Poor Tim Owens. First he became the scapegoat for the poor writing of Downing and Tipton in the post-Halford era of Judas Priest, and now he's stepped into Matthew Barlow's boots in Iced Earth. Owens is a good singer, but it seems he ends up in bands where too much is expected of him. That aside, the snippets of Iced Earth's new album sound good; definitely more interesting than "Horrorshow," that's for sure.

In other metal news, Dave Grohl's Probot project should be out soon. I heard some of it, and it sounds all right. Any album with Lee Dorrian, Cronos, Lemmy, Wino, and Snake, among others, is bound to have some redeeming value. Beats the fuck out of anything else Grohl's done in a long time, that's a fact.

I've picked out a couple choice bits from Axis Mundi Sum for the book reading I'm doing tomorrow night at Sam Houston. I have no idea how the whole thing will go over with folks I don't know, but at least there will be a good number of my buddies in attendance. I'm also pretty much guaranteed to sell most, if not all, of the handful of copies I've got, so I can offset the cost of getting Fireball running.

I'd like to hunt down certain customers at work, as well as the upper management, and reduce their kneecaps and elbows to jelly with a ball-peen hammer. That would teach them the lessons they so richly deserve, as well as give me immense satisfaction. Of course, I'm not really a violent man, but to deny that inflicting painful vengeance on one's antagonists is a fantasy everyone has would make the denier a fucking liar.

Despite my cash-strapped position, I picked up Ulver's newest EP, A Quick Fix of Melancholy, today. That it's Ulver justifies the purchase.

Now, since there is nothing work-related to demand my attention, I will write, as I've been doing fairly steadily for the past few weeks. Two pages a night adds up, and since I'm doing it on the clock, I feel as if my job isn't a total waste of time. Stealing company time to write also allows me to loaf comfortably at home without feeling as if I'm not doing what I should be doing, although I still feel that way often.

Tonight, I go out for drinks with Sara and assorted others.

Next time you see some chump chuggin' down the road in an unwashed, sun-bleached piece of shit Dodge Neon, know that you have beheld me, and weep.

Fireball got out of the shop today and is running as decently as it was back in June, when it died and was left to rot until I could afford a mechanical necromancer to bring it back from the grave. Mechanics don't come cheap, and since cheap is what I am, I've abstained from doing a damned thing about my car until now.

Sure is nice knowing I can get outta town whenever I want to now. Not that poor ol' Fireball could get me very far, but that's beside the point. Houston's getting old, and while I can't think of anywhere specific I'd rather be, I most definitely need a change of pace. Even back to the burbs would suffice, if only for a little while.

Two hours until I'm off the clock, which means two hours of writing and thinking of something to say when I give my first (and probably only) book reading in Huntsville next week.

I haven't read any of his books, but I have been reading everything on his website. He's Jim Goad, nominally famous in certain circles for harsh, accurate, and unforgiving writing about the wretchedness of humanity, as well as for woman-beating. He reminds me of a really vitriolic, unapologetic Joe Bob Briggs, or a more writerly Sean Miliff. Go read his shit; I guarantee you'll find more than a few things that will offend you, mainly because you won't want to admit that you secretly agree with Goad's take on things.

In the meantime, I'm going to chase this cup of cold coffee with a cigarette and get back to work on my current novel, which deals with people who are nothing like Jim Goad at all: nice, middle-class geeks with standard-issue suburban problems. In many ways, now that I think about it, there's something repellent about this work in progress.

It's an established fact about myself that I despise work, and believe it to be the root of all evil. However, I still find myself holding a job, ostensibly to support my continued existence on this planet. This essentially means I'm participating in the very thing I believe to be a considerable source of my own misery. I really need to find a way to live without a job. Ideally, writing would be that method, but thus far, writing's not providing me with sufficient financial or social clout to escape wage slavery. Another option would be to let someone else pay to keep me alive, but I don't know any people who fit that description, and I have a (possibly antiquated) distaste of being a leech. Of course, if I could drift from one person's couch to another, I wouldn't feel like a leech, just a perpetual-motion mendicant, or, to look at it in a better light, an itinerant purveyor of good company. (That sounds like a pleasant version of the old camp-follower prostitute.) Nevertheless, if I could find someone of good humor who'd be willing to put me up and put beer and grub in my belly, I can't say I'd feel too bad about it.

My evolving thoughts on work have definitely changed my outlook on politics, and society in general. To give credit where it's due, I have to thank Len Bracken and Bob Black for this; both of them are dedicated zeroworkers, so to speak, and I've learned a lot from reading their work. I've been drifting (insert Situationist zinger) away from what little ties I ever had to politics, and building up a body of ideas about work has hastened that drift into a casual stroll. It's been a long time since I had anything to do with the right, and my association with the left is weakening as well: your standard leftist, "progressive" (a vile term, indeed- ask Matthew Smith, no relation, what he thinks of it), or even anarchist stances don't really interest me much anymore, because too many of them place too much emphasis on the inherent "dignity" and/or value of work. While I'd still prefer to work a union job, if I had to work, the refusal of unions to acknowledge that work itself is one of the greatest obstacles to human joy is distasteful, and I can't think of any lefty who's in favor of, to quote Bob Black, "the abolition of work." God forbid that the revolution comes, the state is overthrown, and people stop showing up at their jobs. Simply put, not enough people recognize work as the demonic idea that it is, and that includes the left.

