guitarded

So I've been wanting a baritone guitar for awhile, because I love the sound thanks to Corin Tucker and Ian Mackaye and countless others. I like the possibilities of being an octave lower, of being able to play bassline-like or heavy chords and have the advantages of the higher end too.

And there's someone selling one on Craigslist that looked really nice so I emailed the guy about it and through the course of the correspondence I asked about giving it a try as far as playing goes and he kind of flipped out and said that these were collector's items and if I played it it wouldn't be in mint condition anymore and how if I wanted to "test drive" instruments I'd be better off going somewhere like Guitar Center.

Well, okay then. Last time I checked, the majority of people who own instruments intend to play them, right? I mean, it'd be like buying a car without taking it for a drive to see if it actually runs. I'd want to know that the pickups work, and the neck feels good and the tone is what I want, which is why I don't buy things like this over the Internet. I'm sure that being a female didn't help my case either, because we all know that ladies never play anything except piano, violin, or an acoustic guitar like they're in Lilith Fair.

So I'm a little miffed and also glad that the Red Flag of Douchebaggery has been raised so I know better, and say never mind and omit the "sorry I asked," and got an email back about how he was glad I was being honest about not being a "serious buyer."

Really now. If I wasn't serious, I wouldn't have inquired, right? But yeah, I guess I'm not worthy or not serious, because guitars are meant to be in glass display cases and collected like sports cars and baseball cards instead of played. Who would ever do that? How could I be so dumb?

confederacy of dunces

Seriously GOP? Invite Trump to your debate and not this guy? Someone I'd actually consider voting for considering that he has experience running a state and actually kind of makes sense? End the drug war, get the hell out of Afghanistan and everywhere else, and not hassle people about their lifestyle choices? Yes please.

I mean, it's not surprising, but dammit, I feel like I waste my vote every four years, I don't want to pick between the lesser of two evils, and I'd at least like to see it get interesting.

like a bird that sings up the sun....

There's a word in Sanskrit quoted by Eliot at the end of 'The Wasteland' like a benediction. 'Shantih' is roughly translated as 'the peace that passes understanding.' My emotions have been all over the place today, frustration and anger, helpless resignation, slap-happy laughter (deemed verboten by the overlords, but breaks forth nonetheless), thankful for the grace of God, the blessings of caffeine and art and friendship. I've been through way more than this in the past year, and I'll go through way more again.

I can go home to the sanctuary of my second floor, I can pull the weeds growing among my flowers, pound and sculpt and cut clay, drink tea and write, scrawl out prayers and fragments of psalms on canvas in sharpie marker, visit my new nephew and feel my heart melt over and over. A little stress and catharsis every once in awhile makes me a better person, gives me the spark. Maybe someday I will create beauty such as this.





Unlike the bestselling writers and TV preachers, I don't expect that faith will bring a person a life of material wealth or bliss. I don't deserve a thing, and yet I have more in the intangible than could be explained. I can't control what others say or do, I don't see the need to apologize for things that I haven't done wrong, and to paraphrase a song from an old band I love "I'm working, but I'm not working for you."

Who needs to jockey for position when there's so much else to live for? I hope that when I am old, I won't be jealous of the young, I won't be meddling in what's none of my business, I won't be grabbing all I can while the getting's good.

And there is celebrating a friend's wedding this weekend, getting my rust belt kicks with 'Michael Stanley Superstar', and being away from this opera if not forevermore, for a little while.

tiki gods

And in more regional matters, the dumbassery of the Minor Powers That Were continues to be revealed and while some among the Peonage still maintain that the local Dems are like omg totally awesome the best ever, I doubt that any of us makes sufficient scratch to be bribing our favorite party bosses with tiki huts and fake palm trees.


And since Sony sucks, I couldn't post 'Tiki God' from everyone's favorite comedic Seattle band so you're all stuck with this.


Stay classy, dudes. Glad to know that my tax dollars are promoting good taste and general elegance in the Mistake By the Lake. Check out the Don King action on that tie! It's too bad I don't have swanky connections so I could see what kind of tackiness goes down in those wild eastern suburbs. At least the robber barons a century before you left us with some nice parks and some epic cemetery monuments.





At least his smirking mug is being removed from every gas pump and cash register in the kingdom of Cuyahoga, though we humble peons will no longer be able to draw devil horns with ballpoint pen or scratch his eyes out while our check goes through in a totally passive-aggressive manner anymore.



With my neighbors in hot water, shootings on the east side, stabbings in that wild country of Parmastan, it's going to be an interesting year. Here's hoping I can avoid the municipal courthouse this time around.

scams, paint, punk

At least the nights of insomnia and angst could end in sleeping and waking up to sun and snow. Henry Rollins is unsurprisingly sold out, but a message in my spam folder says I have some rich and deceased distant cousin in Malaysia with the same last name as mine so I'll be fabulously wealthy once I give all of my personal information to "Barrister Eric Anthony Esquire" and not ask the logical questions as to why someone Kuala Lumpur would have a long Polack surname like my own.

Meanwhile, in my fair city, the Powers That Be are more concerned about spraypaint than police brutality, because heaven forbid that the police union gets offended. I might be a bit biased to be sure, but this is everything that is wrong with the world encapsulated, with property and wealth being treated as more important than human life, and it's always the voiceless and the vulnerable who are more likely to get screwed in this twisted calculus.

