Burning Down the House

When I was a teenager I set our house on fire. I did this by failing to extinguish a cigarette that I had secretly been smoking, which I threw behind the couch in a rarely used room. This was a big 70's era romper room couch, synthetic from armrest to armrest, filled with a white wiry fluff, which apparently burns well.

You'd expect that I would have made certain that the cigarette was out, and I remember taking pains that it was. I never smoked regularly, so twisting out the embers would have been no boring routine for me, but a matter of my total concentration and enjoyment. For whatever reason, it didn't work.

My mother and I were staying in the house alone. The next morning I was having strange dreams, and I knew I was uncomfortable, but it was nothing I cared to get out of bed to see about. My mother knocked on my door a few times and I told her to leave me alone, though I sensed something was strange. I had become acclimated to the smell, which was merely horrible, not intolerable. It was unnaturally warm. Eventually the situation dawned on me and I got out of bed.

The smoke wasn't really very thick, as I said, but it was a burning presence in the eyes and lungs. Of course I went right to the door of the room where I had been smoking, and stupidly opened it. Until this point there had been no visible flame, but inside the walls were blackened, and the door knob was red hot. Flames were crawling up the drywall and licking the ceiling; virtually every object in the room was ebon with soot. I saw all this in a fraction of an instant before the heat forced me to close the door, but it made a lasting impression.

From here I walked to the kitchen and opened a sliding door which led onto the back patio. I could stand outside and still use a little red phone that had been complementary with a Time magazine subscription. As I dialed 911 I heard the staccattic tapping of the phone echoing the numbers in imitation of a rotary dialer. When the operator answered I was seized by a sense of hilarity, at actually having to report what was happening. I told a very stern sounding person that my house was burning down. He answered immediately with the address of my house, I think expecting to rattle me, assuming I was a prank caller.

I don't remember what my mother was doing at this point, probably gathering photographs. She described later how difficult it was for her to force herself to wake up; both of us were clearly affected by some kind of oxygen deprivation. If she hadn't managed to wake herself, I certainly wouldn't have woken up myself, and we would have both suffocated, most likely.

Soon we were all outside, my mother and I, and our pet pig and rat terrier. Managing the pig was my chief occupation as the firemen poured in and out of our home, and she strove vigorously to go her own way, to explore what the neighborhood acorn trees were offering. Once loosed, she was impossible to direct, and would have to be led back inside by a densely spaced trail of cereal. If allowed to roam free she was capable of creating a fair amount of havoc, and the dog catcher would, with tremendous effort, eventually apprehend her. How an animal with such a profound sense of smell could have remained unaroused in the reek of the building we fled I don't quite understand.

At any rate I couldn't blame things at the pig. The firemen must have found the butt, because they accused me of starting the fire by smoking. This bit of deduction struck me powerfully, and I'm still amazed they were able to figure things out so quickly. Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time.

I denied it and said something lame about having been playing with matches in the afflicted room. My mom, ever staunch defender, believed me, and that was that.

Bucephallus Anyone

It's too cold to go outside, but sitting here is starting to make my head spin. More likely the spinning is related to my diet of rock hard pears and coca cola; I don't think I'm building strong bones and healthy teeth.

Nevertheless I haven't moved since I arrived home hours ago, except to hold my guitar on my lap and type. The saving grace, if one is to be had, is that this is extremely atypical for me. I accomplish things all the time. Not things relevant to achieving much in life, or even very pleasurable things. To wit, I've almost finished reading a collection of character portraits by Plutach, most recently Alexander. I don't know if you have read Plutarch, but the Alexander story is hugely overrated. Not least because his death is so inconclusive. He just gets a mysterious fever and keels over. Poisoning? Malaria? West Nile? According to some people West Nile is actually a serious possibility.

The CDC, therefore, should mention that, when they talk about west nile, hereafter not superflously capitalized. Think you're tough? Ever conquered the known world, had various bones shattered by arrow impact, or been cudgelled so violently that your optic nerve was damaged? Then you probably think you're too tough to die from west nile, but that's where you're wrong, chum. Even if you're in your early 30's, provided you're sclerotic enough, it could claim you for its own, just like it did Alexander the Great.

So maybe that's not such a boring death, but it's not like Coriolanus or Themosticles. As in the never watched or read or discussed eponymous Shakespearian adaptation, Plutarch's Coriolanus is a bad mother. Ostracized from Rome for being a little too vehemently the patrician stallion, he goes out, gets an army, and brings Rome to its knees. But, at the 11th hour, just before he conquers his home town, his mother and wife are trotted out to beg him not to destroy the city. At the sight of his mother's tears, Coriolanus relents and takes his army away; shortly after his men set upon and kill him.

