More Old Dirty Laundry That I would Like to Share... (Ignore the Skidmarks!)

So here's something I spit out on Friendster a while back, in the heady days when Social Networking Software was something interesting, and not just the booty call network. (A bit of sour grapes there...)

Almost a year on I find everything I wrote here to still be true. Especially the parts about the umlauts.

Hair Metal and Mortality


So it finally hit me.
The ugly truth that yes indeed, I'm getting older, and will one day stop being/existing/breathing/getting unsolicited telemarketer calls.
I have always been rather painfully aware of my mortality, the receding hairline, the constant battle to fit into the jeans that fit just fine 3 years ago, the fact that some of my sartorial choices garner snickers from the kids in the record store... but none of this has ever really bugged me.
At some level, I was inside a little bubble of stasis, "existential amber" to be kinda intellectual about it... floating along at a certain mental position in life while the rest of the world continued on it's
merry way, and I could occasionally reach out of my bubble and grab things from the "trudge to
oblivion" that appealed to my worldview. But even with all that, underneath it all I was still the same.

Then came the hit. The universe finally decided to send me the wake up call: "Hello mister Luc - you are
indeed getting older, and here's the solid proof."
But I didn't get mine in the usual manner. No near-miss car crash, No recovery from some almost fatal disease, not even an "almost happened" meteor strike... I guess I wasn't on the budget for the big showy reminder.
No, I got mine in a much more subtle and nefarious manner, by way of my watermarking events in my life according to the music that I was into at the time.

Motley Crue's "Shout At The Devil" is 20 years old.
Which means that since this was a big album to me when I was 12... add 20 to me and that makes me 32... in comparison, it has weathered the score of years better than I have.
That isn't to say SATD has withstood the test of time either, but I sure as hell ain't getting a "Specially Remastered 20th Anniversary Edition" of anything I've done released. So I figure I can
kvetch if'n I want.

Think about that for a minute...
Shout At The Devil.
20 years old.
Hair Metal is almost drinking age.

20 years ago, 4 doofuses from LA brought pentagrams, big scary hair, and bigger scarier codpieces to the masses. Sure, if you lived in one of the coastal burgs, you were hip to all this, but for an alienated
dork into Dungeons and Dragons and Horror movies living in Suburban Oklahoma City? This was the A-bomb of Strange, Scary and "Satanic".
Yeah Ozzy Osbourne was always around, but I figured he was a one man show, ya know? Riding the wave of the "Exorcist in England" imagery of the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath album cover. And there was that Alice Cooper guy, but how scary could a dude with a girl's name be? "School's Out" ain't exactly the kind of music you think the Devil is going to listen to.
But the Crue? For proof look no further than the pictures on the cover. The band photos are all Snarls, more leather than in "The Road Warrior" and mysterious hand gestures (Nikki Sixx doing the "Hook Em Horns" thing - later immortalized by Bloom County's "Billy and The Boingers" as the "Secret Devil Sign"). This Combined with all the flames in the background, the psuedo gothic lettering and of course the
pentagram was to my warped little mind "the-book-of-revelations-has-come-to-pass" apocalyptic
America... and these guys were the soundtrack.
(For all you music snobs... just remember that this was while Metallica was still just hitting
stride and making waves in the underground... but for Shopping-Mall-As-Cultural-Mecca MidSouth America - the Crue as fed by MTV to our young and impressionable minds was the Shit.)
Most importantly - these guys had little dots over their name.
Little Scary Dots.
Over the "O" and the "U".
(Many Sooner fans were noted to ponder if perhaps the LA based minions of Satan were Big Red fans... and the rumour that the music played in the background of "In The Beginning" was "Boomer Sooner" played backwards on a pipe organ.)
To my sheltered worldview - nothing was more "satanic" and guaranteed to cause friction with my parents than those terrible terrible little dots.
They just oozed evil.
Of course, two years later in German class when I learned they were called "umlauts" and the
function they played in pronunciation, I couldn't help but pronounce Motley Crue as "merhtly chruu"
as the umlauts would inflect it.

So - yeah... the album... the music. Nowadays, I find the whole Hair Metal thing of the 80's laughable and embarassing, but back then, "Looks That Kill" was the song that rocked my little preteen universe. "In the beginning" ? Man, this was the opening scrawl for the end of the world... and yes, the hair on the back of my neck still tingles a little bit when I hear the opening riff of the title track. The other tracks all blur together for me now, but one time recently I found myself humming "Ten Seconds To Love" -
(well okay more like tunelessly going babababumbum TEN SECONDS TO LOVE! and then giggling maniacally) I still have the same cassette tape I borrowed and never returned of this, and I have an MP3 of "looks that kill" somewhere that I'll throw on a mix CD for the smug ironic "gosh can you believe we thought this
was cool?" track, but I dunno if I could consider it the cultural milestone that garners a special "20th anniversary re-mastered edition" including bonus tracks and extensive liner notes...

