I was going to discuss some jumbled thoughts I've had about morality and the approaches thereto, but frankly, I don't have the energy or focus to do so right now. Shit, I don't want to do anything except drink more beer, smoke a cigarette, and bask in the pre-dawn glow of my three-day weekend.

It's official: Brant Bjork and the Bros, August 11th, Walter's on Washington. Be there.

Not being able to see anyone except coworkers four out of seven days a week is demoralizing enough, but when I think about the possibility of spending the next couple years with a schedule diametrically opposed to everyone else's, it's downright bleak.

I pray to God that in the near future I find an agent for Critical Hits, and, more importantly, start writing a new novel. I dread to imagine what'll happen if I don't put something down on paper soon.

Now playing: Blut Aus Nord, The Work Which Transforms God

I woke up around nine this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so here I am, awake at an hour I'm usually not. At least I have the whole day ahead of me, unlike yesterday, when I got out of bed at three o'clock. The night shift does strange things to the ol' circadian rhythm.

I went to Jay's party last night with AJ, and while not as big a gathering as I'd expected, it was fun. We left around one o'clock or so, and I rudely didn't say my goodbyes, so here's an apology to everyone.

It's time to stretch out and read.

Goatsnake has a new EP, Trampled Under Hoof, out. Buy it now. Any band that can write songs as bad-ass as "El Coyote," "Black Cat Bone," and "A Truckload of Momma's Muffins" deservers all the support they can get.

There is a party at 1920 W. Alabama tomorrow. It starts at roughly 9 PM, and I hope to see you there, drinking beer and havin' a good fucking time.

Until I get all the piddly shit fixed on the Blue Bastard, driving will make me feel like Ichabod Crane, always hoping to get to the bridge before the Headless Horseman catches me. Inspection and tail light bezel aside, I do have a pretty sweet Jim Anchower upgrade in mind. It will be put into effect tomorrow, since I've got the next three days off.

Go buy Local Angel by Brant Bjork if you haven't done so already.

Please send me $1,000, preferably in cash, so I can purchase fuckloads of metal albums and talk about them to people who don't give a fuck about metal. That means you.

I realized a long time ago that my taste in metal is nowhere as obscure as non-metalheads think it is, if they think that at all, since most metal is obscure to the general public. Nevertheless, since I'm neither an obscurantist or GRIMM AND KVLT AS FVCK, I will hereby issue statements on a fairly well-known metal record, simply because I want to.

Voivod, "War and Pain": Having really only heard Voivod's weirder, more clinical "schizometal" (thanks, Erik Davis, for that one), this came as a surprise. Fuckin' A, it's the archetype of well-done American thrash in 1984, mais du Quebec. Of course, my version is the remastered one, and I have no idea what it sounded like for some sixteen-year-old headbanger when it was originally released twenty years ago, but I bet it fuckin' ruled.

Saint Vitus put out an album named "Born Too Late." Sometimes I feel the same way, but I know I couldn't have been put on this earth at any other time, as cool as it may be to have seen the birth of metal as we know it (among other things). No, I'm here and now, and it's good fuckin' times.

I was sitting at work having a cigarette this evening when something odd happened. Right behind our building, abutted against our barred and covered rear driveway, is a bar, and a fairly popular one, as far as I can tell. Some dude comes out and kneels down next to a Jeep Cherokee parked on the other side of the bars and begins letting air out of one of the tires. He didn't punch a hole in it, but was merely letting the air out through the valve. At first, I thought he had a flat and was filling his tire with an air compressor I couldn't see, but then I noticed that a) the tire was fine, and b) upon standing up, I couldn't see anything next to him. Several times, he got up, looked up and down the street, and went on with his less than valiant attempt to deflate the tire.

I took in all of this within the span of about twenty seconds, and within the first ten I realized that this guy was probably pissed at someone in the bar and was getting some kind of pathetic, petty revenge on them by letting the air out of their tire. Not being one to yell "WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?", despite being on the other side of an impenetrable wall of bars, I took a moment to figure out how to stop him. After all, not only was his attempt weak, but I couldn't just stand there and let it happen.

The solution to the problem was easy. I coughed loudly, and the echo made sure he heard me. Clearly, he hadn't thought about looking down the driveway while getting back at his new enemy, and he jumped up when he saw me standing twenty feet away, staring at him. He applied pressure to the tire valve stem one more time, then jumped in his truck- parked next to the target of his vandalism- and sped off.

I went back to work bewildered by the man's cowardice, pleased that I had taken care of things without any semblance of violence or threats (to him or myself, mainly myself), and chuckling at the fact that despite the vandal's efforts, the Cherokee owner's right rear tire had lost no more than a pound or two of pressure.

Well, it's official: Realm of Chaos has to be one of Bolt Thrower's finest works. Along with ...For Victory, it's one of their most consistent albums. Of course, even when certain albums aren't solid from beginning to end, Bolt Thrower never fail to deliver. They are the 88mm of metal, punching holes in the weak armor of all others. Should I ever command an army, I will have all of my armored divisions outfitted with grotesquely loud sound systems which will blare Bolt Thrower at 300 decibels. If my superior firepower (said tanks will have fucking 12-inch naval guns as their primary cannon) doesn't win the day, then my foes will flee in fear of the mighty Bolt Thrower.

Bolt Thrower, who are anti-war, probably wouldn't appreciate this, but they have to be aware that their music is the sonic equivalent of a tank division rolling through no-man's land.