Themosticles, by sheer weight of balls, forced the Greek victory at Salamis, and thereby saved Western civilization. So naturally he was ostracized from Athens a few years later, because, let me tell you, direct democracy is not a system you want to live under. A political rival poisoned the ears of the ruminating masses against him, accusing him of intriguing with the Persians, the ancient analog of communist paranoia. So Themo flees to Persia, to the king he was instrumental in defeating, and asks if he can hang out there for awhile. The king laughs that the Greeks banish their bravest and most capable citizens, and graciously says okay.

Years later, Themosticles is offered the admirality of a fleet of ships the Persian wants to use to smite Greece. Rather than betray his countrymen, and likewise unable to disappoint the king, Themosticles drinks poison and kills himself. For which the Persians, reportedly, respected him even more. It sounds better the way Plutarch says it.

Hey, Dean Wareham

Taught my last class of the semester today.   Nothing to do until the

20th, when my kids take their final.  Man I hate these winter months of

idleness.  I wish they offered freighter cruises during January.  This bon

vivant lifestyle without the viva is really getting me down.

Watch It

I just stopped a woman from running out into traffic. This was somewhat lucky, since I think the exact same behavior would also work for frightening someone into traffic. I have a tendency to mumble slightly, so what I actually did was nonchalantly comment in a medium volume, "wait, you're about to die!" Or words to that effect.

I have the following Christmas dilemma. The drive home is 13 hours. If I can spend that time listening to audiobooks, my odds are good for retaining my sanity. On the other hand, if I have to spend the entire trip waiting for NPR to come in and out of reception as I wind through the Blue Mountains, I will be powerful discomfited. Especially if they're playing classical.

So I need an mp3 player, but my iPod just checked out after being dropped a final time, for a grand total of something like 39 catastrophic dropping accidents, for a sum of hundreds of feet spent falling. I want this thing for Christmas. But really I need it before Christmas, so I can use it for the drive...

Incidentally I see why this wolf parade album has gotten such good reviews. Much better than the ep.

Also, today I discovered this amazingly overlooked band, comet gain. I'm sure that makes me sound like a raging imbecile.

WIntery Mix

Mix CD's, cheap x-mas presents:

Song, Band, Album, all or none of which may be correct:

MIX1

The Southside Of The World ** Bonnie 'Prince' Billy ** Blue Lotus Feet

The Other Shoe ** Old 97s ** Wreck Your Life

Photobooth ** Death Cab For Cutie ** Forbid

This Is Not ** Blonde Redhead ** Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemons

Walk On Me ** Ben Kweller ** Sha Sha

Banjo Press Conference ** Beachwood Sparks ** Once We Were Trees

New Face In Hell ** The Fall ** 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong

This Here Giraffe ** The Flaming Lips ** Clouds Taste Metallic

Strange ** Built To Spill ** Ancient Melodies Of The Future

Stupidity ** 18th Dye ** Done

The Light ** Mirah ** C'mon Miracle

Bluish Bells ** Edith Frost ** Telescopic

I'm Straight ** The Modern Lovers ** Modern Lovers

Cinder And Smoke ** Iron & Wine ** Our Endless Numbered Days

Superfeaky Memories Luna The Days Of Our Nights


MIX2


united nations ** Bobby Conn ** Rise Up!

Lover I Don't Have to Love ** Bright Eyes ** Toronto, Sept.

I'm Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You ** Silver Jews ** Tanglewood Numbers

supreme nothing ** Tiger Trap ** Tiger Trap

Great Five Lakes ** Buffalo Daughter

Give Back The Key To My Heart ** Uncle Tupelo ** Anodyne

Easily Aroused ** Portastatic ** oh, merge - a Merge Records 10 Year Sampler

Sweeter Than Anything (P J Harvey) ** Bonny Billy ** More Revery

Disco: The Secretaries Blues ** Beulah ** Handsome Western States

What Makes You Sad? ** Aden ** Aden

Outro in No Minor ** The Anniversary ** Designing a Nervous Breakdown

Addle Brains ** Augie March ** Strange Bird

37 Pushups ** (Smog) ** Rock Stars Kill

Fisherman Thugs ** Barry Black ** Barry Black

A Summer Wasting ** Belle & Sebastian ** The Boy With The Arab Strap

Commerce, TX ** Ben Kweller ** Sha Sha


If you have iTunes you can download these here:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPublishedPlaylist?id=603196

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPublishedPlaylist?id=603194

I Read Some Books

I have a chronic but always postponed plan to take a trip across the Atlantic by boat. I chalk this obsession up to an over exposure to various and sundry maritime pageturners. Of these The Sea Wolf is certainly the most pronounced influence, being the only culprit I have read twice in its entirety. Jack London is also to blame via Mutiny on the Elsinore (a very weak book, but he wrote it on the Snark, which I imagine was pretty miserable) and to a marginal extent Martin Eden, which is excellent.

