your kiss is not on the current agenda

This man is clearly a visitor from an alternate universe.
Things that need doing, abridged version:

- get Super Lumina's brake pads replaced
- scale the cherry tree out back and unhook the windchimes before the bad weather starts
- clean off and store the patio furniture
- figure out what I'm going to do with pronounced WOO-BIN
- get my Christmas shopping sorted out before things go crazy
- migrate Armagideon Time to a Wordpress setup on my own webhost
- dig out the sumacs that have snuck their way into the raspberry brambles
- get a haircut
- mail out some packages to my friends
- complete the articles I promised for other sites
- finish sorting and cataloging my popcult archives
- quit kidding myself that making lists will aid me in getting any of the above items done

The Blue Things - You Can't Say We Never Tried (from The Blue Things Story, 1993) - I suppose it depends of what you definition of "tried" is. Mine might be a little more generous than most, and encompasses those transitory flashes of obligation I feel while playing videogames or otherwise procrastinating.

Not that effort automatically equals success, as Kansas's The Blue Things (later "The Bluethings") discovered when their rather nice Byrdsean sound failed to propel the outfit out of the midwestern regional market. Oh, well, there are worse fates than being a well-regarded 1960's garage rock obscurity.

just not enough

Mitchell's academic record was good, extremely good. Excellent. But the arc wasn't there. The arc was something Turner had learned to look for in the dossiers of research people, that certain signal curve of brilliance. He could spot the arc the way a master machinist could identify metals by observing the spark plume off a grinding wheel. And Mitchell hadn't had it. - William Gibson, Count Zero

Eh, whatever. I'm quite content with this comfortable little niche I've carved out for myself.

Dow Jones & The Industrials - Ain't Good Enough (from the Hoosier Hysteria split LP, 1980) - There ain't nothing inadequate about this slice of art-damaged Indiana punk rawk.

won't be worried long

One of my strongest childhood memories is of my mother relating a bit of family folklore to me. It concerned some great-great-relation of her father's side of the family, a stoically creepy bunch of Old Yankees from Maine's Androscoggin County. This particular relative worked in a lumber mill, and during the course of his duties got his arm stuck in the machinery. As his friends tried in vain to find the best way to extricate the ruined limb from the works, my laterally-thinking ancestor came up with an easy solution -- power up the machinery and let it take the limb off quickly and cleanly. So they did.

I can't help but think that lingering effects of my mother's story somehow figure into the following random, but characteristically "Andrew," autobiographical antidote.

I adopted Mia not too long after Zoe Blackfeet, my previous feline companion, wandered off and never returned. Mia had belonged to some neurotic yuppies from Winchester who had soured on the idea of pet ownership and dumped her off at the vet's office.

Unlike Zoe (or Budwina before her), Mia was not a personable cat. I don't know if it was from poor socialization or abuse experienced at the hands of her previous owners, or a simple matter of temperament. I've lived around cats my entire life; they're capricious creatures. Mia, though, wasn't so much aloof as sociopathic, and able to switch from snugglebunny to psycho-slasher with no warning whatsoever. (She also possessed the ability to shed her weight in long white fur on a daily basis.)

Even if she wasn't the nicest cat, I was still happy to have her around and living in a decent home.

On a lovely spring afternoon in 2002, I was in my bedroom reading a book when Mia hopped on the bed and stretched out beside me. I patted her. She purred. I scratched behind her ears. She viciously bit and scratched my left forearm, and refused to let go until my limb had been thoroughly flensed.

It hurt like hell, but cat scratches usually do, and this didn't appear that much worse than some of the previous feline-related injuries I had dealt with. I washed the arm with some soap and water and let nature do the rest. That the cuts seemed to be a long time in healing or there was a growing burning sensation in the arm didn't worry me a whole lot. Nor did the fact that over the course of the following week or so my forearm swelled up to near-Popeye proportions.

Maura, of course, was concerned, but it's her job to be. Besides, who is more familiar with my internal workings than I am? It wasn't until I had entered the second week following the incident that I was forced to acknowledge that something wasn't right. (Maura's mom was particularly persuasive with her worried stare and repeated use of "Jaysis.") While my co-workers and family (not Maura, because she understands me) chimed in with a loud chorus of "EMERGENCY ROOM," I decided to take matters into my own (swollen and healthy) hands.

