Alright kids: you know the deal. There being both a Tumblr 7 and a Facebook 25, I was torn between the two, and wound up with 23 things before I got sick of it. Insofar as such things as "tagging", I'm not going to bother here, but I absolutely want to hear about every single one of you: I’d say most of us don’t know much of anything about the majority of our internet friends. So, to the recycling!

...and, as always, Actual Content Forthcoming.

1. When I was in high school, I'd routinely hop a bus to downtown Bethesda, walk to the Barnes & Noble, and steal tapes, or CDs, or batteries, or cigarette lighters, and so forth; I stole a lot in general. Even the wallet I use now was stolen from a Wilson's Leather in Portland, Oregon while on a high school debate trip. Logistically (not ethically), it's a fair bit easier than you might think.

2. I have a somewhat ruthless cheap streak I've inherited from my folks. If I'm running out of gum, I'll wait until I'm at Target so I can get it as cheaply as possible, fully aware that, on average, I'm only saving about 27¢ per pack.

3. Once when I was little, I sat on a wasp (which then stung me). I wailed and wailed, and remember my mom chasing it with a pillow and thwacking it to pieces. Recently, when I told her about the memory, she stared at me in surprise: as it turns out, I was only 18 months old when it happened. At least it's no mystery why I'm disproportionately afraid of stingy bugs for my gender.

4. One of my gravest failings is my inability to work consistently, but what little exposure to the mental health industry I've had has chilled me with its breeziness: these drugs, for better or worse, completely fuck with people's heads, and I got prescribed some after a 5-minute conversation. In a superficial sense, the meds helped, but they only treated symptoms, and really only in a brute-force sort of way.

However, without some kind of chemical safety net, be it just stupefying doses of caffeine, I can't even keep down a job: my brain doesn’t start humming until the small hours of the morning, and I haven’t found a night-owl friendly career with much existential fulfillment. As hard as teaching can be, when I applied to schools, my greatest anxiety was not getting up in time to get to work. So far so good, but it’s been no small effort.

5. Since my parents learned British English before coming to the States, I grew up spelling some words with the British "u", as in "colour" or “favourite”. I'm only just now letting that little quirk go, and even then, only sometimes.

6. I didn't stop wearing sweatpants until maybe 8th grade, I didn't stop getting food on my clothes every day until maybe 10th, and I didn't shave my mosstache until 12th. There isn't a doubt in my mind that I'm a significantly more considered person for having spent so long being so achingly awkward, but don't try telling that to 13-year-old me. I suspect most folks from high school would barely recognize present-day-me, but that’s probably a fairly vain suspicion.

7. I've been a vegetarian since Thanksgiving 2000, though I'd been off and on since early high school. For all the logical and economic justifications behind my choice, I just felt that eating dead animals was icky. I refrained from all meat until May 2006, when a deep-freezer got left open and a bunch of meat accidentally thawed. It forced me to question whether letting good, non-factory farmed meat go to waste for the sake of some notion of "purity" was indeed a sound ethical choice. 2 cock-stiffeningly delicious salmon patties later, I concluded it wasn't. I still keep vegetarian, but am less dogmatic (and more reasonably freegan) about it.

8. If my parents' stories are to be believed, I knew my alphabet by 10 months, and was reading the newspaper aloud by 2 years at dinner parties. It seems farfetched, but recently I saw a home movie of me at 18 months counting to twenty and reciting the planets in order. Honestly, it’s a little chilling, mostly because it seemed rote and spiritless.

9. I'm absolutely obsessive about shaving, and spend over a half-hour shaving whenever I finally summon the nerve do it. I shave myself raw and bleeding pretty reliably; I know it's stupid. I know I could stop after 10, or even 15 minutes and have it look just as close. I just can’t tolerate it being any other way.

10. I wrote my thesis in a week, I've stocked an entire juice aisle in under an hour, and I've taken my Honda Accord wagon to at least 110 mph, but perhaps the hardest thing I've ever achieved was ending my first relationship with good grace and optimism.

