Another fantastic day will soon be shot to hell by the addition of work, but fuck it. Right now I've got beer, Hermano (not mi hermano, but the band, whose new album I need to find soon), and lots to look forward to. I wanted to post the lyrics to Hermano's "The Bottle" here, but they're not in the liner notes and I haven't found them online, so I'll just mention a particularly pertinent line and wish all y'all a good afternoon. Especially fellow Houstonians: get out and enjoy this shit while it lasts. Soon it will be sweltering, and I don't have enough beer and porch space for all y'all.

"'Cause you're fuckin' around with the bottle, man
She's takin' you the wrong way"

-Hermano, "The Bottle"

One more night and this work week is out of the way. This morning I'm in a position to pull a circa-1982 William Gibson by listening to Steely Dan (courtesy of Bob, who lent me all his LPs), smoking cigarettes, and reading heavy fiction, though in my case it'll be David Foster Wallace and not Samuel Delany. Which reminds me: I need to finish Dhalgren this year, as well as Finnegans Wake. I started the latter in 2001, but I haven't picked it up in a long time. Maybe the next time I get high alone I'll grab it and see where it takes me.

Now: Kreator, Luckies, and shitty rum. Later: reading, writing, LPs. I cannot fucking wait for the weekend.

P.S. If you want to entertain ferrets and yourself, give the ferrets an empty baby bottle with a rubber nipple on it. Then you can sit back and watch them race with it around the house. Good times, man, good times.

Life has been good. Scott's been in New Mexico for the past few days, having a good time with the dawn of American nuclear history and a woman, so I've had the place to myself, and will until this weekend. I've kinda made the most of it, although that phrase doesn't carry a lot of meaning for someone who doesn't do much to make of. I've watched some movies, and failed to finish one of them twice. Haven't written, for no good reason other than that MS Word is dead and I'm slightly daunted by the prospect of starting a new file. I saw Elspeth Sunday night, and had a strikingly good time. It sucks that she's leaving town for two weeks come Thursday. Been reading a fair amount, too, which is always good, and I managed to do some grocery shopping, thereby temporarily freeing me from dining out this week.

Dr. Long Ghost is getting worse about scratching at closed doors, particularly those fronted by carpet. This apartment is already a wreck, and he's not ameliorating the situation at all. I feel bad that I have to cage him so much, but man, the little brute is just a furry tube of destruction.

Work is also shitty, but I can't remember a single time in my life when it wasn't. I haven't felt like spending a lot of time in front of the computer, which is affecting my correspondence with folks. What time I do spend here, however, has been fruitful, as a couple guys from the Southern Lord forum have offered to send me just about every Velvet Cacoon album in the mail. Now that's class.

End discussion of quotidian particulars. I need to get away from this Jesu album for a while; it's a complete fucking downer, which is made even worse by its beauty.

My life is now as complete as it can be without a GTO, a good dame, a steady publishing deal, a house with a front porch, and the answers to all my philosophical questions. I finally got a turntable, so I can not only listen to the records I already have, but buy more. Fuck yes.

Soon I will purchase barbacoa tacos and drink some more beer, then watch Straight to Hell and They and fuck off all night. I'd like to write, but I don't know if I will. We'll see. As it stands, I'm pretty content with doing what little I am.

It'll only last until I run out, but man, I do a whole lot better at maintaining mental clarity when I drink whiskey instead of beer. The real experiment is this, though: which kind of whiskey is best? Bourbon, Irish, Canadian, or Scotch are my options, though my buying habits dictate that I choose the first three. While I know of some cheap brands of scotch (aside: I suppose that the worldwide popularity of Scotch whisky [no e, boo!] is why the S has become lower case instead of upper, but I still loathe spelling it without a capital S), I rarely buy Scotch in the first place. I don't drink cheap Irish or Canadian, since I've got favorite brands of each- Powers and Canadian Club, respectively- and when it comes to bourbon, I'm a Jim Beam man, hence the relative exclusion of Scotch from my experiment.

