Cleanliness is next to something-ness

I don't think Encyclopedia of Home Laundry is The Kids' freshest slang for bunga-bunga, but old hermits are known to know nothing. 

Waiting for Wotan #12

"Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt, but, uh, what are you talking about?"
"The ending of waiting for Wotan."
"My friend here is trying to convince me that those who die while waiting for Wotan are innocent victims when they're destroyed by inertia."

"Well, I'm a loiterer myself. And speaking as a loiterer, I can tell you a loiterer's personal politics comes into play heavily when choosing to wait."
"Like when?"
"Three weeks ago, I was offered a job up in the hills, beautiful road, tons of shade, a simple hangout. They told me if he appeared in one day, I would double my price. Then I realized who I was waiting for."
"Who were you waiting for?"

"Beckett."
"Samuel Beckett, the playwright?"
"The same! The money was right, but the risk was too high. I know who he was, and based on that, I turned the job over to a friend of mine."
"Based on personal politics."

"Right! And the next week, Tom Stoppard put a hit on Beckett's minons. My friend was shot and killed. Didn't even finish waiting."
"No way."
"I'm alive because I knew the risk involved in that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. Any loiterer waiting for Wotan knew the risk involved. If they got killed, it's their own fault. A loiterer listens to his head, not his hope."

A song about trees because it's better than a song about people

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:

Getting drunk in the cemetery

Garbage in, garbage out.

Now who's gonna throw a tantrum on stage?

No executive lunch time = limited darkthroning options.

Arty farty boosterism.

I think that I shall never see
a food as lovely as kibbeh

Where's Waldo's beer?

Cute. Tell anyone I think so & we'll have words.

Thanks for not shitting on our makeshift picnic.

Doom.

Beautiful downtown Clevelandia.

King Kobra or Cobra Commander, who wins?

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Before.

After.

No, I'm not that fat, yet. Before we proceed, if you hate this post, blame the Duchess; the kernel's hers. If you love it, credit yours ugly. So, lopped off the long(ish) because I was tired of it & thus sliced my morning prep time from 45 to 15 seconds thus tripling productivity thus tripling my winning the future winnings here I come Space Casino, which led to a smarmy yet presumably good-natured barb from guess who about whether the power of Metal [ed. note: but not power metal, that stuff sucks, & no, Maiden doesn't count 'cause they fucking rule. More on them later] lies in the coiffure.

All groups, cliques, drone operator knitting clubs, anarchist chimney sweep brigades, even if there isn't a heavy social element due to many of us being borderline nihilists who love life, an awesome paradox if we had all bought pot from Donald Sutherland, have a uniform that we at least piecemeal gravitate towards when not shackled by The Man, everyone au moins a little unless you don't in which case congrats Mr &/or Mrs Three Piece Pantsuit Grindcore teach me your imaginary iconoclast wisdom.

The residue from tribal conditioning's youthful birth still lingers; blame my hermetic tendencies, but 'tis vaguely straunge when mine eyes see The Kids of the Campus wearing Maiden & Cannibal Corpse shirts that picture albums released before they were born [ed. note: no one wears Tomb of the Mutilated ironically], & on females no less. [ed. note: shit like Let It Be threads doesn't count since that's as mainstream as Muzak in a shopping mall]. My concert going has run the gamut from nearly all-testosterone shows in the late 80s to now where the same, if not heavier, strains are a solid mix of dudes & chicks, so the world has indeed changed for the better for once you fucking hippies, because let's be honest, we hairy lumps ain't pretty.

Now, what of the workplace? Given that I, a 38-year old guy who on occasion still wears band shirts to the Towering Slab (which, according to the interneterati, means I've yet to become a grown-ass man), some properly assume that I've been grandfathered in; newer hires whose job duties also include a solid dose of public interaction do not arrive as if preparing for Wacken, troo. Et bien sûr, when the kvlt of darkthroning occurs during a full moon sweltering Clevelandia summer, buttons it is; I ain't TD Jakes, but due to sweat the rock tee morphs into a gooey second skin right quick.

So, what's my point? None beyond fulfillment of today's posting quota.

Waiting for Wotan #11

"No, don't protest --

-- we are bored to death, there's no denying it.

Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do?

We let it go to waste."

Mystery solved

Pay no attention to the man behind the wheel of the DeLorean. 

Always wanted a bong n' Weird Tales sonic treatment of Jesus' stillborn, time-traveling twin, & thanks to the fanatically fervent High on Fire, here it is, quite the Easter egg. On number six, De Vermis Mysteriis, Kurt Ballou's production, following messrs. Albini, Endino, & Fidelman, is still too Valley of the Kings dry -- O how these lucubrations Lovecraftian Blochian long for The Art of Self Defense's wet smoke inhalation -- but, in correcting the one drawback of the last LP, voice & guitar have been restored to their rightful place in the mix, though whatever acrid adult libation Mr. Pike swills in ritually sacrificing his larynx, 1)sign me up, I'll be a big hit on Halloween, 2)no fucked knob twiddle needed in the face of such stellar howls.

