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Except for smoking weed maybe twice, I haven’t done any drugs in over 3 years. I haven’t even gotten that drunk that many times since 2003. However, for some reason, in the past 3 weeks, I’ve just wanted to get fucked out out of my mind and go dancing. Dammit, I really should have gone to Creepy Dan’s bowling rave a couple of weeks ago! Bowling to all sorts of eurotrash dance music with a bunch of raver hippies probably would have gotten me over that feeling really quickly! I don’t know if it’s the crappy weather or what, but I’ve just been wanting to take a vacation from my brain for a few hours. Unfortunately, I don’t know any drug dealers anymore, or have any connections whatsoever to the world of illicit substances. Have you ever wanted to take a vacation from yourself? I do all the time; and I figure that’s why drugs were invented! I mean, there’s even supposedly a statue celebrating ether in Boston Garden (I learned that from playing Trivial Pursuit at Lil’ Bitch’s and Krista’s house last weekend), so it can’t be *that* weird, right?

oh well, it’s supposed to be almost 60 degrees tomorrow and sunny. The crocuses and daffodils are up in Cambridge already (although they always bloom way early in Cambridge for some reason. I think all the rich educated folks pay them to come up a month ahead of the flowers in, say, Medford); perhaps I’ll feel more like being myself. When it’s nice out, I like riding my bike around Fresh Pond; maybe a good ride will be good enough (and also cheaper and without the other side-effects!). The last time I rode around the pond, I brought a picnic lunch, ate it on the rocks by the water, and thus made friends with every single purebread expensive dog that all the Cantabridgian Boomers were walking. Maybe i’ll practice the fiddle or the recorder. Music used to be my main drug; I should really get back into active music. I’ve been way too passive in my approach lately, merely listening.

Ever since Hope the Recorder Teacher retired, I haven’t played anything! The band hardly ever practices due to 50,000 different reasons, and me sitting at my computer attempting to either re-mix stuff or create cheesy electronic crap from the ground up seems a lot like wanking. I was bred to be an ensemble musician–I’m really not good at doing solo things. i think I need the interplay of different instruments and musical ideas to make me wake up. Truthfully, I’m not wild about anything the band does. I mean, it’s fun and stuff… but does the world really need another low-fi, mediocre indie-rockesque band? We have some great moments, but sometimes I kind of want to scrap everything and start again… with a keytar. And a theramin. And… an English horn? 2 basses? I don’t know; something different that doesn’t suck. We either need more melody or less melody and more tune. What we have right now seems really half-assed or something.

What am I rambling on about? Oh yeah, I need something to be my anti-drug. Or, I need to find a nice dealer to hook me up. Or, I need a side project. Maybe I just need a day off. I probably just need a big hug and some ice cream. These 6-day work weeks are for the birds, I tellya. The Birds!

I’m working on my magnum opus using the sounds I recorded on my commutes… however, the only version I have of Fruity Loops, which I’m using to make the beats, is a demo which doesn’t let you save anything. However, it does let you export sounds. Thus, I have one shot to make a nice loop and then export it into another program where I can put it all together. Actually, there’s another program in the middle where you edit the sounds, and then arrange all the loops in another one. That’s a total of 3 programs just to make this thing. I’ve avoided obsessing over the minutiae this time, unlike when I was doing the Nine Inch Nails remix that caused me to work for 3 hours on 5 seconds of it. This time I’m going to get the whole contour of the piece and then fill in the details. Hopefully I will actually finish something this time!

I have this problem where I get bogged down in the details of a project, then I don’t finish it. In fact, out of all the lame-ass electronic composition-y things I’ve done, I don’t think I’ve finished a single one. They are all sitting in little folders on my computer waiting for me to someday put the finishing touches on them. It’s the same way with a ton of essays and short-story things.

Because of this, instead of writing a book, I’ve decided to write a books of false starts and ideas for books. I’ve been writing down all my dumb ideas and then illustrating them for my own entertainment. At least it keeps me amused. Time is running out to do something spectacular with my life… however, I haven’t resigned myself to being a complete loser forever yet. I know I still have something creative to finish or start that will be my Big Thing, and then I can go back to being a sales clerk in a dead-end job at least satisfied that I got to finish the thing I was meant to. I just wish I knew what that was. Argh.