So there it is. I'm tempted to use some of tomorrow's paycheck at Spec's, buying bottles of Powers, Canadian Club, and Jim Beam, and then studying their various effects while abstaining from my usual levels of beer consumption. Even if I buy the whiskey, it ain't gonna happen, because one needs change.

I'm never gonna cut back my drinking if I keep thinking like this. The only justifications I have are my reluctance to mix booze with tooth-rotting soda, and that one day I'll ended up in Europe, where even the lightweights make me look like a pussy.

Ah, fuck it. To quote Chamillionaire, "we fin' to po' up another cold cup."

It's really so much fucking easier just to listen to Bal-Sagoth and daydream about being an Robert E. Howard-esque (anti-)hero than it is to accept my life as it is.

That said, I wouldn't trade who I am, or where and when I am, for anything. Or would I? Maybe if some kind of extradimensional entity appeared to me and could credibly offer me the chance to be someone/something else, I'd take them up on it, but even when I'm incredibly high, such a thing has never happened. Either I need to do more drugs or write more. I vote for writing, even though drugs are speedier.

Wow, that last comment sounded like something King Kuranes probably wrestled with before he transcended worldly bounds to become the lord of Celephais. Not that I'm getting my hopes up.

Here's to Alan "everything you want to be, to some degree" Moore, Robert K. "bow before my grasp of history" Massie, Angela "possible literary agent" Livingston, Soren "I make doubt look as good as it truly is" Kierkegaard, and, most contemporarily and importantly, Elspeth, without whom you could not spell "you rarely meet folks this particularly cool."

Life is solid. Rock solid. Of course, that could always change, but it does nothing to detract from this moment. And that's what matters.

The weekend has arrived. The first cold beer goes down quickly, backed up by Destroyer 666, the recent trove of Alan Moore goods from Top Shelf Comix (that lithograph is even more stunning than I'd hoped), and the quiet ruckus of ferrets. Soon will come a glass of Powers, writing, and perhaps company, though the latter is less than likely and not particularly necessary.

I thoroughly enjoy being in a good mood. Here's to it lasting until I crash at dawn.

"Jesus Christ, they're drinkin' it straight
In the hills of Connemara."

-The Popes

Happy St. Patrick's Day, folks. Have yourself a glass of Powers and chase some snakes out of your neighborhood.

Another night of water, cigarettes, black metal, and writing. All I can think about is ambivalence.

There's about fifteen pages (in MS Word format, at least) of new material over at my Unheimlich site. Slowly but surely, slowly but surely.

Some one-sentence album reviews, because I've purchased a good amount of new CDs in the past week or so and think highly of all of them:

Unearthly Trance, In The Red: A desperate, drugged derive through the bad neighborhoods of Carcosa.

Boris, Flood: The most beautiful flotation device I've come across in ages.

Destroyer 666, Violence is the Prince of This World: The storm you saw on the horizon only when it was too late.

SunnO))), The Grimmrobe Demos: Seismological disturbances from R'lyeh.

Velvet Cacoon, Genevieve: Swimming after a dead mermaid in a sea far beyond wine-dark.


Movement and water have clearly been in my thoughts lately. I wish I could visit Kingsport.

I was going to write an obtuse (at least to outsiders) review of Om's new record, Variations On A Theme, but fuck it. All that needs to be said is that the breakup of Sleep* is not the tragedy it could've been. The triumvirate of Hakius, Pike, and Cisneros have gone their own ways, and all of them have mastered their art.

While that was the only thing that needed to be said, I also want to impress upon all of you that Om will demonstrate that guitars are completely unnecessary. I have never heard a bass tone like Al Cisneros', and I doubt I ever will.

Buy this record, turn the volume up, and know that the world is not the failure you think it may be.