Chaotic opener Serums of Liao doesn't imprint as ruthlessly as past album introductions -- Baghdad, Devilution, & Fury Whip are red giant imposing -- but 'tis early in its life, & the seasick solo sticks like peanut butter on the brain, & here we go, Bloody Knuckles feeds on Slayer's rich, tasty courage, grit between the teeth. Des Kensel's masterful control of whack-a-tom starts the speed & sleep splatter of Fertile Green -- let me pause for a moment & state that within a just world, any minute now this guy would begin to usurp Lombardo's throne in the hesher consciousness. The dude owns, consistently.

The crawl-birthing-a-stomp of Madness of an Architect drones the ears like a rusty cheese grater, & it's beautiful, the other side of the looking glass to the voiceless melodicism of Samsara that renews the psychedelic side trips of Death is This Communion, & being an understated showpiece for too-underrated bassist Jeff Matz, who quickly flips back the switch, the rest also congregating in Spiritual Rites whose stop-start pacing gleefully recalls Rumors of War, an extra gear thrashed for good measure.

King of Days, O, it proceeds like the Weedian, but sandblasted with unexpected Cosmic Requiem-era hues of Cathedral melancholy. The grinding title track is arguably the weakest piece which is surprising, & speaks to the 18/01 strength of the entire album, such as found in the paired final responsorials, the stoned Motörhead cohort march of Romulus and Remus, & the eerie breathing space 'fore the final charge of Warhorn, expert, expanding gradations within the band's specific palette.

Some bands I dig a smidgen more, some albums punch the emotional gut a bit harder, & this isn't their finest hour (too much speed, too little groaning, fucked-up turbulence), but if a stranger asked hey Randal what is metal? I'd probably pass them a High on Fire record, & this is ain't a bad place to start.

Dream a little dream

I can feel the wheel but I can't steer

The summer before the first video game war, yours truly was browsing at Peaches, later to become Coconuts then FYE then abandoned, ready to blow whatever hole-burning scratch my meager shit job threw in my pocket when the craziest, acid-fuck cover caught my four eyes & I was smitten before I heard a note. Filed in the metal section, so no Bell Biv DeVoe danger, Facelift lifted them; not tearing as thrash, but a creeping, painful rip. Pulling the Band-Aid slow always hurts more. Never getting as much love from the gatekeepers as other acts only added to the fuck you, plus it was & is good brooding & bike-riding music. Cue time travel: blind date success, the U of Akron, Clash of the Titans, far too early domesticity, & a sickly haunting curveball of solace in the form of Sap. 1992 was my K-T Boundary.

I want you to scrape me from the walls

North of the future Via Popearosa, I strolled to then fro from Disc Connection & its proprietor who bore an uncanny resemblance to a brutal Skynyrd or 38 Special roadie but was actually a swell guy beneath the perpetual shades. 55° that late September day the papers say, remember it being warm, was 82° as close as the 17th & hit the high 70s the following week. What's with the heat mapping of doddering memory? 'tis more than its cracked orange cover image. Heat births sweat which in turn births conscious acknowledgment of something awry, at least for me.

Here, i.e. then, I was 19 with no skills save a local Tecmo Bowl mastery & hashish-less heshering & I haven't expanded my repertoire much since, no loot past meager "work"-"study" [ed. note: verily, quote marks are apropos to both] scratch, & a new wife whose oven was bunn'd. Stupid adults aren't ready, so stupid kids sit behind the 8-, 9- & 10-balls. Despite having no first-, second- or third-hand experience with the ravaging stampede of white horses, Dirt became a security blanket.

To the non-idealist drowning in a sea of sorrow stupid with no island in sight though if there were it'd be populated by a cannibal holocaust, all is melodrama. Being predisposed to emotion over reason, like eating ten too many poem-stuffed pizza rolls with a cough syrup chaser & regretting the paralyzing numb when I should know better, Layne was singing my song. Now who's stupid, you query? Contraceptive failure rates exist as numbers on packaging & who hasn't always wanted to feel that special joy of existing as a statistic. What of Roe v. Wade, you inquire? A dozen nanoseconds, & nein. As with everything, until you're wearing the clogs, you ain't dancing. But this isn't about that divide & conquer bone so fuck off, but the whole I feel so alone/gonna end up a big ole pile of them. Like I said, melodrama, much preferable to the Sominex of coolly detached irony, & I haven't even hit on the still-omnipresent shadow: Brother, but not, from the aforementioned EP, chorus, first line.


