interesting

Coital Alignment Technique (anybody wanna be my guinea pig?)
also
StraightDope.com staff report: 'why did the Beatles break up?'

(no subject)

i found out that there's a difference betwixt acetyl L-carnitine and L-carnitine. the acetyl part, according to the health store lady and her fat book, assists in the production (or breakdown, i forget which) of [compound] in the brain, which is thought to have the effect of limiting age-related dementia. so i guess i don't need it, considering that a bottle costs about fifty damn dollas, when the other non-acetyl stuff only costs $20. christ. still, i'd like to try what Doc Rat-Youth is using.

i got carded yet again for smokes today. yay me!
<Lester Burnham>
i RULE!
</Lester Burnham>

picked up new best-ofs: Bowie (2CD version), Fleetwood Mac (new 2CD version) (i have the old one, which inexplicably left out "Landslide", arguably F.Mac's best song), and John Lennon Legend (because i can't very well call myself a Beatles fan without owning at least ONE of his records).

also ordered about 20 CDs online. thank god for awesome dirt-cheap specials! most of 'em were $1.99 (new!), and quite a few are used. here's what i'll be getting soon:
Utopia Anthology
Kool Keith Black Elvis/Lost in Space
The Crystal Method Vegas
Bob Dylan Blonde On Blonde
Parliament Mothership Connection
Carole King Tapestry [SACD Stereo]
Pavement Slanted & Enchanted
The Fugees The Score
The Doors The Doors
Van Halen 1984
The Police Synchronicity (for a gift; i already have the complete recordings)
Big Audio Dynamite Super Hits
Boards of Canada Music Has the Right to Children
Depeche Mode Some Great Reward
The Pop Will Eat Itself This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!
Judas Priest Metal Works '73-'93
Billy Joel Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 & 2 (1973-1985)
Elton John Greatest Hits
Elton John Greatest Hits, Vol. 2
Joe Jackson Greatest Hits
Simply Red Essentials

(no subject)

yippee! looks like me & my ol' pal Tony and i are gonna take a road trip into Indiana next saturday! i'm-a get my multitrack fixed! yay me! i don't know what song i'm gonna record first. probably like we are. it's got a great riff to it, sounds like an unreleased Afghan Whigs song.

i gotta dust off my old trusty frankenstein electric. i put it together myself, could say i built it, but the intonation is pretty off, and the hardware is pretty rusted now. i may have to get a new guitar somehow, but i really really really like the way i've got my pickups wired on my red frankie. plus, it's got a $300 compound-radius Warmouth neck on it, Seymour Duncan Invader (biggest fuckin' polepieces in the world... makes it loud and dirty, just how i like it, but kinda compromises the sustain) humbucker in the bridge position, two EMG single-coils, and a Kahler Spider (a Floyd II-type Floyd Rose-licensed whammy bar) (...or Striker, or something like that). the pickups are wired to two dipole (on/off), and one tripole(on/on/off), switches.

now let me tell you how i wired that bad muthafucka. listen up, rockers:

the two single coil EMGs are each wired to a dipole switch. the humbucker (dual-coil) is controlled by the tripole. one master volume knob and one master tone (treble roll-off). the humbucker is wired, i think, so that the first position is off, the second is splitting the coils and tapping just one of them (i think the one closest to the bridge), and the third is full-on monster crunchin' doublecoil. here's where it gets interesting...

the middle EMG is wired out-of-phase. that means that by itself, it sounds fine. BUT, when i flip the middle on while either of the other two are on --either the dirty, crunchy bridge Duncan humbucker or the warm, singing neck EMG single, or both-- it throws the whole deal just out of phase. it sounds really really thin and trebly, but tight and crackling with electricity (not literally). in a nutshell, it sounds like a freakin' overdriven Tele. i rule. the sheer variety of tones i can get is astounding. i used that guitar on virtually every recording i've ever done that featured an electric guitar. i even used it as the bass on "monster." (that old grunge-y song). there's some other stuff that hardly anyone's ever heard, too. sounds great. but i need a serious intonatin job on it. and maybe even some new hardware, if i can't get all the surface rust off.