*When Sleep broke up, Matt Pike formed High on Fire, and recently the other two members, Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, have formed Om. This is why Sleep has been mentioned.

A couple years ago, when I still had a subscription to Modern Drunkard magazine, they ran an article on drinking slang. I was particularly impressed by "bayoneting the wounded," or drinking all the half-empty, possibly contaminated drinks left over from last night's party/drinking session. It was the name that got me, and not the act itself, just so you know.

This morning I've ever improved upon or sunk lower than the practice of bayoneting the wounded. Having no fresh beer in the house, I found a couple half-full tallboys from earlier in the day and put them in the freezer. While flat, a little time spent in an icy chamber has rendered the beers relatively palatable, if only to desperate folks like yours truly. I've labeled beers treated in such a way "resuscitated casualties," after the ghoulish Nazi zombies described in the Call of Cthulhu supplement Delta Green. Like said zombies, re-chilled flat beers get the job done, but there's something intrinsically unnatural about them. It seems that the taint of necromancy isn't limited only to dealings with corpses.

I've long since accepted the fact that, if I'm remembered at all, it won't be as a writer. I don't think I've ever written anything truly memorable or meaningful, which bothers me intensely, but such is life. If only more writers didn't have good sales and/or critical acclaim to swell their egos, the literary world would be a far richer place, and a lot more people would still read books instead of opting for half-assed television shows and soulless music.

I do think, however, that I am a decent conversationalist. Not so much in terms of actual conversation, wherein my voice cracks and my words are at the mercy of nervousness, alcohol, or any other number of factors, but online conversation. When I can write to someone in a conversational style, instant messages being the format I have in mind, I tend to shine brightly. Fairly quick wit, good typing skills, and a few seconds in which to consider what I'm saying add up to some damned fine lines on my part. It's not unusual for me to wistfully look back upon some of my IM conversations and wish that I could write books with as much flair as said conversations exhibit.

Here's the thing, though. We may live in an era where online communication is no longer strange to your common man, but it's nevertheless not so popular that one can gain a solid reputation as an online raconteur. I'm not seeking any kind of following as an online speaker, but I have to acknowledge the divide between genuine, face-to-face wit and wit delivered from one end of a modem connection. I am fortunate enough to know folks whose immediate ability to deliver scathing lines far outstrips mine, and the mere fact that I have such friendships diminishes my own verbal kung fu. This doesn't bother me in the slightest, as even my misanthropic self applauds legitimate, unmediated human contact.

All of the above comments constitute yet another poorly-verbalized discourse on issues of "real" vs. "virtual" socialization. To use a common phrase of mine when dealing with folks who still raise an eyebrow when phrases such as "I met them on" and "the Internet" are used in the same sentence: this isn't 1997 anymore. The Internet isn't merely a conglomerate of cretins, fanboys, pervs, nerds, and the like.

Instead, the Internet of today is essentially a giant mouth-breathing organism, which is far more repugnant than the assemblage of quirky individuals that it used to be. It may be a little less hazardous to hang out with strangers you met online, but it's a lot more likely to be boring, too.

To wrap up: I have grave doubts about my writing career, I like being witty online, and while talking online to folks is perfectly acceptable, it won't earn me, or anyone, a meaningful epitaph.

Damned fictional characters! Always stringing me along in one way or another with your well-scripted dialogue and such!

That said, here's to you, cast of Questionable Content. (Especially Dora and Faye. To quote my youth in Venezuela: "uuuuuufff.")

Very little to report lately. The writing is crawling along, but since it's not likely to run or even stroll anytime soon, I can accept crawling. Been polishing off books and starting new ones. Irked by the poor command interface of Shadow of the Comet, but haven't installed Beneath A Steel Sky yet to check it out. Get to see the folks and Uncle Smitty this weekend, as well as further acquaint myself with my Kalashnikov. Life is quiet, and not often disturbed by things that could, with time, cause serious problems- yet. Everything is inevitable, though.