Friday afternoon, and the only sign of Ivan is a pleasant breeze. It appears that my fears were unfounded, but I'm assuming that we'll at least get some nasty rain, most likely while I'm moving my shit tomorrow. Man, I'm gonna miss this house, and I'm definitely gonna miss the Heights. One day, should I ever have the money, I think I'd like to settle down here, though that's contigent on not finding a more appealing locale in the meantime.

For now, it's a last few Lone Stars, some more Thin Lizzy, and conversation online with friends and loved ones. I'll pack the last of my shit later.

It took a few years, but purchasing Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak LP for a quarter back at SHSU has struck me as one of the best things I've ever done for myself, and, simultaneously, one of the worst. Last weekend I bought Dedication, a Thin Lizzy best-of, and while I've enjoyed it immensely- it's nice hearing what else they have to offer other than Jailbreak, which is a damnedly good record- I can't help but really feel remorseful that Phil Lynott is dead. I don't know that I've ever felt so sad that a musician or other artist has passed on, which is odd, given that I'm no long-term Thin Lizzy fan. Maybe when Bruce Dickinson, or Rob Halford, or Lemmy, or Matt Pike, or Tony Iommi, or other people I've dug for a while, become worm food, I'll feel the way I do now. I suppose it's a testament to how good a songwriter and bassist Mr. Lynott was that I truly wish he was still alive to put out albums. I can see why Brant Bjork dedicated Local Angel to him. Said album is very much a Thin Lizzy kinda record, which I never recognized until Randy and I were enjoying instant classics such as "I'm A Rocker" and "Chinatown," among others.

I think I need to try to talk my brother into learning how to play "Jailbreak." What a fucking RIFF! Why don't you fuckin' heathens enjoy this shit as much as I do?

Word is that a tropical storm is supposed to hit Houston sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening, most likely while I'm at work. I can't help but recall the hellacious flood of 2001, of which I had the dishonor of being subjected to, and which I desperately hope is not reprised in the next couple of days. I cannot afford to have my car fucked by the vagaries of weather, nor do I wish to be stuck at work, worrying whether or not my house is receiving an aquatic reaming, especially since my ferrets will be here. I'm going to get hold of Sara first thing tomorrow and see if she can keep an eye on the place, since her new apartment is on the third floor and is therefore pretty much floodproof. With any luck, the rain will come at a steady pace, knocking on the door of H-Town instead of trying to kick it in, and my possessions and well-being will remain intact. Either way, it's supposed to rain all weekend, which should be fucking great, since I'll be moving. Nothing like lugging furniture and waterlogged cardboard boxes around town.

Ah, well. There's nowt to be done about it, so I'll just sit here, smoke a du Maurier, and sip on this glass of incredibly good Rhum Barbancourt from Haiti. C'est la vie.

Behold September's RPG.net column. May I suggest sampling some dilled brussel sprouts while you peruse it?

I really shouldn't listen to Katatonia and think about how much I wish the girl I'm seeing was around. Hell, Katatonia are just a flat-out downer anytime you listen to them, albeit magnificently so, but damn, their brand of morbid, offbeat romanticism just isn't what I need at the moment. It just makes me miss Natalie more.

I think it's time for more Thin Lizzy, though it's hard to break away from this aurally-induced melancholy.

My day has consisted of sleep, beer, hanging out with Randy, buying books and albums, more beer, visiting lame "hip" bars, fuckin' off on MySpace, and listening to shitloads of Thin Lizzy. Life ain't too bad.

Download this song. Listen to this song. Repeatedly. I dare say this song has been the most meaningful piece of music I've consistently listened to for the past two or three months. Here are the most accurate lyrics the Internet could provide, with editing and additions on my part.

"Lone Wolf Winter"
Destroyer 666


Lone wolf winter...
Alone again
Lookin' sideways
Paranoid again

Gotta get out
Out of here
Cannot breathe
With the stench of fear!

Black days and blacker nights
Gets the gift of second sight
Don't believe that I belong
Don't feel right but I don't feel wrong

I think I'm a wolf
Then again I'm fuckin' crazy
I think what I need is a bitch
Don't you?
Lone wolf winter

Lone wolf winter

How is it that I have become the hunter
And the hunted
And thought has become my enemy?

Memory falls away behind me
Leaving me in despair
I run but I cannot hide
The terror is inside
I awake but the nightmare is still here

-----

How I loathe mankind sometimes.

-Dave
"I am still here"

Tonight I'm going to finish my RPG.net column, really. I'm not reveling in luxurious sloth at the moment, so might as well go for it. As a matter of fact, I even jotted down some notes for a potential new novel at work tonight, some of which involved ideas I had last night while propelling myself to bed, which wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, thanks to a couple of hasty beers.