While I love the non-legal artistry of those who make my RTA ride colorful, I've got no love for taggers either, especially the tagbanging types in my neighborhood who've turned vibrant graffiti spots into some macho lameness. But it bothers me way more that whenever I've called 911 I've been blown off by the dispatcher, that people who aren't creative class crackers get beat up at worst or ignored at best, and I know there's probably decent people out there on the force who actually do care about the city, but I get more doubtful by the day because I haven't always seen it.

one more thing to put in line / one more thing to waste my time

So the economy of my state depends on the prison industry and people drinking themselves into oblivion or some combination thereof, we can't fund NPR but we can drop bombs in Libya, even though life is hard in the rust belt, it's way worse other places, and the family is suggesting strongly that I invest in a security system because I live in the almost-hood but what's the point if the cops don't come when you call anyway. Besides, given my clumsiness, I'm the kind of person that would trip the alarm on my own as it is.

I don't mean to sound so surly, but listening to powerpoint presentations of bureautechnocracy in all of its mind-numbing banality will do that. To think about all of these people who think they should know all your business, under the pretense that it's for your own good is spooky as anything, whether it's those who see us peons as expendable human resources or the general nanny-statism that has become the norm over the last decade.

I know that I participate in my own forms of escapism as much as those I deride for obsessing over the Kardashians or the last episode of whatever people are watching on TV, hence the nights spent honing artistic skills and writing my Chinese Democracy of an unfinished novel.

Ah well, I'll be going home to crash from the comedown of all the coffee I've drank, finish up that damn midterm, and try to retrieve my brain from the absurdity of modern life. And while this band really isn't all that good, this song is pretty awesome for those days when I just need some abstract angst and Butch Vig-produced power-chordness that sounds an awful lot like that guitar sound on 'Nevermind.'

branding iron

Seriously people, this year on my corner of the world won't all be about Alice in Chains, generational conflict, and the travails of life in the Rust Belt.

Randal is way more entertaining than myself about a book that came through here about personal branding and I honestly don't know what planet some of these people live on. It had to do with shampoo and a trademarked "YOU" or something and talked about how the reason women are sexually harassed is because they don't wear proper business attire and that men are judged by what shoes they wear.

Because women are "totally asking for it" and we should judge a man by the pattern on his tie. Right.

It's bad enough to be judging someone by what brands they wear, but when we start talking about what brand a person IS and that some are more desirable than others, well, what the heck? And we do judge if we're honest. I don't tend to trust people who wear expensive suits who want me to vote for them or who try to sell me something, and I can't take someone's ideas seriously if they can't spell.

I guess we call this labeling and typecasting by any other name which I thought was a bad thing and there's this strange cultural social Orwellianism of all of us theoretically being equal but some of us still being much more equal than others.

I like to give my boomer compadres a hard time, but my fellow millenial spawn appear to be taking the narcissism to a whole new level and we don't even get some good music or something resembling the civil rights movement out of the deal. Just a lot of tweets and likes.

I really wonder about my generation when I see these other people who are my age who have bought into this whole idea of not just marketing as something you do to pay your bills, but as something you make a life out of because you're just so damn special and so damn interesting in a calculated kind of way.

And I know I don't work in an environment or culture with such individuals, and they probably don't attend the esteemed academic institution I work for because they consider state schools beneath them. I wonder where these people live, where they party, how they sleep at night, what kind of relationships do they have? Clearly they don't live here, I think, having blown this popsicle stand for places like Chicago and either coast. Their parents probably live in a nice house and wouldn't talk to mine because we don't have any social capital.



But then I remember that there was this guy when I was at Kent who was my age but throughout undergrad wore suits every day and was one of those people who everyone knew and all that. I think he's probably gone on to be successful and I guess people like him are the kind of people that get things done but that's just not how I roll I guess.

And the subbacultcha is all about the personal brand just in a collective tribal sense... having the right haircut, the right band t-shirts and accessories, the right attitude, and it can be just as catty as any celebutante reality show, only with a heavy dose of sour grapes and "at least I'm not like THAT" thrown in.



So I look at these nebulous questions like "What is YOUR personal brand?" or "How does your appearance enhance your brand?" or people promoting a "personal brand toolkit." It's already a soul-sucking enterprise to sell things, but to sell yourself often at the expense of others...

I don't even have words and it sounds childish and immaturely punk rock to say corporate whore but what kind of other real description is there? Not that I'm advocating the absurdity that is Adbusters, and it's true that people do still judge, but to wholeheartedly embrace it seems so profoundly wrong.



Speaking of branding, this one was big among my old crew back when Sub Pop was awesome.



I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? I look pretty good but I'm just back-dated as it is.

power, corruption, and lies

I went back for my last hearing in front of the judge this morning and after waiting half an hour, she finally showed up in a better mood than last time. Every case where the cop didn't show up, she let them off, which she didn't let happen to me a few months ago even though it was the same situation and my partner in crime got his charges dropped for lack of witnesses when he went in front of another judge.

It kills me that people who have this kind of power abuse it when they wake up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning or have their own axe to grind. Evidently the guy texting while driving gets off because she's in a good mood and the girl taking photos in an abandoned building gets probation and a $200 fine because she hadn't had her morning coffee yet.

I wanted to say something so badly but knew that'd get me in more trouble.

Meanwhile, Mr. Comic Sans who think he owns the soul of Cleveland because he owns their basketball team and a good chunk of their subprime mortgages is trying to mess with our river. Thanks a lot. I still wish Lebron had taken you with him. I hope you pull an Art Modell. The amount of hubris here is so stunning it's disgusting.

That, and the ubermensch, we're above the law attitude I see out of these business owners and national leaders just makes me want to hurl. The constant need to defend the indefensible, the constant trampling over others in pursuit of the almighty dollar, the constant devaluation of others who don't count because they have no money or don't look like you or don't provide you with connections.

Dammit.