Stray Voltage II

Happy happy!

Love this icon, this emblem. Great stand-alone piece of artwork. Great band, too. Just found out about these guys, the Aquabats, and am happy that I have. I'd love to have the cash to hire them for a party--that would be great fun.

Looking forward to my next gun purchase, sometime in late September. Going to spend a few hundred dollars of my annual bonus on a Smith & Wesson Model 629 Classic, with a 5" barrel, in .44 Magnum. Yup, that's the Dirty Harry hand-cannon. Great addition to the collection, something to hand down to my son in a few more years, once I wink out. Don't mind waiting a while for it, and don't mind registering it. Wouldn't mind having a national database and a national licensing apparatus for it, either. Hell, it's a gun, for Chrissakes. I mean, we have to have a license and demonstrate safe proficiency in order to drive a car, so why can't we have the same kind of process for a truly deadly weapon, like a gun? That's not an infringement upon or limiting of the 2nd Amendment, not in the least, and it would be a common-sensical step to "...promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty..." Nothing like taking positive charge of a controversial issue, and positive charge of a dangerous (if handled improperly/recklessly) asset. Hell, I think that would be something a concerned and proactive public servant would be very keen to do. Yeah, so much for integrity, public interest, safety, and the common good, not when there's lobbying money to be had.

Made the mistake of eating at a McDonald's the other day, and it was the filthiest McDonald's I've ever visited in my life. One of the filthiest restaurants I've ever been to in my entire life, and I've eaten in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and then some. The filth was just caked on surfaces. Filthy chairs and tables, dirty floors, furniture in disrepair. And the human trash eating in this rural dump just loved it, the most wonderful culinary experience they could ever imagine in their provincial, ignorant minds. Fucking gomers.

Just bought and highly recommend the "Espionage" release by the James Taylor Quartet. Great stuff.

I really wish I had an old-school, genuine arcade version of the original Robotron 2084 video game. Man, in college I was the campus champion of this game. I'd take an entire Friday afternoon to play it, so set the high score. One quarter, and I'd be playing for 3 or 4 hours. Or an original Defender, that would be another great acquisition to the home game room I don't have. Now that's a good reason to be a millionaire, to be able to build a proper, no-shit game room, and the goodies to go in it.

I'm pretty sure I'll die in a plane crash or other type of aeronautical accident someday. I've been having plane-crash dreams for a good 20 years, and they just keep coming. It'll almost be a relief when it happens, having had the nocturnal practice for so many years.

My office overlooks a condo pool, and I can say without any hesitation whatsoever that breast implants are grotesque and unnatural. Doesn't matter if you're flat as a pancake, be yourself, be natural, and be normal. Don't go for the false front, the inorganic solution to what is a non-problem, something shallow popular culture shoves down your throat at every turn. Just be yourself and use what you've got. There are those of us out here who notice and appreciate it.

I absolutely love the earthy, real, totally human smell of a woman without armpit deodorant. Genuine, natural, and honest. Not a heady, Grateful Dead, three-days-without-a-shower miasma, mind you, but not that fake, soapy, caked-up white gunk that TV commercials push so well.

Love the scent of alcohol on a woman's breath. I wonder where this comes from, and most likely it's all the way back to raucous puberty days of high school, experimenting with drinking and sex, usually at the same time. Now I'm in my 40s and the two are inextricably linked in my sexual arousal pattern. Go figure.

I've tried so hard to get into Captain Beefheart, and I just can't do it. The rock critics, the Power Reviewers, the smart and informed of the modern music world call him and the Magic Band a seminal influence on early rock, especially Trout Mask Replica. I bought it, and have listened over and over, but I just don't like it! I want to, I want to access its artistic nuances and original phrasing, its groundbreaking structure and sound, but in the end it's just plain dissonant to my ears, and that Beefheart growling and yowling just grates on me. I dig him when he's working with Zappa, but on his own I just can't get into it. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

Absolutely love the village assault sequence in Apocalypse Now. Just love it. It's the single most exhilarating battle sequence ever shot, and shows Coppola's mastery of his craft. The thrust of the scene is the overwhelming firepower, equipment, communication, training, and experience of the US Army, and the correspondingly overwhelming Western/American arrogance and ultimately misplaced confidence, and it communicates all of the above. My hair stands on end when I watch it, and I can feel the adrenaline just thumping into my system (hell, I can feel it right now, just thinking about it). It builds and builds, the music swelling, and then the release of the opening shots, sizzling rockets from a rushing distance, a chaotic yet choreographed and controlled sequence of violent, destructive moves and actions, everyone knowing his place and mission and responsibilities. It's incredibly exhilarating; I feel absolutely invincible as I drink it in, so eager to get into myself. But things shift subtly and quickly as you move into the scene, once you hit the ground. That metaphor is not lost, as once the USofA gets on the ground in Vietnam, then that control and power and overwhelming superiority aren't quite what one thought they were. Great stuff, absolutely fantastic.

