Chicken, Hot Dogs, and Research

i'm a vegetarian, have been one for about 2 1/2 years now.  i still crave meat from time to time, though.  i usually think about the animal it's made from to stop craving it.  it's not like having been away from meat that long diminishes any cravings for it, it's sort of like me craving butter beans or something else i haven't had for years.  i thought about fried chicken yesterday and hot dogs today.  i might get some tofu dogs the next time i go grocery shopping.

another odd thing about being vegetarian, when people realize that you don't eat meat, they say "oh, you can't eat jello?" and stuff like that.  "can't", not "don't" or "won't".  semantics, maybe, but it still makes me drift off into imagining vegetarians bursting into flame if they eat meat, and things like that.

i wrote a song a few days ago, sent it to joey, zack and adrian.  joey and i had the following conversation:

i like your song

good

now what's wrong with it?

its sucks

good

it pretty much sums up how we look at our music.

saturday i saw the Morning Benders at Lincoln Hall.  they put on a good show, much better than when i saw them open for The Black Keys.

sunday i started drafting my exploratory research questionnaire.

monday i finished it.

tuesday i probably did something.

wednesday too.

thursday i forget.  "call me on thursday, if you will.  call me on wednesday, better still."  listening to a ton of The Replacements these days.  i love the lyric that follows that line, too, it goes "ain't lost yet, so i gotta be a winner;  fingernails and cigarettes are a lousy dinner."  oh, i remember.  i stayed at Eventric till 630 so i could leave early on friday.

friday, i left work early so i could make it to The King's Jetfighters' late show in columbus.  The King's Jetfighters is all of Alien Orders except me.  Joey, Zack and Adrian started playing together around the same time i started playing with Operation America (the pop punk band that Danny, Adrian and i started, wrote ten songs, played two shows, and then disbanded).  Joey and i had been jamming together for a while, writing songs here and there, and eventually Zack and Adrian joined in.  the way i explained it to some short kid at the show on friday, it's sort of like Bob Dylan and The Band, where The King's Jetfighters is The Band and i'm Bob Dylan.  we each have material that stands on its own, but when we come together, it's much better.  also sort of like the Constructicons from Transformers.

Alien Orders:  just like the Constructicons

in case you were wondering, i'm Quickmix, Joey is Bonecrusher, Zack is Hightower, and Adrian is Buckethead.  the other two Decepticons are just placeholders for when we decide to form Devastator (aka Alien Orders).  Adrian and i somehow independently ended up at a mobile taco stand outside of a gas station.  they were good, not as good as Junior's Tacos though.

saturday, i went to the parents' house in amanda, then to a vinyl release party at the Monster House in columbus.  it's a diy house that's been around for 3-4 years now.  anyway, American War was releasing their (his?) album on vinyl, and Tin Armor and Asinine were playing too.  it was good fun.  American War played in full band format, complete with Richard on sax, and played Rhetoric all the way through. good seeing friends i haven't seen in months, too.  Joey and i ate Buckeye Donuts afterwards.

sunday, had Alien Orders practice sans Zack.  he had studying to do.  Adrian, Joey and i had a good practice though.  also met up with ex roommates Andrew and Tyler.  ate Donatos pizza, drank Great Lakes Christmas Ale, played Nazi Zombies.  good night.

monday, met with my research advisor.  research is coming along nicely, should be starting the first phase in exactly a week.  then applied for a new passport, ate at Qdoba with ex roommate Andrew, left for chicago.  listened to The Clash's Vanilla Tapes (demo tapes for London Calling), The Replacements, The Thermals, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and a mix cd or two.

third nye blind

i spent five hours working on mostly one project today.  probably shouldn't have taken me so long, but i wanted to make it easy on me for future weeks.  now it should take me an hour or two each week to update everything on this ongoing showlist of chicago shows.  i was pretty proud of it until i realized how utterly insignificant it is in the grand scheme of things, and what i could have been doing in those five hours. 0.00259% of my life so far, down the drain, assuming my math is right.  probably a little bit less, i just rounded to 22 years... but that's irrelevant.  what is relevant is that a skilled surgeon can do a heart transplant in 6 hours, i could fly to new york from chicago in two and a quarter hours, and the gettysburg address was given in a little over two minutes.  lots could happen in five hours.