Lil’ Bitch scored guest list spots for us at the Mission of Burma show at the Paradise! It was really good! I’ve seen MoB like 5 times before, and other shows might have been better, but this one was really good. The audience was really into it, though they were an average age of about 45.

Maybe it was because I spent last night listening to massive guitar noises, but I’ve been in the mood to listen to nothing but Audioslave’s first album today. I have no idea why; maybe I just feel like singing, and that’s a good album to sing along with. In fact, Chris Cornell is my favorite dude to sing along with out of everyone. Ok, the top 3 albums I like to sing along with are: Temple of the Dog, The Andrews Sisters [some collection I have, I think it’s the Best of or the Greatest hits or something], and Mother Love Bone. So, I don’t hate all guitar bands. In fact, I’m going to make a list of all the guitar bands I don’t hate, because I love making lists:

1. Mission of Burma
2. Audioslave
3. Queens of the Stone Age
4. the Mars Volta
5. … And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead (even though their name is dumb)
6. System of a Down

Those are the current ones, anyway. I like Bad Brains and Nirvana of course, and lots of other defunct bands… Those above are the ones that could be labelled RAWK! by people. You might see jocks and meatheads at their shows, thus putting them in the realm of modern day Cock Rock, sort of. At least System of a Down is– they’re totally prog rock. They have really nice melodies, though, and I dig the excessive use of harmony, as well. They’re also political, which is cool. Ya gotta hand it to those Armenians. They’ve got everything!

Today Our House was having $1 burgers & free wings. The only catch was that you had to watch football. Luckily, Biatch is way into the football, so we played Connect Four during commercials (I’m just as bad at it as I was in 4th grade. In fact, I think I’ve gotten worse) and ate cheap food. Of course, during the course of the evening, I remembered that I had band practice. DUH! So I ran home and was still early-ish. We wrote a new song! I think this is the first new song we’ve written in a year (at least since Matt kid #2 was born, and I think he’s over a year old now). We’ve made a pact (sort of) to practice more often. Also, to settle the name debate, we’re now called The Consumption. So, Phoenix band The Consumers, you have your name back (even though more than half of you are dead now).

If you want to start your own rock band, go here– it’s kinda fun.

I looked at an apartment yesterday that was AWESOME! It is huge and cheap! It’s in north Cambridge, which I’m not wild about (I like this side of the river and I have massive hatred towards the People’s Republic of Cambridge), but I won’t have to have any stinky housemates, and that’s the key. I’ve been looking at apartment listings, and I really don’t want to have to move into a tiny room in a skanky dump with 5 drunken college students… that seems to be what’s out there now, since everyone’s leases aren’t up until September.

Anyway, this apartment is in the basement of a house. It’s 2 giant rooms + a bathroom. The rent is cheaper than this place, and includes all utilities (including the innernets!) The only drawback is that it doesn’t have a kitchen (just a microwave and a fridge), but that’s not a big deal. I have a toaster and a deep fryer– I can just eat toasted and deep fried things from now on! The landlady said she’d tell me today whether or not I could take the place; there was one person who had dibs over me, and she was going to let the landlady know today if she was going to take the place. I haven’t heard anything from anyone, and I emailed the landlady and everything. I’m kinda going nuts waiting! Oh yeah, there’s FREE LAUNDRY in the house, too! There’s also a ton of storage space. I really really really hope I get it! It’s nearish to Porter Square, so I’ll be able to take the Red Line to work, instead of the stupid stinky Green Line. Yay!

Me!

Slug and I recorded another song, and here it is! http://www.planetannoy.com/songs/broadway.mp3

Recording these songs is getting way too fun. Maybe I should run away and find a time machine and join a big band…

My MP3 player is even awesomer than I originally thought! It has a “record” function with a pretty good microphone built in. Today I recorded some sounds of the subway on my commute– I got the clacking of the train, some of the muffled announcements over the loudspeaker, and some random notes a dude was playing on the saxophone on the platform. I was just testing the whole record thing out, but now I know what it’s capable of, beware! I will record all sorts of noise that only I find entertaining and make all sorts of shitty techno with which to irritate everyone! In a fit of inspiration, I made a MySpace music page for all the musical projects I hoped to someday finish. Maybe I’ll actually put something on it. Wouldn’t that be a novel approach? Heh.

strange, unique things happened last night.