So while you metal faithful out there get your bonfire ready I'll close up by saying this:
Motley Crue nowadays are a bunch of has-been yutzes who garner all the derision that being on a VH-1 behind the Music entitles them to.
Yes, Tommy Lee IS a great drummer, but since he's more known now for his acting than for his music...HAS BEEN.
Vince Neil wears a bandanna all the time to hide his receding hairline (David Lee Roth Level Has-Been), Nikki Sixx spends more time talking about how drugs f**ked up his life than about his music (perhaps he knows where his talent lay after all) (talentless Has-Been)
and Mick Marrs is even uglier without the makeup (Mutant Has-Been).
But at one point in my life - they were the beginning of the end of the world. And that was cool.

I see that on Amazon they're selling a box set of all their stuff, as all bands are wont to do nowadays. I wonder how long it'll be before we start seeing annual summer tours outta them like we did for the Beach Boys back when we were kids and our parents were our age... Big Quadruple Bill Tickets with RATT, whoever is still alive from WASP, and perhaps Poison, if Bret and CC can ever bury the hatchet.

Man, I need to stop watching VH-1 when I'm bored.

The Lemony Fresh Scent Of Pure Evil

So building maintenance has reloaded the "Let's hide the poopy smell" air freshener in the restroom at work. This is all fine and good, cuz there may be some truth in "everyone loves their own brand", but god(s) knows I don't wanna smell what your GI tract did to that Whataburger you scarfed down yesterday. Anyway - not meaning to branch off into scatology or anything... this deoderizr thingie exudes a smell that is supposed to be lemon. To cop a riff from Douglas Adams this stuff smells "almost, but not quite entirely unlike" lemon. But you know it's lemon-y because all the artificial lemon flavoring/scenting that we've been exposed to since the advent of "artificial colors and flavors".

So - being the lateral thinking kind of guy I am... I started thinking about stinks, and evil. The general conception is that bad things smell... well, bad. Horror stories (the kind I like to read) often use adjectives like "putrescent", "sepulchural", "open grave like", "rotten" et cetera when discussing the Damned Thing that is menacing society (yeah, I like's me some Lovecraft)... there's a few exceptions to this, but even those (I'm thinking of the virus in Peter Straub's Floating Dragon here) have an underlying hint of something nasty to them, like it might smell like lillies, but there's a tinge of decay in the scent or whatever. Or somehow the smell is overpowering and therefore goes out the backend of "pleasant smell" into the realm of "overload of scent" and therefore bad.

I'm thinking, rot and decay are part of the world, it's only natural. And granted that they still smell unpleasant, but they're still part of the circle of life and all that. So why should we associate these smells (of death) with things that are horrific?

Reading critical discussions of Horror (like Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature or King's Danse Macabre) both of these talk about what separates Horror from Terror. Terror is just fear turned up to 11. Horror is defined by things having a sense of "wrongness" to them. What made Frankenstein's creature so horrifying was that he was outside the natural order, being created and not born, and was as smart as a "nautral" man. An imperfect reflection of an already imperfect thing.

So - if we've got this sense of wrongness going on in "true" horror, as opposed to terror, then the kinds of scents monsters exude would be akin to the deoderizer smell in the men's room. Zombies shouldn't just smell like dead rotting meat, but rotting meat mixed with that grape flavoring that they use in grape bubble gum. Or vampires smell like strawberry quik. After all, these things are unnatural and outside the order of things... just like those artificial flavors.

For my money - the devil won't smell like sulfur and brimstone, he'll have the lemony scent going on, naturally. And hell will smell like the bathroom did. For all eternity.

Satan, God, Bugs Bunny and Me.

Okay - I ripped off this post's title from an album by the industrial band Cassandra Complex. Well, I dunno if you could call them industrial - more like insano.. though All Music Guide calls them "Industrial Dance". All I know is when I bought the record back in High School, I was looking for a record that would scare people, but was well... funny...This one had that in spades. Then I got Ministry's Land Of Rape and Honey, while not funny, per se... definitely had the scary thing down. Guess who won that battle of the bands. I think CC had the better title though.

