demo hell

this morning on the way to work i listened to a tape of myself- of some demos i made a few weeks ago. two or three songs i have been working on for a long, long time are finally coming together, musically. but i need to work on the lryics. one song is only a year old, but one is like 4 years old. songwriting didn't used to be this complicated...

i have "the theme from metroid" by mr. bungle stuck in my head.

i'm walking down the road by the lake. the road is crumbling and patched in many places. the ground along the lake-side of the road is eroding underneath it. there are struts and various attempt to repair and support it from below. there is an old man working on the repairs. he is chopping somthing with an ax. it's looks like blue panels. it's like styrofoam, but harder. what he chops he then puits into a fire. what's left is a hot paste which he's adding to the piles of junk that being laid along the side of the road to help keep it from crumbling down onto the shore. i talk with him, and then he takes me skateboarding down the road. we rode together on the same skateboard. it glides along, like on air, not on the road.

last night: i was driving down main street in my SUV. traffic was slow, apparently there was an accident up ahead. traffic began to move forward again- but i had to pull over to the side of the road, as a large tow truck approached on the wrong side of the road. the flat bed truck was carrying a large rocket, smooth dull metallic grey with no markings, with its front end crushed and dented in. up ahead the road was completely blocked off. police cruisers were parked in the road, and cones and tape boxed in the accident sceene. i had to pull a u-turn, and as i came around i saw the ploice taking statements from some people swho looked like they had been in the accident. so was the missile on the truck just one of the thing turned around at the roadblock? or was the accident between a car and a rocket?

just a baby

so we went to the wake yesterday for my co-worker's son. trajic. a young guy, early 20's, all his friends were there. weeping relatives. after going up to offer my condolences and briefly kneel at that casket to pray, i went to the back of the room and sat down. next to me was a teary-eyed co-worker. i asked if she was ok, she said "i'm OK" and then "he was just a baby". to our mothers, we're all always still a baby. that's just how it is.

audio verite

so this morning on the way to work i was listening to a CD i just burned, with kazaa songs off of the internet. i decided on tuesday morning that i wanted to listen to some mr. bungle and faith no more songs. specifically, i wanted to hear "pink cigarette" by mr bungle off of the california album, and anythign off of the "album of the year" album by faith no more. so i went and downloaded a whole bunch of crap off of kazaa. some of the tracks are downright silly, including covers of "hit me baby", "like a paryer" and "i started a joke". i guess the ultimate measure of success for a musical artist is being able to quit your band, open you own label, and spend time recording things like madonna covers and Pranzo Oltranzista. so i love this cd now. it opens up corners of my mind, long undisturbed memories and lingering smells of the lonely times, places, car rides of 1995 and 1998.

2 nights ago:

i picked up dunkin' donuts for my friend craig and his girlfriend. i got each of them a coffee and a donut. for some reason i had to be sneaky and leave it for them in an out-of-the-way public restroom where they would find it later. on the way out of the restroom, i saw a cleaning lady on her way in. i asked her not to touch the donut stuff on the counter, and she told me that it would mean an extra $5 charge.

then i was out in a grassy courtyard on a college campus. it was a spring day and everyone just got out of class. people were mingling and talking under the shade of trees and sitting on the grass and just enjoying the nice day. and i wanted to join them, but in stead i was like "i have to go home". and i left.

last night:

all i remember is that i witnessed a gathering of all of the world's professional basketball players in one large indoor arena. thousands of them. they were separated into different sections for each country and league. the NBA players were sitting in rows of folding chairs on the court, with the western conference on one side, and the east on the other. the whole arena of people were singing together, in unison. down in one of the hallways, i witnessed two players having an argument.

happy or sad

i walked into work this morning with a peice of chocolate cake from my brother's birthday dinner last night. no one was around; i was expecting eager office mates ready with plastic forks. i turns out that a co-worker's son had died in a car accident last night. he was in his early 20's. what can you say? nothing. this co-worker had not come in to work, but rather we found out from a voicemail. everyone was bummed out this morning. but people move on quickly, when it's not their son. by lunch they were joking in the hallway. but that's just how it is. around 3:00 i offered the cake around and i got two takers. i felt like i was helping assuage everyone's gloom a little bit. cakes can be happy or sad.

So I had a couple of dreams last night: 1) I had a dream I wintessed the birth/creation of the plant which would beget a race of planet-eating mutant plant humanoids, exactly like was the "monster mind" villians in the cartoon show "jayce and the wheeled warriors". However, in my dream the evail plant was not accidentally created, but rather, it was intentionally created by a mad-scientist type villian. Apparently, he could not have a child was jealous of people who did (me?) so he created this monster plant (I vaguely remeber something about his having combined the DNA of all sorts of different creatures to make it). Anyway, I found myself in the greenhouse where it was begin brought up- and it had two little red venus-fly-trap heads with teeth and they were reaching out and trying to eat me. I tried to sneak away undetected, but it bit me. I think I got away. 2) I had a dream that I was at a college party type thing in an old run-down off-campus house's basement. The basement was durty and dark and musty. People like Jon and Sarah were there. So was my wife. The baby was upstairs in some other room and I went to check on him. He was crawling around on the ground floor of the house. I decided to skip the party and stay upstairs and watch the baby. On at least one occasion I remeber fervently reminding someone to keep the doorto the stairs closed. 3) I was in some sort of two story bar & surf shop in a nondescript vacation beach area. I was sneaking around in the second floor, along a balcony. I found a service door or something which lead downstairs into a closed-off section of the first floor which was like a private bar-room. I decended and was now behind the bar. I was trying to sneak out of the room without getting in trouble, but there was all this stuff piled up around the bar, making it hard to get out. I tried crawling underneath part of the bar to get out into the open part of the room, but when I got on the other side i found myself stuck between a large chamapgne-glas pyramid and a large inflatable replica beer can. The pryamid of glasses started wobbling and I struggled to keep it from falling over, while leaning against the large bouncy inflated beer can. A waitress heard and came in to help me, and somehow she managed to get the pramid to topple over on its side without all of the glasses falling and breaking. I supposed it was not really a glass-pyramid after all but a fake one where all of the glasses were really plastic, and stuck together. In another part of the same sequence I was trying to convince this archetype bully-kid I knew frtom high school not to beat up my brother (?), which was random. In the end I was downstairs looking for my shoes (?) and I had to pay at the register. That's it.

chase the rolling coins

yeah, so i was thinking today about soda machines. i was standing in front of the soda machine at work. i had 5 quarters, which is enough for one soda. i thought about how long it might take me to get a soda if i stood back about 6 feet and tried to throw the coins into the slot. it would probably take a couple of hours, at least. if i was still in college, in a dorm, i would probably have tried it. i would have tried for at least an hour or two, provided i didn't have class soon or something. i certainly would have if i were with someone who was willing to sit and talk with me to pass the time and chase the rolling coins. better yet, i would maybe have a contest- and we'd alternate. it would be like a dart game. but anyway, i was not in my college dorm. i was alone in front of this machine, at work. so i step forward and get put the quarters in like a normal person, and get my soda.

god damn, i have not blogged in a while. i apoligize, world. i will blog more often, i promise. i don't know if this is against blog-etiquette, but i am going to add a whole load of stuff today to make up for my month of neglect. if it violates some rule of blogging, then F it, honestly. i can do whatever i want, this is my stupid blog site for christ's sake.