i think my amps could use some serious cleaning on their pots, too. last time i plugged one in it was pretty noisy.

i have at least two other finished songs i'll record, too. and i'll finally get my Nick Cave "Let It Be" down, just because god dammit, i thought of it first.

i'm also planning on adding some much-needed vocals to a lot of those electronic songs. got to get my hands on a reverb unit somehow. after i get all that done, my plan is to do all my backing tracks on the playstation (MTV Music Generator makes for a hella great sequencer/sampler, not to mention it's about the best drum machine i've got, much more versatile than my old trusty TR-707), send the stereo mix to fourtrack, and overdub whatever i need on top.

my wish list:
a decent digital 8 track (like the new Boss 10-track model with the CD burner option) $800-$1000
any decent to excellent multi-effects floor unit $5-600
wah pedal, preferably a Crybaby $75
e-bow $70
2.0+ second digital delay pedal $100-150
ibanez tube screamer distortion pedal $100-150
decent set of monitors and flat-response headphones for mixing $2-400
a fucking deck to mix down to! $150-300
a place to set up. someplace with a real live sound, and a small carpeted room for dead sound
total cost, not including space: maybe $3000 or so.
damn. add to that list: a sugarmama.

American Beauty

i forgot to mention that i also picked up American Beauty today. there's Citizen Kane, and then there's American Beauty. everything else in between has been filler. really excellent filler at times, but filler nonetheless. i'm going to go and get some malt liquor, and maybe smoke a bit of a joint, and watch it in a little bit.

it occured to me when i was unwrapping the box that i can't quite look at that cover image the way i wanted to, the way i used to. see, i've seen a rather extraordinary mock-up of that cover shot, featuring a wonderful belly i would have loved to have gotten to know. *sigh* ...so i can't display it on my shelf the way it should be, next to Pi and C.K., in all its splendour and glory. oh well, the film itself is the thing anyway.

i really identify with A.B.. i guess because i feel like the last year here i've been gradually waking up from my own sort of coma. i mean, i've always understood that fantastic, surreal beauty about life and things and Experience (that thing Hendrix was really talking about, you know?)... the colours beneath the objects they represent. it's just that i let myself be turned into a smaller version of myself a while back. in fact, the day i took an office job, i let myself down in a way i hope i will never do again. oh, i might take another office job in the future, but i will never, ever, become a smaller version of jeremy like that again. i'm not going to wake up every day and find that i've been asleep for months, and will sleep again as soon as i get out of bed. i'm sort of relearning how to work the drive-thru, how to smoke a joint with the next-door neighbour's kid, how to own up to the fact that i don't drive a 1970 Pontiac Firebird (i'm speaking purely metaphorically here... i love my Dart, it's my 1970 Pontiac Firebird; and the one thing that's kept me in the world of the truly ALIVE for all these years has been driving the cool, older cars that i love so much) and god dammit, GET that car, lift those weights, speak out of turn whenever i'm moved to. i'm not that slave any more; my chains are broken... i still wear them, but that's only because i haven't run across the right tool to get them off, once and for all. but i can move about a bit more freely, and it feels much better. one day, very soon, i think, i'll find me a pair of bolt cutters and fly away, just... fly away.

on an entirely different note, i was relishing the fact that i remember very clearly when John Lennon's last few singles were radio staples, not just the posthumous ones from Milk and Honey but also the Double Fantasy stuff.

and i'm truly not any older today than i was several years ago. i'll soon be 31 years old (technically), but i don't think i'll start getting older for a long while. i simply won't choose to ("There is an art... or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." -Douglas Adams). there was a period, once, when i was fully chained and had my very own set of maya-masters, when i was far older and tireder than i am today, and thankfully, those days are long gone. i dunno, maybe it was just Jacksonville. anyway, my point is that i'm so much wiser and ten times more restless and energised and HUNGRY than i was then. and definitely stronger by the day. maybe i owe Lisa for part of that, i don't know. i know i owe it to myself more than anything.

all i know is this: someday i'll be dead, just like Lester Burnham, and you, and everybody else in the world is or will be, and i certainly don't want to have wasted so much time living by being dead through most of it already.