Everyone must love Seabear.

Edwin Moses Love Turns You Upside Down. I love Edwin Moses. I seemingly always start these posts with my declaration of various colours of love. I don't actually love anyone now. I'd welcome love with an exploding heart; I'd die,but it would be for love, it would be glorious and serene and sad melancholic groups of people would rediscover my lost manuscripts and thus having died for love I would become pinup hero to goth girls the world over. I'd rest in peace alongside Sylvia Plath, scorning Ted Hughes as he tried to ride sidecar on our already bedecked tandem bicycle. But my love for Edwin Moses surely makes me a racist. Racists are an expanding class. Should you not vote for Obama then you are a racist. Honest. I am voting for Mickey Lolich. He was born right handed and after a tricycle accident was forced to switch hands. Marvelous. What has Obama ever done to compare to that? Mickey Lolich could probably turn black even though he's been saddled with being born white and makes doughnuts now. His doughnut shop is directly across the street from the post office where I mailed more mixtapes than from any other. A Landmark of the future "Sights" of the "boy who died for love", mixtapes of course being the embodiment of dreams of love and devotion. Second song for Edwin Moses, I'm Feeling So Much Better, glorious, it's slow burn seventies soul music made by two "white" guys in Spain. Thus my racism. I'm sorry for being a racist. He's got a lovely falsetto. Nice horns, drums that sound like handclaps, strings, marvelousness abounds. It's dance music, it is physical. My dancing style is key. How does one dance during a depression anyhow? Jim Cramer says if Uncle Ben and Uncle Hank don't get this package through then when I go to the ATM tomorrow there isn't going to be any money in the ATM. How will I pay for my Indian Food? Will they have Indian themed soup kitchens when we are in the midst of the next depression? I hope so. I am glib. But is it not an exciting time to live in? This impending collapse of everything and the sensing by unredeemed Marxists that this is their time thrills all sorts of idiocy will escape from the shadows. Will I be sent to a re-education camp by Joebama? i hope so. In a depression you dance close to conserve heat. I'd like to slow dance someday, I might be encouraging a depression soon, I could picket Janus Funds, whose office lies just down the street from here, "more profligacy, less responsibility" would be on my placard! I could dance with someone special then, take pity on my charitable cause. Third song is playing now, a slow burner, again, Glory Glory. Does anyone who knows anything about soul music rate this stuff? Or is it merely simpleton musical colonialists such as myself who rate this stuff? Who knows. They make fabulous cover art for Edwin Moses records, well except for this one, it was a bit understated and dull which is odd since this is the best Edwin Moses album. There is a mythology attached to each record that the label has created especially for the band. The real Edwin Moses does not feature within that mythology. The high hurdles were never a glamourous event even as Edwin Moses went something like 10 years in between losing races. It could have been that inconclusive facial hair. How magnificent would a life be where you wake up every day for ten years straight knowing that you are going to win. I can barely bat .500 in a day. Or was he unable to sleep believing rather that each evening was the evening before he was about to lose to the Chinese national in lane 5. Of course he actually lost to Danny Harris. I missed a free lecture on Chaos and Linear Dynamics today. Edwin Moses has a degree in physics. Oooo! Best song now, Summertime in India, strings are wonderful that guitar shimmer, the vocals, it's the how and now like melted velveeta. I could start my own mythology. I could make the claim that I was once the drummer in Edwin Moses but I was kicked out because i wasn't actually racist, I merely pretended to be by listening to Edwin Moses records and playing drums for Edwin Moses. I am am involuntarily adopting my non-depression dancing style while listening to this, it's groovy man. Coda packed with horns, big, booming horns, some low end slinking towards a pretty string fade out. Ah. Next song, this one carves out tiny teaspoons full of the surface of the sun and places them in the air in front of your to grasp at. But you can't grab hold of delight such as this, it is an ephemeral apparition, beauty fluttering alone, drying its wings from the morning dew, unshackleable. He's smouldering now, well he is semi-smouldering now. Maybe he is black. I could be racist for assuming he is not. The Moors and Othello and a world of history could compel some sensitivity in my case, but it has not. I have declared indiepop dead. Alistair Fitchett has done as much already but then still he raves about nonsense like Bobby Baby. He may not have raved about Bobby Baby. But have you noticed that everything posted on indiepop sites is rubbish? Truly. S*********** has an especial talent for discovering indie nonsense, congratulations. They should adopt my point of view and instead spend their life discovering lost Margaret Sullavan movie clips and post them instead. I have almost finished a Skeptics entry, for real, and it has attached to it their video for Affco. So disturbing. S*********** will run crying from the room, but that only means that he's a nice kid and not a bitter old clod like myself. When Dear Catastrophe Waitress came out I compared the song If She Wants Me to Edwin Moses. Someone told me that Stuart Murdoch is black. He was probably searching for Curtis Mayfield or Teddy Pendegrass or even Lou Rawls and here I disparage him with my facile comparison. There isn't anything lugubrious about this album, not a single thing, this is the sort of music that needs to be constructed and disseminated during the oncoming depression but then reality begs and I bet the employment office somewhere is already bustling with people seeking employment as the new Woody Guthrie. Of course, the new Woody Guthrie will be avaialble exclusively on ITunes. Last evening I watched a man going through a sobriety test in the parking lot. He didn't appear to be heading for a passing grade. I mocked him in the distance by hopping along the freshly painted lines in the parking lot on my left foot with my right hand in my left ear. I may have been sober. I had had a few pints of Coors light, err... and some wings but it had been a couple of hours. i recommend the chinese wings at the Piper. The piper is a biker bar near where I work that my boss is partial to even though he does not own a bike and he's a square, everyone I work with is a square, some are squares with guns. Let You Down was a blast that just passed and now to the title track. Cool rhodes piano, smooth guitar, some funky wikki wah wah in the background. When the strings come in it's a bit like we're occupants of a church rather than a den of inequity. They need to work on that. I wrote an entry on their third album The Gospel Years some time ago. It's somethign fabulous too but it actually has a bit of Spiritualized in it, funny enough, but then Jason Pierce is endlessly on about he makes soul music. He doesn't. Odes to little snack debbies. Being in a state of not being smitten with anyone is a clear thinking state. I've identified my shortcomings and am thinking of working on them some day. I've started to observe people at work and I am going to steal all of their personality defects for my own race of book people, there are some that are over fastidiousness, many who possess poor judgement, those who express endless streams of vulgarity, and laziness abounds. All of these things are those that I clearly lack. Ha. I am not fastidious, certainly not, I am not vulgar and I work seven days a week. I do deny the sabbath so it appears then that I am truly vulgar. Only the title appears in the lyrics, it's a bit of Spiritualized-aping foreshadowing here, it is majestic and swooning. I am thinking about what to wear today. I hardly have any clothes at all. i am thinking I need to buy some, I could assemble my wardrobe based on moods I wish to convey, assemble a surrealist outfit, assemble an outfit when I am raging against those who describe