Obituary

I bought the new issue of Terroriser today. Obituary are on the cover. Man, Obituary! That takes me back! I say, smiling crookedly and rubbing my grizzled whiskers as I lean back in my rickety chair.
In 1989 their debut album Slowly We Rot came out and I bought it. What a great album. It sounded like the kind of music turbo zombies would make. I listened to that album over and over and never got sick of it. Another great thing about it, I was sure that if I played it to somebody else, (at least) 99.999% of them would absolutely HATE it. That was pretty cool. For sure, only if you were truly HARDCORE could you handle (much less enjoy) this kind of music, so it felt pretty damn great to know that I was one of these totally hardcore dudes. Ha ha! *head thrown back, mad egomaniacal laughter going on and on well into the night*
And the band photo, it was taken at night with a light behind them so you could only see their silhouettes. I noticed how goddam skinny they were. Hey, I was pretty damn skinny too! These turbo zombies were the same age as me, and they were skinny like me too, AND they made this totally EVIL music that I LOVED but just about everybody else HATED.
Anyway, with Obituary coming back it made me think about the *age thing*. You know, young dudes make fun of the oldies going along to see the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd or Yes or whoever, and I know I did too - those ponytail dudes, ha ha! But what's even funnier is, when Obituary come out here touring their new album and showing off their bigger stomachs, looking like that silhouette photo on the back of Slowly We Rot, only a fatter version, I'll go along to see them, and there will be some young dudes there who were making big steaming smelly piles in their nappy when I bought that first Obituary album, and they will look at me and say, Ha ha, look at that dude, he's pretty old, hey. Don't stay up too late Grampa!

Rare *Good Blog* Alert

Is it really so rare to find a good blog? It sure is. In fact, these days it's even rare to find an actual blog because most of the time, when you click on the next random blog button, what do you find but a horrible sleazy adblog. How I want to KILL THEM ALL! If only my hands were big enough! Boy do they make me cranky! (By the way, it must be about time for another Survey of Some Recent Blogs, what do you think?)
Anyway, as I was saying, it's really rare and wonderful to find a good blog but Holy Smokes today I found one - Just Another Blowhard. The guy who is responsible for it has good taste in books and movies. He writes good too, fun to read. And he likes John Waters - you know that anybody who likes John Waters is a good egg.

I Saw Her

It's been so long that I had begun to wonder if I would ever see her again. Maybe once a week I think about her. It's probably more than once a week. Anyway, this morning when I reached the corner of my street and turned, BAM! there she was, right in front of me, walking along with her head jammed in a book.
Suddenly there seemed to be rainbows blasting across the sky. I felt my heart surge up in my chest, almost bursting out from its ribcage prison with pure glad joy. Gee, how long had it been since I had seen her? It was way back in March. Six months ago.
Well, never mind. There she was again and nothing else mattered.
I fell in behind her, making sure not to walk at my usual speed. She walks pretty fast for a woman (in fact, all these walking women seem to walk pretty fast for women these days) but still not as fast as me. I had to stay behind her, or sort of behind her but to the side, or even more to the side but not quite. I had to find out what that book was she was reading.
This time though I made sure to pay more attention to her. What is it with my obsession about her? It must be more than that she likes to read a book as she walks to work. And is it really an obsession? If it really was, wouldn't I do what my friend The J Man suggested and follow her all the way to work and see if there was a Position Vacant sign in the window?
Well anyway, there I was making sure not to walk too fast, I had plenty of time to make some observations. For a start, she is shorter than I remembered, but only a little. That's OK. But the thing with that is that it's hard to get a look at the cover of the book she is reading. I would have to drop down right in front of her pretending my shoelace had come undone and sneak a look up. That would be too obvious. If it was another woman I could maybe do it, but not with her. The last thing I want to do is freak her out. But I came close enough to that today anyway.
This morning she was wearing a navy blue suit. It was a bit baggy, and seemed to be at least one size too big for her. She was also wearing sneakers. Her hair was shoulder length and brown, with the sides swept round to the back and tied up so they fell joined down the middle of the back of her head, over the top of the other hair that grew naturally from the back of her head. I imagined that to a million other people she would appear to be a quite average looking woman, only distinguished by the possibly wacky way she walks fast down the street with a book jammed in her face. Yet to me she is utterly captivating and enchanting. God, how wonderful and singular she is!
We were already at Taylor's Square and I still hadn't managed to learn what her book was, so I decided to make a strategic move. Surging past her and well ahead, I reached a bus stop and went inside and sat down. The back of it was glass so I could see through as she walked past. She zoomed past and I didn't manage to catch the book title or author. Blazes! Foiled!
I scrambled out of there and quickly caught up with her again. It seemed to be vitally important that I find out what book she was reading. Was it another historical romance? Good grief but the suspense was at a high pitch!
Three blocks later and I was still in the dark, so to speak, and the point where our paths would tragically diverge was coming up fast. I knew I had to try another manoevre so once more I accelerated ahead and found a seat, some newly installed *street furniture*. I sat down and pretended to be looking through my backpack for something. For a second it occurred to me that she might see me and wonder what the hell I was about, but I quickly understood that she was far too engrossed in her book to notice much going on around her. But again she came up as I frantically tried to focus on the wobbling book cover. Again it eluded me! Cruel!
At last we got up near Hyde Park. That was it, the end of the line. She was going through it; I was going along the edge of it forty five degrees in the wrong direction. The pedestrian light was red. We all stopped. There was a desperation in me then. I realised I should just go on up and ask her. It was so simple, really. Really simple and straightforward. Anybody could it, you would think. I could pretend to be a robot. Just go and say, Excuse me but would you mind telling me what book that is you are reading? But then of course my brain started revolting, sabotaging such simple logic. Of course, it was too simple. Ha ha! Yes. She would freak out. That could really happen. What business was it of mine? And if I left my mirror sunglasses on she would think I was a fiend or some kind of creep; if I took them off she would be horrified and repulsed by my bloodshot eyes, for they were surely still so. Or it would be a Danielle Steele book and I would not be able to suppress a mad giggle or some look of horrified alarm. Either way, if I went ahead and asked her I would ruin everything, that's for sure.
The light turned green and we all walked across the road. Then I kept watching her as she disappeared among the trees.
God, how long would it be this time before I saw her again?

