I understand that I have in the past proclaimed records to be the best of all time, but really, Dag Nasty Field Day IS the one. It's a major part of my musical foundation. It's on the turntable right now. Lovey. I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

Ok, only to be tied by Jane's Addiction Ritual De Lo Habitual, which may have a slight lead...

So my friend Jason who lives in Champaign-Urbana just told me that last night he was really drunk and accidentally joined a heavy metal band. The drummer hit on him and the singer looks like Keith Richards. Don't be concerned though, because they have have a logo. It's whiskey bottle remaniscent. Jason is also going to be a father in 3-5 days. Double-fucking-whammy. Good times. I'm going to be a monkey's uncle. Only because Jason looks like Grape Ape.

A Loose Outline of My Day

I. Woke up at 4am after a long night of drinking to go open the store.
A. Lightly sleep on the bus until the Racine stop.
B. Walk the rest of the way cursing SB and the ungodly hour.
II. Dealt with caffeine addicts until noon.
A. Purchased and Italian Beef from a place near work that I've been
eyeing for sometime now.
B. Inhaled sandwich on lunch break.
III. Caught the Brown Line headed downtown to attend a meeting at SBHQ.
A. Fought the urge to walk out of said meeeting for three hours.
IV. Stopped off at my old store at State & Ohio to say hi to some of the peeps up in
there.
A. Contemplated going across the street to get chicken strips and tater babies
just like old times.
B. Fought the urge as it would have hampered beer drinking planned for
this evening.
1. I agreed to meet up with some friends for kareoke tonight. I've never
kareoked before. Ever. I'm not even sure that I'll be able to.
2. Although, I DO have the perfect cabana-wear-Ben-
Stiller's-father-big-collared-60's-leisure-suit-jacket for the occasion.
3. If I do end up going, I hope they have the teeny tiny skinny little
microphones with the cord. That'll go great with all that polyester.

I'm actually feeling a bit too tired to go out. I'd almost rather catch up on sleep, but then again I don't work tomorrow. I think I'll take a nap and then decide.
Yeah. I wonder how that'll play out...

Freedom.
Guess what happened to me today.
Time to tighten up the belt a little.

I find that not having a snack machine or food source of any kind in your workplace to be a minor tragedy. Minor in relation to issues on the whole, major to my tum tum. I do have some coffee but it's really just steering my attention in the direction of coffee & a cigarette, coffee & a donut, or coffee & an Italian beef with jardinera from the dirty little food place near my house. arg. They have the IBs, gyros, pizza puffs, etc. If it's probably bad for you, they have it. For cheap. Really good. Back to tracking stuff on the FedEx site. I've been glued to eBay lately. I've purchased some really cool cases for the kit. They'll be in today and I can't wait. Just in time* too. Tomorrow we're going into WLUW to record live to tape for the Radio One show. It airs on Thanksgiving day at 6:30pm if you'd like to check it out. There will be an interview as well, so you can hear us run our yappers.

* Just-In-Time should be the title of Justin Timberlake's next record.

If you've ever played in a band and had really enjoyed it, you cannot tell me that VH1's Bands Reunited doesn't tug on the heart strings when a whole band reunites after nearly twenty years and rehashes the old days while getting ready to rock out together for one last show. The friendships and emotions involved are just as if not more important as the music they've created. They just look so happy. That makes me happy just watching it. Goodbye to you.

What the hell is going on today? I've been plagued by the well known in my world 'If The Morning Doesn't Run Smoothly, Then There Goes My Entire Day' scenario. It happens to be consistently intertwined with The Law Of Minor Disasters Domino Effect, which by the way is absolutely unavoidable regardless of the degree of proactivity once the first 'domino' has fallen, obviously. The third customer of the day at SB more or less walked over to the first domino and kicked the fucker over, got his 17 coffees, and walked out the door leaving approximately 30 people in line behind him beaming eyes of 'what is taking so long?' at the TWO of us. Not the four we're supposed to have on a Friday morning. As expected, my morning has followed TLOMDDE. The preceding information clearly states why I'm sitting here in the office, 15 minutes late, with dead batteries in my walkman, a sesame bagel and cream cheese with no knife, my cigarettes, cell phone, pants and jacket soaked with the other half of my now cold cup of coffee, and a right hand that looks like I wiped a squirrel's ass with it on the way over here. It's a narrow streak of espresso that a rapper/gangsta type dude on the train kindly pointed out and then giggled to his buddy about while consistently grabbing his balls, no less.

Seriously.
It's definitely going to be a 12-pack night.

Right now there is a show on the Bravo channel called Manhunt. I've never heard of it until now and I almost turned the channel right after The West Wing was over, but I'm kinda glad I didn't. Turns out that Manhunt is like a reality show version of Zoolander. Way too funny.