everything as surreal even though they have no idea what surreal means, an outfit with a definition of surrealism on the front and an umbrella on a dissecting table on the back. Got surrealism? This next song Holding Back for Sorrow epically sad and beautiful. Pianos, chimes, loads of chimes on here, this is splendid. Really! Do buy this album. Make love to yourself. While the Greenwood Village police were censuring the poor soul who was walking the lines poorly just outside the Bonefish grill after his having had two too many Sam Adams Summer Ales they might have been missing an opportunity to break up a high school kegger with loads of high school chicks to pick up and defile in the back room of donut shops not owned by Mickey Lolich. Mickey used to pitch nearly 400 innings a season. John Santana has never thrown over 125 pitches, madness! Or while geting this menace to good sense off of the streets were there armies of pedophiles cruising the Chuck e Cheese looking to do research for the great american novel Lolita 2. Is Sound of Arrows indiepop? Perhaps by association. They are on a wimpy label who release the wimpiest political records ever. Have you heard Radio Dept's "Freddy" single? It's a larf. So wuss. Perhaps an indiepop version of Rage Against the Machine is what is called for on this eve of the next great Depression. Some impecunious graduate from Brandeis forced to live on his trust fund while discovering himself and whose parents audaciously corrupted him by plying him with everything he wanted merely out of the bourgeois conspiracy of love and slow dance. But man he's got a prius now, he's sporting dreadlocks, a girlfriend whose parents knew Herbert Marcuse in junior high school and all 100 cloudberry releases. Fury on the glockenspiel! It will be unleashed on the unsuspecting masses and it will be massive. Someone call Jimmy Tassos! James Feagin will give it five stars, "Objectively Speaking". Here is another party track Blues Away, so much of a party with its lovely guitars and overall funkiness that it is crashing my computer, the file is corrupted by the soul fired funk. Here is a quick memo to all of the incoherency- Macbook's suck! Honest. Mine crashes four or five times on every use, I've gone through and purchased spyware doctors and virus detectors and calld Apple and I can't get no satisfaction, thank god. So then I must skip the second half of Dance Party USA a.k,a Blues Away and move into the soul folk of the next track which is called Streams of Love and Hate. Pedro Vigil is the musical brains behind Edwin Moses. He does make cold cut music as well, big symphonic ham adorned records with wordless songs that are rather good. But this is where his genius truly flowers, his approrpiation of all of the best elements of spanish folk from say the likes of Le Mans and Soul and Space rawk have made me consider Edwin Moses for mythological beatification. Next song, acousitc guitar, a bit Plain White Tees, they could be stars, chimes, only just now it has turned a bit Air Supply perhaps. The dentist market beckons. This is beautiful. Did Pedro hold auditions for his singer? This guy is fabulous, when the swooning strings swoop in onver the horizon it is dramatic and remarkable and emo. Emo soul, it's time has come. More chimes, so friendly. Is this big in Japan? Is Siesta Records big in Japan, I would imagine Angie Tillett and Jez Butler are deities to be stored in prayer huts there, each captured in their arrested state of cognitive development. What about China? Do they have the same fascination with adolescence? I spent the last few days with a gentlemen who runs factories in China and he talked about the chinese mob and the government gladhanding and the smog and the new airport in Hong Kong but he didn't mention Momus' stature on the mainland. Perhaps when Chine overtakes the US in the space race and sends a variety of firsts up into space including the first cirque de soleil acrobats, the first red pandas and the first general secretaries they can then send the first indiepop star into space as well. Over. Soon there will be a new Prefab Sprout record to allow me to endure my drought of smittenlessness.

Pas/Cal I Was Raised on Matthew, Mark, Luke and Laura. The most anticipated album ever, in my tiny plastic heart, and inevitably it disappoints. Tragedy. It starts off a bit Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me, no really, for a few merciful err...perhaps hopeful seconds, there is a piano, it is gloomy but then it turns avant tedious somewhat quickly after that. It isn't as if this is a terrible song, no, it is merely the first indication that this is not a pop record. If we were expecting the greatest pop record in the history of the world, and we were, let's be honest, then after deciding it is not going to deliver on that count we must accept that in its place we must learn to live with what is essentially a sequel to Mercury Rev's See You On the Other Side instead. I love SYOTOS, dearly. But the fact that this record shares more in common with that record than it does with say Pet Sounds or even The 3-Way confounds dearly. Is it a reversion back to the mathematical halcyon of Asha Vida and Burnt Hair? Unknown. It is something to be cheered if you were concerned about craft and attention to detail and comprehensiveness but it's disastrously ponderous. It's something akin to watching gears turn inside a machine without being concerned about the end result. The workings and precision might fascinate but you don't really have any need for the resulting outcome do you. I was always fascinated by this old meat grinder that my parents had, it must have been 75 years old, solid and gleaming still, but all my mother ever made with it was this oddly pugnacious ham salad. At the moment we're going into the 'stuttering' phased ending. Dull, so very dull, but competent. Again. Next song. You Were Too Old For Me, this is faintly reminiscent of what has come before in Pas/Cal world, the golden years, it is...an almost pop song. It's got this leaden pace shackling it down though, the entire record does, there are few moments that rise above, that carry you aloft on angel sighs or dorsal fins. Even now with the jaunty sprint Casimer is engaged in at the moment, it's only ascended towards being mediocre. It is about his father. All of the lyrics are more personal, allegedly, I don't understand why this makes them better. Pop song lyrics don't matter. The sooner everyone on the planet realizes this the better off we will all be. Teachers might then stop assigning a exposition on Born to Run to their 10th grade honors english courses. It took years to make this album. Was it an exercise to resemble the lepidoptera or merely petrification? Were these once vibrant and exciting tunes and they just became ossified from age or were they young and exciting , larva like, and through endless tinkering and muscling did they become transformed into things joyless and uninspired? What did these songs sound like before they became this overbaked? There are loads of intricacies to marvel at at the moment but his voice, in the very same moments, is errant and unfortunate. Last bit is nice, a hopeful return to a verdant youth quashed by cynical sophistication. Again. The drummer is highly skilled, I am not sure if this is an asset. He's too heavy fisted, clubbing his toys mercilessly. Is that the result of a producer who is timid? I remember reading that they wanted to toughen their sound with this record but then later I read that they completely changed thier approach about halfway through and where they ended up is still a mystery even after hearing this. Who knows, who cares. It can't be termed a successful evolution from initiation to completion. Ending is pointless, really, he should have stopped with the short, tender piano send-off. Ugh. Next song is the second worst on the album. Here I am setting you up even as the second song continues interminably for no apparent reason at all, this could have been the live extended coda but it really needn't be on the album. Mercy. It is over! Now, We Made Our Way We Amtrakked, minor chord intros, they are in love with the minor chord intro. His voice is rather dire here. High pitched and squealy and "aggressive". They should not do rock songs, if anything is apparent and well put forward