11. I learned half again as much from the 4 years spent after college as I did while I was there. Granted, practical knowledge and academic knowledge aren’t meaningfully comparable, but learning how the hell to come up with rent is inestimably more useful than 19th-century European History.

12. For all the weird-ass bleepy-bloppy bands for sad shut-ins that I cherish, maybe the most important song I've come to love in the past decade is Britney Spears' "Toxic", if only because it helped rid me of a great deal of pretense.

13. When I was in high school, I had an elaborate system of luck-inspiring rituals, including but not limited to lucky underwear for each class and specific bands I listened to before tests. Good luck also involved dragonclaw pendants holding glass marbles of different colors: maybe the most D&D piece of jewelry known to man, short of D20 earrings.

14. Shortly after my 19th birthday, I was pulled off a plane in Santa Barbara and questioned by between 4 and 6 government agencies before Keith & Anne came to the airport and rescued me. As it turns out I have a No-Fly Name: the government has been looking for a fellow who shares 2 of my 3 names (not in order) and my birthday. I wonder if they’ve found him yet.

For what it’s worth, I got a candid “In This Post 9-11 World” apology from the TSA dude, who was part Moroccan, and told me his own story of being pulled over and questioned when crossing the Canadian border. Naturally, my folks thought I was going to mouth off to the government agents (which sort of happened) and get shipped off to Guantánamo Bay (which would have taken some effort). Ask me to tell you the whole story some time.

15. I haven't paid for a haircut since immediately after graduation, 2005: Rachel's been cutting it the whole time. She didn't know she could do it either. Tangentially, my students think I’ve gotten a haircut every Monday. Dudes: it’s just hat hair. I’m not pulling a Legally Blonde on purpose.

16. I maintain that I was a pioneer of the wi-fi laptop-poop. I make this assertion without a trace of shame.

17. Since finding the interwhats, I’ve had 2 blogger blogs, a LiveJournal, a Wordpress blog, a Twitter account, a Flickr account, and have posted to several music review sites. I’m not that easy to find, though: there’s tons of Google Noise from another Aziz A. Khan, who happens to be the Pakistani ambassador to India and Afghanistan. As you can imagine, he’s in the news a fair bit.

18. While I say I have perfect pitch, it actually amounts to a very, very long-term pitch memory: I hear some tones more unambiguously than others, and can fill in the blanks with relative pitch. However, nothing rings as clearly as Eb: for whatever reason, I can pick it out quite easily without any external comparison. My clearest reference tone is the beginning to “I Just Wanna Get Along” by The Breeders, which points out a G#. The electric hum of the DC Metro is nearly a C#. The 60-cycle buzz of most electrical devices is not quite a B, but sharp for a Bb. And so forth.

19.  …I should probably just hide in a cave with a pallet of Shredded Spoonfuls and a Mr. Coffee and not come out until I’ve written a book, composed an album, or run out of food.

20. My first Big Four were The Beatles, U2, Radiohead, and The Pixies. I can’t honestly say I have a favorite band anymore, but they taught me the most about what it meant to love a band to the point of consuming their music whole, reading their history, and delighting in their Completion.

21. I’m obsessed with pens, and have always carried around my favourite few in whatever man-purse I’ve sported at the time. Along those lines, a pen from me is a token of love, like some kind of weird, tribal gift that is intensely meaningful to the giver, but incomprehensible to the recipient. My current pen of choice is a Pentel Slicci, and if you’re in Japan (or on the internet, or both), you know how awesome they are.

22. It is embarrassing how much I love (and miss) playing music with my friends. Being in bands is the most thrilling thing I know that doesn’t strongly prescribe disrobing. I enjoy it too much not to do it, and am constantly thinking about playing music as a background mental task. As soon as I’ve got this teaching thing down, I’m gonna be in somebody’s basement, raising a gorgeous racket.