I had the perfect idea for a vacation just a few minutes ago. I wanted to go to the UK and see Slint play Feb. 25th-27th, but it's sold out. That would have been a great trip. Now I need to think of something else...

even on my day off i still woke up at 4am. the mental alarm clock. evil.
i'm doing the morning coffee ritual while listening to some records and preparing a 'to do' list. it would be really nice to be ahead of the game for this coming week. seems like i've been running around and getting things done so inefficiently that it was stressing me out. so, i figure if i can knock out this list by early afternoon i'll have a less stressful week and then the rest of the afternoon to do whatever. i'm listening to The Firebird Suite-1996-1998 Archives CD and it's good. i used to have a couple Firebird songs burned that used a drum machine and was hoping they would be on this one, but they're not. there are a few on this CD that i think i originally heard with a drum machine but are backed by real drums. nice surprise, if i'm not hallucinating.
better get started on this list. the longer i sit here, the longer the list gets.

right now, my ass is getting kicked due to rock songs from Slint-Spiderland and Pavement-Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. guess what i've been doin'...

i gotta say, that is a perty nice haircut*...

where's my beer...

crap. i gave it away...

* whenever i listen to this song, for some reason i think of a Hanna-Barbera style cartoon snake with a really nice haircut cruising past the same damn barrel for a few minutes.

it is extremely disturbing for me to know that 51% of this nation re-elected a president responsible for killing more than 100,000 people under false pretenses. this place is fucked.

i couldn't have said it any better than this.

finally, i'm back here at the pad watching the election coverage. thanks to new hours at SB we're forced to stay until 9:45pm. seriously, we had 3 customers within the last 3.5 hours. unreal. although i did bring in a radio and listened to NPR the whole time. i'm floored at the fact that so many people are voting for Jackass. i really thought Kerry would have taken a decent sized lead early on. gotta stay up and watch while i enjoy a few more PBRs. gotta be back at SB at 5am.
un-fucking-real.

i'm at the office looking even more disheveled than usual. seeing as it is nearly impossible for me to get up earlier than needed, i took a 3 minute shower, threw on a baseball cap and the first things that i saw in the closet. so i've got these weird black pants and a ridiculous sweater jacket thing on because i had to run down to my polling place to vote before i got coffee and caught the train. get to the polls early. that's what they always say, don't they? i only waited for 10 minutes to vote. that great considering the 2 hour lines in NYC this morning. i've been trying to find somewhere online that is keeping track of the current counted votes. anyone know where i can find that? or if they've even started that yet? if ding-dong gets re-elected, i may have to seriously contemplate getting the hell out of dodge.

i was actually going to start out this entry with the words 'hot damn'. can you believe it. because i can't.

but the real reason i'm in here right now is to re-inform everyone that Bivouac is the greatest fucking record. And that Sheild Your Eyes is the aural incarnation of God.

Nope. Still working here. I can't remember ever wanting to be fired before. It's definately ...different. I guess I shouldn't bitch about it. It is extra cash, after all. Over the weekend I went to Urbana to do some chilling. I chilled.
Went to a few bars to prep for a Halloween party at one of the Absinthe Blind dudes house. My costume: a one-piece kids clown suit complete with fluffy things and crazy neck fluffy thing. It was really really small and really really fucking goofy looking. I think my beard complimented it nicely. Other great costumes I spied that night include Janet Jackson's boob, an almost exact replica of Johnny Depp's character in Fear and Loathing, some dude with his face ripped off, who Jason and I kept ripping on all night by saying things like, "Dude, I think you forgot something.","Hey now, why the no face?" and "Face it man, even though you fucked up, you still have to save some face." C'mon. Have a few beers and I swear it'll be funnier. Really.

Nope. Still working here. I can't remember ever wanting to be fired before. It's definately ...different. I guess I shouldn't bitch about it. It is extra cash, after all. Over the weekend I went to Urbana to do some chilling. I chilled.
Went to a few bars to prep for a Halloween party at one of the Absinthe Blind dudes house. My costume: a one-piece kids clown suit complete with fluffy things and crazy neck fluffy thing. It was really really small and really really fucking goofy looking. I think my beard complimented it nicely. Other great costumes I spied that night include Janet Jackson's boob, an almost exact replica of Johnny Depp's character in Fear and Loathing, some dude with his face ripped off, who Jason and I kept ripping on all night by saying things like, "Dude, I think you forgot something.","Hey now, why the no face?" and "Face it man, even though you fucked up, you still have to save some face." C'mon. Have a few beers and I swear it'll be funnier. Really.