It's Not Because I Don't Like You, I Just Really Need to Close My Eyes for A Minute

Last night, I was lucky enough to have Electric Six destroy my soul. This was a fine experience. Mosh pit at a "dance" concert? Hells yes, hells yes indeed, mother fucker.

Electric Six being ten tons of awesome is neither news-worthy nor the topic of today's discussion. However, their concert is. Like most bands, they have opening bands that are on tour with them. They were your standard dance punk bands, so meh. What stood out to me was how infuriating close to a metal band the second opening act was. Dance punk frequently borrows from metal. Bass lines tend to have similar low rhytmic throbbing, guitar parts tend to borrow similar angular riffs, and most of their drum lines would be ten times better with double kick (well, most things are better with double kick).

This doesn't bother me, I like metal and all, but what does bother me is that this band kept teasing us. Every other song would steal the main line from "Raining Blood" with a slight step change. Maybe it's just me, but if you're going to rip off Slayer lines, you should make a metal band.

Just saying.

-Thomas

Wood Borer

Insert your own boner joke.

I find myself in an awkward situation. Knowing that this a topic that is not uncommon for me, I suspect most, if not all, of ye blog readers will quickly become bored with the following rambling mass of incoherent pestilence. So, if you suspect that me over analyzing my internal thought process will be boring I recommend that you proceed to click next blog at this time. If this does not adequately fulfill your needs, might I suggest this as an alternative. Barring that, I leave you with mindles joy.

Anyway, at present I am trying to determine whether I know what I'm doing anymore. It's not that I'm not cognizant of my actions, but rather, that some of my behavior feels like I'm on auto-pilot. A better way to describe the sensation would be as though I have to convince my conscious mind that, "yes that did happen you did get that done." For example: I woke up this morning and ate breakfast. Now, at the time, I knew I was chomping away on some delicious cereal, but now, I have to think about what I actually did. Another example: I went to London last week; I've got pictures to prove it. The memories are solid, but I can't shake the feeling that it didn't actually occur.

So, what I can't decide is: am I going crazy or is my life so awesome I just can't believe things are going so well?

-Thomas

We Got Eggs and Toilet Paper and a Hate that Needs Diffusing

Strange and "new" things seem to happen all the time. I say "new" because it isn't really new (i.e. it just came into being) as much as it is new to me.

I was biking home from St. Paul last night. It's late, dark, and nippy as hell. It was one of those rides where you find yourself being able to actually take your full lane as entitled to all bikes in Minnesota, the road stretching out, unencumbered by the hulking wretches that clutter it throughout the day. Part of this miraculous freedom to swerve back and forth across all four lanes has to do with St. Paul going to bed as of 9:00 PM, but I always find myself giggling when I'm up late enough to enjoy the post-apocalyptic peace of an empty street. Perhaps this is due more to my pent up childhood giddiness of staying up late, my fondness for late-night antics that occur in such conditions, or it's possible I just love speeding through areas I normally have to fight tooth and nail to get through safely.

Anyway, the joy of night-haunting is not my focus here, rather a particular incident that occurred due to such activity.

Last night I was speeding down a long downhill street and got to a freeway overpass. As I approach, I grumble as the light shifts from green to red. Now, normally, I'd have to wait for the light to change due to traffic, but as I peer around I realize that nobody is even close to the intersection, so I shift back up and blare through the red light.

Before I go any further I should note that ignoring traffic regulation devices is a tried and true biking tradition, one that I'm quite proud to carry on (when vehicles follow the laws that apply to me and I'll start following traffic laws). That said: I am well aware that I am technically breaking the law, and, therefore, I fear the wrath of the policia. Back to our story, already in progress:

I'm flying through the intersection and all of the sudden I see these bright flashes of light. Everyone has had one of those moments when adrenaline hits and everything slows to a crawl; well with those flashes of light all I could think was, "fuck... busted..." I sit up in my seat and turn around, expecting to see the hurtling form of one everyone's least favorite government-funded vehicles. Instead I'm greeted by the dimming flashbulb of a red-light photo cops.

