The post in which everyone realizes what an idiot I truly am

I haven’t spoken about this yet but there has been something really making me completely crazy for several months now. It has been gathering steam and has now really come to a head in the last couple weeks.

See, I have been smoking the same brand of cigarettes for about 30 years now. They’re called Export A medium. Technically, I actually used to smoke the mild but they stopped making those... Anyway, these are very particular cigarettes. Made in Canada of a higher quality tobacco than, and with about 50% less weird chemicals than American. They are also significantly shorter than American cigarettes. No other tobacco product tastes like them.

The problem is that I can’t really afford them anymore. I noticed them just going up and up a few months ago. So I, with much trepidation, started checking out some roll your own tobaccos. I opted to try American Spirit Perique. It is all fancy and shit and comes in a cool black packet. Technically a blend, the perique part is a tobacco usually used in pipe tobacco blends. It is grown just on one plantation in North Carolina. So yeah, it’s all cool and hipscale I guess. In the long run it’s ok. But it tastes nothing like my smokes. It has gone stale in it’s pouch in my drawer and I kept on buying mine.

Suddenly the carton price went up ten dollars from the manufacturer. Let me put this in perspective - sixty eight dollars for two hundred cigarettes means thirty-four cents a piece. And people give me attitude for snarling at panhandlers asking for a smoke?! That's basically a buck every three cigarettes. I have been determinedly tooling around town, buying out every store that still has the old price for about two weeks now. Well, I have now officially emptied the town of all the old Exports. Today I reluctantly called the best tobacconist in town, Maison Edward, and asked them for a recommendation for loose tobacco. They suggested I might like “Peter Stokkeby Danish” whatever the fuck that was.

And that is how I found myself today, at my usual tobacconists, buying all the necessary accouterments to roll my own. The shortest rolling machine they sell, a bag of the shortest filters, three packs of zig-zag whites, and a can of this “Peter Stokkeby” muck. When I got to the checkout I just started crying. It was like I was going through that painful, disentangling, part of a disintegrating relationship. This is where the “I can just see everybody calling me an idiot” part comes in.

Well universe, just pardon the fuck out of me for loving what I love. What I love is good tobacco. More than drugs, more than booze, probably more than sex and chocolate both. Obviously quite possibly more than life itself. Because I really don’t care if tobacco kills me. Of course it actually won’t, because I am, of course, the special exception to that statistical norm. But if it did I am ok with that, well, the death part, not so much the part just prior to that.

Remember how I said earlier this fall about pieces of my identity falling away and I wasn’t handling it so well? Well this is sure feeling like another. Similar to, but less intense than a few years ago, when the cat I had lived with since I was eighteen died. The sense of loss is palpable. This is something I have known my entire adult life. And I can probably expect no support at all in this as most people, when suggesting that I quit smoking, have no understanding that I have been smoking since conception and that from over here that feels very much like a suggestion like “why don’t you just stop eating?” And don’t even tell me the government is doing all this for my own good. (The taxes part of the equation that is.) We all know that they don’t actually want me to quit cuz then I wouldn’t be paying the taxes they drool for would I? Nor would I die as early making their SSI system more efficient.

So that’s it , I am officially in mourning for my best friend and stupid “brand”. I am totally branded, commodified and I'm having a chee-Z American entitlement pissy, hissy fit about it. Yup I'm just a jerk.

AM earworms

And today is a whole different phenomena where I sit up for a few minutes, the brain starts gearing up, and something triggers “ I Woke Up This Morning (and you were on my mind)” Later to be triggered again into “Walking Through The Sleepy City” - The Rolling Stones and then “ I Saw Her Again Last Night”. A completely different phenomena from essentially “waking up singing”, yet with the same long term results.

AM earworms

It Ain’t Easy - David Bowie

I am still left wondering where some of them come from and why they are just plopped there the minute I open my eyes. Many are easily traceable. They are jingles or real music being used as jingles recently. Or I heard it on the radio a few days ago.
Or someone mentioned something nearby it which led in a chain of thought to it. Occasionally I know I was singing it in my dream. Although, how does that work? The choosing of the soundtrack for my dream. I’d sure like to know that as well. Anyway, when I can only think of that yes, I was talking very generally about different Bowie almost a week ago, but when something then just presents in this way it is just odd.
I get the whole repetitive part, the true worm of the earworm. That’s a function of OCD among other things, but this question of origins, it’s really kicking my ass.