from this record, it is that much. It's completely unlikable. I find it so. There is a short bit after the first chorus, softened, wordless, a respite but then back to his pointless ranting. Someone else wrote that the songs are not good enough to justify the arrangements and I find myself in agreement. The demos here would not thrill The world's worst whistling solo is going on now, and now some vaudeville styling underneath that world's worst whistling solo ever, marvelous. There are dozens of parts to this song, currently it is not so ill starred but then of course soon it turns unfortunate and ugly once more. I think this was the song where my crestfallen heart decided it would not be revived in regard to this album, my heart sent up a line of pickets in protest. Summer is Almost Here is the next song, I already knew that was a fantastic song, but its from ages ago. Are all of the rest a more recent vintage? Dull thuds and random bits on guitars, there is nothing aspiring in any of this. Driving home this evening in the eastern sky was a flat bottomed cloud, cleaved by the shearing breezes and a rainbow plunged into the base of the cloud. That was inspiration, truth and beauty. Now to Summer is Almost here, a classic, sure, but we already knew that. I wonder about Craig. Is he a 9-5 dad who carries a briefcase to work inside it a tuna sandwich and the latest copy of Utne Reader? Possibly. A tweed suit, a geometric tie and his NHS spectacles and loafers. When he comes home there may be a quick hug for the kids, a chance to tell them about the electrifying mojo and then a journey to the basement to work over once more the already tortured tapes of this album. This is the anti-summer summer hit pop song. In context of the album the ending seems pointlessly drawn out, out of context it did not. Next song, Glorious Ballad of the Ignored, dreadfully voiced. Dreadfully accompanied by multi-tracked Craig-ness. The chorus, dull and pudgy. I miss the empty spaces within, within say a song like Poor Maude which is clearly as inventive as anything on here but doesn't suffer from the kitchen sink mentality that overloads the senses on everything here. it's delicate and intricate right now in a transition stage but his voice, the wordless insipidness, blah blah blah. It's masterfully played but then so was The Second Coming, it will surely win all sorts of awards at music producer camp but who will want to listen to this record? It is an endurance test. It is physically taxing to make it through, honestly. It's sci-fi pop music. I half expect the majority of the band to be bearded by the end of the record, it is that taxing. it seems like all of the pieces of this song fit together exquisitely but the whole is wholly unmemorable. It is all very Grandaddy. Was there a hoto of Dave Fridmann pasted on the wall for inspiration? If you recall I was going to write a more positive review of the record than this as a point-counterpoint exercise but I don't want to have to sit through this record again. Next song. I've heard this one before. Long ago, over Christmas once, live to radio. It hasn't changed much since then. I wasn't much for it the first time that I heard it to be honest. It is similar to the song that just ended. The long fruitless ballads that lie like twin anchors and cause the album to sag around the middle. Bloated is the term we have avoided so far. I am still waiting for Suzanne Thorpe to show up. Was the whistling from earlier a tribute? More of the annoying wordless fills. Unnecessary. Have you listened to the advertisement for the NFL network where they have appropriated Morrissey's Everyday is Like Sunday for a football advertisement? It is surreal. There was a time where Morrissey claimed to be a proponent of the sweet science but would he ever go for american football? Surely not. No one will ever compare Craig to the sound of American Football. Pas/Cal receive dubious credit for having clever lyrics. Not really. I miss the Detroit references. At the moment he's singing about one of his teachers, from his youth. This is the best of the new songs. It's still not great. It's a bit Queen. Only his voice sounds as if it's been buffeted by a massive dose of soul destroying sheen. It treads as if it has been tracked 5 or 6 times and all of the tender vulnerable hollowness of the earlier records has been evacuated, willfully, until all we are left with is desultory emptiness. Another segue into a bouncy Wings-like pop jaunt, again, not great. Again with the aggression. Not wise. He's fey, sensitive and articulate, he isn't abrasive or intimidating or threatening. Is it anger? Frankly there is loads to be angry about in Detroit. It's a marvel that they have managed to sound as lovely as they do on this album. It's a mystery whether the current financial crisis will engender a new movement that matters in pop music. A return to modest earnestness and a movement away from the narcissistic display of superficial emotion without depth or sincerity that is based more on misogyny than anything else. Emo = misogyny, it is my pet theory. At least Pas/Cal are not emo. Another old song, Little Red Radio, a classic with the marvelous organ that propels the song fiercely. Fierce is better than aggressive, especially as his voice is merely energized rather than pained. The Detroit references comfort. Only a Detroit boy would long for a Cadillac these days. At least he isn't singing for a hybrid Escalade. We will surely need to endue their version of Eco School on the second album. Will there be a second album? This one doesn't appear to be winning over that many converts actually. The Cherry suite has now begun. First part is a vocal led piece, falsetto or is it Bem singing? Could be. I seem to recall that he didn't have anything to do with one part of this "suite". This is not horrible, it's seemingly more suited for life as a b-side somewhere but I can live with it, at least the drums are muted, somewhat. The voices though, still not great, did he forget how to record his/her voice in the last year or so? Did he fall out of love with his voice? Part II. A country-ish beginning. Actually quite pleasant until the multi-tracking on the vocals start, they don't work as an ethereal band either. It's a delicate balance they must maintain then, earthy and charming, not rocking, not wispy, a witty pop band. Soft pop. This isn't great, it's a bit dull. Part III now, this is the most successful part, maybe I am biased because they use a drum machine instead of the clubber. This entire record could serve as metaphor for modern life, a parallel to the gleaming technology and architecture that is renewing the skin of modern life while the soul within turns decrepit and spoilt. Everything about this album sounds great but the spirit inside is just not refreshing, I can't wrap my arms around it at all. Even as Part III gently charms it still seems second rate, we think it might have been even better if they had gotten out from under the x-rays in the cloud mines and followed a more skeletal approach. Humans have always been abominations, the history of this planet is punctuated not by the epochs of tranquility but by the endless march of cruelty. Our age will be no different, though the beastliness now appears to be a more personal matter, destruction is sown in Myspace pages, in the degradation of social mores and the general decline of public standards when applied to intellectual rigour, ethics and decency. I am from the wrong generation, I should have been born pious in the 11th century and livd alone in the bogs of Wales. Far from the disappointments of records like this. But then the disappointments whether they be pop record, novel endings or people in general actually serve to inspire more than anything else. I know I can be better. People more clever than I am have failed but I can step on the steps paved by their failures and discover a new sense of enlightenment just beyond their grasp. There was another song, the new version of Citizen's Army Uniform but honestly I don't ever want to listen to it ever again so I've put the original version in it's place and it's rather nice.

I could be German as the only question I missed was the colors of the North Rhine Westphalian flag. It is good to know that I have the option of moving to Germany available in a pinch.