For sea tales actually penned in the 19th century, Melville is probably the most striking with Moby Dick, which everyone should read as an adult. Creepier and now unofficially banned because of its overt racism is Benito Cereno. Typee is worth reading for its insight into European (religious) imperialism in the Pacific, and (provided you get a version with lots of editorial notes) as a nonfiction text on pre-European Pacific island culture in general. In my opinion, esteeming Melville as probably my single favorite author, Typee is a weakly written book, but it's interesting for that very reason, in as far as you get to watch genius finding its feet.

There's a certain amount of masochism involved in reading any of the books mentioned so far, except the Sea Wolf, which is to say they are worthwhile, but inaccessible because of the complexity of language, vis a vis archaic sentence structure, in all its semicoloned pre-Strunk and White byzantinicity. In the same category falls most of Joseph Conrad, in particular with Lord Jim, which is brilliant throughout, but simultaneously interesting AND brilliant for the first hundred pages or so, in which a young person of great potential semi-inadvertently commits an act of cowardice which dominates the remainder of his life. The rest of this book concerns the fallout, and the middle parts are difficult to take at times, plotwise. Poetically it's consistently beautiful. Typhoon is short and a bit sensationalist, but it's still Conrad.

The Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy I hope to read some day, at this point having only finished the first book. The view you get of military discipline on a Cook era sailing vessel is striking. Obviously Bligh is given a somewhat rough treatment, but you learn how much more there was to him than Marlon Brando pacing around in an angry fashion.

Contemporarily speaking, James Clavell's Asian saga is breathtaking in its scope of research and its sheer length. The books, after a few thousand pages, depending on the episode, more or less arbitrarily end, giving you the impression the James just decided to stop writing, finally. That notwithstanding, they are incredibly fascinating, especially Shogun, though Tai-Pan is the most nautical. While the details are fuzzed, the books are more or less historical, in broad strokes terms concerning Western naval infiltration of eastern Asia, as well as in some strange particulars, such as 17th and 18th century personalities who rose to political prominence in Asia. The nonfiction book Samurai William exposits on the true tale of the Dutch man who's story inspired Shogun.

I could wank onward about my autodidactic exploits, but getting back to actual 1st person sailing, today I found this website. I'll just let you look that over.

Sauropodoidal

This is an animal, recently discovered by science, from Borneo.

When I first saw this photo it reminded me of an 80's movie called Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, in which a child-sized brontosaurus is somehow found living in an Amazonian jungle. Then I realized, to my dissapointment, that the craning appendage is actually her tail, not her head.

creepy,
fun.

Lancelot Link

When I came across this dog article, I was reminded of a story about dolphins that appeared after huricane Katrina. The navy, apparently, trains dolphins to fire projectile weapons that are strapped to their heads. The articles weren't specific as to how.

When the flood waters rose above the dolphins' holding pens on the Gulf Coast in August, the deluge joined some of their containment tanks with the Gulf of Mexico, and a pod of the dolphin assassins escaped. I never heard anything else on this issue, so I assume they didn't attack anyone; they seem to have only been armed with tranquilizer darts. But presumably they are still out there, complete with praetorian head gear.

Rogue Wave

Rogue Wave
Last night I went to see the band Rogue Wave at the Black Cat. One of the
band members is a friend of a friend, but I'm not certain which one. It
was a Schrodinger's cat-like situation, with four individuals waiting to
randomly collapse into a single person who I distantly know.

Rogue Wave is from Oakland, so they don't usually have to wait in the
sleet to get into shows. To be honest, I didn't wait in the sleet either,
but when I emerged from the bar hours later there was a soft
tintinnabulation of falling ice pellets, and they polyped the trunks of
cars to half a fingernail. Combined with the ringing in my ears and the
Bluegrass Music awards, which happened to be on the radio, this made the
trip home as wholesome and tonic as a night drive in D.C. is likely to be.

