My hometown

Earlier this week while procrastinating in front of my computer at work, I discovered that there was a Wikipedia article about my hometown. The final sentences of the "Demographics" portion of the article are my favorite: "Many Danvillians just sit around collecting checks from the government, and not doing much of anything. It's been all downhill since 1865."

Update 4/16/06: It's gone now. Ah, Wikipedia, such a warzone of opinion.

Dammit

Damn you to hell, cactus dick man!

Working for the man

I hate my job. No surprise there, many of us hate our jobs, but most bloggers don't have jobs where they have to crawl around inaccessible areas and move tons of boxes of dusty garbage no one wants to buy from one part of a warehouse to another. (God, did anyone really think that all this King Kong merchandise would sell?) And I'm an office worker. Oh, and did I mention that I'm third shift this week, so I get to do all the above at 3:30 AM.

Last night I checked my work email and my boss left me the following cryptic message:

There is no easy to move the inventory the process sometime seems length but the end result will come together. Follow the protocol move the items into location and make the Inventory moves accordingly. Please make sure that all inventories are moved. You guys are doing a good job we must stay on top of high movers you are able to make the moves if you guys stay focused.

Yes, this bizarre missive was written by the person who tells me what to do. Those thousands of dollars of my own money I spent on tuition was well spent I must say.

Milestone or millstone?

Earlier today I passed the 50,000 hits mark. Sady, there's no prize for the person who was the 50,000th visitor to this blog. I'd be more excited by reaching this milestone if the majority of my traffic over the past two or three months weren't jackasses finding that stupid picture of cactus dick man while doing an innocuous image search.

The endless slog of existence

I haven't been able to work up enough enthusiasm to do any posting here recently.

And I had a birthday yesterday, so I'm not too happy about being all old and everything.

Also, I was informed yesterday that I would have to work third shift all next week.

So bite me.

RIP, Buck

Continuing my recent Hee-Haw-related posts, I just read that Buck Owens died today.

Eeph aaph

I've mentioned before about how on Saturday nights we'd watch Hee-Haw when I was little. Eventually I quit watching this show and started listening to proper music like DEVO that better spoke to my special needs, but I digress. Back to Hee-Haw, dammit.

They had a guy on Hee-Haw named Jimmy Riddle (which is also, oddly enough, cockney rhyming slang for pissing) who basically made a career of going "Eeph-aaph! Eeph-aaph!" in various permutations. Very retarded, but sort of entertaining. Anyway, NPR did a piece on him and the "the Lost Art of Eephing". In the article, eephing is described as, "the hillbilly equivalent of the hip-hop human 'beat box'."

I'd forgotten completely about Riddle until a couple of months ago I was watching TV early one morning and caught an infomercial for Hee-Haw DVD's and saw him having an eephing fit of some sort.

The only reason I'm even doing this post on eephing at all is to encourage everyone to go read the NPR piece and listen to some of the sound clips they have. "Little Eefin' Annie" may be familiar to some of you and it's so seriously messed up that it's worth listening to, but I really want you to hear the demented "'Eephunky' Remix". There's also a "eephing tutorial" recorded by Riddle himself.

The other one

Here's the other drawing of the bald, pipe-smoking crossdresser from the weird 19th century we never get to hear about.

Oh, my aching brain

No, I haven't died or been dragged off by giant frogs to mate horribly with their giant frog females to bring about a horrible mutant race of frogmen, I've just been diligently working at my job. And by diligently I mean involuntarily. Dang, I hate my job. Anyway, on to the blog-post.

My sister's recent post on vintage graffiti she found in a book reminds me of some strange drawings I found years ago in an ancient Bible I bought at a thrift store. The Bible was printed in 1864 and has a handwritten inscription dated 1869, but the most interesting thing about this book are drawings of bald women in hoop skirts smoking pipes.

These drawings are the types of things that may cause a concerned teacher to ask, "Is everything OK at home?" Or maybe the teacher would just drag the kid in front of the class and savagely paddle his/her ass with a freshly cut pine board. They had to cut this kind of nonsense out early or it could lead to even worse things like self-pollution or even dancing.

Maybe grandma strolled around with no wig on and smoked a pipe. Hell, maybe dad strolled around in a dress. These types of scenarios never turn up in those sappy, sentimental made for TV movies about American life in the 1800's.

I like how the arms are straight out as if the bald, hoop-skirt wearing, pipe-smoker were sleepwalking. Imagine coming upon that on your way to the outhouse at three o'clock in the morning.

This took way too much time to write

A meme-type thing cribbed from the one and only Leptard-type thing.

Pick ten bands and answer questions about them afterwards.

1. Television
2. New York Dolls
3. Wilco
4. Velvet Underground
5. Led Zeppelin
6. Black Flag
7. Sonic Youth
8. Yardbirds
9. XTC
10. Dead Kennedys

What was the first song you ever heard by 6?
Rise Above

What is your favorite album of 8?
Oddly, it isn't Roger the Engineer, but Cumular Limit, a hodgepodge of live tracks, demos, outtakes, and rough mixes from the Jimmy Page era. There's also a neato black and white video included of them playing live circa 1967 on a German TV show called Beat Beat Beat (or something like that).