Julian Fane Our New Quarters. A spiraling bout of distortion and piano burst forth, immediately, your ears take a few moments to adjust. Then bliss. He sings like Thom Yorke, we forgive you. I watched a Radiohead bit of nonsense on VH-1 classic the other night. They are so tedious. Old men dressing like teen skate punks. And his Thom head movements, so offensive to my weak stomach. This first song is the title track. It actually reminds some of Fats Thompson? How many people want to agree with me? There was that wonderful Fats Thompson song on the Killing Kapitalism with Kindness compilation and then the album, that one marvelous song and a dozen other less marvelous songs. This has a sligtly more upscale Make Mine Music feel to it. It's beautiful. It is music for the weather that torments us this evening, the rain, so infrequent, made me wear a ball cap while running. I feel compromised when I wear a ball cap. Perhaps it is my very large head that makes me self conscious about wearing a ball cap. I don't have any cool ball caps. I used to wear a ball cap when I played ball I know, silly. Seocnd song is almost a parody of Thom with the pretentious h. I could be Keihth. The h is silent and intimidating. Fear my consonants! When the rain comes the landscape at first recoils, the trees droop then fall into a serene submission and then later they muster the courage to face this strange malfeasance. The wind has not acocmpanied tonight's downpour. A hurricane almost hit my parents' home. They were about to leave for Michigan. Who leaves for Michigan any more? I called them the morning after the nearly hurricane. It was a tropical storm. They live five miles from the coast. They can afford homeowners insurance. Was golf cancelled? That was the height of their calamity. When I spent Christmas there two years ago it rained four inches on the baby jesus' birthday. It was an odd sensation. I still have strange memories of when it was once 63 degrees in Detroit on Christmas Day. My wealthy cousins had received a snow mobile for their Christmas present and we rode it on the dry pavement and listened to the J. Geils Band very loudly. When it rained two Christmas' ago we watched mythbusters and I had an allergic reaction to cats. It is a holiday tradition. This Christmas I ran for hours after having fallen hard for the sea level abundance of oxygen and humidified inhalations. Third song. More skeletal, vocodered vocals, perhaps more Schengen or Library Tapes than Radiohead. Radiohead are very serious, they use loads of obscure chords, this means they mean business. I can't play Radiohead songs. My utter failure as a human being is revealed. Ha. This is a really really gorgeous record. It has that amniotic feel, wombedelia, a Third Eye Foundation sense of mastery and a commited fandom of all of the rock greats in the canon from Lake Orion circa 1991. Ride, My Bloody Valentine and the mighty Chapterhouse. Did you watch the Chapterhouse video I posted a few days ago? It is the original version of Something More with the kids looking all of 17 years old. Andrew Sherriff is the singer. He writes music for dinosaur documentaries now and wins emmys for his efforts. Bravo. Next song, more of a foreboding effort, Oscar Widle grinding corn on his treadmill whispered Yorke-isms. Surely there were fine people who sung like this before Thomas Y. The mumble seems less of an impostion in this case, his pain is entirely nonprepossessed. Hurrah. I have four toothbrushes now. Now Youth Cadet. I've begun "Kavlier and Clay" and wahey!!! it is really rather good. It is exactly the sort of thing I should be reading. It's filled with historical allusions, timelessness, youthful adventures and nostalgia. It was made for me and it triggered a thought about art or the pretensions of artists, the seeming contradiction it poses in relation to most other endeavours. In all other aspects of culture, especially in science and technology, there seems to be a gradual progression or forward momentum which raises all who follow in the wake to greater heights. Science builds on all of the knowledge that was constructed before the present, on Aristotle, Ptoelmy, Ibn Khaldun, Newton, Pauli, etc...and thus there is a confirmed belief that what is known today is more correct, greater, than what is known to have been known in the past. But art doesn't build on the past, at least not anymore, classicism is dead. There is this fascination with the novel. This record doesn't suffer from that in that it is merely a pretty reconstruction of a Radiohead record but in general trends in art are not seen as a gradual progression. There seems to be sudden fits and starts and left turns and moves back into primitivism. Is it the emotional register that infects this continuum, the whims of the human heart, a step away from the mathematical. A deviation from the harmony of the spheres. Possibly. Next song. No vocoder, gentle pastoral voices layered on top of gentle swirls of beauty. What would be a natural progression of art? I am not sure where we would be now if it was realized. Perhaps it is tied with the technology question. Clearly music "sounds" better than it ever has with the advent of technology but it doesn't sound as human but has anyone bettered Bach. Thus perhaps the reversion to simpler times is a result of cultural intimidation or the lack of catholic application in the arts, who knows, this is all too academic and pointless. I was just thinking of the monuments of our age when this society fails just the same as every other society has. There is a new steel obelisk or marker being constructed alongside the freeway here in Greenwood Village, it has taken months to construct and it seems to have no purpose at all. I love this. I have written before about the burial mound of the lost emperor of Greenwood Village alongside Arapahoe Road and its gorgeous non-utilitarian glory. I have spent many nights sitting at its apex wishing away all of the light pollution. I lie. In my heart truly the pollution makes the night sky more mysterious as if a dissembled codex cloud is hiding the true beauty that can be found only in words from the past. This marker is about 75 feet tall, it is like a column of vertebrae alongside a sterile public roadway and there have been "artisans" working on it for many many months now. I can't quite grasp the appeal of it aesthetically, only idealistically does it conform to my own sensibilities. There should be more beautiful pointless things in this world. More Pram reords that no one will buy, more biographies of Flaubert that no one will read, more strange culinary concoctions that no one will dare, strip the homogenizd safety of modern society to the bone. Gorgeous piano ballad now, Downfall, Fats Thompson-y. Yes there should even be more Fats Thompson records, perhaps there are dozens alredy. It's a DIY society, when I finish my novel I can publish it myself, I will publish 8 copies and secretly place them in inconspicuous spots all across the city waiting for obscurantists to discover them with joy. As we did once, on a mountainside under a rock, a letter to the universe, a confession to some higher power, a promise to not give up. It was endearing, it served no purpose outside of one soul but when it leaked away fromt he source it has engendered a gentle reminder of love. But again speaking of future generations, when they rediscover this marker on the side of Interstate 25 will they ascribe such deeper religiosu meaning to it? Perhaps it will be mistaken for some astrological monument predicting the turning of the season based on the lunar cycle. It is oriented towards the west, it could be a air gometer, low tech, sensors built into the ribs detecting the coming of the age of deprivation. it could be a spiritual beacon to that same higher being who answered the prayers of our mountain friend in the light of a waning lights of a dying civilization. Beneath it there might be the remnants of a terra cotta army, I have no idea. I went golfing or the first time in 3 months this Sunday and I played decently. I can do everything. I say this humbly. Why do I lack confidence in my abilities then? I am not certain. it could go back to wrestlng. I wrestled in 9th grade. I was small, I was 5'6" in ninth grade, in my weight class there was a little man. You know the sort, those wrestling afficionados with squat builds, rippling biceps and the ability to grow a full beard by 2pm on their 11th birthday. I am not certain if I can grow a full beard even now. I shave even on sundays. There was a preposterous rule that you had to have a wrestle off each week to wrestle in an actual match. I never had wrestled before, I had never worn one of those silly headgears before, this little man was serious, I was just curious. He pinned me 13 straight weeks. I thought of quitting. Back then I only thought of it. I was in fabulous physical condition. The loser had to run for the rest of the week. It was good for my hockey career but then even though I was "canadian" my hockey career never took off. My friend played goalie for Michigan Tech. I studied endlessly for no apparent reason at the University of Michigan, beautiful pointlessness. This song is a rush of electric guitars, real drums?!, nasal vocals, it's a build up, all moments intense, driving, dreamy, soft. Marvelous. My beautiful pointlessness is not revered by anyone. It is a difficult search to discover those who are as enamoured with the idea of bettering yourself through the pursuit of fruitless aimlessness rather than through accomplishments. That reads like a copout. I don't mean it. I like Kornblum's dictum in "Kavlier and Clay", "Never worry about what you are escaping from, reserve your anxieties for where you are escaping to", it's a forward thinking strategy I should adopt. So it is alright that no one likes me now. I don't have any friends but nearby there exists a future to escape to with loads of beautiful moments and kind people, I only need to save my anxiousness in order to rescue myself. Rattle, a dreamy moan, no idea what the vocals are on about in this, its a cacophony of programming and synthesizers and static electricity. It could be samples of Thomas Edison electrocuting elephants and dogs in order to drive George Westinghouse insane. i don't know. It is lovely even so. I could have hair like Michael Chabon but not his cheekbones nor his intelligence or wit or humour, or wait...I could, I need only my reserve of nervousness to fall back upon. Life has been explained to me. I mock, but it really is a beautiful novel. Has literature progressed linearly? it is hard to say. i read Anabasis and it is amazing how little the human condition has been altered even in the past 2500 years and granted, the translation is modern and for a modern consciousness but the treachery, deceit and endemic failure of human character is all too familiar. My personality profile says I hold people to my own impossible moral standards. It is why I am isolated I suppose. I have strange reactions to people's pedestrian revelations. I dont' know why. Mostly I have little regard for anyone. I have discovered this is a truism that has been repeated to me often by my mother when I reveal to her that I don't mind being considered an ass in front of strangers and she tells me it is because I have the perennial flaw of believing I am better than everyone else. It might be true. But then I lack self esteem. This post is all about an examination of inherent contradictions. it may have been some time since my mother dissected my psyche but I have a phenomenal memory, I can recall entire conversations with unimportant people from almost 18 years ago. I recall sitting within the vibrations of a paint mixer in Kmart listening to a man retell his live as landing craft driver in WWII and all that he had to do to keep his diesel running and everything that a friend at work tells me, much to hers and everyone's annoyance. But then I tune out things I should remember. This one was stunning. The whole record is stunning. Are his other records this splendid? I don't recall him singing on his previous releases. When I was on a julian kick back when I discovered Julien Neto and had dreams of Julian Schwinger I considered Julian Fane but politely declined at the time. Did I err? Last song, church atmospherics and wanky electric guitar, odd. Contradictory masturbation in the house of the lord, soaring vocals. Would he have a hopeful expression on his face while singing this? It could be the pseudo pained expression of Thom Yorke is what really irritates me about Radiohead, you just never know. Our New Quarters is deliriously great.