23. I am the luckiest person I know in actual, literal terms. I work at a fantastic school that hired me without any prior teaching experience, I live in a fantastic apartment in one of the world’s most amazing cities, I can afford most things I might need, and I’m dating a girl more wonderful than I knew a person could be. My tribulations are largely weightless and my joys innumerable.

…but I still obsess over those whom I’ve lost and things I’ve failed to do, even though I absolutely know better. I am a perfectionist, and I am fearful, and I do not bear my mistakes well.

But I’m learning.

...I got a job as a teacher :)

This fall, I'll be teaching Physics, Astronomy, and Chemistry at St. Ann's school in Brooklyn Heights. (Woah!) To my discredit, I found out in April, but have been shameful about writing about it here.

In the luckiest stroke I've had in a long while, I found a school that doesn't mind that I don't have any prior classroom experience. It’s an odd, progressive school that gives qualitative evaluations, rather than numerical grades and doesn’t standardize its curricula. The freedoms the school affords its teachers relative to a more traditional academic environment are at once thrilling and terrifying, triply so to a first-year teacher. Fundamentally, I know I’m gonna make no shortage of mistakes: a galling reality. I’m to learn from them, I know, but I've never done well with constructive failure, so to speak; anxiety abounds.

But for now, I can take comfort in knowing that the school is full of charming kids, and has been terrifically welcoming: they want me there.

Very Telling Moment: for years, I've left the personal quirk that I have perfect pitch on my résumé in the vain hope that someone, somewhere would pick up on it and think “hey, that’s pretty neat.” The very first time anyone’s ever brought it up was when St. Ann’s Dean of Faculty pointed it out during my first interview with the school. Within 5 minutes, we were talking about Queen. It was easily the best interview of my life.

Oh man. This fall, I'll be a Teacher.

...Brooklyn. Brooklyn?

As of March, Rachel and I have bid farewell to the sleepy Northeast and its bounties of snow, stagnation, and solitude. Our present apartment lies in southeast Crown Heights, perched at the southern edge of a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood and surrounded by the predominantly Caribbean population of the area. Rachel is routinely the only (non-Hasidic) white person on the subway by the time we get to our stop. Me, well, I'm spoken for. All in all, it's an interesting place. Not welcoming, but not hostile, and the bagel place stays open 'till 5 pm.

The apartment situation, however, threw us a moderate curve. We took on a sublet with the understanding that in a month's time, the current residents would move on, the current lease would expire, and we'd sign a new one and hunt for our own new batch of roommates. The apartment is spacious, and decorating it and filling it with friends was an exciting prospect indeed.

...as it is, miscommunication abounded, nobody else left, and we're in an apartment that feels like a dorm. The living environment is functional, but not much better: sparse interaction, reluctantly shared flatware, separate milks. Financial exchanges haven't yet taken place, but I imagine they'll incur very slight resentments that won't be discussed. But: social breakthroughs come in small, daily exchanges. For every ten awkward non-greetings, there's a lengthy, clumsy-but-earnest conversation. Sociability, at least to some degree, is inevitable.

However, for every quiet evening, a screaming fight cuts through the cheap construction from upstairs, often around 6 am. The problem: at the point where a family (of sorts) is screaming at each other at all hours, there's not much priority placed on being good neighbours. The building is a nakedly flimsy thing. Sound bounces about freely, and the mice have free run of the place through the uncommonly-hollow walls. Thankfully, they seem to just pass through, and don't eat our food or poop on too much of the countertop. So it goes.

The revised plan, then: live as cheaply as possible for the time being, and hunt for a new place when we have a better idea of where our full-time jobs will take us. I'm scheming to be a high school teacher in a more concrete way than I've schemed about anything since graduating. I think it a course of action well-suited to me; most folks seem to agree. In spite of not much résumé-friendly prior experience (save tutoring), I've got a couple of interviews in coming the coming days. Refreshing fact: sometime between nervous high school days and now, I started interviewing well.

...not that I couldn't use the good luck.

