third law of motion horrors it unleashes & the also incontrovertible logic that no generous dollop of versifying, darkthroning, air guitaring &/or conducting can salve timeless savagery but we keep applying folk medicine anyway. Distraction's a wonderful thing until it becomes one more accelerant. 

So this is what it's like to be single & a geek, or, Saturday night's alright for fighting personal demons & wizards

 


Of course I avoided acting the part of Lawnmower Man -- three more chances & lack of blood n' guts (just add haruspicy) was thumbs-up worthy -- sat instead in deep meditation [ed. note: a lie] before Heinekening the Champions League final [ed. note: Barcelona is pretty good] at which point the sometimes-better-half & lunatic offspring shuffled off to the in-laws, though whether I wasn't requested due to my vast interest in the game (heads), that I'm last season's accessory (tails, but black's always in style) or an unforeseen reason (side, like that old Twilight Zone ep) is too complex a question for a blog post especially this slacker affair not that I would have left the comfort of the carpet unless it was imitating a 70s disaster flick -- the inferno, not the frog army or runaway jetliner kind -- & all I know is that I've had the place to myself for far longer than I can consciously recall, no I didn't Karaoke sans machine & outer layers because I can't afford therapy for our cats.

So, a life of quiet desperation the thrill-a-minute circus sideshow two-headed-fetus-in-a-jar of Evel Knievel & Lance Murdock that I experience every day:

Glossed a copy of the Necronomicon cleverly disguised.

Laid on the floor staring at the ceiling --

-- paused long enough to shoot the wall.

Screamed at myself to shamble out of pretend sleep & spend time more fruitfully by recklessly driving through an orange barrel maze that I swear was there don't care they didn't appear on screen to crash in DVD land. Au moins no one died.

No one besides good taste.

Dammit, I still have to cut the grass & work on my material 'cause this is all but a repeat of yesterday, warped along with fish-headed monkeys & alligator-skinned bearded ladies in funhouse mirrors, though if I'm feeling generous & I'm not sure just yet if I am especially to myself, all this uninspired internets is the ostensible price for "inspired" writing which probably isn't as writer's block currently isn't & that's as rare as Halley's comet visiting the Large Magellanic Cloud so roll ballpoint, roll because tomorrow's forecast is dry. I know those omens, there's an insomnia coming. Fucking second wind.

The indifferent cosmos ain't so much after all

'tis the only plausible explanation for this so-called serendipitous return of winter in light of the impending holy service to be held this Saturday evening.

Oh, a bunch of crazy crap happened yesterday & is likely happening now. I'm sure someone somewhere is raging about it & I'd wager some of them are right on. For those about to type, we salute you.



Two days till catharsis woo!

Speaking of death, bah & humbug. Sure, the library's "vault" is a not-that-underground, asbestos-infested rathole, but I'm not that blind, so yours truly wins the dystopia, triumphant hardee har har.

One Seventeen Bourbon(s), One Twenty-Three Scotch(es) and One Six Cases of Beer

Whew! I can finally wipe off the dust & put that to good use.

On a more less not-all-that serious note, folks bag on goopers as being smart as a sack of really dumb rocks, but this is ingeniously supervillain, for booze, like porn, is coated with a year's supply of Recession Wax. I'm not saying the loot won't ooze to the usual suspects 'cause duh, thus my fellow Ohioans, please join me in a soon-to-be more expensive drink, not like you weren't gonna get blotto anyway 'cause you can't afford hookers n' blow like said usuals especially after hearing from fellow peonage about the technocracy's local HR bot layering red cake razzmatape (shorter: don't you or your future-winning children even *think* about getting really x 3 sick who do you think you are

"First, your shorter isn't very short. Second, everyone already knows this."

You again.



expendable worm, a said usual? [ed. note: deathly ill? Non, though it would be handy to have some basement junk to hawk on the Legitimate Businessman's Market, mayhap I'll become a pretzeldent]) at yesterday's staff meeting that I never attend & now I wish I had 'cause I rather enjoy a zesty snifter of angry blood ritual & a chortle chaser, this calls for some metal facing.  



Three days till catharsis woo!

Gov. Kasich & the Booze Czar (do we have one?) explain the finer points of scamola to a filthy rube. (h/t Charles)

Fine, I'll slack at work instead & how is that any different from any other day I'll let you decide

So that's why all the viking kids grew up to rape & pillage.

As the young people say (did say? I don't know, Daddy-O, hey hey you you get off of my cloud), word. Oh, mucho thanko to a certain ethnic plumber broadcaster for darkthroning on the radio this crisp morn & if I was an ultra jerk instead of a part-time jerk, I would've put it on speaker for all the public transportationistas to enjoy.

Look man, I better use up some of this vacation before it's outlawed & you know what they say about outlaws. Printemps break falls within a serendipitous collection of works (creating's the real work, motherfuckers & the stuff I've got for swanky zine action, shudder, I suck & unofficial deadlines are made to be horribly axe-murdered, no?) & days, a Michael Stanley double shot of Champions League action & public drunken bunga bunga avoidance. Kill two crows with one well-placed potato gun shot, wee lasses & lads, I'll drink to that.

[ed. note: for your edification, the Undisclosed Location has been disclosed. Sloppy, CheneyBot, sloppy.]

Support Our Potatoes

Look man, when I'm Tribal Warfare Day channel surfing, I expect a fresh batch of brand new Hitler Nazi extraterrestrial reptile occult UFO jazz, not staid & obvious Americanish herotastic programming whose commercial breaks repeat said Americanish herotasticism of The Greatest Country In The World Ever MotherFCC® brought to you by Freedom Isn't Free Corporations Pay For It Not Responsible For Inadequate Distribution All Rights Reserved, agitprop drooled forth by a parade of John McCain lookalikes at least they don't crash, an AIM-7 sticking out the back of your torso. So next time, less jingoism, more Nostradamus Swap Believe It Or Not in between hawking some Time-Life DVDs or Viagra or Ritz or life insurance don't make me watch the Food Network or cable access schwing or *gasp* read a fucking book is that too much to ask?


Sheesh.

A Vapid Poetics of Votology & Other Stories

Monstrosities like this rear their collective uglies on this campus as well, every two years, like diabolical stop-motion clockwork.
















American foreign policy?

The ballot box crap, not the photo. That ugly gets a pretty smile.

Speaking of pretty, Jennifer Hetrick in an episode of TNG. WMDest MacGuffin ever aside -- that's no Star Destroyer, that's a STAR DESTROYER -- am I, as I seem to be going by conversations over the years, in the minority in digging Captain's Holiday a lot? Man, that was two decades ago. I'm old.















Speaking of old, I feel extra today on the account of Doodily, Unplanned Offspring #1, achieving the age where she is legally permitted to write in Snoopy or Woodstock or Dick Nixon or Dead Gus Hall on said ballot box crap. A cynical chip off the decrepit block. I'm so proud of her, sniff.