Klima Klima. Who remembers Petr Klima? Don Cherry used to assail him for wearing a bucket on his head instead of a "good Canadian" helmet. Petr had a mullet, he was trapped behind the iron curtain, he must have secretly believed he was outrageously adept with his brillo curls hanging out above his collar. Was he worth the covert cold war action and KGB defying? Not really. When I was in high school he and Bob Probert went out and tied one on before the big game and then slept walked through said big game. He may have murdered Jacques Demers, Metaphorically. Later he played for the Edmonton Oilers and won a Stanley Cup. Bully. This Klima is french. That Klima was Czechoslovakian. This Klima is lovely. That Klima, not so much. It's a bit reminiscent of Bows. Close your eyes and seal them shut, stick your head inside a 3/4 moonlit sky and dream of Ruth Emond and Signe Hoirrup and you might come up with an image of the first song In The City in your mind. It is certainly more reminiscent of those glory days than A Heart and Two Stars. Second song Fluorescent Stars. More minimal, a few guitar lines contrapuntal guitars, a beautiful Cloudboy-esque vocal. Breathy, but from the earth, a bellows instead of a soft breeze, reluctantly stoking the night. Soft, warm, skillful. It's been produced by Guy Fixsen. What has become of Laika? When Margret started to believe that she could sing then the wheels fell off. There is a 3/4 moon out this evening. There are football fans out this evening. When I run I run late in the evening. I arrive home from work almost around 8PM and I must eat. Who can run after eating? Maybe Mary Decker Slaney can but I can not. So I must sit and watch Mad Money for an hour then go running when the evning is beginning to crest. Darkness is complete. I could not actually identify anything contrapuntal, people, strings, opinions, etc...but I can identify agastache rupestris. Could you? Could you? Say it in your Alec Baldwin voice. Third song. So Bows. Drum programming, twinkles, multi-tracked hushed echoey vocals. Strings. Gloriousness. It's an unbelievably fantastic song, if you could hear this now your day would without doubt be made brighter, my day is made ecstatic and it is almost over. it would be, If I could sleep. But I am not tired. I wake up tired, I go to bed awake. I had a breakthrough on my "novel". I wrote the first page. I could write loads of the nonsense in the middle but how to begin a book, it's a great deal of pressure. It would be, if anyone were ever to read it. But I found a perfect opening. I should frame it. I spend all of my hours that I am not meant to b thinking about my vocational duties thinking of ideas for books and then forgetting them. I had a brilliant idea this afternoon while driving home from Fort Collins with a stopover in Mead, Colorado and yes I have forgotten it. Mead is barely anywhere at all. Mead is subdivisions filled with fugitives from the city. They may all be big fans of Klima. Perhaps there are enclaves of Klima fans cloistered in Parisian suburbia, in thatch roof homes with flat panel televisions and an itch to vote for Olivier Besancenot after a fit of rational exposition. Fourth song has been on for some time, repetition, multi-tracked whispers, by turn disoriented and unfinished. Ending is building confusion upon confusion. Nice, a touch insignificant. FIfth song, tinkles, steel drums made out of zinc. Demarnia vocals. Name your next child Demarnia, name your next child after that Jodi and he'll become a Maori rapper. I played golf with a Maori non-rapper. I have no idea if he was truly Maori. he was from California but his accent did not place him from the Inland Empire. Possibly Redding or Sacramento? I insist that he be Maori even if he is Indian for no good reason at all. This song is gorgeous. I am trying to convince my friend who is anti-breathy sultry voices that this is exceedingly lovely but she is not easily convinced. She doesn't need to be. I still haven't read Kavalier and Clay. The problem may be that I would never read it on my own. I am finishing Orlando at the moment. Another Bows-y song now. Neverending this is similar to the ones that Luke would have sung in Bows. I spotted a Long Fin Killie on YouTube. It was uploaded off of a VH-1 channel somewhere. Long Fin Killie on VH-1. The mind boggles. The video is an abomination. Luke looks elegant, urbane and decidedly pretentious. A dream. My goal is to appear to be all of those things to certain sorts of people and to be human to the rest. There is someone now who answers in my head to "splendid butterfly", I have decided that I need to create a character in my Dargeresque escapade named Splendid Butterfly, she will have blonde hair and blue eyes an offer a punch in the face for free. It will turn the entire endeavour into marvelous literature. I am positive of this. More drum programming, some fracture, some over exposed electronics, the sorts that Guy used to be able to conjure for a Laika album, whirrs and whistles and tiny earnest vocals from a poor french milkmaid from the countryside. Next song, a classy dance number, could be an entry in the Andre Rieu catalog someday. Sultry vocals. One of these songs is about the suicide of a friend. I have only known one suicide victim. Mrs. Beiser, the mother of my friend Joe. A knife to the chest. A discovery by her children. Sadness and grief enveloped the neighbourhood, my mother made food, she surrendered it anonymously, watched and prayed. Later they had a new Corvette. I don't know if it was related. Even later he fell in love with this girl named Tera. I lost touch, he was squat and an alcoholic. I was shy and a dreamer. "It's not the end of the world", so says Klima. Her real name is not Klima. She's reaching down for the bottom of her heart welled up. It's earnest, again, it's almost the most sophisticated singer-songwriter record ever made. She's in Piano Magic some days, I am not a fan of Piano Magic. Does she make them lovely? Next song. Why Does Everything Have to End?, so Demarnia. A lone guitar, some Hawaiian vibes, long distance vocals bedded beneath the main vocal line, whooshes and streams of kind hearted sentiments. It's a small record, surely it was recorded in hers or in Guy Fixsen's bedroom. Was Margret Fiedler home making porridge for the two of them to allow them to endure the creative peaks? Nice military marching drums. Who does this remind of? Cloudboy. Yes! but there is someone else. A bit Slowdive perhaps, it is very Blue Day in the willowy vocals. If I am ever to marry I will play Slowdive Avalyn for the first dance. You can't dance to Slowdive Avalyn but