I'm drunk, sleepy, and listening to Voivod, Blut Aus Nord, Cruachan, and Bolt Thrower. Earlier I hung out with AJ, watched Better
Luck Tomorrow with the Mann, drank beer with my brother and
company, and took a nap. Like is pretty damned good.



Within thirty minutes I will hit the sack, and life will be even better.

Quality happenings in el mundo del cadaver, folks.

-Work's over for the week.
-Got paid.
-Have beer and cigarettes.
-Listening to Cathedral, Deathspell Omega, and Grand Magus.
-Probably gaming this weekend.
-Making a trip to the record store tomorrow, since I now have a job that allows for such things without fiduciary stress.

All right.

Ha! Some dude wrote a review of Axis Mundi Sum for Amazon, bitching about the lack of an ending and my presence in the book as a character and the author. He said he hoped it would be the first book of a trilogy, and if it wasn't, it would be even worse.

He's got some valid points. The author-as-character device is hackneyed, but it was amusing at the time. As for the ending, well, finality ain't much fun. Neatly wrapping up a book's worth of ramshackle adventures didn't strike me as the right thing to do, especially since half the characters- Kellogg, Null and Void, and Jennyquinn and Leigh, mainly- weren't in a position to conclude their escapades.

Fuck it, though. At least he read the thing and wasn't completely appalled. Then again, he did recommend reading one of Dan Brown's books instead of AMS. This doesn't strike me as a particularly creative, or even apt, suggestion, since (as far as I understand), Brown is a poor man's Umberto Eco when it comes to conspiracy fiction, while I'm the equivalent of a lazy fuck sleeping off a hangover in one of Eco's semiotics classes, and make no claims to much of anything. Comparing us is a waste of effort, but at least I'm the one not wasting it.

I would very much like to live in a world that resembled a Nicholas Roerich painting.

What a fuckin' night. Morning. Whatever. My neighbor's friend's boyfriend and she (the friend) are having some kind of fight and it's keeping me from sleeping. Not that it really matters, but fuck, I wanted to be in bed by 3:30 so I could get up at 11 and have some time to kill before work. It's 4:30 now, and if I'm lucky I'll get outta bed by 1 PM.

The worst part is that I'm out of cigarettes and alcohol.

I read BoingBoing every day. There are some interesting things to be found there, but to a large degree, it irks the living fuck out of me. You see, BoingBoing is run by a few intelligent folks that talk about shit I usually don't have very much interest in: copyright laws, the Disney company, wireless networking, blogs, and so forth. I realize that plenty of people care about these things, but I'm not usually one of them.

However, this isn't really the problem. My bitch, and Wiley Wiggins once voiced a related opinion using a Bob Black essay as a reference, is that they almost fetishize every little gadget, cultural trend, legal battle, piece of furniture, and hip blog they run across. Cory Doctorow, who's a sci-fi writer and a good one at that, has to be the worst offender. His whorish use of the adverb "screamingly" makes me want to hunt him down and tell him that NOT EVERYTHING HE GETS A KICK OUT OF IS REALLY THAT FUCKING GREAT! Another violator is Xeni Jardin, a writer for Wired among other things. She strikes me as the ultimate high-end, post-ironic hipster with an iPod and a fuckin' camera phone. BORING!

Fuck this. I'm not thinking coherently enough to make even a quasi-logical argument. Not that I need to, because this is just a near-buzzed diatribe. I have nothing personal against the BoingBoing staff; I'd just prefer to sit on the porch with a cigarette and a beer and shoot the breeze than run around talking about wifi and DRM. If some lawmaker thinks downloading songs is theft, or that using an open wifi connection is wrong, fine; there are plenty of other laws not pertaining to serious moral or ethical that suck. Just break 'em and be done with it.

I can't believe I've wasted as much time on this as I have. Fuck.

Getting home between as late as 4:15 is a weird feeling, but so far, life at the new job is worth it. I stay busy enough to keep my brain from rotting, but not so busy that I get pissed about having to work too hard. I also get to go to sleep when the sun rises, if I'm so inclined, which I was yesterday.

I think working the night shift may end up being just what I need.

I started my new job yesterday. While hardly exciting, it seems like it'll be all right, in the blase sense; the people are decent, there's just enough work to keep my busy, and it requires more thought on my part than any other job I've had. Tonight will be my first night shift, from 5 PM until 3:30 AM. I hope it goes smoothly.

I thought there was something else to say, but I'll be damned if I can remember what.

I have to thank the International Channel for pickin' me up last night. Around nine I hit the couch with some cold wine and had the pleasure of watching what is now one of my favorite kung fu flicks, Buddhist Fist. See this movie as soon as you can, especially if you like a bit of humor with your chop-socky. It's got bad-ass fight scenes, tons of item-fu, a recognizable plot, a creepy hunchback, shabby-looking cigarettes, hardcore old monks, a crafty xiang qi player, an unstoppably lazy but fierce temple guard, and hilarious dialogue. (It was dubbed, which I usually don't like, but it added to the comedy.)

I'm also writing again. What'll come of it, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. Life ain't too bad, dude.

"Left hand Buddha Palm, right hand Buddha Fist!"
"Sleeping Buddha!"
"Drunken Buddha!"
"Furious Buddha!"

Yeah, life is fuckin' sweet. Especially since I just found a bunch of Buddhist Fist .wav files!

Deep sense of unease. Much of it is probably the result of being nervous about starting a new job in a couple days, but there's something else I can't quite put my finger on.

At least I've got Local Angel to listen to. Brant Bjork can do no wrong.