What is your favourite lyric that 5 has sung?
Zeppelin wasn't exactly known for their lyrics, but I'd have to pick Dazed and Confused which, oddly enough Jimmy Page basically ripped off during the Yardbirds era from a guy named Jake Holmes, but Zeppelin changed the lyrics. Also, on the Yardbirds album above there's an earlier live version of this song with different lyrics than the Zeppelin version. Confused yet? How about dazed?

How many times have you seen 4 live?
None. They basically stopped being relevant when I was one year old after Lou Reed left to go solo. Yes, I could've seen them during their sad reunion tour opening for U2 in some goddamn stadium, but that wouldn't have been enjoyable at all I don't think.

What's your favorite song of 7?
Hey Joni probably.

What is a good memory you have considering the music of 10?
My sister coming home from visiting some college with a friend and their family and bringing home a French import copy of In God We Trust, Inc. It was vinyl (this was 1984) and neither of us had ever seen a 12 inch 45 rpm record before so we just assumed that it would played at 33 1/3 rpm. So we ended listening to it, and totally loving it, at the wrong damn speed for a week probably. We'd play it two or three times a day. But what did we know, we were just a couple of stupid redneck kids listening to BIG CITY PUNK RAWK! Plus everything on the label was in French. Anyway, eventually one of us said, "Hey, maybe this isn't on the right speed."

Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad?
Yes, all of them. Or most of them. Except for a few tunes, Wilco isn't exactly a peppy, happy bunch, which is probably why they appeal to me so much.

What is your favourite lyric that 2 has sung?
It's hard to beat Jet Boy:

Jet Boys fly
Jet Boys gone
Jet Boy stole my baby

Actually, now that I think about it, Frankenstein has better lyrics:

Is it a crime, is it a crime
For you to fall in love in with Frankenstein
Wrong, could it be wrong
Baby, don't you want a friend
Well, Frankenstein, oh, Frankenstein, Frankenstein
You're gonna get it, you're gonna get it
You're gonna get it, from Frankenstein

What is your favorite song by 9?
Probably Senses Working Overtime, but it's just too hard to chose just one XTC tune.

How did you get in to 3?
I was watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien to see a Winona Ryder interview and Wilco, who I'd only vaguely heard of, was the musical guest. They did How to Fight the Loneliness which I really liked, so I got a copy of Summerteeth. For some reason the album didn't strike me as that interesting and for two or three years all I'd ever play was How to Fight the Loneliness. Eventually, because I kept reading stuff about them, I got the CD out and started playing it. For awhile there I played everyday.

What was the first song you heard by 1?
I don't know. For some reason I think it may have been See No Evil.

What is your favourite song by 4?
Heroin, maybe. Or perhaps Some Kinda Love

What is a good memory you have concerning 2?
Nothing comes to mind, except discoving how catchy Jet Boy is.

Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad?
No. Not even Still I'm Sad. Well, maybe some of the studio versions of stuff from the Jimmy Page era makes me sad because it's so inanely produced. It's a shame they didn't have management and producers during that period to capture the loud-ass brutality of their live stuff and BBC session material done during the same time.

What is your favourite album of 5?
The first one.

What is your favourite lyric that 3 has sung?
Either Poor Places or Handshake Drugs.

What is your favourite song of 6?
Again I'll chose Rise Above. Or maybe their debut single, Nervous Breakdown.

Two dreams

In the first dream I found myself in the middle of a protest that was about to become a riot and I, naturally, wanted to take some pictures of what was going on rather than actually take part. I didn't have a camera, but I did, for some odd reason, have a can of spray paint. So I started taking pictures by holding the spray paint can up to my eye and pressing the spray top thingy. The paint spraying out at what I aimed at was somehow recording images. It seemed so logical at the time. But I do remember leaving so I could hurry home and get a real camera.

The second dream kind of infuriates me because I remember so little of it. I was reading a novel by Paul Auster and somehow simultaneously watching a movie version of the same book. Auster's my favorite living writer and this dream novel and movie was almost exactly like one of his strange, convoluted novels. Of course I remembered virtually none of what happened after I woke up.

Krapp's last chance

In an act of desparation, I sent an email to James Knowlson, author of an aclaimed Samuel Beckett biography and founder of the Beckett International Foundation, asking if he knew of any recordings of Beckett's voice. Much to my surprise, he wrote back the next day. There's a recording of Beckett reading his story, "Lessness," but you can only listen to it (not copy it) at the above foundation, which is in Reading, UK. He also said there were some other recordings, but they're in private hands. So, basically, there's recordings, but I either can't hear them or I'd have to travel all the way to England to hear them.

That can't be all there is, can it?

File under, Bad Company Names

Saturday I was filling up the Buick with overpriced gas and saw a truck drive up with PMS painted on the doors. Apparently it stood for something like Piedmont Machine Systems, but you'd think they would know that people are going to think of something else entirely when they see those three letters.

And, no, a woman wasn't driving.