So! If you're in the neighborhood etc etc. Space is tight, but there's always room.

Love!

Geekout Post-script: I got a black MacBook last October (my first Apple) and it is lovely :)

Social networky post-post-script: still twittering, often hilariously. It's a good idea of the day-to-day, if transparency is what you're after.

(Written after Halloween 2007, lost in a desktop shuffle, and found again)

**** ****

Next year, remind me that I should never, ever fail to dress up for Halloween. Lame, lame, lame.

Part of the blame may lie with post-Freddie burnout: where to go from a costume that involved a week’s DIY tailoring and consummated a months-long obsession?

Beyond that, slim social pickings mean a constant baseline social inertia: when the bulk of your costumed company will be twelve, it’s hard to bother.

Last-minute costume ideas involved Sanjuro (from Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” among others) and Wolverine (in his cinematic, biker-cum-boutique finery rather than something regrettably cosplay), but those were last year's desperate, last-minute ideas; I didn’t bother with them because Wolverine and Sanjuro are awesome, and deserve commensurate costuming, not just duct tape, hair gel, and mismatched butter knives.

As it turns out, most of Manchester’s trick-o-treaters congregate in a single neighborhood in festival density. The neighborhood responds in turn by doing it up proper: houses are transformed, parents sport elaborate, youth-preserving getups, and the town generally goes big.

...or so I’m told. I went home.

Oh well. I know a town that doesn’t fuck around when it comes to Purim.

Hit the ground running, loves: our ghosts are hot on our heels.

Happy New Year, all. If you're reading this, odds are good I'd be all about you saying hello.

Love!

...and on Friday, the sixteenth of November, the skies did show their mottled underbellies of grey, and it did snow.

It took about 12 hours to dismantle the Ikea furniture, sweep up, split a rushed Domino’s pizza, and cram the contents of the apartment into Rachel’s Kia Rio (quite tiny) and a borrowed Ford Windstar (fucking huge).

Driving a full-to-the-brim minivan, by the by, is like piloting a pregnant rocket cow, for obvious reasons.

Moving presents a set of circumstances at odds with itself. Taking stock of all one’s possessions necessarily inspires reflection and stirs up memories. It’s the sort of thing that warrants a full weekend’s worth of turning things over, laughing quietly, and starting letters to old friends if so emboldened.

Instead, we had to grab everything as quickly as possible, stuff it into boxes and bags, and hope nothing essential broke in transit (just a shelf. Oops). By the last of the packing, Rachel and I were running loads out to the cars at a vicious clip and furiously scooping odds and ends into grocery bags, all while snuffling and gritting our teeth at the gravity of it all as our footsteps reverberated around the bare walls.

...I shudder to think at all the proper good-byes I failed to say, of all the friends I didn’t mean to leave behind. For all of my griping about D.C., it was very kind to us in most ways (excepting climatologically).

So, with A Night At The Opera playing in both of our cars, the cat wild-eyed, clinging to the back of Rachel’s seat, and the van’s contents shifting ominously behind me, we bade farewell to our lovely Takoma Park apartment and hit the highway at about 11 p.m.

At around 7 a.m., with the stomp-clap of “Give Peace A Chance” rattling the lampshade by my head and the summer sunrise spilling over an impossible green expanse, we rolled into Manchester Center, our temporary refuge against the disapproving scowl of the job market.

...not to spoil the ending, but we've remained a bit past the summer, though the specific details will have to wait.

And so, another briefish overview of Vermont. The colonists who named it had a nose for the perspicuous, I think: quite simply, there are rolling green hills pretty much across its entire expanse. It is foremost relentlessly gorgeous, and the gubernatorial powers that be are well-aware: local businesses are aggressively supported, and the state is rightfully leery of development. Towns are small and separated by miles of farmland, local dairies' products show up alongside name brands in supermarkets, and Farmer’s Markets are well-trafficked, delicious affairs.