you can fall in love to it over and over and over. Everyone around me is getting married. I am not writing this to say thank you but no, I hope I don't live my life as I will eventually die....aaaaaaalone. That would be horrible. Fort Collins has a different vibe than Denver. It feels midwestern. Denver not so much. Denver is caught somewhere indefinably between wannabeism and cowtown. I can still buy a nice pair of boots here. Crocs is being sued because some stupid kid hurt himself on an escalator. I am all for the abolition of the croc blight from the fashion landscape but seaweed does not maim, poor parenting maims. Next song, epic in its magnificence. The Third Man. Graham Greene? Orson Welles? I can't really make out the plot. Some distorted effects on the instruments, seemingly guitars, pattered electronics, fuzzed out vocals, distance. Again. her warmth comes from the enveloping ambience. Now a fall out to guitar and voice, so tender and elegant. "Will you still be my friend next week...even remember me", the last bit evermore softly. She's on to making another record already. I am so terribly excited to hear it. I could put a character in my "novel" named Klima, she could sing madrigals and play a casio SK-1 for the infirm and then read Highlights magazine on her breaks. I read Maldoror on my breaks and talked rudely of Quentin Tarantino on the same breaks. I had just seen Swoon, I wasn't yet convinced that most independent films are rubbish. Next to last song, Your Game is Over, a bit more playful, roller dance party, ringing chords chime in about a minute in, wordless accompaniment, so petite and delicate. It feels sub-tropical in its outlook, it could be ethereal and glacial but instead there is a sunniness to the affair that draws you into the heart of the song. It isn't some grand unknowable experience, the confidence comes from the fact that these could be played on a ukulele on a sandy beach in front of an approving pig on a spit and you wouldn't have sand kicked in your face. I think I need to live near the ocean. I am overwhelmed by nostalgia with the sea air scents. So many happy childhood memories in the sand, away from home, away from the disappointments on parade. Apparently my childhood home has recently been razed. Demolished to make room for progress. There are ripples in the collective consciousness I share with all of the memories I cannot forget, all of the ones I carry with me in a quiver to shoot at the oscillating waves of interest in a conversation. I can kill dead any conversation with a pointless non-sequitur. It must be obvious from my writing style. i find it difficult to stay on one topic for very long. When I had a blind date recently with someone's sister I asked one thousand and eleven questions and had to answer but two. My answers were flatly intoned and uninspiring, I am a failure at human communication. I write for the gladiator bugs, they require a strong voice, I hold them so dear in my heart. I have yet to see the gladiator genus or that palm that blooms once every 50 years. Have you? Have you? Alec Baldwin voice, once more. Last song. Acoustic guitar, her voice, a bit Golden Palominos, multi-tracked loveliness. Broken hearts, wounded voices, uneasy stirrings, romance.

Pram Prisoner of the Seven Pines. Normally, this, Pram, is my stock answer for my most favorite band ever. Lovely little Pram. It grants me an aloof sense of indifference. Were they not so absolutely glamourous then Pram should instead be American. They plunder the shadows of obscurity, never once threatening the mainstream, and yet they continue on. It is all so amiably American. Would they consider that a compliment? Here on Beluga they have the tiny twinkles, the wheeze addled horn, the clever clever percussion and that spooky ambience as if they cheered while writing the alternative soundtrack for Leslie Caron in Lili. Sparkles in the fog arrive by way of staggered keyboard motifs. So so marvelous. I had a plan to include 'marvelous' in every entry once upon a time. I also once claimed to have a desire to never use the singular pronoun. All that has resulted is that I have became an abject failure when it comes to defending my stylistic mandates. Next song. Bouncy, very Sleepy Sweet, more charming, it is nearly Stereolab-y kitschy. It's a remix by Psapp. They are meant to be fun and galoopy. This is both. Chirpy samples, squeezebox strings and toy organs, all tuned to a delicious sense of naivety. I too am so very naive. I wonder if it has turned obvious to the outside world. I almost admitted to being a public dreamer yesterday. I once thought it noble, my quest to endure college long enough without the stigma of a degree to dim my idealistic light. But it seemed drearily unpoetic in shadows along the 8th fairway. I have hope. Financial remuneration for university success! Possibly. But then even that vision has become shorn of gilt. Third song, Martin doom, dark and foreboding. Sparse and flighty. Theremins hang from the ceiling and mirrors turned on an axis to reflect the insides of hearts. A mirror to reflect your inner self would be a terrifying utensil. I have never considered that she may have been lying about being Elvis Presley's sweetheart. It seemed so intensely youthful, a trapped in amber heart fluttering of a butterfly on a impending supernova. Was the heat already bubbling just beneath. There is not anything lingering just beneath my exterior, only a second exterior and deeper within only more teflon surfaces. My heart is bereft. Passion? Or does it need resuscitating from without? This is a bit Murcof-y? No? It was remixed by Aguirre Wrath of Godsy which is surely a pseudonym for some fabulously corny German. Almost certainly. Or, he may be someone famous. Or, he is a she. I saw Pram play live once. I saw Pram play with Heavenly. For charity. Now Amelia Fletcher is attempting to guide sterling and engineer soft landings while Pram is tinkling in basements of foreclosed multi-level abodes. This is a marvelous remix record. So was their last. Is it the child like innocence in the ominous tones that sets free the hearts and fingers of digital remixers? There is a digitization of human emotion in these moments. It's water, fire, earth and air all in equal measure, it's perfectly balanced inside the normally desiccated interior of a remix album. Now we're speeding to the outer reaches with sizzling keyboard twinges of escapism. Clarinet like a tribble in mourning. Terrific. Last one, voice in an echo chamber, radio static, church organ, spacemen ray guns and a hip hop beat. Is this a Pram effort? Possibly. Through the looking glass...

