Not Much

Starting a new job today. Only part time, but there's still loads of stuff I want to do with the house and I'll have time to do it while earning a modest paycheck.

No, This is Not My Guitar

I'm bringing it to a friend...

I though it was time for a short break from metal. And seriously I don't own a guitar. Though back when I had long hair I was often asked if I was in a band.

It's a wonderful song all in all, but there's one line I particularly love.

I came down from the room
I saw you in the rain
Laughing with some people
Hair dripping down your face

See that? He created a perfect image with truncated language. The action being conveyed is wet hair plastered across someone's face (assuming a woman here) dripping. The hair is not doing the dripping; the water is. But "water dripping from your hair down your face" really lacks something doesn't it? It's soulless and pedantic.

I think I write a lot like that. Not the good line; the awfully specific and mechanical one. Language is a tool used to convey information. it's nice to be understood, although I sometimes think I need to push past the boundaries of comfortable, certain language. Maybe that's what all this nonsense is about.

Prisencolinensinainciusol, all right?

 Great; that title looks like something that would set off a spam filter.

Hi blog. Been a while. It's amazing how easily you can be knocked out of your routine. A couple of weeks ago we lost internet access at our house for about a week. Coincidentally, the first day without it was the day I'd scheduled a blog update. I've been trying to do one a week.  I guess I find that my particular brand of nonsense fits a little better on Twitter where it can be chopped up into miniscule chunks like a former mafioso that's turned state's evidence.

Anyway, I had something I wanted to share. Listen to this before reading what's below it.

Made in 1972, Prisencolinensinainciusol was an attempt by Italian composer Adriano Celentano to write a song that sounded like spoken English with an American accent. It is, in fact, complete gibberish. The first time I heard it, the link was provided without any explanation and it wasn't until bout two minutes in that I figured out that, no, I did not just have a stroke, and my ears were functioning perfectly well.

 So, theoretically I'm a writer. And maybe that means I like words, but I also like seeing how much can be communicated without identifiable language. The overall tone feels like he's trying to explain something, doesn't it? Kind of fitting.

 And since I'm apparently getting traffic from Beeradvocate now, I thought I'd mention that I picked up one of these today.

 I have an unreasonable fondness for Smuttynose Brewing given that I've had as many hits from them as misses. Old Brown Dog? Hit. Finest Kind? Miss. Star Island? Hit. Winter Ale? Miss. Not saying that these are objectively good or bad, just that that's where my preferences have fallen.

Gravitation is either my first or second quad, and is an absolute hit in my book. This bottle is currently chilling (literally) next to the bottle of Really Old Brown Dog in the beer fridge downstairs. Kind of fruity with a bit of bubblegum and a big booziness. Gets to be a bit much as it warms up, but a delicious beer regardless.

 I think the more questionable thing is why I would link to what is ostensible a writing blog in my Beeradvocate profile. I think I was taking too narrow an approach; basically, I'm not just an amateur writer trying to catch a break, I'm also a guy who likes beer. And football. And cooking. Trying to present just one facet had started to feel really shortsighted and limiting.

It's Baseball Season

Not that I really care much. Theoretically I'm a Red Sox fan since I live in Massachusetts and I've been to Fenway a couple of times. Oh, and I'll root for the Sox if pressed. I used to be an Oakland A's fan years and years ago when they had Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire and Ricky Henderson. Kids like home runs.

And I just cleaned all of my old baseball cards out of the closet of the room I used to sleep in in my parents' house. According to the most recent price guide I could find, they're worth about the same now as they were when I started collecting them around 1990-91-ish.

I don't really have a team to follow, so I guess you could say I follow nostalgia. The only team I really give a damn about anymore is double-A's own New Britain Rock Cats. Not because I'm a Minnesota Twins fan (they're a Twins affiliate), obviously, but because of those roasted peanuts with the dust on them, the vaguely spicy nacho cheese they used to have, grandpa and grandma and my aunts and uncles and cousins and my mother and father who used to go to the games and still occasionally do. And I'm a fan because the park used to be so much bigger when I was a kid, but now that I'm small I realize there's not a bad seat in the relatively small house, and the fall from the back of the bleachers probably won't kill me.

I suppose the presence of beer doesn't hurt either.

They used to be a Red Sox team. Hell, they used to be the New Britain Red Sox. I remember feeling a little hurt when the change happened, but you get over things like that eventually.

Go Cats! Beat (insert team I'm not familiar with here)!

Goin' Outside

Well, you know you're a homeowner when you're cleaning old leaves out of your gutters and desperately hoping that the wasps didn't also make a nest up there. From the looks of it, the only nests were in the old grill the previous owner left behind, and I sprayed those down with pesticides one night last week so hopefully that's the last of that.

We've got bunnies and chipmunks in the yard. It's kind of cool, although I now wonder if we also have things that eat bunnies and chipmunks living nearby too. The town we're living in now is thoroughly suburban but our area is kinda woodsy.

Celebrating a few Small Victories

So if I haven't already mentioned it here--and I'm sure I haven't--my drabble, "Lab Rats" just won The Drabblecast's 2011 People's Choice award for best drabble (cue excited party noises)! The story first appeared in the Drabblecast's 229th episode, opening for the story "Singularity Knocks" by Bill Ludwigsen.

In other news, I just made sold a story for over the $100 mark for the first time, and it astounds me that people are willing to pay that much for something that could be interpreted as the product of a fever dream or mental illness. Still, it's a good excuse to open up that Ommegang Abbey Ale I'd been saving. Cheers!

Pleasant, Controlled Screaming

George Carlin once said something to the effect of singing just being a form of pleasant, controlled screaming. I don't agree that that's the case with all singing, but there are some bands out there which fit the bill.

Last year I finished a novel partly inspired by the Diabolical Masquerade album Death's Design. Near as I can tell, it was released under the guise of a soundtrack to a movie that, in fact, never actually existed. Something about people being between life and death and quite literally running for their lives, trying to get out a neutral zone in between. The novel--which I've tentatively titled "Up in Hell" and, though finished, has not been subbed anywhere since I've yet to work up the nerve--turned out to be about puppets trying to survive in hell. When I'd started it I only aimed to make a short zany story about a sock puppet freaking out in amusing ways as its set upon by demons. It turned out to be something a  lot harsher and probably a lot less funny.

It's funny how music can drag you along sometimes. More recently, the band Alcest struck the same chord that Death's Design had, with a track off of Ecailles De Lune called, coincidentally, Ecailles De Lune (Part 2).

There's something beautiful in the contrast between words delivered in a hoarse scream and carefully controlled, occasionally dreamlike instrumentals. It's chaos rocketing over a well-ordered landscape. Can't think of a better way to describe it than that. When the screaming is only a part of a larger whole, and its placed against something more serene, it actually feels like it serves a purpose other than being loud. It feels like a fight has broken out and some lone individual is trying to make themselves heard among something more ordered and easier to listen to, if that makes any sense.

I'm not big on throaty scream metal, most of which sounds anywhere between ridiculous and unlistenable in my opinion. This parody video by a band calling themselves the Black Satans hits what I'm tallking about dead on. A lot of that really hardcore metal just piles on the evildarkgrimevilsatanblackness until there isn't enough contrast for it to mean anything.