Vermont’s main export, hands down, is quaintness. Its main import is actually New York ex-pats and  falltime leafers, leading to a nauseating density of Yankees bumper stickers on enormous SUVs during prime foliage weekends. The present weeks are a welcome reprieve between leaf season and skiing season, though a fair number of New Yorkers either have seasonal property or have simply relocated wholesale while maintaining The City's particular brand of charmlessness.

Pastoral beauty and small-town charm, while a delight, are not without consequence: strictly speaking, there isn't a hospital in town, and everything shuts down by 9 p.m. Manchester nightlife is restricted to either short strolls (country highways are an ideal place to be a victim of vehicular manslaughter) or evenings wondering if "The Office" is on (oddly, it always seems to be).

So, once again with the broad brush: stunning, but dull, and ill-suited to an extended stay from youthful twentysomethings with aspirations to drink deeply of the world that they will eventually save.

Say hi. I've missed you.

...and every PJ Harvey fan winces. News, and revisions to old news:

In spite of the authoritative map of yesterpost, at this point Burlington is more or less off the table. It's charming as hell, to be sure (the view over Lake Champlain was impossibly gorgeous), but it doesn't offer a lot in the meaningful employment or proximity to loved ones departments.
 
Honestly, if I succumbed to the notion that I'm not capable enough for a real job, I might have moved there and just dashed myself to bits trying to crack the music industry. I did, however, land a gig writing for Soundcheck Magazine (the website is a half-formed, misleading thing: it is first and foremost an honest-to-glossy print magazine) thanks to one Caitlin Caven. It's not at all a meaningful source of income, but were the simple pleasure of writing about music not enough, the exposure is a currency unto itself.

In other musicy news, I soundtracked a short promo clip for ic! berlin eyeglasses, though we'll see if anything comes of that. I thought it woefully inadequate when I finished it, but find it downright okay upon revisitation; so it goes with most things I do.

As it is, I'll still be in Vermont for the summer, though not beyond that: the two of us will be sending forth a modest torrent of cover letters and résumés and reading about various cities in the far-fetched hope that one can glean the experience of living somewhere from a couple of books and the internet. Summer income will come from peculiarly lucrative odd jobs, I expect: Manchester is a quiet haven for old money and vacationing New Yorkers who don't mind the drive.

So! Come visit: Vermont is nothing if not beautiful, and the house(!) we're renting for the summer has no shortage of free space. The middle of nowhere, as it turns out, won't charge you that much for a roof over your head. Not quite sure how much free time we'll have, but I'd be surprised if we were too busy for a road trip or two (if either of our cars can take it). Writing is also heartily encouraged, and odds are good I'll have the time and inspiration to reply. Let me know if you want the address.

Where to, then, after the summer? Likely Chicago, though it's far from a done deal. If something choice turns up in Boston or New York, we may just stay on the Eastern Seaboard. As much as I love everyone in Philly (so, so, so much), it's a definite second or third choice as a place to call home. While the West Coast still calls, I can't quite answer it just yet, though Portland rests at the tip of everyone's tongue, it seems, as a lovely city to live.

Along the lines of responsible employment, I'm applying to more peripherally academic science jobs, though there's almost nothing in Physics that academia doesn't take care of in-house; the majority of lab jobs I've found are either biomedical research or industrial chemical synthesis. While I'm nothing if not mired in reluctance and inaction, my avoiding such positions seems a more trustworthy leeriness than the usual baseline inertia.

I'm fervently hoping this is the last of my post-collegiate inactivity. Anything you guys might be sitting on in the way of advice, leads, or general encouragement would be most welcome indeed. Awkward high-fives and demeaning ass-pats are less desirable, but also accepted.

****

Yeah. Done.

Today was my final scheduled day at Trader Joe's. Strictly speaking, I'm still on the payroll, and can still come in and pick up shifts if need be, but my time remains mine. Finally, to all the tasks great and minute I'd not had the presence to do for months, and to all the people I've missed. But first: to share my news, and to listen to Lazer Guided Melodies, start to finish, in the dark, time be damned.

