tool of fate

when i was at my parents house the other day, i was wandering around the basement with EW. he was exploring and playing with things, like a little car set my parents bought at a garage sale. i was looking through an old box of LPs and tapes, which i'm sure i've gone through 20 times before, looking for hidden gems. i found a neat old LP box set called "introduction to the classical composers" or something like that- i remember it was quite good because it interspersed stories of composers lives with samples of their music. anyway, i also found a weird old cassette tape that i swear i've never seen before. maybe my dad picked it up at a garage sale recently, and deposited it in this box. but also, maybe it was always there and i just never noticed it? it was a "double album" cassette tape of fatts waller's piano solos. it was released in 1977, with a cover all made of cardboard, worn and faded. i put it in my pocket. this morning, i grabbed it off my dresser on the way out the door, and put it in my car's tape player as i headed off to work. it sounded like a recording directly off of an LP, as opposed to master tapes. it was scratchy. the songs were good. lively. i could picture this guy at the piano, playing at a bar, with people drinking and grooving along. song after song, it started to sound the same a bit... like every song was meant to convey the same bluesy thought... which is ok by me. i was enjoying the novelty of each song and the thematic monotony all at once. as i pulled into the parking lot of my office, the music stopped, as the tape broke. maybe i was supposed to be annoyed, but instead this feeling of finality came over me. calm. acceptance. somehow i felt like i was meant to find this tape, liberate it from my parent's basement, take it for a joy ride and let its tunes ring one last time, and then allow it to die right there in the tape deck. today i am a tool of fate.

ah, memories

after we kayaked skunked coors light on your neighbpors picnic table, only later to puke them into your downstairs toilet, i lay all night, in agony, dreaming of taking the remaining beers - piling them onto your coffee table, and blasting them to pieces with a shotgun... later you and chris went and tried to fish the remaining, discarded, already-skunked beers out of the storm drain in the back yard."