Friday, January 27, 2006

A Sign Of The Times

I went to Wal Mart at 1:00 in the morning instead of going to bed. Don't ask why, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It was either that or be perilously close to having no shampoo or toothpaste this morning, and I wasn't quite ready for sleep anyways. As I wandered the isles, taking the few groceries that I needed and watching the Wal Morlocks stocking the shelves (they were pretty much the only other people in the store at the time), I slowly began to notice the mundane elevator music that was being played on the supermarket sound system at a volume that has been perfectly adjusted to be barely noticeable, but somehow extremely obnoxious at the same time. It's the volume level at which the music in hell is played. You don't even really notice anything about the music, you just hear something like a voice and something like instraments behind it, and curse it under your breath. But then something strange happened: I recognized the voice in the supermarket music. This isn't supposed to happen. You're not supposed to notice anything at all about supermarket music, let alone recognize the voices of its perpetrators. Suddenly the part of my subconsious that recognized the voice found the name that belongs to it: James Hetfeild. Then it all came together. I realized that this was no ordinary supermarket music, it was 80s-90s heavy metal icons Metallica belting out their anthem Sanitarium. Weird.

And now page two: Sandra Banks of Waikiki, Illinois discovered that with a GE/Soft Comfort/Bose mattress/stereo/light bulb, she can sleep one hundred percent better, hear better sound, see better, treat her arthritis, and even fly! Paul Harvey. Good day?

Yes indeed, Reginald. Since whoever reads this blog must almost certainly be a fan of completely useless things, you can download a low-quality mp3 of my song from last weekend here . It's not especially good, but it is moderately amusing. Keep checking in, and I'll keep trying to update this with more useless tidbits.

Monday, January 23, 2006

And Then Suddenly Nothing Happened...

Hello Internet! I assume that no real human being is still reading this nonsense after my complete neglect of the blog for so long, so I might as well address the internet as an entity in and of itself. I'm back in school and that's exciting, taking Economics and French (my major and minor, respectively), supplemented with piano lessons (starting tommorow) and a racquetball class (starting today), to meet a #@*!** physical education requirement. Marvelous. My econ and french classes all seem pretty fun thus far, although the workload promises to be challenging. I just have to fight the onslaught of senioritis when it arrives. On the bright side, I got the opportunity to perform a song that I wrote called "Stilettos" over the weekend, backed up by bandmates Josh and Noah on drums and guitar, and I happen to have pictures (as usual, courtesy of Jonathan Walker). The pink shirt and cowboy hat can be explained by the fact that it's sort of a silly attempt at a country song (a genre that I still do not listen to), and I was trying to be in character. I was fairly happy with the results of the experiment, due almost entirely to my being backed by the right musicians. I myself didn't do as well as I would have liked, but the audience responded favorably, and we all had a great time, so I'm satistfied. The lights get darker sometimes, but not so much that you'd really think to mention it. It's more the kind of dimming where you look around to see if anyone else has that same dumb look on their face that you do, and if at least one person does, then you might venture to say "Ok, did it just get dimmer in here?" Naturally, you say it in such a way as to imply that you merely thought it did, you really aren't quite sure at all, because if you commit yourself to the idea that the lights did in fact get suddenly dimmer, then if no one else noticed it they might abandon all that they previously knew about you (that is that you are a generally sane and well-adjusted sort), and begin to beleive that you're completely bananas. Yup, can't have that happening, not over a loose wire in the lighting, anyways. If everyone really is going to think you're crazy, might as well be because you do things that really are crazy, like call everyone you talk to Reginald, and use their name (that is, Reginald) at least once per sentence in which you speak to them. That would be really good for a laugh, if you really wanted everyone to think you're crazy. Wouldn't you agree, Reginald? Crazy or not I wish you a good week, Reginald, and I hope that next week at this time we shall have another one of these little chats.