Free association - I need to write more goddammit

Now playing: Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl (D.O.S.E. Mix)
via FoxyTunes

I haven't updated in much longer than I'd like, and I figure the next few days would be perfect to remedy that. Tomorrow I don't have class because my prof has a family thing. He also won't be there on Friday. Meanwhile, due to Liz having a doctor's appointment in Indy on Thursday, I won't be in class THAT day. So I had two days of class followed by a three-day weekend followed by one (possibly more) day of work. I feel like I shouldn't be wearing a shirt and have stains of all sorts on what clothing I do wear.

I'm officially desperate for a new electric guitar now. I keep finding all these awesome metal songs I want to learn to play and I feel like playing them acoustically sounds retarded. Plus, as digital and electronic as Rob Zombie's catalogue is, it would be asinine to play "Pussy Liquor" on a Grandpas Guitars. On the bright side, I remember how to play, and I remember several of the songs I knew when I was first learning. I have made it a point to forget all the Creed and Nickelback (one song each) I learnt because I am not a pompous no-talent wannabe.

As for newly discovered music that I recommend to anyone: Wolves in the Throne Room is great symphonic metal. I say symphonic because these songs could easily be considered symphonies on the quality, length, and intricacy contained. Rammstein is a band I heard of ten years ago and I thought they were pretty good, but I never really got into them because I was into generic rap and things one heard on the radio. Liz started flipping out about the song Spieluhr and then she found the linked video that reinterprets the (almost identical) story of the Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child". My fiancee, for the record, has excellent taste in most things - exceptions include Sex and the City and peanut butter sandwiches. Today I listened to a Foo Fighters concert recorded at Wembley Stadium in London, which was utterly fantastic and only confirmed my desire to see them play live. I add them to the list that includes Metallica, Flogging Molly, Ozzy, KT Tunstall (whole thing this time), Rage Against the Machine (before they break up again), Tom Morello (with or without a band), and anyone playing with Jimmy Page.

I hate people who tell other people what sport team they should support. I was recently yelled at by someone for wearing a Patriots hat. I wear the Pats hat (as well as Boston Red Sox hats) because I have a strong desire to move to Boston or at least the Massachusetts area, and I've always enjoyed watching both teams (Boston teams I do not support include the Celtics and Bruins, as well as any NCAA teams). I do not support IU, UK, ISU, USI, SIU, UE, PU, BSU, FU, FSU, FUAD, UCLA, St Louis, Chicago (any team), Cincinatti, etc, etc, etc because I do not enjoy watching them. The person who complained about my Patriots hat said I should support UK, at which point I had to mentally count to ten to prevent from slapping him for insulting me so badly. Really, life is bad enough telling people I am from Indiana. I would never seek to move down the evolutionary ladder via sports or anything else.

I've decided to start marking both the start and finish of my blog posts with what song I'm listening to at the time. There are several songs in between, but I think on the posts where I actually have something to say that would be horribly interruptive to the general flow and progression of my writing. After all, that is what I'm trying to do with my blog posts: become a better writer.

Obviously today was not a giant leap for writing-kind. I'm okay with it though, because it's some fucking content already.

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Now playing: Black Sabbath - The Sign Of The Southern Cross
via FoxyTunes

An edit! I nearly forgot - my friend Leah started a new jobs-related blog and twitter today. Check it out at http://leahsgotit.blogspot.com/ and http://www.twitter.com/leahsgotit.

Picking nits and taking names

I worked arse-early this morning. I don't mind that, but somebody used a phrase I've heard before, and never really got. The phrase, a very common one, was "Kicking ass and taking names".

I honestly don't know what you need the names for. I was told by the person who said it that you need the names "For kickin' ass!" but that seems overly structured. I've never seen kickin' ass as an orderly, organised activity. It seems more to me like an activity engaged in at the last second, and with no particular order to it. For example, if one is kickin' ass, and someone is there, guess what? There's going to be a foot-ass connection. You don't need to make a list! Just kick ass! This isn't the fucking census!

This got me thinking about what other phrases confer a status of organisation upon a naturally rowdy or disorganised behaviour? Is a demolition derby a structured event? Do jazz and blues players plan out exactly what notes they play, or do they do what feels and sounds right? Did Randy Rhoads write his guitar solos down? Do improv comedians (not the ones on such programmes as "Whose Line", but ones in clubs) plan their entire routine? NO, IT'S IMPROV. You're supposed to IMPROVISE.

I really don't get the "taking names" bit. I would prefer to "Kick this ass, kick that ass, I'll KICK THE ASS OF ANYTHING THAT MOVES!" This isn't to say everything should be unstructured. But kicking ass bank-teller style doesn't really work as a mental image. Kicking ass Dentist-style makes me think people's fears of going to the dentist are well-founded. Kicking ass screenwriter-style reminds me of anything Michael Bay has ever done, as opposed to The Godfather. Activities like kicking ass should be free-verse as opposed to iambic pentameter.

Unless Shakespeare has some as-yet-undiscovered battle raps lying about somewhere in Stratford.

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Now playing: Ozzy Osbourne - Trap Door (Album Version)
via FoxyTunes

iTunes-related OCD

I'm not really sure what gets into me sometimes. Every so often I will be in an excessively weird mood. I just finished organising, collectivising, and Album-artworking my iTunes library.

Yes, iTunes automatically organises tracks and downloads album artwork, but I listen to enough slightly obscure stuff that iTunes doesn't know where to find the artwork. Not to mention tracks I get from friends, from mix tapes, improperly labelled tracks, and really old random techno music from my first year in university, when I downloaded most things that popped up when I searched "techno" (half of that shit has never been properly labelled).

So anyway, I was organising, artworking, etc. I have no idea what causes me to do this. Is it because I just ripped a Black Sabbath album and it couldn't find the artwork? That makes sense; I had to go find it anyway, so I might as well keep wiki-searching and GISing all the other stuff. But that's not it, because when I put the entire Star Wars Trilogy of NPR dramas, I didn't think to properly title the tracks or relabel each disc so I only had one bit of artwork for the whole thing (instead of Star Wars The Radio Drama 1, it would be Star Wars The Radio Drama). (This blog is shaping up to be exciting as fuck this year, innit?) For Talib Kweli's Beautiful Struggle I got it from a friend, and some of the tracks weren't titled, and it took me six months to title them.

I guess I get into organisational moods, rather than being organised all the time. This makes me wonder if my New Year's Resolution to save receipts that could conceivably be work- or school-related so as to tax-deduct them will amount to anything past this weekend? I mean, I manage to let the dishes pile up in the sink until there aren't any cups and I want a glass of milk, I let the dustbin overflow until I have more than one aluminium can to throw away, and let's not even talk about the state of the floors in my flat. But every couple of weeks (sometimes once a month, it depends) I will go NUTS with cleaning.

This could be why I never gave a shit at Best Buy. When we were slow, they had us dust whatever surface we could find. We were occasionally so slow we had to dust the pegs upon which things hung. PEGS! Things that have next to no surface area on which dust can collect! And yet, we were supposed to dust them. I never got into it. I always half-assed the job, even after having to do it every day one week. I just didn't give a shit. Meanwhile, at my current job, I'll pile up returns on the small counter space until I can't put anything else there, and then when I get a free moment, I'll move that shit to where it belongs.

I'm not sure how it works, but maybe it has to do with it being on my computer. I flip out if I can't permanently delete things. I'm constantly trying to keep my hard disk more than 50 GB free. The only cleaning items I buy and use reliably are monitor wipes and canned air.

Or it could be that Liz was playing the second most boring bit of KOTOR II again and I needed something to occupy my fingers and brain.