Salisbury Steak

Enough about turds. Although, yes, Miss LGG, it was a nice turd.


Today I was working at a store on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, which meant that I had to drive 2 1/2 hours to and from work. Which kinda sucked. But they're paying me 50.5 cents per mile, which means I'll make an extra 120 bucks for my trouble. Which I can use. I went down there to train some dude. Who was from Belfast so he talked funny.

I am tired this evening. But my girlfriend has promised me ice cream if I go for a walk with her, so it looks like I'll be going for a walk. I hope the ice cream doesn't give me immediate and forceful diarrhea. But just to be on the safe side, I don't get the ice cream until the end of the walk.

You shoulda seen the dinner I made for myself tonight: two burgers, green beans, baked potato (My name is potato!), and a big glassa milk. Yum goddam yum.

Jeannie just said:

"Don't you fuckin' look at me! Grrrrr!"

To my homeboys:

If you're ever out and about, maybe hanging at your local grocery store or, I don't know....say a bookstore, and you think it would be a funny joke to take a shit in one of the urinals in the men's room, don't do it. Cause somebody is gonna have to clean your turd(s) out of the urinal. And that somebody might be the only male manager in the building, even if it's the music manager, who has nothing even vaguely resembling "turd removal" in his job description. Think about it.

Um, I forget...what was your name again?

I found this YouTube clip on the blog of someone I don't know.

The woman in it kinda reminds me of myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdXfML9gUmU

But then again, the animated potato also reminds me of myself.

The Office

Jesus Christ. I had to go to an 8 hour meeting today, and the topic of said meeting was the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This, by itself, equals a bad day, but my day was made even more painful by the fact that:

1. 6 of the 8 members of the "team" (including myself) had had this meeting before, about 6 months ago, but at least then it was stretched out over 6 weeks. So we were talking about all the same shit except with 2 new people.

2. I had to poop for the entire 8 hours.


Fuck this.

Spring Wind (or, I am a big can of clever)

I found out today from my brother that he and his wife are expecting bambino numero 3. Huzzah!

The weather here has been beautiful lately, it's getting warm (at times a little too warm...a too-early preview of the hot bullshit that is to come...) and sunny and thus it is, for the most part, nice to be outside. So I spent a good portion of the day in bed. And then went to work, which was boring and stupid.

Tomorrow the J-Dog will be gone for at least a good chunk of the day, and I have the day off work, so I will be forced to drum up some entertainment for myself. At the moment I have grand schemes of going grocery shopping, doing laundry, dishes, and going to the gym. We'll see how it all pans out. I would also like to start working on the next Spiff song.

I have, for the first time in the 8 or so years that the book has been sitting on my shelf, reached page 100 in Mason and Dixon. I'm a little unnerved, because once I've finished this book, I don't have any other books on my "I will finish this book one day, goddammit." list. There are a couple of books that I may or may not read (Moby Dick, Don Quixote) but none that I've sworn to conquer.

If you're feeling nostalgic for some mid-80's, feminine male, British, politically savvy pop music, go get yourself the Housemartins' cd's, London 0 Hull 4 and The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death. Some catchy shit. WARNING TO BJ AND POSSIBLY OTHERS: Several members of the Housemartins went on to form The Beatiful South, so if you don't like The Beautiful South you probably won't like the Housemartins. FUN FACT: Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, was the bass player for the Housemartins.

Huzzah!

Two and 2

Only a quick 2 things to note:

1. Last night I began, yet again, to read Mason and Dixon. It made more sense than I remember it making. Maybe I will make it past page 30 this time. This one's for you, BJ. You owe me an Infinite Jest attempt.

2. I think I might have finally put together a decent mix of the Seanyboy song I've been working on. I just have to take it to work tomorrow to test it on our super-bass headphones.

Oh, and if you want to see picture of a good kid lookin' like an idjit, check out the Schluetermetz blog today.

I am a failure. And a loser.

Got up early this morning to go to a meeting at work that had been canceled. So I went to the gym instead. Came home and worked on a lot of music of different varieties. I spent some time last night and continued today) working on a song of my own that I knew was a big waste of time because it was too repetitive and got too muddy. And I was right, it was a big waste of time because it's too repetitive and gets too muddy. Also spent some time trying to mix one of Seanyboy's songs but it never really came together. So I'll work on that one again tomorrow. And then I also worked on another song of my cousin's, and the jury's still out on that one, but if I decide to put more effort into it, it's gonna need a lot more effort, so I have to decide whether it's worth the time or if I should just start over.

Then I took a nap and then I went to work.

So today was kinda frustrating, but not too frustrating because I didn't have any high hopes. Tomorrow I'm off work (for the most part) and so hopefully I'll be able to put more focus into working on Sean's song.