The show itself was good; there were two opening bands, both of which are
creditable. Mazarin disagrees with me, but they have nice chops. If I'm
not confusing my impressions, they do a little too much with long segments
of tension building repitition, which went over especially poorly at
11:50, when most people were ready for the main act to come on. The
opening band, Kaleidoscope, is local and quite good. Their sound gives the
impression of being indistinct and fuzz-loaded, but the underlying
architechture is flawless and the distortion is purposeful and well done.
The vocals have a Virginia tinge to them, and the frontman likes to
display his twang in between songs.

At 12:30 I was wonding what the hell I was still doing there. When RW
finally came on, that feeling went away. They have a lot of grape-nuts
style potency, but the music is still pleasantly unpredictable. They are
"authentic" in a way most modern bands eschew, but innovative enough in
their sound to still be fresh; their lyrics mean something, and they mean
them.

Besides three guitars and keyboards, they have a background noise track
that's controlled by the drummer. This comes through on their recorded
tracks as a kind of ambient roaring, which, probably deliberately,
connotes a "rushing wave" type of sound. It's energizing and good. Last
night, though, they seemed to be having some problems. Either they had a
feedback issue, or the monitors weren't letting the band hear what the
audience did, namely a distractingly loud drone.

Technical issues notwithstanding, RW's recorded music leaves little doubt
of their virtuosity and originality. Their album Descended Like Vultures
was recently on the Billboard top 50. They recently signed with Sub Pop,
which is plugging them with free downloads from their podcast outlet.
Given the band's relatively recent manifestation, their best work is
probably still in the future; all indications suggest it will be worth
investigating.

Rogue Wave
Mazarin
(The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope

Stop the Strop

A girl, that is, the licensed hair cutter, or a barber, if women can be barbers, cut my hair. This was at what screams to be called a "novelty" hair cutting chain, Floyd's, wall-papered with rock posters and gewgaws, intersecting just enough with tastefulness to eschew the bizarre.

Except for the fact that my hair was relatively unclean, rinsed but sufficiently unscrubbed to make me slightly self conscious of its unctuous texture and duck feather sheen, there was nothing exceptional about the cut. When the chopping was over, however, two things of a strange nature took place. First, the back of my neck was lathered, pleasantly, with warm shaving cream, emanating a scent I associate with a benign kind of masculinity, something like leather mixed with baby powder and pancakes. But what followed made me concerned, in fact a little shaky, as a straight razor was unfolded and applied delicately to the round trunk of flesh that carries a gushing torrent of blood precariously from my torso to my head.

All of this was done in silence, and I was in no mood to speak, but the blade was large, moreso in the small hands of this woman, and even she, with a twist of the shoulders and a jerk of the arms, could have moved the implement through my fat, trapesius, mastoids and what all else, if she had wanted to, in an unstoppable instant. There is maybe nothing special about this, since we are all a hairsbreadth away from killing each other inadvertently, how much easier deliberately. But to be so much in her power was something I hadn't made the necessary mental preparations for, and it came to me as a cold surprise. But she refrained from beheading me.

When she was done with the shave, she put on a vibrating glove and worked me over with it. This was my first encounter with such a glove, and the feeling of it was very pleasant, in fact maybe addictive. It was as close as I have ever come to visiting a demimonde, and made me curious as to how stimulating that experience could be, if a simple robotic glove could send me to such heights when applied by a strange woman. This went on for about a minute and the only thing that subtracted slightly from it was my noticing that all of the hair cutting stations were equipped with robot gloves, and so this wasn't a special treatment that was being extended only to me, but that one could, possibly, come to Floyd's at a certain time and see any number of people being worked on with glove massagers. I still hold a little hope that its use isn't compulsory, and that my allotted coiffeuse just wanted to run her hands across my back.

Asafoetida

The girl with the bezoar has stopped emailing me. It wasn't actually a bezoar, I've forgotten what it actually was, though I saw a picture of it, before she shyly removed it from public purview, sitting gross and innocuous on some blue surgical paper, digitally photographed in the post-op. I imagine it now with blood vessels, though it almost certainly had none, merely "fiber", whatever that happens to mean.

A bezoar proper is a lump of undigestible material, which hangs out in the stomach for longer or shorter periods of time. Sometimes people have them surgically removed. They are reputed to have magical properties, maybe because of some special significance assigned to them when prognostication was practiced more regularly with the entrails of goats and such like. They are a panacea against poisonings.

I had seen her months ago, talked to her with visceral pleasure, as though I were myself bezoared, having watched her sometimes before. She is unavailable, and we are both certain of this, at any rate we live on opposite coasts. Unfortunately she is pretty, and allowed me to touch her necklace, and we have since been playing a lazy correspondence.