...oh man, I have nothing but days off. My every meaningful tomorrow is a DAY OFF. God, is that sweet.

Not that I'm without a guiding imperative: these weeks bring change, as they seem to every year: the girl and I are again looking for a new city to call home, and may likely settle on (and in) Burlington, Vermont. Pluses include natural splendor beyond most of what the East Coast can offer, favourable climes (both political and literal), and being out of Washington, D.C.. Drawbacks include a high degree of geographical isolation and a less-than-robust job market for an aspiring academe.

Hopefully the man passed away knowing he was nothing shy of a living legend, one whose mark had already been made. Frankly, the literary world is full of brilliant authors: in a realm where density is king, Kurt Vonnegut's writing is at once accessible and genius, plainspoken and sweeping. The beating heart of the man is there, transparent, and necessary.

...if I could, I would buy everyone I know a copy of Welcome To The Monkey House. I read it for the first time in huge gulps followed by silent periods of contemplative awe. I paced myself little better the second time through.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

Okay. When I say "I want to be Brian May," I don't mean that I want my consciousness to inhabit his being. Rather, I mean that his incredible talents and expertise align quite well with my interests and passions.

...all the same, though, I want to be Brian May.

...oh, and I finally finished that Mindless Self Indulgence concert review from last July.

Music: Stereo MCs - Get Connected. Thanks for the Shuffle, Jeshua!

I'm joining the growing number of folks twittering, I think. The format imposes brevity on entries, keeping them ruthlessly functional, though hopefully not banal. That makes two blogger blogs (both basically inactive), a WordPress music blog, this LiveJournal, and now this new means of excessive personal discourse and opinion dispensing.

Interesting, interesting.

Oh, and I should thank everyone for making turning twenty-three quite so wonderful: my birthday was simple but full. I actually conked out early on account of having gotten up at a semi-reasonable hour to have lunch with the fam, then snag coffee with Ram before his return to Pittsburgh. Sorry to those in California whose calls I missed (yes, all of both calls: sorry!). In general, most of it was spent basking, grinning, and (over)eating.

Music: A pair of recently acquired Kraftwerk albums (Tour De France and Autobahn). Nothing, nothing, nothing feeds your inner robot like Kraftwerk.

And with Christmas coming a mere 11 days after Thanksgiving, 2006 has earned itself the title of Fastest Year On Record, clocking in at a scorching 5 months, 2 days, 9 hours, 51 minutes, and 28 seconds.

However, as these things go, it was a pretty wonderful year. A while ago, in my self-indulgent way, I remarked that I'd need a perfect year to get over the last one (2005); I certainly couldn't ask for any better than this one. Naturally, leaving Philly was a little rough, and it's always sad to see friends scatter and fade, but living on my own with the greatest of good twins (within driving distance of most of the people I love, no less) has been the simplest, least stressful thing I've done in a decade.

Tomorrow: a belated Christmas morning! Yes, there will be trans-fatty biscuits and warm (Oregon) chai. Yes, there are gift-wrapped gifts underneath a plastic tree, next to a night light in the shape of a fireplace. And yeah, I can't wait to wake up for the first time in ages.

To everyone: never be afraid to say hi. I'm also terribly sorry if I didn't say anything for any of your Birthdays. Know that you're in my thoughts and warmest wishes quite a bit more frequently than you might imagine.

Thank you all so, so much. May 2007 be your finest year yet :)

Music: Aside from the aforementioned Lennon, Queen's "Somebody To Love."

...alright. Drexel's is due by January 1st. I've written a thesis in a week. I ought to be able to do this.

...right?

I'll tell you how I've been when I've the time to write about it to my satisfaction (short answer: rather well).

I miss you. A lot. In many cases, acutely.

Music: Mama Cass - Dream A Little Dream Of Me.

...at least in a categorical sense.