Using a sterilized needle, I opened up the bite wounds that were the source of the infection and let the stream of pus drain out. Afterwards I soaked the arm in warm water and Epsom salt for an hour before slathering the area with anti-bacterial ointment and bandaging it up. It took about a week of such therapy before my arm started to resemble its old self (though I still have a few scars), thus proving that not only that am I too laid back for my own good, but that I can occasionally remedy the problems which arise from my complacency (in an extremely painful and disgusting way that could have been avoided with a glimmer of foresight).

Prince Buster - Pussy Cat Bite Me (from Wreck A Pum Pum, 1976) - Felis dentata ska.

Tom Jones - It Takes a Worried Man (from Along Came Jones, 1965; collected on Millennium Edition, 2000) - Devo's cover of this folk standard will always be the definitive version as far as I'm concerned, but Sir Tom's powerhouse vocals and that magnificent horn section are almost enough to make me reconsider my position.

Love and Rockets - No Big Deal (from Love and Rockets, 1989) - True, but a perfectly fine song, nonetheless.

energy can be directed

Such as whether or not Mr. T really did eat your balls.
"Good enough" really is good enough for me most of the time. I am a man of simple tastes and few ambitions. Any penalties that my lack of competitive drive have incurred have been more than ameliorated by my sense of laid-back equanimity. It's when events disrupt my comfortable state of deliberate equilibrium that I get, well, whiny.

I was fine with the speed and performance of my current DSL service. It's easy to install and maintain, and hotswitching the router between PC and the Xbox can be done in a couple of minutes. Despite marketing propaganda's push to shame me as a narrow bandwith luddite, I've never been one to measure the size of my manhood in Mbps. The "bigger, badder, faster" mindset leads to things like Hummers, McMansions, and eventually total environmental and economic collapse.

For years I've been resisting the dinner-and-showertime robocalls from my ISP urging, nay browbeating, my wife and I to upgrade to FIOS. I didn't trust the pricing of the service, regardless of the front end deals offered. I had no desire to let some stanger into my house to screw around with the wiring. Most importantly, I definitely didn't want said stranger to fuck around with my carefully maintained computer and/or uploading company junkware onto it as part of some "special package."

Yet that's exactly what's going to happen tomorrow morning. Yeah, I know -- "Poor, poor Andrew having to suffer through the horror of having super high-speed internet service installed." It's still a pain in the ass, though, as I have to spend most of my day clearing space and cleaning the monumental clutter that has accumulated around my workstation over the past few years in order to give a person or persons unknown free access to my secret lair.

The Kings - Switchin' to Glide (from The Kings Are Here, 1980) - Does not include new wave installation surcharge, hooky parts and labor, or any applicable local taxes on synth usage.

Clarence Reid - If It Was Good Enough for Daddy (from Running Water, 1973) - Bring on the punch cards, rotary phones, and heavy-ass funk!

(If there's no post tomorrow, just assume something went catastrophically wrong.)

no one knows what it's for

I'm very possessive of my Saturdays. Because Maura spends the better part of the day grocery shopping and checking out yard sales, Saturday is the one day of the week where I'm free to do work around the house or goof off for long stretches without having to worry about pending obligations or inconveniencing the wife in any way (not really an issue, but I work better when I don't have to second-guess others' intentions).

As both my roster of household chores and backlog of games/books/movies has grown over the past three-and-a-half years, every minute of my personal sabbath is precious and an hour spent talking shit on the phone is an hour NOT spent doing something I had intended on doing.

Posting to Armagideon Time on the weekends has also become something of a wasteful expenditure of time in recent months. The site's weekend traffic is always anemic and it's a pain to take the time to come up the idea for, then compose post that amounts to more than just a "funny" out of context image and a music link.

And yet here I am, typing away about it, when I really want to be downstairs rampaging through Liberty City's virtual streets. When I last posted something along these lines, some asshole commenter made a crack about my having an OCD.

That assessment was pure bullshit (and no one's forcing you to read AT, Mr. Anonymous Q. Shitheel). The reason for the weekend posts is quite simple: an awareness of my own sense of inertia. It's easier to keep with the daily schedule than to let my deep-seated sense of personal complacency creep into the mix.