“Well all the people have got their problems that ain't nothing new
With the help of the good lord we can all pull on through
We can all pull on through get there in the end
Sometimes it’ll take you right up and sometimes down again”

A meme about stuff I actually care about

The 15 (really 16) albums that blew up my world, in the order of doing so, and why

1) The Court Of The Crimson King - King Crimson

I have told this story so many times it’s become almost apocryphal by now. But, when my brother brought this home and put it on when I had just turned six, my life was literally saved by rock’n’ roll. I would have been one of those kids who had had a “tragic accident” or something because I was so, fucking, out of here. But Fripp told me that I just had to wait patiently and when I got old enough I would find a different reality and it would be good. And he was mostly right.

2) Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd. - The Monkees

Let’s just get this straight. I am, un-apologetically, a fiend for a well crafted pop song. And The Monkees had the best writers in the business. Boyce & Hart, Carole King, Nillsson, Neil Diamond, Don Kirschner and more, and Michael Nesmith turned out pretty good as well. The Monkees just ruled me in childhood popland.

3) Paranoid - Black Sabbath

The first 45 I ever went out and bought with my own money was Iron Man b/w Electric Funeral. I freaking loved Electric Funeral when I was like 10. Then when I heard War Pigs and Planet Caravan - oh man, that was just some really, really, good shit. Of course, just to balance that out I will confess that in that same outing I also bought Dancing Machine by The Jackson Five and Werewolf by Five Man Electrical Band.

3 - again cuz it’s a tie) Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy - The Who

So it was a best of. So what? It was either this or Tommy that had to be included and while I listened to Tommy incessantly down in my brothers room with the earphones on from 1970 to 1972 and then again for all of 1976, I think this one had far more far reaching influence on my whole life. These are, with the exception of The Seeker and Pinball Wizard consistently my favourite Who songs.

4) Love It To Death - Alice Cooper

This was the first album I ever bought with my own money. It was at a garage sale. I remember just seeing those crazy eyes, having no idea what it was at all, and being mesmerized into buying it. Then I took it home and listened to it. Oh my freaking god it was the coolest thing EVER! To this day I will kick the shit out out of anybody at karaoke by doing “Is It My Body”

5) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars - David Bowie

I was at the Earthworks “meet and greet new recruits” party at the Boehnkes house in the summer of 1977. I was wrecked on weed, morning glory seeds, some kind of low budget sweet alcohol and visions of becoming, finally, one of the really, truly, cool kids. Pete Grobner put this on the stereo. My glam self was born in that moment. T-Rex came a little later, Bowie was my ambassador and probably still is. Again, most of my favourite Bowie songs except “Eight Line Poem” are here.

6) Freakout - Frank Zappa

More Earthworks revelatory experiences. I had heard some Zappa, but I think it was mostly Overnite Sensation. While I was appropriately 12 year old titillated by Dirty Love I never “got” Zappa till Josh Ezekiel played the whole “Freakout” album for me at music appreciation class. I think I learned it by heart in a week. We used to sit stoned in the middle of the diag singing “Who Are the Brain Police?” and “You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m here” almost everyday. It was some sort of protest I suppose. I wish I could jump into someone’s brain (who had one) who saw that and retrieve their memory impression of it. That was some really serious backwards trippingness. I think we did it at Briarwood once as well and were escorted off premises by security.

7) Horses - Patti Smith

Dec 26, 1977. Julia got this one, the eponymous “Runaways”, and Rod Stewarts “Tonights The Night” for X-mas. Rod Stewart lasted a week. Horses and Cherry Bomb lasted forever. That was when we really knew once and for all we were going to make great art out of being bad, bad, really bad, girls.

8) One Nation Under A Groove - Parliament Funkadelic

What can one say about their first conscious experience of George Clinton? I immediately promised to funk the whole funk, becoming a lifelong funkateer. Early exposure to Mojo helped I’m sure. The nazi-like punks I was hanging out with had the horrors. To this day I believe it’s their loss.

9) Germ Fee Adolescent - X-Ray Spex

This album excuses any weirdnesses Poly Styrene later came out with and keeps her one of my musical heros forever and ever, world without end. What an inspiration to my 15 year girl self this was. I could and would do anything I chose.

10) The Clash - The Clash

Truly humorous punk with “pop sensibilties”? Be still my beating heart. I was just never so angry that I didn’t want to laugh a lot as well and this was fun, fun, fun, and smart.

11) Sunrise On The Sufferbus - Fela Anikulapo Kuti

I love this guy. Another one of those “I remember exactly where I was when I first heard that” moments. “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” In Gab Ugwu’s dingy aptartment above the Guild House ministries offices. Probably ‘78 or ‘79. “Who is this??!! What is this??!!” O, it’s Soca... I want more.