Fire. Standing waves. Oscilloscopes. Physics-professor hair. And Brubeck!

The contraption is called a Ruben's Tube. Essentially, it's a dramatic way of visualizing wave amplitudes within a somewhat one-dimensional environment, and neatly underscores the fact that sound really is just air moving in an interesting way.

Glory!

Or: an open letter to Ram Subramanian.

Dude. You kill me. Twice a month or so, you've got some new song on your blog that's little more than you banging away on some not-quite-in-tune acoustic guitar and singing as best you can without overloading the shit-ass microphone you've probably unearthed from some old copy of DragonSpeak. Your lyrics blog absolutely breaks my heart, both in content and in unsung quantity of perfectly cromulent work. The whole experience makes me want to pack up, apply for another transfer, and move into your apartment, working at the soon-to-open Trader Joe's in Pittsburgh by day and giving shape to your songs with you by night (or, likelier, the other way 'round) and not leaving town 'till you've got another proper album to your name (given that, remarkably enough, you've already got an EP and an LP as it is).

...I sent you a scan of a notepad in 12th grade that had some manner of scrawling on it. (It's that alt-pop song skeleton in Bb I've remembered for years, having forgotten all else.) You reeled at the crude invented notation: "...it's like musical cuneiform." The point is that pathetic scanned notepad from 12th grade is basically a third of the number of songs I've committed to paper (maybe a song and a half, in sum), and that's (almost) okay: you're writing most of the songs that I haven't been able to.

Thank you. Some day, I hope to give you a hand.

Music: The Girls - Problems. The one where you're singing with balls. Incidentally, that's your finest vocal work.

...'cause it's just another one of Those Nights, another shitstain on your Friends page. There's nothing novel about it. If you asked me to explain, I might have enough in me for a mumbled "same old bullshit." No, this is stale and revoltingly familiar, rancid on the shelf. This should have been thrown out long ago.

Clinical lucidity: between four to eight nights in a given month (or so), I am again confronted with the sickening disparity between What Is and What Should Be, the years of inertia, and the inexcusableness of it all, and wish to Cease. I don't even shake anymore, in lieu of a more meaningful somatic release of this lingering anxiety. Just sorta...withdraw.

Charmless self-awareness: I have no real reason to write this. The public externalization only wears on everyone's patience. By now, you're sick of holding my hand, of dragging me along, of speaking my virtues, of having your love seem to do so little; if you aren't yet, you will be if this keeps up much longer. It's typically a haze by morning, anywhoo: flop out of bed, a bleary-eyed tripleshot, into the shower, a dash to my car, and another day at work dreading the kind words (or unkind words, or dead silence...really, you can't win) that come with a post like this.

Even the advice is a sickening song. Regiment your life, yes, I wish it came easier. See a shrink, God, absolutely. Quit smoking, well, that goes without saying. I don't do anything, and it kills me. I don't for a moment feel unlucky, unfairly downtrodden, or entitled. This cowardice is, however, an undeniable reality, no matter how pathetic or circumstantially meritless it may be.

No, this is a deeper rut than I can climb out of alone. Stop my heart, or shake me Awake; either way, I'm going to need more than what I've got at hand to get out this time around.

...this is still sort of an improvement on last year, though, I think.

In continuation of our proud tradition of only seeing bands that refrain from taking themselves seriously, Rachel and I lost our respective voices at Saturday night's Electric Six concert at the Black Cat, drafting Ames (who then called Shannon) into coming out at the last minute.

Highlights include a nonsensical, politically outraged monologue (pleasing interlude?) before "Rock And Roll Evacuation," pulling a kid onstage (who had been clamouring for "Synthesizer" all night) to apologize for not being able to play "Synthesizer" (as "Dance Commander" already had dibs as their encore), and our high degree of proximity to the band (about twenty feet, I'd say).

Complaints include the omission of better, older songs in favor of less distinctive newer material (no trace of "I'm The Bomb," for one), some eyebrow-raising sad-sack dancing on Dick Valentine's part, and a complete failure to properly herald any guitar solos (again, a gross Valentine oversight).