The above serves as a long-winded introduction for the solution to my dilemma:

AT's Saturday Mixtape

This inaugural edition contains a selection of favorites from the driving mix CD-R's I used to cobble together before Super Lumina's CD player shit the bed and I started using our Zune instead. One of the tricky parts of compiling tracklists for driving mixes was negotiating the subtle, yet important differences between Maura's musical tastes and mine...because that woman is not afraid to let her opinions be known in the most brutal manner.

This mix runs heavy on the punk/powerpop, with some token electronica and alt-rock tracks tossed in to break up the monotony. Also included is the requisite "Yes, I know she hates it, but I'm the one making the disc" track, which should be fairly easy to spot.

never comprehending the race had long gone by

If there's one lesson I need to learn, it's that the personal complacency that serves me well on so many occasions should not be applied to matters related to dental care. It's not as if I wasn't clued onto that in a big way three months ago, but some habits are harder to break than others.

While I do my best to shoulder my current self-made cross of avoidable stupidity, here are a few things that possess the ability to make me forget the pain, if only for a few short moments...

Kylie Minogue - Did It Again


Belly - Now They'll Sleep


Modern English - I Melt With You

he who waits is lost

So remember I couple of days ago, when I was whining about what I thought was just a bad head cold? I think it has turned out to be something a little more complicated.

Last June, when I made my long-postponed trip to the dentist, I was told that two contiguous teeth on the upper right-hand side were candidates for root canals, due to the fact that both had been cracked open and left untreated so long before being filled. My dentist wrote me up a referral for an endodontist, and was supposed to set me up an appointment for the initial consultation.

The thing is that, for whatever reason, I never got a call back from the endodontist. I didn't pursue the matter, since I had a dozen cavities that needed filling, my dental coverage was scaled back (modestly, but still) when I switched unions, and root canals are expensive. Better to nip the numerous small problems in the bud, I thought, rather than blow the entire year's benefit on a couple big procedures that, let's face it, rank rather low on the "things we prefer to experience scale." (My wife, who has had a root canal done by the same people not too long ago, says that the process is completely different these days, and that she fell asleep in the chair while it was being done. Even so, I notice she isn't hoping to undergo the experience again any time soon.)

Besides, I figured, how bad could things get in the eleven months before the next fiscal year? The rotten chompers were already sensitive, I had lived through the white hot pain of countless canker sores, and I was not going to be intimidated by some bush league toothache. Sure, my friend recounted some over-the-top horror story about a classmate of his whose jaw abscessed due to similar neglect, which made the poor kid hallucinate and speak in tongues, but my friend has similar stories for every health issue from hangnails to cerebral hemorrhages.

Despite all my rationalizations and calculations, the answer to "how bad could it be" turned out to be "pretty damn horrible, actually." I've spent the last 48 hours distracted to the point of near madness by a throbbing, itching ache in my upper jaw, the inflamed nerve endings broadcasting all sorts of nasty sensations through my sinuses, cheek, and throat (which is why I though it was a head cold at first). As much as a canker sore feels like a blowtorch being held to the fleshy tissue inside the mouth, it's an acute pain and can be blocked out with a bit of effort. Until I finally took my wife's advice about the wonders of ibuprofen (O, glorious OTC pain reliever!) this morning, I was reduced to a state where I began to consider the merits of unconventional treatment as practiced by Bruce Willis's character in 12 Monkeys (fortunately I couldn't remember where I put my hunting knife) or by the learned triumvirate of Howard, Fine, and Howard...


Bill Haley & His Comets - (Now and Then) There's a Fool Such as I (from The Decca Years & More box set, 1991) - Tell me about it, Bill.

The Upsetters - Toothache (from The Complete UK Upsetters Singles Collection, Vol. 2, 2002) - The only kind of toothache worth having.

choking on the dirt and sand

I spent my holiday engaged in a lopsided battle to root out the forces of entropy from their subterranean lair, or in less florid terms, "I cleaned the basement." It's a project I had been meaning (however reluctantly) to tackle for some time now, though a stream of convenient distractions (read: videogames and weak excuses) made it possible to postpone the inevitable longer than I ever dreamed possible.

