I dreamed last night that I was kissing her belly, and I told her how much I used to love her.
"Now I remember," she said.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
whispered
hymn,
12-28-2007
-----------------------
I
hope
the
years
have
worn
you
to
the
bone,
I
know
you're
just
as
lovely,
I
hope
you're
sitting,
cold
and
all
alone,
Of
course
you're
with
somebody,
And
if
you
think
of
me,
The
crystal
moments
in
my
memory,
Are
blurred,
anonymous
and
dim,
Still,
you
linger
in
me
like
a
whispered
hymn.
--
chorus
falling
back,
1-3-2008
---------------------------
in
the
heel
of
life,
where
consequences
bunch
and
burn
and
itch,
staring
into
nothing,
some
distraction,
drinking
something
warm
and
almost
soothing,
radiating,
slow
and
soft
and
desolate,
chorus
falling
back
behind
the
curtain,
and
in
the
haunted
echo,
just
to
whistle,
just
to
not
look
back
--
wave
the
rabbit,
feb/march
2008
---------------------
shuffle,
try
to
find
a
place
to
stand,
amid
uncomfortable
answers,
mutter
in
an
awkward
sleight-of-hand,
wave
the
rabbit,
hide
the
cancer,
&
in
the
traffic
in
the
living
rooms
&
cubicles,
you
shudder
imperceptibly,
your
cheeks
are
burning
&
your
spinal
cord's
an
icicle,
&
tunnel
vision's
all
you
see,
power
through,
though,
knowing
everything
passes,
any
avalanche
could
uncover
a
vein,
you
know
the
crawling
time
will
very
soon
be
far
too
fast,
on
this
relentless
train.
What is the best beer on planet Earth?
Submitted by Remmy Van Hornie.
Might have to be Big Time's Bhagwans Best IPA. Another contender is the "Contraband IPA" that Rogue does exclusively for the Hopvine in Seattle. Bridgeport IPA will always be my comfort food.
I've grown rather disenchanted with Six Apart, all because of stuff happening with LiveJournal that only minimally effects me, but has definitely driven some of my friends away. That's most of the reason I'm bothered, because it's made it that much more difficult to keep in touch with people through passive-journal reading.
That being said, censorship sucks in general, and people who feel censored have the right to take their toys and find a new place to play. I encourage it, and am quite fond of other blogging tools such as WordPress, which is what I use for my blog at www.quasilaur.net.
I will likely not use this Vox for anything but keeping in touch with the few who will continue to use Six Apart blogging tools. You've been warned.
I awoke from a dream Saturday morning in love with a girl from my imagination. I met her in the dream, at a party -- a lovely dark-haired girl with smiling, friendly, mischievous eyes.
I
asked her name, but didn't hear her clearly and asked her to repeat. I
still didn't get it, and I asked again. After trying three times she
wrote out a cryptogram, telling me that solving it would give me a clue
to her name. I awoke while trying fumblingly to work it out, writing
my solution on her belt, the spaces between her belt loops having
replaced the blanks on the page she'd handed me.
In the Butthole Surfer's concert/documentary "Blind Eye Sees All" video, there is a scene where a band member takes a bit too gnarly of a bonghit and vomits all over himself. Another bandmember, thinking quickly, grabs a turkey baster, sucks up the juice, and squeezes it into his own mouth. Ick! Not exactly the kind of thing I am into. However, we can find beauty in some very unlikely places.
Much of the work of the Butthole Surfers seems designed specifically to create horrible feelings in reasonable people, and yet behind this are some of the most stunning examples of modern songcraft and truly beautiful sounds. The ring modulator drone in Whirling Hall of Knives rhymes with my neurotransmitter functions in a way that almost no other song I've ever heard does. The rain-smeared chords of "Hey" pull me from side to side in a throbbing rhapsodic stupor that seems more fitting for an old woman being moved by the organ at church than any kind of a punk moment. For whatever reason, from the first time I heard the Butthole Surfers, all of their shock-schlock was lost on me, invisible really, and I was able to penetrate to the core and concentrate solely on the beautiful melodies and evocative lyrics.
I get chills from some songs, especially those on Hairway to Steven. In music appreciation (as a radio major) class in college, we had to write a paper explaining the perception of music and the effects it can have on the listener. I hated this class; the instructor was a very strict old-school opera fiend and almost all of the examples of beautiful music he chose were to me almost unlistenable. He was open in his disdain of all things rock. Almost as a confrontational action, I wrote a detailed dissection of the Butthole Surfers and how I had near spiritual experiences listening to them, even without the (admittedly often added) help of drugs. I was the only student to get a perfect score and the professor embarrassingly made copies of it for the whole class as an example of how to think about music.
Human Cannonball is just another of their songs that has stuck with me*. Its a fairly straight-forward rock song, in fact I've heard it described as a hard rock parody. Perhaps I like hard rock enough that the parody isn't needed and I enjoy it at face value. Anyway its the kind of song I hum in the shower. And recently I had been doing just that. It got to the point that I was singing it in the car, singing it around the house. I had to get it out:
It's usually hard for me to share stuff like this since I don't want to insult my favorite works with my amateurish bumbling. However, I am not really ashamed of loving music so hard that I become a virus-like pawn, forced to replicate and spread it. Its pretty cool actually.
* Embarrassing Bonus Anecdote: In high school I was accusing someone of selling bogus LSD. To demonstrate my conviction that he was selling blank blotter, I ate two pieces at lunch. It was not blank. That afternoon in creative writing class, it was my turn to give an oral presentation on a song with moving lyrics that could be considered creative writing. I had meant to think about it over the afternoon and improvise (as was often my way with schoolwork) but concentrating on not freaking-the-fuck-out pretty much took all my spare cycles and I arrived at class wholly unprepared. Luckily(?) I had Locust Abortion Technician in my backpack, and I recalled that Human Cannonball was fairly listenable as that album goes. So after some struggling I got the tape cued up, stood before the class, watching the reflections and gridlines of the linoleum floor tiles intersect and fold in on themselves as space and time often do. I did not remember the intro to the song being so long. Its about a minute and a half I guess, which really is quite long for a pop song, but really it seemed like about 15 minutes. I kept saying "it starts soon, I'm sure". Finally the teacher stopped the tape and said I should bring my real presentation the following Monday. Woohoo!
What are some charitable causes that you support or would like to support?
There are only two that I give dough to with regularity. I tithe to Erowid, the vast and indespensible library of entheogen data. They rather quietly do a tremendous amount of good work.
I kick down for a membership in EFF. They are fighting many good fights and winning a lot of battles.
I'd love to support some sort of enviro/green/eco cause but I feel pretty cynical about the efficacy of most of the movement. If there were a green advocacy organization as nimble, with the kind of brain trust and proactive tactics of an Electronic Frontier Foundation, I'd be happy.
I made lunch today. Kindof. Hi vox.