War on Dancing Kids

Thanks to The J Man for this - a report of a rave party in Utah busted up by what appears to be the US Army. Big soldiers carrying high-powered weapons kicking little rave girls on the ground. Wow. Really tough. You army guys sure are big and strong. But going after dancing kids? What about the War on Terror? You guys seems to be a little off track here. You've gone wacky. These are dancing kids for Pete's sake. What's the big idea? Why did you do that? What threat could dancing kids possibly pose to the security of the USA? Please tell me. This is confusing and seems highly illogical.

Do Something!

On Friday I went out for lunch as usual. Halfway there the pedestrian light was red and cars were zooming out of the street so I stopped with the other people. They were kids heading up to the accounting and law buildings. There was nothing unusual about the day at all. But then I heard a man shout something incomprehensible over to my left. There was a man over there near the trees. I didn't hear what he shouted but the next second I saw him bring something up to his mouth. He made a musical toot on it, a short up and down scale. It was a harmonica! The university kids looked at him and quickly looked away, trying to ignore him. I couldn't turn my eyes away from him, neither could I prevent a big smile growing up across my face.
Then he shouted, "Do something! Do something for your country!" then tooted again on his harmonica. He was ducking in and out of the trees. It was great. The university kids didn't think so. They continued to stubbornly focus their eyes directly ahead.
I kept looking at him, then gave him a thumbs-up. He instantly gave a thumbs-up back. It was great. I felt happy that there were such people running around with their harmonicas and bold exhortations.
The pedestrian light turned green, the cars stopped zooming in front of us, and I got a fast headstart quickly taking the lead in front of the boring university robots.

Morning Puzzle

This morning I woke up. Then I tried to figure out where the sound was coming from. There was a sound in my ears and I figured it must be coming from somewhere nearby. Yes by gum I was on the right track - it seemed to be coming from the clock radio. Looking over in that direction all I could see was some green blurry lines. That was the clock. The green lines were the time but they were blurry. A man was talking. Yes I could hear a man saying things, and he was in the radio. The clock radio with the green blurry lines. There had to be some way to silence the talking man, and at the back of my mind the idea came to me that I had done it before, successfully. It was confusing though. Really. There were buttons, I knew that. And there was some kind of sliding button that made things tricky. In my groggy state, my brain was struggling to make sense of the situation. It was a puzzle alright. Goddam. A real tricky one. The man was still talking. How could I go back to sleep with the man talking loud in my earholes like that? Well, I couldn't, no sir. There had to be some way to manipulate the buttons to make him stop. Phew! Did this happen every morning? I couldn't remember. Everything was a big blur. I blinked my eyes and rolled over. The green blur came closer and the man got louder. Ah! That seemed to trigger some spark of comprehension. Yes! There was a long button at the front of the infernal machine. If you managed to hit that button, the man stopped talking. In slow motion, like a big turtle, I reached over and aimed my hand at the button. The man stopped talking. Thank God Almighty! There was perfect silence. I went back to sleep.
I went back to sleep for nine minutes before the man started talking loudly again. My stupid dumb idiotic clock radio has a snooze function that lasts nine minutes. Why nine minutes and not ten? Why? Why is that? Why the heckity-heck?

The Author

Here is a photo of me in the middle of coming up with an idea for something to write in my blog. If you had x-ray vision, you would see that my brain cells are on fire. The vigorous intellectual life. The life of the mind. Ideas surging like the sea. It's a blessing and a curse.