This morning I woke up and it was overcast outside. The first time in a long while I don’t remember waking up to the sun. Not only that, it was cool outside. I stepped out into the morning and smelled Fall on the air. I know it’s premature, but it got me so excited for the coming of my favorite season. I could almost smell Halloween night, and I was pumped.
With the Taiwan trip coming up fast this Friday, I’m in a furious rush to get various things done and squared before I leave. This activity burst led to me having a day of unprecedented productivity yesterday. I mowed the lawn and had some more mulch and decomposed-granite delivered, all on my lunch hour. Dropped my new slacks off to be hemmed, and filled some prescriptions so I won’t die from my obscure disease while overseas. It was the kind of day I love, where I’m driven harder each time I tick something off the “to do” list, feeling more accomplished with each one. The kind of day where, when I lay down in bed at night, I feel productive.
Speaking of my various outings today: When I took my regular-man’s pants to be hemmed and magically transformed into tall-fat-man-with-ridiculously-short-legs pants, I was giving instructions to the woman behind the counter. “Both the black and khaki pair need two inches off the bottom, the navy-blue pair needs three.” “Oh,” said the woman, “I better not call them ‘khaki,’ the woman who does the alterations is Korean and might not know what that word means. I’ll call them ‘beige.'” OK, I’m thinking, why not get kindergarten on her ass and just call them “brown?” I mean, just how English-deficient is the Korean seamstress? Will she be able to interpret the “two inches” part or do we need to draw a picture or send a piece of string or something?
The other day, I was surfing around reading up on death metal. I don’t know why, I’m certainly not a fan of death metal or anything – but I am slightly fascinated with the devotion people have to an “art form” which to me sounds like pure shite. I mean, some of the website music samples for the “best” black/death/grindcore bands are hilarious. And then there’s the complete seriousness with which websites review these albums. I mean we’re talking about what are, on average, two-minute “compositions” comprised of rapid-fire bassdrum pounding, heavily distorted guitar crunching, and some dude puking into a microphone for lyrics. I mean seriously, you gotta read some of these reviews. They make absolutely no sense. In a review of Massacara’s album “Enjoy the Violence,” the reviewer pens the following gibberish:
Feral vocals slash across pounding rhythm carrying direct motifs of revolving riffs which in inversion or recombination transfer the listener through Wagnerian visual illustration in sound: shaping harmonic space in collage of juxtapositions to demonstrate change, allowing basic poetic ideas to expand into song structure conveying not catharsis but logical realization within a context where catharsis is an event of listener decision.
What the hell?! Did he even say anything? If you didn’t notice, that’s one sentence. And I’m not entirely sure, but I think there may have been a comparison drawn between the classical composer Wagner and this band Massacara. Really, there’s page upon page filled with these reviews, and I’m starting to think not a single one of them says a damn thing. Check it:
From this modal playing framing atonal song development is a dying Baroque gasp given ferocity by the gutter logicianship of death metal in a rising force of logic within the decaying realm, a negative truth within a larger existential conception which can never be reconciled with the forces of Judeo-Christian morality; its expression (cause and effect as self-inventing forms of calculation and change) brings to mind the ancients alongside the more recent philosophical efforts in Nietzsche and Heidegger to replace morality with a primal, natural valuation of a constantly changing aesthetic landscape with unaltering core values, as seen is the modern time.
Oh. My. Word. What the eff is this dude talking about?! Is there a thought buried in that mess? Again, that’s one sentence. Guys, the “songs” on these albums have titles like “Vomited Anal Tract,” “Orgiastic Disembowelment,” and “Feast On Dismembered Carnage,” and I’m seeing references to Nietzsche and Wagner? Are these people serious? I mean, that’s a whole dictionary’s worth of words and I swear they said nothing. Somebody boil it down for me, gimme a bulleted list or something. Crap, it’s too hilarious.
OK, well, I’m outta here. I’ve gotta take care of some spots of crabgrass I noticed while mowing yesterday. I mean, what is this stuff, magic? I mowed a week ago and there wasn’t a dang sign of it, it was nonexistent. Now, a mere week later, it’s snaking around in at least six different outcroppings. Personally, I think a jealous neighbor may have thrown some clippings in my yard or something. No worries, I’ll take that shit out – for good.
Dave out.