12) A Saucerful Of Secrets - Pink Floyd
The epitome of my brain on drugs. But I hated “Corporal Clegg” passionately because I was always too high to remember to drag myself up from laying on the floor and flip the album before that jarring, non-conducive, awful part came on. I finally wised up and taped it w/out it. It took a while to think of that. By the time ripping and burning became available I’d stopped doing acid. You kids don’t know how good you have it.

13) Rain Dogs - Tom Waits
Was in a pile of albums left behind by one of the ever revolving lineup of roommates. If you are out there anywhere Steve Curl, bless you a thousand times. I now love a whole lot of Tom Waits a whole lot. But this one is ever so close to my heart because it was my first and it is just so fucking good.

14) Another Green World - Brian Eno

Something about the line “I’ll come running to tie your shoe” brought me back a little piece of my lost innocence at a time when I really needed it. If I am ever on a rampage just put this album on and I’ll stop being The Hulk immediately.

15) Swingin’ with Django - Django Reinhardt

Somehow along the way, I was the victim of one of those weird misinformation, brain shorts that can happen when pieces of disparate information come in around the same time and get fused in the memory banks. Consequently I was always under the impression that Django Reinhardt was somehow in the same category as or affiliated with Wavy Gravy. I was having none of that so I never explored that avenue any further even though I had heard various people being excited about him at various points in time.
Fast forward to summer of 2000 and move me to London. I am standing in the Borders in front of the amazing discount racks of cd’s they had at the time. There is a disc called “Swingin’ with Django” and the cover has a 1930’s B&W photo on it that doesn’t seem like hippie shite at all. With the exchange rate it comes out to about $6.50 so I picked it up. Took it back to the flat, noone else around so I crank it up. It’s all pretty dang good and then comes on Bolero De Django. Total mind fuck. Turn it up and play it again. I am all hot and cold. Apparently I am not too old and jaded to have a piece of music blow up my world.

Not to be confused with the other pieces frequently listed under Django and Bolero. This IS the one covered by The Dave Grisman Quintet except that their version sucks balls. Accept no substitutes for the Django at the Hot Club version.

You fellas prolly just won’t give a damn about this one.

I’ve changed my hair for the first time in over twenty years. Yup. Since 1988 I’ve just been letting it grow, on it’s own, all naturally. Then occasionally hacking off a couple inches from the bottom myself. I sort of just didn’t care any more for cuts and styles after the several years of several insane do’s in the eighties. The most notorious of which was probably the horse’s mane. This was - head shaved up to each side to the crown, leaving about a 5 inch strip of foot long hair which was then dyed in black and red stripes, across not down. Perfectly hideous. Probably one of the ugliest things I could have come up with. But I was feeling pretty ugly there in 1987, probably one of the worst years of my life, that and 1986.

Suddenly I decided I wanted change. But change I could live with. Something easy and low maintenance. Something that covered up the miles of pallid forehead that I was hating in pictures. But I was frightened Auntie Em.
I went yesterday and got bangs cut in despite all that fear. And guess what? Bangs are kicky. Bangs are cute. Bangs are just what the doctor ordered. I would totally post a photobooth picture if that wasn’t going to give away the secret identity.
The only thing is, now I think I will actually need to purchase a piece of equipment and that just really goes against my nature. I think I am going to have to have a curling iron. If I was able to avoid that scene in the seventies getting one now seems REALLY odd. I think that is just the price I am going to have to pay.
Pray for me that I don’t manage to burn the house down.

Second earworm of the day

Upon waking from a rather uncomfortable, unanticipated, three hour, nap.
Sick Things - Alice Cooper

AM earworms

Frenchette - David Johanson
Loud and clear, both at 6 am and again at 7:30. Must be very important.

“I can’t get the love I want
or I need
so let’s just dance”

AM earworms

Istanbul - The They Might Be Giants version of course.
Easily explained, I’m reading “From Russia With Love”.

Am earworms

A strange medley of Punchinella, Barbarella, Exodus and the Jonny Quest incidental music.
Which is weird, but far superior to the incessant song phrase “I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride, and I’m wanted, dead or alive” which has been absolutely torturing me for days and days now. And to make it worse, because it is SUCH a decroded piece of crap, I only know that tiny bit. I don’t want to know more about it (Oliver seems to think it’s Whitesnake) so I dasn’t look it up in any way, but I am then stuck with the one phrase repeating over, and over, and over, and over, and over. So bring on the movie and cartoon theme and incidental music because otherwise I may have to finally kill myself. Didn’t they speculate that Schuman jumped in the river because (among other things) he had a constant E playing in his ear?