Grinning like a complete idiot, I race through the final set of lights for the overpass (also red), cackling like a six-year old who just pulled off their first successful whoopy cussioning.

Although I do have one question: can get prints of those?

-Thomas

I Want Your Soul

No eating of said soul, I promise.

I have lived many days this week. Life has taken too long to move forward and I grow agitated.

Enough on that foolishness. Happy Women's Day! As someone who wakes up every day, thankful of his gender, being a women strikes me as having some amazingly sucky qualities (rampant discrimination, menstruation, men, menstruation, pregnancy, and let us not forget menstruation), and if any group of people deserves a day of, "yeah, go you," it's women. Despite these general feelings - I'm not going to lie - Women's Day bothers me for the same reason that AIDS Day bothers me. Yes, women have lots of problems facing them - human trafficking, the afore mentioned discrimination, and so on - and that sucks. However, what do we get by having one day? It raises awareness you say? Well, that's kick-ass, but what about the rest of the year?

Let's honestly ask ourselves if all the statements people make about how awesome women are and how we need to fight for women's rights really develop into noticeable changes for women. The answer is no. Just like AIDS day, where most people buy a little ribbon and then forget about it for the rest of the year, women's day does not develop into anything, nine times out of ten.

I'm not advocating for getting rid of Women's Day; quite the contrary in fact. All I'm saying is that instead of going nuts on one day, we should make sure we hold policy people accountable, we should make sure that the money we give to advocacy groups goes some where reasonable, and we should actually take what we're saying seriously and try to do something the other days. It's either that or shut the fuck up.

-Thomas

Canda Pacific Still Runs Tracks and We Can Still Fling Bodies Boldy Over Fairview

Every once and a while I'll find myself in a situation where I get so exasperated, so mind-numbingly irritate that I lack the words to properly express my frustration. It is in these moments of great murkiness where one of two things happen. The first choice is rage shall erupt forth, I will yell, I will shout, I gesture angrily, and I will stumble out ideas from my head like some drunken patrons at a bar. Whole blocks will know of my anger; it is the very deffinition of, "causing a scene." The other, and more common, outcome is a great deal of silence; a great stweing of internal frustraion to a point where I may, hopefully, wield some great destructive force against that which I feel has become so deserving of my wrath.

I preffer this latter solution because it often gives me time to refocus and say, "no, you really, don't need to get that upset over this. He/She/They didn't mean to say something like that, let it go." In short, the pause in which I am attempting to perfect words so vile and hateful that the bark of trees would likely melt off, gives me enough time to bite my tounge and dismiss it.

The fascinating part about this, is I am not entirely rid of the bile in my throat, in fact, I'm sure that it's being buried off in the desert of my sub-concious. Still, the fact that I can dispose of the ideas is significantly better when I would just launch into the afore mentioned tirades. In short: I am thankful my aging process has allowed me to settle down a little.

-Thomas

Someday, When You're Big and Strong, You Can Blow Up the World With the Power of Your Mind.But Right Now, You're Still Just a Jackass

Seriously. The best line in the whole thing is, "Given the ruthless efficiency of the Germans, if there was an extermination programme to kill all the Jews, how come so many survived?"

And people still ask why I hate people.

Anyway, I recently redicovered network TV (in particular Univision, more on that later). This is no small part due to my girlfriend donating bunny ears to my life (in fact I would say it's pretty much mostly on her part), but it's also my fault for going, "well, I'm eating my dinner, I wonder what's on TV." The answer is often nothing, but sometimes it's the Simpsons and that's always good.

On the other hand, I've also seen Fox 9 news, which is bad, America's Next Top Model (hilarious, but bad), and so much other crap I can't think of it all.

One, "bright," spot in all of this has been the horror that is Cristina on Univision. This is not a good talk show, but it is amusing as hell. "Video Vixens! Good or Bad?" That's not a topic I'd listen to in English, but Spanish with some crazy women? Done.

-Thomas