i wrote lyrics to a song today.  we'll see how that goes.  a little girl on the bus kept on giving me strange looks while i was writing it, and i felt like the woman next to me was reading over my shoulder.  who knows what they really thought.

i also got rained on today.  i was the only one at milwaukee/north/damen that didn't go for shelter.  it was a pretty odd feeling, but the rain stopped soon.  a guy smiled at me like i knew something he didn't when the rain stopped.  he had torn jeans and an umbrella.

had piece pizza for lunch and a veggie burger, chips and salsa for dinner, complemented by goose island beer and some fudge that grandma bradney had sent.

listened to part of neil young's new album today.  the other intern begged me to stop.  said it was horrible.  frankly, it's not his best album by any means, but it isn't horrible either.  it's just a guy with his guitar, and i guess that's why i like it so much.  granted, it's a guy with his guitar in a very nice studio with a bunch of very nice gadgets to make it sound pretty, but it's still neil young playing his guitar and singing.  he's probably spent decades doing that.  serious musicians spend a lot more time playing than bystanders think.  hendrix used to take speed so he could stay up and play guitar more.  clapton learned how to play all the records in his house.  that doesn't come overnight.  it's a pretty deeply personal thing, and that's how le noise comes off to me.  it may not find its way into my regularly listened records, but it has its place in my music library.

i also listened to the beatles today, first time in 7 or 8 months, likely.  rubber soul.  it and help! are probably the two albums that i have listened to the most in my life, besides so far so good by bryan adams (it was the only cassette i owned for about three years).  i need to go through and listen to all of the beatles' discography.  it's been a really long time since i've listened to revolver or the white album all the way through.

oh yeah, the title.  mike and i looked up bill nye parody songs today.  this was one of the parody bands' names.

lazy or busy

i could make excuses all day for not writing on this blog.  here are a few of my favorites:

• it's mold awareness month.  i was being aware of mold.
• i was cast in a b-movie zombie flick.  zombies don't use the internet.
• the coriolis effect

the truth of it is, i mostly forgot.  lots of interesting events occurred.  big bro got hitched, i got a second internship with eventric, i mixed a song that alien orders had recorded in practice, i finished In Cold Blood, and the cashier at the local jewel-osco shorted me five stickers for my free cookware scorecard.  hussy.

i'm going to try to be better about it, honest.

saw a fellow jma intern's band at schuba's tonight.  they were called carbon tigers, and were a very technically proficient band, which made me all the more proud to be an un-technically proficient musician. i'm not saying that what they did was bad by any means (it really wasn't bad.  they had very skillful compositions), i'm just glad that my bands have always been on the "pure energy" side of the music spectrum and not on the "intricate detail" side.  i get to jump around and yell more that way.

jeff and jill and i had dinner.  i had a vegan burrito.  jeff, if you read this, thanks again.

i'm starting two projects tonight.  first, i'm mixing a second song from the alien orders practice.  this one is called "day terrors", and is shaping up to probably be one of two songs that we play under 120 bpm (for non-concert band nerds, that's about the tempo of "getting better" by the beatles).  i'm also starting a biography of winston churchill called Churchill: A Life (creative title, right?) by martin gilbert.  apparently this 1000+ page book was expanded upon later in gilbert's career, with him advertising 14 books on Winston Churchill, ranging from 967 to 2165 pages long.  this guy has a serious hard-on for churchill.  i can't wait to read the book.

that's about it for now.  joey and i did a bit of work on some alien orders songs, rearranging them for two guitars + bass instead of one guitar + bass.  weezer on friday, alien orders practice on saturday and sunday.

oh, i also went on a serious neil young kick this weekend, as well as an iggy pop video kick.  can't beat iggy for his live show, and i probably listened to the live rust versions of "hey hey my my" and "my my hey hey" a dozen times each.  new thermals album is growing on me, but i doubt i'll end up liking it as much as their last three.