10 pontifications meme

1) Ladies, I have to tell you that you are not helping the cause when I see you in disproportionate numbers doing really stupid crap while driving. Especially when most of you I see doing these things are on cell phones. But the guy who honked aggressively at the car in front of him for making a right turn takes the freaking jerk cake.

2) All relationships end one way or the other. So if you are in a stupid or bad one just get out already. Yes it is true that we frequently give up too easily, acting like furtive transients. But it is equally true that some horrific christian ethos about sex and marriage poison lives by socially guilting people into “trying to work it out” because it’s somehow “owed” to some evanescent artificial moral construct.
If you are calling each other names, cursing each other, feeling actual hatred, either fix it or quit it already.

3) Why would you swim in the ocean? You might as well walk into the forest, bush or rain forest naked and weapon-less. There is almost no coastline on this continent where there are not sharks. And, they say that sharks are coming inland in rivers as well. Bull sharks in the warm areas and Greenland sharks in the Saint Lawrence Seaway. A great white was killing people in a river in Matawan Jersey in the early 1900’s. And that’s just sharks.

4) Are you over 18? Then stop bitching, whining and blaming your parents. Most of them did the best they could or they would have done better. Most of them were both fucked up and fabulous. Talk about the one percenters, that is like the people who had awesome parents. Also in a fairly small percentage are people who have completely fucked parents. I know some of those people, and you neurotics who writhe at the idea of taking personal responsibility have no idea how bad those people actually had it and you are actually wrongfully encroaching on their justified pain.

5) What is it with alcohol? What a cheap, lousy drug to waste that much time on. Talk about your opiate of the masses. Even the highest quality of it is worse than actual good drugs. Some alcohol is fine. I enjoy the occasional getting stupid session myself. But God, give it a rest sometimes. Do you need really need it at the level you are using it? And stop giving me the ol’ fisheye when you’re drunk (a lot) and I’m not.

6) And while we’re on the subject, when we were kids we were foolishly trying to become more sophisticated not more lowest common denominator. Whatever happened to the days of drinking potato vodka, chartreuse and smoking gauloises’. Trying to be artistes. Now it’s PBR, chewing tobacco and beer pong. Trying to be extreme cage fighters. We were trying to extract the cracker not roll in it like breading. Although I have to admit that a cracker breading is perfect for fried oysters, but that’s about it.

7) We don’t buy the “miracle of birth” trip. When every living thing does it, It seems more miraculous to be able to avoid it.

8) I am also not buying the idea that no two snowflakes are ever alike. I could believe that no two humans, other than identical twins, are alike. You are dealing with zillions of permutations of DNA. It is seemingly possible to get no matches. But if you think of how many times it has snowed on this planet since the beginning of time, then of how many snowflakes are in a single snowstorm and the fact that we are dealing with crystalline structures which have some basic parameters and also potentially identical or similar weather conditions many, many, many times, why wouldn’t there easily be identical flakes?

9) I don’t want to hear about how you are too cool for TV. What is that about? I totally get the philosophy of limiting and controlling your children's exposure to it. I heartily approve of that. But if you are making a big point of announcing that you don’t “do” TV because you are too sophisticated then you are trying to prove something that isn’t likely to be true. I can’t help but notice that many of of my friends who are extra loud about this are people who, if you turn on a TV around them, get completely mesmerized. They can’t look away or hear the other conversations going on at the same time.

10) I hate the expression once a (blank - insert pejorative name calling) always a (blank). This is so prevalent and it is completely false. Change is one thing we have proven humans absolutely can do. But apparently people do have a really hard time with ambiguity. They should just learn to live with it.

New wave earworms

I Know What Boys Want - The Waitresses
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist - Gang of Four

And I was dreaming of putting on stockings, garters and heels. That hasn’t been reality for at least 15 years.... 2 steps forward 6 steps back 6 steps back

Good Morning Viet Nam

I was having an interesting dream, that I was trying to cross an elevated spillway while being subtly menaced by an ordinary looking yet mystical crow. This was somehow an off shoot of having coached many character building vague field games for odd, multiplying, packs of ragged urchins which caused me to find the magic packet of paperwork that would resolve all issues if only I would stop losing it again.
Suddenly Patsy Cline requested that I stop the world and let her off. This seemed incongruous and rather loud. Mainly because it was actually happening.
Apparently, the mighty, the clever, the very handsome, recklessly agile and ever curious Jetson had managed to: turn on the computer, bring up itunes, select the Patsy playlist and then hit play.
This seemed so very astute of him that I did not at that time apply the spray bottle as I knew in my heart that I would need that impact when a few minutes later he rejoined the task of destroying my jewelry boxes that he had left half done earlier.