Got me wrong

This was the original pressing with the proper song order, i.e. Down in a Hole as penultimate track. Such scene cred was important, I imagined, for those carousing & chording in a scene. When Bowling Ball Keith (liked to & looked like) & Rabid Mike whose woman done him wrong like a country music song [ed. note: no joke, crazy attracts crazy I guess] refused the shape of things to come, the former high school scene shrinks to two though feeling more like one, oft darkthroning before I knew what the hell that was. Candles pissed upon, proof of who's a fake. Exaggeration? For a time, just a time, the river was dammed indeed, comfort found in claustrophobic spite spackled over with its sonic expression & a predominantly forest green flannel & USC sweat pants [ed. note: beats me, so don't ask; wish I still had that Marijuana Pickers t-shirt handed down from gramps], the ensemble a walking vomitorium that I of course wore on my first day of student employment inside the Towering Slab.

I wasn't high on that chilly October afternoon, merely gorging on inattention to surroundings & others, a theme recurring to this day. Selfishness or safety? As with all things, a bit of both, & part of the problem.

Shocks to the system make one feel like a fly trapped in a jar, & those ghostly tracks plus the slow-burn death spiral on the self-titled a few years later sealed the hermetic deal. Frogs still pierces without remorse.

So, ten years later give or take, today in fact & the reason for this post, Layne's a syringe masquerading as a corpse, & ten after that, I'm still here, the bun out of the oven & into the frying pan-on-low-heat of misleadingly-labeled higher ed, just like yours truly was when Dirt first spun, a timely coincidence of marking out invented miles along an artificial road.

Looking back on all that, the causes of antisocial behavior, characters tuning in, dropping out as a tree's April buds (some have stood out, still do, & will because they're the rarest of creatures), wondering whose fault(s) was/is this spooling aftermath lip to silent lip, a thousand words for every one, more than one supporting or no, I've my suspicions which are probably less fault & more it is what it is, what shall I do, rooster snuffed yet animate?


If I would, could you?

To mope, to mope, sawed-off shotgun riffs choking dead meadows, fetal in the curling smoke of primal brooding, necks arcing, whipping, bending in the wind of dissolution, never breaking in time, this kind of crumbling takes time, rebuilding even longer. I have never felt such frustration/Or lack of self control. Aural scrawlings on repeat about drug addiction & darkness & the attendant figurative holes left after each step on a mine still harrow twenty years on in their hallowed comfort. There are other kinds of addiction, of that I'm versed well. So, desert island gaming at gunpoint, the works of this band. There can be no other choice, because there's always something to rebuild, preserve, & put off till later both home & abroad & what better fuel for hopeful lungs than an air of destruction?

We humans are storytellers, sure, & most are boring, mine included. But it's the only one I know well. & Down in a Hole is still the most beautiful song ever. Thanks, Layne & Co. Could've done it without you, but it would've sucked a little bit more.

Waiting for Wotan #10

"Are either one of these any good?"
"I don't eat vegetables."
"Well have you heard anything about either one of them?"
"I find it's best to stay out of other peoples' affairs."

 
"You mean you haven't heard anyone say anything about whether carrots or turnips can help me find Wotan?"
"Nope."
"Well, what about these two?"
"Oh, they suck."

"These are the same two vegetables. You weren't paying any attention."
"No, I wasn't."

"I don't think Wotan would appreciate --"
"I don't appreciate your ruse, ma'am."

Message in a bottle

Jinn, like graffiti & jaywalking in front of the Space Casino, kills.

+1 for olde schule geekery. Oui, I can reward myself. I'm a loner, Dottie, a rebel. By the way, you, the reader, suck. Don't worry, so do we though the other half of Local no. 13 less so, me gumming up a personal cost-benefit analysis with fewer thoughts on Important stuff & more on verse-y I-stuff, though Important stuff bleeds through, how can it not. Apropos that oxidized blood is the color of rust 'cause all the waste twixt the lands of a completed piece you see where I'm going with this. Ruin porn ain't just for shooting rubble. Fucking hangovers, & that ain't all of the ubiquitous it. Don't be daft, surface phenomena.

Nine consecutive hours of cracker jazz sprinkled with micromanagement, or, damn it's hot in here & not in a good way

A potpourri of miscellany

Stop flashing your private sector parts

[because I care a lot, no photo]

Yet another instance of micromangement, this time from macromanagement, managing to cleave the antiquated notion of decency, for, & cue Vincent & a shadowed pool of near-fluorescent blood, someone's parental figurine w/o the kung-fu grip was haughty enough to be ill, & worker bee, with shameless gusto & hubris, took time off the Vital Task of the hour, receiving an e-slap. Gasp, horror, fuck off.


Death's door

Too soon?


Dead

Left, salvage. Right, the salvageable.

Waiting for Wotan #9

 

"You gave me a fright."
"I thought it was he."

"Steve?"

"Wotan, dumbass."

 

"Pah! The wind in the reeds."
"I could have sworn I heard a fan."