Strongly recommend Quincy Jones' Sounds...And Stuff Like That 1990 CD release from the early 1978 album. Get your own, cheap too, at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002GC4/qid=1123676915/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/103-3255302-6539845?v=glance&s=music, and check the excellent rundown at http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,111834,00.html. Great stuff, especially "Tell Me A Bedtime Story," which is the soul (ha!) reason I purchased it.

Continuing musically, get yourself the Mighty Wind soundtrack, and take a good listen to the lyrics. Absolutely brilliant, the stuff Guest, McKean, and Shearer have done here. I especially love the words to "Never Did No Wanderin'," just fantastic. And there's the understated and highly subversive Folksmen interpretation of "Start Me Up." Excellent work, Mr. Jamie Lee Curtis--thank you.

All these years later, now 15 years down the road, and tons of major positive personal events in between, and my absolutely black loathing and hatred of my ex-wife are as fresh and sharp as they've ever been. I still catch myself fantasizing about watching her fall under a subway train, tripping in front of a bus, being crushed by a falling safe or piano, impaled by errant construction debris, etc. I'd saunter up and just stand over her, staring silently into her eyes as she expired, smiling down at her futile, pointless, needless, yet so completely satisfying death. I wonder just as often if this is too cruel of me, too raw and vicious, but then I remember the lies, the years of deception, the raw and vicious dishonesty, the blithe selfishness, using my trust and devotion and unconditional love as tools for her own adulterous purposes, using me for food and shelter and personal benefit while essentially living a double life, and in all of the break-up ugliness, never a word of apology, even the slightest admission of wrongdoing or personal culpability. All of this comes back to me, along with the feelings of rejection, inadequacy, feeling ugly and wrong, doubting myself, feeling used and stupid, feeling foolish, and I come to the easy conclusion that my abiding disgust with her is pretty much the exactly appropriate response. I can't wait to read in a magazine how the cancer I so agonizingly helped get her through has finally come back and taken her. I look forward to it.

I don't speak Spanish, but this web site just creeps me the hell out: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cinefantastico.com/terroruniversal/imagen/vent01.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cinefantastico.com/terroruniversal/index.php%3Fid%3D134&h=217&w=331&sz=11&tbnid=03yvGeDoNmAJ:&tbnh=74&tbnw=114&hl=en&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmagic%2Bfats%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff.

I love all kinds of music, except country & western and opera, mostly. I was driving across town yesterday, and Randy Travis' "I'm Gonna Love You Forever" came on, and that's one I've always liked. I also liked that dumbass Jon Anderson "Swingin'" tune back in the mid-80s. And that's about it for country. Opera, sorry, but just can't access it. I think it's an interesting art form, a combination of singing and lyrical poetry, just taken to a ridiculous, over-developed, dead-end extreme (same thing with ballet, of course, having taken simple dancing to a dogmatic, formalized extreme). I don't speak Italian, so I just don't get it. Live or recorded, it just doesn't work for me. No, wait, there is some opera I enjoy. I've always like the Looney Tunes tak on opera, specifically the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd classic take on Wagner: "Wif my spea-yuh and magic helmet!" Brilliant.

I struggle with the knowledge that my father-in-law, a 30-year retired Teamster, thinks I'm a brainiac college boy. Trouble is, he's right. I don't work with my hands, other than to build a tree house for the kids, maybe put up some sturdy shelving in the storage room. I don't know dick about my car other than gas go in exhaust come out, and he built race cars just for fun. He's built entire additions to the family house, did the plumbing, wiring, the whole bit, but my attitude is that's what general contractors are for. I'm more about job specialization, and he's more about no-shit do it yourself. He knows how to install doorknobs and reset tumbler locks. He's good with a cold chisel. And he's missing the tips of a number of fingers from little mishaps there on the shop floor over the years. He makes me feel inadequate, a lot. But then the discussion turns to international terrorism or political economy or the nature of international development, and I think I may actually see a spark of admiration and respect in there somewhere, as he stops talking and just listens, and asks pointed questions. He asks about what's on the news, what it means, how it got to be that way, and I provide context and background that he's never been given. We might just be coming to a mutual understanding and respect. I dunno.

What is better in life than making slow, quiet, delicate love with your one-and-only, in your own bed in your own warm house, as the thunder and lightning crash and the rain pours down outside?