So... THis weekend I watched the Disinfo.com DVD which I heartily suggest all go out and purchase, if for no other reason than to immerse yerself in a couplafew hours of Supreme HIgh Weirdness. Usedtowas back in the day, you had to send an SASE to some strange little P.O. Box listed in Ivan Stang's "High Weirdness By Mail" to get yerself exposed to this much... freaky outthere-ness, but not anymore. Gods bless the Digital REvolution! Now you too can share the joy of "Uncle Goddam!" and the Mind boggling strangeness of Recovered memories of the Brainwashed CIA Trained Sex Slaves of Bob Hope! I always knew he was some kinda twisted sleazo pervert...(You think I'm kidding, don'tcha?)Buy this DVD. It will make the brainmeats quivering with delightfulness!

Moving on. The real highlight of this (For Me, anyway) was the second DVD filmed at Disnfocon2000. Mostly this was speeches from various "counter cultural icons" including Douglas Rushkoff, Grant Morrison and Of course, the man who first helped me have fun with my mind Robert Anton Wilson. All people who I not only really dig what they have to say but would love to one day sit down and share a drink or a joint or whatever and just talk about shtuff with them. Sigh.

So, the thing is that this was all done back in y2k - the wild and woolly days of pre 9-11 millenial weirdness. The overarching ideas from lotsa the speakers there was how the world was getting ready to change to "our" (the "counter culture" 's Viewpoint) and it would be an interesting time to live in... well. As the old curse goes. Interesting times indeed. Seems to me 4 years on we're at more of a return to mid 80's "Us and Them" thinking. We got the big baddy of "Islamofacism" as the right wing asspieces (since they sure ain't talking out of their mouths) like to call it. Much more "hands on" bad guy than the soviets were, that's for sure. I wonder what they're thinking about the state of the counter culture now.

Something Old, Somethin' Somethin' Somethin'

(This is a little bit I did a while ago for a teamblog I was involved with around this time last year. As it seems that blog has gone the way of Dodoes, Carrier Pigeons, Quality Children's Television and Critical Thinking... I present it for amusement and/or revilement purposes)

The Cheapness Of Nations (A Rebuttal)

While it has long been alluded that the French are indeed cheapskates, this, when applied to their drinking, is patently False.

The great existentialist author - Albert Camus - was often known to stand the entire discussion group a round when debating the pointlessness and futility of life. His reasoning was that since there was no inherent meaningfulness to existence, other than what you made of it - you might as well be drunk when you decided to give your life meaning.

Sartre, on the other hand, was regularly witnessed to beg off when it was his turn to buy, claiming he had to leave due to "Nausea". When this was later revealed to be the title of his manuscript - he was permanently banned from several taverns and cafes the exitentialists met at.

Toulose LaTrec, famous for his diminutive stature, predilection for ladies of negotiable affection, and the fruit of the grape, was also known to be an excellent tipper. While he was often too poor to leave monetary compensation for the amount of alcohol he consumed (and the service efforts of the staff of the establishments at which he indulged), he would often leave paintings and sketches as payment. Once even going so far as to paint the office of the owner of the Moulin Rouge with portraits of his favorite dancers as seen from his unique perspective. In later years, this was recognized as the first underwear catalogue ever created.
(Picasso would later steal this idea to eat for free all over Spain)

It is conjectured in Gastronomic Service circles that the origin of the French's reputation as poor tippers was an outgrowth of the feud between the Futurists and the Surrealists in the early 20th century.

The Futurists were often known to take over a restaurant, make exorbitant demands of the kitchen and waitstaff, and then leave hastily drafted political manifestoes outlining the frivolity of monetary compenstation in the coming workers paradise as exemplified in their artwork.

The Surrealists, whle acting in much the same manner, would leave hastily constructed tableaux as compensation - usually involving fish in derby hats, sewing machines draped in pasta, and rotten fruit impaled on railroad spikes.

When asked later as to which they preferred, the waitstaff invariably sided with the Surrealists, citing that you could at least eat the fish, even if it did in some odd way remind you of your mother.

The Futurists released the manifesto: "The Surrealists Are A Bunch Of Cheap Bourgeosie Jerks" in retaliation, and the Futurist Sympathizer Editor of the Food and Beverage section of Le Monde, the Parisian Newspaper, enabled the seeds of slander to be sown for the future.

The Surrealist rebuttal to these accusations: "Erotic Examination of an Umbrella" was only released in a limited folio braille edition and subsequently fell on deaf ears.