I was thinking about collaborative art the other day, and I decided that I function best during the early stages of a project: getting from the point where you have a few ideas and not much else and making something worthwhile out of them. I'm really not very useful once the project has progressed past that point and you want to turn it into something good and beautiful and detailed and polished.

Plans for a potential trip to Ohio in late May are brewing.

Old Potatoes

I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to come up with a good title for this blog, but nothing interesting is surfacing. Nothing witty, nor pleasantly mundane, nor unintentionally poignant.

It's easier to make potato wedges than it is to make potato chips.

Yesterday on my day off I did very few of the things that I had proposed that I was going to do. I ate no bacon (I did defrost some, though). I spent no more time outside than I did inside, but had a balanced mix of indoor and outdoor activities. I did a lot of cleaning. I took our broken TV to the recycling place. I consciously took a day off of working on music, even though it probably would have been a decent day to work on music.

Weather's been getting warmer. I took the winter coats off of the hooks in the hallway and put them in the coat closet.

I think I found the source of the gnats. (old potatoes)

Cuttin' it down to size

This goddamned blog takes too damn long to load. And so, although I like the idea of the whole thing unfurling like a Chinese scroll when you load the page, I'm going to tell it to only show a portion of the posts on the first page. For those of you who like to re-read all of the previous posts to feel caught up whenever I post a new post, I apologize for the inconvenience that this might cause.

Work has been kickin' my ass around for the last few days. But I'm off tomorrow and I plan on relaxin' and eatin bacon.

Mixing the songs that Sean and I worked on is also kickin' my ass. It's just been slow going.

Random lightning round:

A few days ago Jeannie and I saw two beavers.

I have some sort of subterranean pimple underneath my right eyebrow.

Yes, Schlueter, I probably do still have that old white T-shirt from the photo I found. In fact, I might currently be wearing it.

Spiff is going to be opening up for Michael Franti and Spearhead. I saw Michael Franti in the very early 90's when his band The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprosy opened up for U2.

My car has been in the shop for the last few days. Jeannie talked to the mechanic yesterday and today and he says that my car has stumped him and he hates my car.

I am getting rid of a lot of my books and keeping only the essentials.

I'm thinking about getting the new Black Keys album.

J-Dog and I both really like Newcastle beer.

I realized today as I drove to work that if J-Dog and I lived in a house instead of an apartment I would probably throw parties.

Not looking forward to the summer heat.

Weird little gnats are coming from somewhere...

I'm either going to spend tomorrow entirely inside or I'm going to try to get outside.

The Remix Project (or, 350 and rollin'!)

Well, this is a first.

Someone who I don't know contacted me via Myspace and told me that they found one of my songs (27) on a music download site and remixed it. I am flattered. And I like the remix.

You can listen to it here. It's the track called "I'm sorry." It was recommended to me to listen to it in headphones because it hasn't been mixed yet.

Anyway. That's kinda weird and cool and it feels strange.

I went out tonight after work with folks from work to commemorate Adrienne's last day at the B&N. It was a good time. So now that I'm home I'm continuing the party with a beer and a baguette.

The Alaska trip has been on my brain ever since we've been back. People have asked if I want to move to Alaska now that I've visited, and the honest answer is no, I don't really feel like it's the place for the J-Dog and I to move. Alaska seems to be a place for people who know that they're meant to be there. And I thought it was gorgeous and peaceful and fun, but I don't think I'm meant to be there. But damn, it was good to see Seanyboy. There's something musical that clicks between he and I that makes both of us do better work than we do individually, I think. I feel like if we had a week to hang out with nothing else to do, we could write a hundred good songs. So we decided that the next visit we have will be a writing visit rather than a recording visit.

I've been spending my free time mixing the songs that Sean and I worked on. It's been going pretty well. I think that everything we worked on is really solid, and it's just a matter of making it sound as good as it possibly can. Things are starting to shape up...

Tomorrow the J-Dog and I get to spend all day together, which should be pretty awesome. We started some Spring cleaning today (gathering together all the old clothes we don't wear) and I hope to continue tomorrow, getting rid of more shit we don't use.

The Jeanners and I bought some dice.

Meh.

I just farted and it smells like I pooped in my pants.

I never really woke up today. I had some whack dreams last night (partially about LOST, partially about working at the power plant, partially un-remembered) that kept me active and calling out in my sleep ("Jack!") (that was the part about LOST).

Been kinda busy at work.

Have chores to do but don't feel like doing them.

This week I bought a massive package of chicken patties for $4.99 and I took them to work with a loaf of bread and I've been enjoying chicken sandwiches for my lunches. Truly tasty.