1. the band actually practiced. Holy shit!

2. I actually went out. There was this night at The Paraside lounge that boasted it was “A night of Indie, 80’s, Guilty Pleasures, Electro & Motown.” Basically, it sounded like pretty much everything at once. But, that band Locksley that I saw open for the Rapture last week was playing, so I figured I’d give it a try. Robin just got dumped, so he was in the mood to “drink until he couldn’t remember how to spell her name” and Pete’s new move to Somerville has left him with an unsatisfactory social life in his eyes, so he was up for something. I thought the band played really well, but the other two were not into it in any way, so after they played we went to the Silhouette and then the Model. Wow, just like old times!

Other than that, I’ve been way too exhausted to write anything of note this week. I had forgotten how tiring it is working retail! I like it way more than the office, though. I’m glad to be back. However, being on your feet all day rushing around finding things for customers with vague questions, shelving product and trying to re-arrange things so they all fit in small spaces in an aesthetically pleasing way can be really exhausting. I spent like 55 hours on my feet this week and, well, I was happy to sleep in this morning.

However, it seems that the world is a teeny bit more of a better place since the Democrats are the almighty rulers of both the Senate and the House these days, Deval Patrick is the governor of Mass, Wacky Pataki is out of NY, and that dumbass Donald Rumsfeld resigned. All right!!! Maybe the government will be there do do something other than help rich people get richer and produce sex scandals! I’m not holding my breath, but I do see a little glimmer of hope.

No entry would be complete without a musical tirade, so let me leave you with a new band I heard called Dead Moon. They sound exactly like Led Zeppelin with Dave Chappelle singing. Seriously. know how DC sings in his sort of funny-blues voice? Well, that’s what the singer of Dead Moon sounds like. It was cracking me up, although this band is totally serious.

Those kooky kids on Evil Imrie Road! Every weekend they have a wild and crazy party that consists of them blastimg some middle eastern music and screaming along. Then they play some Latin music and scream along, and then maybe back to the middle eastern-type music. I think they played some Indian music last week. Oh wait, there they go now with the Indian music– I can tell, because the tabla always illicits a pavlovian response in me and makes me salivate. It’s weird; they’ll blast a song, then turn it down and we won’t hear more music out of the windows for a little while, then something else will blast. Those wild and crazy kids!

Add to it the constant yapping of the generic little white dog across the hall. Why are little yappy dogs always white? Damn I wish that thing would shut up!

The Consumers practiced today! I almost forgot! We haven’t practiced in months, seriously. It was good to go and make some music, except I forgot 1/2 the lyrics to the songs. Why can I remember songs in languages I don’t even speak that have 10 verses, entire oratorios, and like songs off of 80s albums I haven’t listened to in years… yet I can’t remember the words to songs that I wrote? Oy. Gotta study up on that shizzle!

I want to call our band the Obvious. I think that’s an awesome name, almost as good as my runners-up, Toaster Coven and Space Heater. I also like Matt’s idea of Mistakes Were Made, because I’m all about the Passive Voice. MWM looks cool, too.

I realize that my summer is basically a connect-the-dots picture from concert to concert. On the horizon: Devo with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Franz Ferdinand, possibly Geritol-apalooza (mega concert for us old fogeys with Morrissey, Sonic Youth, The Pixies, etc.) and tonight is the Stills! (also The Rapture [yawn– but I’ll give them a change to redeem themselves], Violent Femmes, and Stellastarr* [don’t forget that asterisk!])

However, none of these can compare with the concert last night. Awww yeah. The Cambridge Center Renaissance Ensemble kicked some serious ass with yours truly on soprano voice; alto, bass, and soprano recorders; and tenor crumhorn! We rocked the house with Holborne, Hassler, and friends. I think we sounded really good in places! There were definitely moments of glory. We’ll overlook the part of the Hessler where I messed up the first part.

Tonight was the first Renaissance ensemble practice. It was actually good to get back in the swing of things. We’re doing a really nice Palestrina Ave Verum Corpus, and I get to sing the top line. Yay!

Assmunchkin posted something about playing Pachelbel’s Canon. Now I’m psyched to arrange it for viola, violin and cello (Brenda plays cello). I really miss arranging shit. I haven’t done it in a really long time.