As time moved on, the Futurists fell into disrepute and the Surrealist movement gained recognition outside of France. As they began travelling abroad for the press junkets for the Surrealist Exhibitions, the negative image of the Surrelaists as laid down years before by their now-gone opposition preceded them.

One English Art Crtitic - Hawthrone J Windbloom, a failed Modernist sculptor and Futurist Sympathizer, managed to obtain, translate and release a revised edition of the accusatory manifesto, under the new title - "Unsettling Things Observed In Surrealist Art, And No, I Never Felt That Way About My Sister, Why Do You Ask". The central thesis being updated to the following:

The Surrealists (and henceforth ALL French) were rude, demented perverts, and also to cheap to paint good proper English things for the subject of their art.

Since England - even in the waning days of the Empire - set the standard for world opinion, the damage was permanently done to the French Reputation.

The French, with typical Gallic aplomb, then took it upon themselves to point out the stupidity of the gross generalization by proceeding to act as much like that as possible, hoping that the ironic intent of their actions would point out the fallacy of this accusation. Unfortunately - the subtleties of the French satire of their stereotype was misinterpreted by the world as the truth being revealed for all to see.

And the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

Historians and Sociologists have recently announced findings that indicate that the cheapest people on earth when it comes to ANYTHING are in fact, the Dutch. It is now theorized that Amsterdam was created and is still maintained with the money that the Dutch saved by stiffing most of Europe on Tips and rounds of Drinks between 1460 and 1907.

Happy Bloomsday!

Today's the day immortalized by James Joyce in Ulysses! Over in Dublin they were doing readings, people were going on tours of Dublin ala the path that Sidney Bloom took, etc etc etc.

So the Christians have the stations of the cross, the Muslims have the Haj, and Lit Geeks have the Blooms Day walk I guess.

The Flexidisks of Extraordinary Gentlemen

So... futzing about on the internet for things to diminish productivity during lunchbreak, I came across mention of "The Sinister Ducks" over at The Alan Moore Store ... (where I was teasing myself with purchasing some piece of Mr. Moore's work that he had been kind enough to scribble his name upon...) and I found mention of an issue of Critters that included a flexidisk by a band featuring Mr. Alan Moore. Said band? The Afore Mentioned Sinister Ducks.

(Biographical Interlude)
For a while there I was mad for the Flexi's - while some of my collector nerd friends wanted vinyl of every color in the rainbow, I decided I wanted nothing but flexidisks.
(clumsy segue from biography into on-topic rambling)

Also from the comic book world - I got Tim Truman's Scout issue 19 (MISSY ROCKS!) with the "Blues Crusade" flexi, and subsequently bought the Tim Truman and The Dixie Pistols album "Marauders" when it came out....
{Comic Geek Interjection - GRIMJACK is Coming Back w00t!}
Somewhere I have a flexi of the Flaming Lips doing a cover of Bowie's "Life on Mars" that sounded like it was recorded under an overpass in Oklahoma City while 18 wheelers blaze by. I later found out this was due to my record player slowly dying.
Then there was the flexi of the reunited Bad Brains from some guitar mag in the early 90's (which was menh at best)...
And the at-the-time-Cream-of-the-Crop - 4 songs from Man Or Astroman that had only been released on a flexi that came with a B-movie/Surf Music fanzine (well, until their rarities CD came out).

But to have a sampling of Alan Moore's early musical output? (Since I'm too cheap a bastard to pay the eBay-o-riffic rates for a copy of The Emperors Of Ice Cream, if someone were mad enough to put it on there)
This would've been the dream of dreams. I've got a copy of the Highbury Working, which so far has been the only Alan Moore Music/Performance CD that my local comic shop saw fit to stock. But here he was (back in the day) working with David J of BauHaus!!! How cool would this be?

Well... thanks to the wonders of the internet, and the star-power clout of Neil Gaiman, The Sinister Ducks was made available to all recently. And what a wondrous thing it is.

For your listening pleasure:
March of the Sinister Ducks

This has replaced 1,2, cha cha cha as the song I constantly play at work to drive my colleagues slowly, frothingly insane.
That's been moved to my alarm clock song.

Diary of a Book Fiend

Some people can go into The Gap or whatever is the hot clothing chain (as seen on TV!) this week... And drop a couple hundred bucks on clothes. Others can destroy their credit ratings and run out of storage space with an afternoon surfing on eBay... Me? I can't resist the books. The printed word. Hardbacks, paperbacks, trade paperbacks, magazines, comics, folios, coffee table books, dustcovers, slipcovers, ripped covers, remaindered, returned, reprinted, misprinted... you name it baby, if it's somehow a book... I want it. Gimme them little squiggles on the page. No romance novels, please. The polite name for it is Bibliophile, or bibliomaniac... something like that.