Fuckin' A, the new Mastodon album is bad-ass. I'd love to be in a boat with Queequeg or Dagoo chasing a whale while listening to "Iron Tusk" and dodging the line as it whips from the tub. Yeah, fuckers, go read Moby-Dick and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Man, I'm lazy.

I'm so lazy I don't want to do nothing. Don't let yourself think that the double negative cancels itself out, because what I mean is that I am so lazy that doing nothing sounds like too much effort, so I want to do less than nothing.

My RPG.net column is horribly overdue, and while I've got maybe half of it finished, I'm too lazy to write the rest tonight. I don't even want to bother plugging in my headphones to listen to the new Ghost album, which is fantastic. Shit, I'm so fucking lazy I don't want to drag my ass to bed, because falling asleep will take some work.

This level of laziness is awe-inspiring.

Another blur of a weekend, but I can't say it's been a bad blur, even though I failed to write my column for RPG.net in a timely fashion. With any luck I'll have it emailed off tomorrow. Sorry, Aeon.

And now, the requisite shallow metal album reviews.

Mastodon, Leviathan
Let's see... technical, rifftastic, modern metal with a Moby-Dick theme. I FAIL TO FIND ANY FUCKING PROBLEMS WITH THAT.

Amon Amarth, Fate of Norns
Despite sounding exactly like Amon Amarth should, there's a slight variance from their old albums here, albeit a good one. It'll take a few more listens to put my finger on it, but if you dig Amon Amarth, you can't go wrong. Even if you don't like them, this is worth your time if you want solid Swedish metal.

Thursday morning, 3:05 AM, payday, booze, etc etc. (Thanks for that one, DFW.)

I'm desperately trying to find a medium-sized Dopesmoker t-shirt. Sleep, despite being defunct, need to be promulgated.

Fuck. I think I'm going to lose it, and I have the Murder City Devils to thank for it. "18 Wheels" is not a song I can afford to hear right now, but I'll be damned if I'm not playing it again.

The follow-up to the emotional ditch the MCD threw me into is an old Gas Giant song, and it's doing a fine job of putting my head in a better place, albeit temporarily.

I need a permanent vacation.

Why does practically every action feel like one taken in the service of entropy?

I ran across this on Blabbermouth.net, a metal news site.

Amy Norton of Reuters Health reports: Blasting music can be hard on the ears and the neighbors, and now researchers say it can also pack enough punch to collapse a lung.

Reporting in the medical journal Thorax, they describe the cases of four young men who suffered a lung collapse — technically called pneumothorax — that appeared to be triggered by loud music. Three of the men were at a concert or club when the pneumothorax occurred, while the fourth was in his car, which was outfitted with a 1,000-watt bass box because he "liked to listen to loud music."

A pneumothorax occurs when a small rupture in one of the lungs allows air to leak into the space between the lungs and the chest wall, causing the lung to collapse. Symptoms include breathlessness and chest pain on the affected side.

A small, partial collapse may resolve on its own, but more severe cases may require the insertion of a chest tube to allow the air to escape the chest cavity.

Often, an underlying lung disease or chest injury is the culprit in pneumothorax. But so-called primary spontaneous pneumothorax happens in the absence of an underlying disease, typically striking tall, thin, male smokers.

Given that I like loud music, am a tall, thin, male smoker, and suffered a pneumothorax last year (courtesy of a car accident) that required the aforementioned chest tube, I am incredibly creeped out to read this, and have all the more reason to quit smoking, which I will do long before I stop listening to loud music.

I don't know that I've ever been as rapidly overwhelmed by a piece of writing as I was when I read David Foster Wallace's "Incarnations of Burned Children" on my lunch (or maybe it was a smoke) break at work today. A mere three pages or so, the story hit me in a way that I would imagine a shotgun fired by God would. I simply cannot describe it. I re-read the final few lines at least four times, and went back to work in a daze, which I haven't fully recovered from.

If you're interested in reading it, "Incarnations of Burned Children" can be found in DFW's newest book, Oblivion. I recently checked it out from the library, and halfway through reading the first story, "Mr. Squishy," which dredged up all the horror roiling in the quiet corners of everyone's daily existence, I went out and bought a book of the man's essays, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. My God, I've never read contemporary fiction like this. Simply put, it is everything that literary fiction should be- no, fuck that, it's everything all fiction should aspire to, on some level. I cannot wait to read the reast of Wallace's work.

I'm also concurrently reading Omoo by Herman Melville, which is most excellent, and incidentally the source of one of my ferrets' names.

If there was a printed-word equivalent of crack, I would be on it right now.