Consider the above a teaser for a forthcoming musicblog entry, though I make no assurances as to whether or not I'll finish it in a timely fashion.

A brief life-update: still working at the Trader Joe's in Silver Spring (over 40 hours a week most weeks, so come and visit), haven't yet finalized a list of grad schools (suggestions welcome!), and generally doing quite decently. Personally, as spooky-fast as time passes, I can't wait for the crisp chill of fall to finally settle in.

...oh man, I can't wait for SNOW.

...I miss you all and love you and hope you're in good health and spirits...

Music: Spiritualized - Angel Sigh / Sway / 200 Bars. It'd been a long while since I listened to Lazer Guided Melodies...at the moment, I'm in the middle of a soaring wash of synthchoir, sound-on-sound shimmer-guitar, and Kate Radley counting to one hundred...

So, while culling the herd and making space for the slew of new music I've grabbed recently, I happen across this half-hour audio clip of Ram and I in my parents' basement last year...we're playing guitar and singing together and cracking wise and enjoying ourselves as best as we know how: pure, noisy, gleeful rockouts.

Ram, I should apologize: I'm clumsy and sausage-fingered and not a very good guitarist at all (though I've gotten better since). I consistently screw up the cello outro on "Like A Forest," I drown out your simple, clean tone with my echoey din, and I botch the chords AND words to "Strange Currencies" so badly so as to make me clap my hands to my mouth (the nadir's around 20:15). The Participlings deserve better. Next time, I'll do a much better job of playing guitar, though with any luck I'll find that gorgeous sheet of feedback again if we ever try to play "Sweetness Follows" down the line.

Obviously enough, the quality of our performance isn't the point at all: the recording documents one of the finest nights I can recall, and the absolute greatest way to spend time with you after having not seen you for literally years.

The closing exchange, through paralyzing giggling:

Z: I want you to say something incriminating on MP3 recorder.
R: I killed Kennedy.
Z: That was excellent.

The night sky was crystalline as we drove home.

...Perfect. Just Perfect.

...Happy Birthday, man. I love you. Thank you.

Wish the other one a Happy Birthday too, would you? I imagine she'd be pleased to hear from you.

Music: Cocteau Twins' Heaven Or Las Vegas. Y'know, I shouldn't have listened to her. Her dad's got it right: this band is amazing.

If you ever need to recall the sustaining, profound joy of childlike fixation, order something you REALLY WANT in the mail, then obsessively track its progress across the country.

...In related news, my new headphones (another pair of PX-100s) are ON MY EARS RIGHT NOW, and I am blissed out. I missed headphones SO MUCH.

Enheartening: Friday night, Rachel and I arrive at a Mayorga Cafe in Silver Spring (one of the area's free wi-fi hotspots) just as an adorable folk duo are packing up their modest rig into their jeep (we didn't actually hear them play at all). So, expressing our apologies at arriving too late to hear them, we offered to help them get their stuff together and into their car (the days of driving into and out of Philly with an amp, two guitars, and two processing ensembles being fresh in my mind).

We chat while we shuffle down the steps in turns; I'm told a story about how one of their mothers gave up a potential career as a concert pianist at the age of 16 to follow medicine, then, after her husband's passing, picked up piano again (and harp for good measure) at the age of 84 (!). As of now, she's 89, and still at it.

The point: it's never to late to play, to give vent to a bone-deep need to make music, indeed, to rock out. Important to take such lessons to heart, given the recent shelving of JDS9 (for entirely reasonable logistical reasons, and not the torrid, personality-driven sort).

A new processor came within a week of the decision; I've yet to give it a proper name, but I don't doubt that when the time comes to again make a beautiful, mighty, neighbor-alienating din, it will have one.

Music: Mouse On Mars' Rost Pocks, a collection of their early EPs that I got from Claire. Thanks Clairey!!