Hi, my name is Steve and I'm a book junkie.

This past weekend... Half Price books was the target of opportunity. The Parents were in town. Dad and WSM and little bro... we rolled up on Half Price Books, a crack commando team of readers. Our assault was quickly initiated, but slowly resolved. 2 hours and 500 bucks later (I dropped a hundred myself, I know Dad made at least three trips) the back seat of their minivan was a guerilla bookmobile bringing the printed word to the poor starving literary appetit- er addictions of the four of us.

So I picked up a bunch of these graphic novel-esque books called "Introducing (Insert Subject Here)" Wide ranging topics covered in these... the subjects I will be introduced to over the next few days/weeks include Eastern Philosophy, Derrida, Chomsky, Chaos, Evolutionary Psychology, Existentialism, Quantum Theory, Mind & Brain, Relativity, Consciousness... I've already read ones on Semiotics, Foucault, Culutral Criticism, Linguistics, Einstein, and Freud.

I can feel my brainmeats growing with every one of these I read.(Wiggles finger from middle of forehead as if pineal gland has popped out ala "From Beyond") It's...So...Beautiful!!!

Soon I will need to trepan my skull, I will be so overflowing with the knowledges.

The thing I dig about these is their jam-packed fulla info, but done in a graphic novel style. Not comic booky - since that brings to mind spandex and sound effects for most, but a blending of Graphical and Textual Information... Cut and Paste and Line Drawing and Photocollage along with good old written info. Spend a few hours with one of these books and you feel like you just took a pretty decent introduction/survey class to that topic at your local college/learning annex. And of course, Excellent Bibliographies in the back as well... fuel for the fires of my addiction...

Another treasure from our expedition -"Can such things be?" a collection of Ambrose Bierce's short fiction. Alla you cynical hipsters awash in Irony cuz yer favorite webzine tells you it's cool? Try reading Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" and some of his short fiction to really see what cynicism and irony are about... all wrapped up in a lovely littel package of such utter bleak misanthropy, you'll think G.G. Allin was a really fun guy in comparison. You may remember him (Bierce, not Allin) as the author of the story "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" or at least had skimmed the Cliff's notes on it... or maybe even saw the Twilight Zone episode.

Also just finished "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. Damn fine book. Easy to see why it's considered one of the greatest Science Fiction novels ever written. Written nearly 50 years ago and yet it's got ideas and concepts in it that some other writers have been squeezing entire careers out of thrown away as single sentences. Wish I could write like that.

Gonna talk smart "...destination" tomorrow, me. Oh yes.

The Wrath of Something-Or-Other

Standing out on my front porch, smoking a cigarette as the second round of storms rolled in... The north texas area got pummelled last night. Headlines and Websites said the usual: "Thousands without power" "clean up crews working overtime" etc...and tonight was the encore. Pretty sedate comparatively speaking. No golf ball size hail or anything like that. All in all - nature kinda struck out on the sequel, IMHO.

Except...

I think that somehow Cartoon Network or I have angered some obscure weather god.

Twice now Aqua Teen Hunger force was interrupted by the storm being too dense for the satellite signal to get through. Last night and then again tonight. All through the storm otherwise, signal was fine... made it through VH-1's Most Metal Moments with no problem (potato chip television at it's finest!) Futurama and Family Guy came through in DVD clarity. ATHF starts up... and the signal fries out - first the sound starts to stagger... then the video artifacts then - The thrice damned "SEARCHING FOR SIGNAL" came up.
So once again, I was denied ATHF, until I get my lazy ass down to the video store and buy them.

you can't christen a thing with box wine

And I ain't about to hit my computer with a bottle of champagne.

A statement of purpose is in order I guess. Yet another blog on the internet. But this one is mine, mine, ALL MINE!!! well, the content is anyway... but I have a BLOG! Cower before me, puny mortals and witness the power of my...bloggishness!

Um... yeah. So anyway. I gots me a blog thingie. A place to spill my guts, to rant about whatever comes to mind, to mistype song lyrics that I feel are applicable to my mood... to generally whittle away the hours on my keyboard. Hell, beats climbing up in a bell tower with a rifle. (kidding, kidding)

Stay tuned for more rambling semi-coherent fun!