Regina Oi Miten Suuria Voimia!. The Finnish contingent will need to email me later with a translation. The music is electro-dancish pop. The vocals are stunning, her voice, somewhat mediocre, but the arrangements are dazzling. It's arty, her voice resides somewhere on the continuum that contains Kate Bush and Sarah Cracknell. Does such a continuum exist I wonder? I am just home from work. It is after 10pm, giddy, I should be more exhausted than I am. But then there are few things I'd rather be doing other than working. Witness the tragedy of my existence. I am re-reading Mark Polizotti's treatise on my favorite book. My favorite book is Maldoror. It may be a book but it is not a novel. It is a long prose poem. It's madness. Mark P spends a fair bit of foul breaht on the time dilation aspect fo the book. It doesn't really resonate with me. I feel less the relative effects of time and more the victimhood of unceasing momentum. But anyhow we are on song two, it's a bit more shrill, chugging, her voice high pitched squealie, the music a repeating loop of nanobots in solution. I haven't any idea why I would want to come home and write an entry on a Finnish dance pop band while staring into a computer screen after having stared at a computer screen for a dozen hours at work and gone nearly blind because of it. I am self conscious over my 'thats'. Today I spoke with people from New Jersey, Mead, Colorado, Ann Arbor, MI, Dallas, TX and Kansas. I mean to ask my Kansas correspondent about the most essential part of Kansas--Prairie Dog Town--but I do not. We talk about Austrian Pines and Chanticleer Pears. I pretend to know something about trees. I am desperate to ask about oreo goats, six legged steers and 8000 pound prairie dogs, but I have need to seem sophisticated although I am seemingly older than the person I am speaking with so I am granted immense respect down to my age. I drove a pop band across Kansas once. I mentioned this band in the previous entry. Can you guess which band I drove across Kansas? It was a compact car. Limits the options. Third song, spiral swirls and whooshes and whorls and whispers. I love this album. I have been running to it, when I have been running, I have been getting home after 8Pm most nights, I am not running on those nights. Autumn has arrived. Along with a respiratory infection I believed I had shaken some time ago. Perhaps I have MS? It's possible. Self Diagnosis is a dubious thing. Really, I am frightfully healthy. I heal really quickly. My dental implant is mostly set already. I did have a hole in my head, in the roof of my motuh, I could run my tongue over my amygdala for a few days. Honestly. Or not. Fourth song, tongue twisting Finnish things coming out of her mouth, perhaps they originate from her own amygdala. Where is the Junior Boys remix? We spoke of the time continuum earlier, you have just been flashed forward along its length, to Monday. Are you recovered? Yesterday afternoon I played golf with a "splendid butterfly". Honestly. I keep applying that adverb, I mean it this time. There are butterflies that turn the world in their hands and turn every thought unspoilt. Thank goodness. I shalln't ever catch a butterfly again. Fourth song over. it was spirited. A male is singing now, it is the next song, something else in Finnish. I run and have night terrors when listening to this a flash of shadows in the headlamps reflected of of monolithic concrete barriers from the 1970s that once separated the Wasps from the Catholics and now the landed gentry from the paupers striving for fitness when it is their 401k that they should be working on the nautilus machine. Next song, dramatic, siren wails, thumping drums, her voice girly and coy at the moment and in the menacing chorus ominous and frosty. it's a marvelous thing. This album. Much better than Gentle TOuch. They once shared a record label. Along with Moto Boy. I haven't written much on here which is a good thing. I write here when I feel as if I need to discover something accidentally, I don't think when I write here and random thoughts and images arise from the aether as if conjured by the dark arts. I feel guilty over the incoherence and random sampling but then there are three people who read this. Zero butterflies list among my readership, sadly. I hadn't ever heard anyone discuss the fatwa against that in written communication before. Is it true? Is it a Nebraska prohibition? A semi-blue law? An azzurro law? Next song. Robotic and charming. Singing in Finnish is the most natural thing in the world to them. It is a musical language. Even without the tingly dipthongs Ms Kilma holds so dear to her heart. Klima is still in my heart, I will write about her sometime, soon. And Julian Fane, I've gotten over the fact that he mumbles the same as Thom Thumb. When I was out this evening I noticed a sign that still had a "welcome delegates" message encoded. Actually, it was "welcome delagates". It was in the parking lot of a Walgreens. Is this the Denver the delegates have come to see? I went into the Walgreens tonight and it didn't seem to be a hotbed of political activity, but I suppose they may have sold some of the human excretion containers that were threatening the sanitary sanity of so many of we Denverites. Our fearless Mayor put on his bicycle helmet for Obama and then shut the freeway. Coudl I have driven my bicycle during Octavian's speech? I'd like to ride my bicycle on the motorway. Downhill. Next song, fierce programming, loads of voices, stereo panning in and out. Foxes and hounds and mountains and trees and pelotons and music. Beautiful music. I held my tongue today and did not correct false spelling, it is the most difficult thing in the world for me, not correcting people. I have no idea why. I am going to drink to forget. I remember too many things, I don't have enough joy to remember everything that has ever been ever. It's an odd existence this sensation of recall in a vacuum. I wish to cast it aside. if I had reason to realize the present I might then forget. Next song. Whirrs and waaahs, nice vocals, again with the clever editing and splices, three or four times over, now a semi-dance beat. I am not sure that you could dance to this. It is head music, music to fire your neurons viscerally rather than a device of physical excitation. I have been reading Paul Theroux with a different eye. I can write as well as Paul Theroux. I am convinced of this. My butterfly partner inspired a sense of defiance in my heart. I will turn inside out, all of the elegant folly of my inner being shown to the outside world in a panoramic distillation, a brilliant torrent channeled at the tip of a pen. I am thrilled at the possibility. A gust shot on Keith Olbermann! Denigrating the communist bastards that run the boy scouts! Last song, trills, baroque epicentrism and loveliness. It's all endearingly dreamy. Dreams alive.

ballboy I Worked on the Ships. I love ballboy. They are in the realm along with the Bats, the Lucksmiths and surely loads of others I can't consistently recall. They record the same album, over and over and once again. Slight updates are introduced through production gimmickry such as a sample of a Paula Cole song but little else is updated. ballboy's(small b) thing is jokey/clever stories, some are abou kids eating bags of glue, cannibals in love, boring sex, etc...This then is more of the same. Thank goodness. I can relate to all of these bands because I have a repeating set of riffs as well. Not only on here but everywhere. I present one limited face in public and rarely diverge from it. I am meaning to change this but i always feel caught beneath a mountain of conformity that I must slay, mountain slayer, before my raging eccentrism is let loose on an unsuspecting public. I am going to allow my more irrational side to flower, someday. Sarah Palin says "bloom where your planted". I like that. She's my new spiritual guidance counselor. I went running along a different route last evening. I had followed the same route for the past 16 months. Last evening I ran through the tech center instead and marveled at the 'ADA' tags on concrete at my feet and I was thinking it was some new gang that had infested my tony Greenwood Village suburbia similar to the mythical A.B.I. of my youth. Albanian Boys Incorporated. Of course ADA is not a gang but rather the American with Disabilities act. It was probably some bureaucrat who is now tasked, hazed, with tagging his territory. He'll spray paint the curb inelegantly as bureaucrats are wont to express themselves and later some disreputable company will come in and install a curb cut with those fancy braille foot pads. When I first moved here there seemed to be loads of blind people walking about with their canes and super senses of smell on full display. Near the Entemans factory it must have been heaven for the extraolfactory, near the Maytag sales center the clockwork machinery a pleasant ring in their extrahearinability, near the chain smoking Asian checkout clerk at the Firestone shop a lack of sympathy for the asian male who will grow up as alone as I am. But i've moved away. The blind can't seem to afford my prosperous life here in Greenwood Village. I can't really either, I'm a dreaded tenant. I could bring a case with the aid of an ADA lawyer as I do allegedly have a cataract and could claim that the fact that I can't actually afford these million dollar homes is only because i am being summarily discriminated against because of my less than perfect eyesight. It sounds fantatically