Eventually I'll write more on this subject, because it's becoming increasingly important to me and I want people to reevaluate their views on work. For now, I'm going to stop remembering that I'm part of the alienated labor pool, because it makes me feel like a hypocrite. Nevertheless, you can bet that I'm going to do my damnedest to get my ass sustainably unemployed (permanently, I hope) as soon as possible, and when I find a way to do it, I'll share it with everyone.

Here's to idleness.

The Man came around for Johnny Cash early this morning.

If the 1001 Nights (or the Arabian Nights, to a lot of folks) were in any way representative of the true nature of living in Islamic society and/or being a Muslim, I'd be on my way to Mecca right now.

To be fair, any good fiction has that effect on someone. "If (insert idea here) was as cool as it is in (insert title of book here), "I'd (insert activity/belief/whatever is a widely-recognized feature of an idea found in particular book here)." And that is precisely why literature is sublime.

Everyone knows what today is, but instead of bitterly railing against all the sneaky shit I usually would on such an occasion, I'm going to list some things that truly make America great. Fuck politics, fuck terrorism, fuck the media, and fuck "patriotism."

Here's a few things that really make America worth a damn, in the order they occur to me:

Rock n' roll.
Texas.
Tobacco.
Bourbon.
Comic books.
Beautiful women.
Literature.
Inescapable weirdness.
Joe Bob Briggs.
Muscle cars.

I don't feel like thinking of anything else. This list could have just as easily been compiled by a redneck, but that's the beauty of America. Too bad it's run by liars, thieves, morons, and whores. But what country ain't?

Let's hurry up and have a revolution.

I really, really, really like the way William Gibson writes. Not just his novels, but everything: I want to say his writing is cool, but I can't, because that's not right (and not just becaused it's an overused word). Crystalline, maybe? I don't know. I do know it's fucking slick, and the writer in me wishes I could write such fucking sharp, smooth sentences. Christ, the man's good.

Another crafter of fine word structures, albeit in an entirely different way, is Kool Keith. Listen to his Dr. Octagon project and you'll know what I mean. The man's out there, or at least plays the role to the hilt, and his strange fixations and wide vocabulary make his words build images. Alien gynecologist computer science- textbook throwback crazy images. His words constitute the projections into man's mind of an alternate universe so thoroughly different than ours that all one can do is sit back and revel in it all.

I wonder what you'd get if you crossed William Gibson with Kool Keith. It's fucking mind-boggling!

Take a guess what I've been doing:

"You recognize, so what? I turn invisible, make myself clear, reappear to you visual."

Of course, then comes the inevitable:

"disappear and get zapped like an android,"

and a statement to those in denial:

"face the fact I fly on planets everyday."

This isn't even the wackiest shit that Dr. Octagon spews. Hot damn, this shit is great.

The other day Sara said something about me having lots of good music that I don't listen to anymore. She was right: I've got dozens of albums that I never put on. Why?

Simple answer. Most of them don't do it for me anymore. They're just not what I'm interested in at this point in my life. There are some, though, that are timeless and cross stylistic boundaries; in this particular case, I'm thinking of the now-departed Murder City Devils. I don't listen to them often, but holy shit, whenever I hear them, I know why I'd never get rid of any of their albums, much less stop listening to them. They had something that nobody else had, and that something will last forever.

Like this song that's on now, "18 Wheels." Desperation and drinking and Farfisa organ. Perfect.

Sunday afternoon. At work. Worn out.

I need to read more. Aside from the benefits of soaking up words, it's a solitary activity, and the last few days have been filled with people. I could use a break.

The weather is uncharacteristically pleasant today, as it was yesterday. If wasn't at work until ten o'clock, I'd be sitting on the porch with a glass of iced tea and a book. I hope the weather remains pre-autumnal, as it should be in September.

I don't know how I ever functioned properly back in the days when I drank shitloads of coffee. I've had four or so cups tonight, loaded with creamer and sugar because the coffee here at work sucks so fucking badly, and I'm so edgy it's grotesque. Having the place to myself at least gives me the opportunity to get a little energy out, but damn, I'm gonna stay away from this level of stimulants in my system. Urgh.

To make it worse, my hands are shaking so badly, and my mind's racing so fast, that I can't even make use of this state to write. Bring on the alcohol!

np: Brant Bjork and the Operators, s/t

You gotta love both Steve Jackson and his games.

Labor Day, and I'm at work. Big surprise. What's worse is that today's the beginning of my new shifts, three of which run from 4 PM to midnight. On the flipside, since I'm not really expected to bust a lot of ass after 10 PM, I can try to get some writing done. This should prove fruitful.

I'm reading Marcus Boon's The Road of Excess: A History of Writers On Drugs, and it's excellent. I cannot recommend it enough if you're interested in a lucid, well-written book about drugs, literature, and history, or any of the above.

I wonder how well my book is selling.

I wonder why I waste time and bandwidth writing this.

Ridiculous.


np: Enslaved, Below the Lights