plausible at the moment. The braille footpads could be some sort of secet communication device used by a cabal of the blind who are intent of conquering western civilization and turning it into a tyranny of the sightless. Early every morning these foot pads are likely modified with new messages inserted to give commands to the foot soldiers of the blotted revolution. Secret directors polluting their minds with dastardly details of the coming sighted holocaust. It will be grim. Why do they hate us? Or...it is possible that they might have a more benign function. I could speak of the music. Have you heard a ballboy song? Then you know what this sounds like. Really. The peacable outcome of more braille footpads could be a secret dissemination of the disappeared texts of literary masters. The lost novels of Salinger, Ducasse, Joyce, etc...blah blah blah. Walking around the city they shall read, sensually, the bumps through their toes and imbibe in the joy of all of the the lost classics secretly yet deeply woven into the culture of the eyeless. The eyed would be jealous, if only they knew, if only they could get over their Sarah Palin crush to learn how to read braille with sole(s). My sole laid bare, indeed. A Baudelaire pun! Actually it was Poe. No? And it was 'heart laid bare'. But there were those Baudelaire journals, his friendship with Manet, the Salon, Berthe Morisot, etc...blah blah blah. I had a pretentious period where I only read French novels. Flaubert, France, Zola, Jarry, Appolinaire, Gide. I was sophisticated even as I read And the Gods Will Have Blood, I could understand when bass players made wanting comments like 'this reminds of a gide novel'. Or I could pretend to. ballboy are not pretentious. They are small 'b' salt of the earth. Scottish. I am Scottish. I am frugal. I realized tonight that I don't buy anything at all. Other than food that is. I buy pants too, i go through a lot of pants in my job. Does that make me seem mysterious? Why is he going through so many pairs of pants? It's better to leave them guessing I have found. These braille stories could be fabulously surreal, a Joyce-ian tale about a loft dweller in East St Louis with his very own cosmology that revolves a cult of personality surrounding George Lemaitre. A very small group of St Louisans gather in the World's Fair ruins alongside Hiram Birdseed and pray to heaven for the discovery of the last greatest mystery particle, the Veronica Lake-on. And in Salinger's hidden novel Holden Caulfield is revealed as a republican and OCD and he is cast from the pantheon of literary super agents with a cruel shower of fables told by ironic kids from a post ironic future with moving sidewalks and earnest scottish pop bands. Sadness. Ducasse? His sharks that made love to devils are now pregnant and embedded in stain glass windows just outside, just next to, almost inside the Maldives. And there the dare arrives at the end of the book instead of at the beginning begging enjoining readers to respire or die. I was in a Wal-Mart and there was a young lady in front of me discussing how a local restaurant chain was not recycling their recyclables and she was in near tears while explaining this to her near husband/boyfriend/accomplice. I do not recycle. I can not relate. It's an artificial market. It is created by mandates and through mandates its success feds on itself while no one looks at the dark side. There is a dark side to recylcing, somewhere, it's simple if recycling was a worthwhile endeavour then it would be market competitive with simply throwing my old pants int he dust bin. I recycle my pants. But anyway. von Mises!. ballboy. This is a lovely little record, pleasant and kind, warm and inviting. 'You left your notes on lesbian sex on the fish tank in the hall'. Poor Gordon. He's ben a school teacher in his non-pop star life. He could teach the children the life story of Isidore Ducasse. You could make it up, nobody knows. Not Mark Polizziotti, he is lost, that's for certain, the desert metaphor, oh dear. So many fragmentary thoughts. I am tired, so so tired, I have been working and playing ice hockey and not much else in between. I've not ben spending money to save the jobs of those less fortunate than I am. I am playing golf this weekend, happily. With someone who seems to disapprove of my hockey playing. I have, suddenly, a reason to not go into work and I am also free to spend an afternoon with a brilliant kind soul who will petend to enjoy spending time with me. It will be marvelous. Next song. Ominous. FDR paraphrasing, he borrows snippets of Americana and turns it on its side awkwardly. I listen to Gordon the school teacher sing Born in the USA and it is so comprised of ache, melancholy and terror and then I listen to da boss and it's full of bombast, constipation and irritation. Yay for Scotland! This is a lovely song. Much of this reminds of the solo-ish acoustic record he made some time ago. It has been so very long time since the last ballboy album. The A.D.A. is killing Christmas here. There was meant to be a village of christmas on the prairies, a light on the lawn of a real estate moguls' personal museum where his taxidermy delights are displayed alongside giant dioramas and peachy glasses of lemonade. But the A.D.A. says that the village on the lawn, on the turf covered hill, must be handicap accessible. It's important not to discriminate when offering up cheap facsimiles of holiday tradition. LED. The disabled in China do not leave their homes, there are few elevators in China. Are you aware of this? Me, I spread holiday cheer from October to January, all across the city, all hours of the day, with ballboy in my ears some days and ballboy in my heart always. This is some impressive sort of lovely. I enjoy ballboy. I do. When I am spreading cheer far and wide underneath the big sky in unfamiliar places i've now learned that I can orient myself directionally by staring at the cows as apparently cows prefer to align themselves along a north south axis. It was discovered via intense research completed with the use of google earth. I was using google earth today to look at football stadiums to be dressed up in bows, to look at the vehicles in our workplace parking lot and hearing that you can email google and have them remove photos of your street views because there are images tempting the baleful within the frame. Another quiet one now, Empty Throat, it's a bit raspy and willowy, threadbare. I actually purchased this record online. I could not find any place to steal it. So I lied. I do buy some things. I also purchased a dvd from a lecture series an entry on "how to construct worthwhile sentences". Next time you read an entry here you may just be dazzled by my new shiny sentences. Gone forever will be these limp, decrepit imitations that I try to pass off as coherency and in its place sturdy, reinforced clauses and dactyls and when read aloud effervescent dipthongs will roam and there will also be whatever else I am keen to discover through the joys of video scholarship. Normally my acquisition of knowledge comes from repeated viewings of The Core. I have upgraded, possibly. I rarely leave work now before the night arrives. This song is similar to earlier ballboy numbers, it has a sprightly jig feel about it but it's in a muted, gauzy, softer, winded style and rather not spiteful or tart. Nice. I could be nice. I could spnd my life searching for a path to eternity. I did spend a few patient minutes discussing inventions and intentions this afternoon with someone who works for me. He believed he was primed to change society with his revolution in haberdashery. Cheerful cellos! His ranting has been neutered here, trampled with delicately trimmed piano ballads and tender vocals and a female accompaniment. It's all serenity in dreamscape echos. What of his side project that had visions of Darren Haymanesque/French disasters conjured in public by the minds of devotees? A song about mobile phones. I can't relate. Will it be soon that people have a fetish for items with moving parts. I can hear the whirr and hum in the internal workings of my macbook on occasion but it seems a nuisance to punctuate fruitless efforts to take me to this website and others that deride the lack of imagination within children these days. I have photos on my wall and i stare into them and look deeper into the smaller corners where the definition is unkempt and feel smug at the richness of my internal monologue. Envy my decadence! This the new girl. Was she on the last album? I can't remember. The other got married, 'there's a lot to be said about lifelong sex and security' after all. Two more songs. It is late. Next is a jolly tune, piano like player piano, thumping drums, strums. The same strums he's been plying forever. it's charm that carries him through, it is charm that I lack. I am too afraid to make a good impression. It might bear with it responsibility and hope, and all I can deliver is disappointment and resentment. This is a beautiful album. Much better than the Euros Childs album I was able to steal earlier yesterday afternoon. Euros Childs seems lost. He needs to look to the Ayrshires, Guernseys, Holsteins! It is where I discover all of my own inspiration. Completely and utterly. Seems like ballboy is a bit spent as well, here is the trademark windup at the end of the song and it's reserved, tepid, unfit. It's actually really quite nice though. Surprising. Last song, quiet, again. Small and steady, pianos, guitars, warmth and other tiny blessings.