My idle leisure's stay of execution ended last Thursday, however, when a representative from the natural gas company came knocking at my front door in order to inform me that our meter was past due for replacement and that they'd send a crew to the house on Wednesday to install a new one. While I've long since resigned myself to having a disgracefully messy cellar, I was not comfortable with sharing knowledge of its present state with outsiders. Being a member of civil society means that there are standards which must be observed, and one doesn't allow just anyone to bear witness to the large pile of soda cans that have fallen out of the recycling bin (sometime back in 2005, but the intent to redeem them was there, honest) or the haphazard jumble of boxes that once contained various household appliances...and the replacements for those appliances...and the replacements for the replacements.

I set aside this, the last day of my long weekend (because there is nothing so important that it cannot be deferred till the last minute), to impose a degree of order upon the chaos borne of complacency. It was surprisingly easy going. At least, it was until I broke out the push broom, and generated a cloud of airborne debris with my sweeping that rivaled the output of a major pyroclastic event. My glasses, my clothes, the hair, my bronchial passages quickly became coated in a layer of thick gray layer of dust that no amount of deep soaking seems to be able to dislodge completely.

And so, while I head off to the bathroom to attempt to expectorate a few more chunks of phlegm-crete, I offer you these fine particulate-themed tracks for your musical enjoyment. (Breath masks optional, though strongly recommended.)

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Cities in Dust (from Tinderbox, 1986) - Where the band and I parted ways. They did release a few minor gems after this Vesuvial masterpiece, but -- much like The Cure did around the same time -- seemed to increasingly play toward the public's flawed perceptions of the band's image, and that's a one way road to embarrassment.

Mazzy Star - Into Dust (from So Tonight I Might See, 1993) - The dark dreaminess of a Nyquil-triggered haze distilled into musical form, and I mean that as a compliment, really.

The Chemical Brothers - In Dust We Trust (from Exit Planet Dust, 1995) - Your volume do not adjust, though your hair may get mussed. Instead moves you should bust, to the beats of electro lust. (This concludes today's test of my readership alienation experiment.)

Vacation II – Day 2 – Dream of the perfect life

“The problem of leisure,” sang Gang of Four in 1979, is “what to do for pleasure.” Putting aside postpunk dissections of alienated labor and how the theory applies to everyday life, I find myself currently in a similar predicament. I’ve never been one for formally structured vacations, where the end result means coming away even more exhausted and deeper in debt than one was going into the adventure. Better to stay at home, relax, and indulge in some low stress, low cost pursuits, or perhaps, motivation willing, get some oft delayed project around the home taken care of.

While they are presently plenty of things that need doing, however, I’m having a difficult time coming up with things which I’d like or want to do during this break from work. My fear is that based on today’s experience, where I spent the bulk of my free time filling monster hunt quotas in Rogue Galaxy, that this vacation might devolve into an extended long weekend, with all the soul deadening emptiness such a thing entails.

Gang of Four – Natural’s Not in It (from Entertainment!, 1979)

and I ruin any kind of fun you have in mind

Complacency is a double-edged sword. While there is something to be said for blissfully coasting through life, free of the stresses that ulcerate the stomachs or hemorrhage the cerebrums of more proactive folks, there’s a very high risk that one’s slacker ways will spill over into areas of one’s life that need more than the minimal required service plan.

There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. No matter how comfortable with the status quo one may become, without an influx of energy, entropy will be the inevitable end result.

…and by “entropy,” I mean:

- your normally close-cropped hair has been allowed to turn into a pompadour with muttonchop sideburns

- there’s a package on the computer desk you’ve been meaning to mail to a friend in Seattle for weeks

- it’s been fourteen months and you still haven’t rescheduled the dentist appointment you cancelled, despite waking up with pains in your jaw every morning

- you can’t remember the last time you actually did anything outside the normal household routine with your spouse

- between the long playing sessions of Rogue Galaxy and searching the music archives for songs to match to individual Justice League Detroit members, you forgot you even have a spouse

No, I’m not talking from personal experience. What made you think that?

Dow Jones and The Industrials – What’s the Difference? (from Hoosier Hysteria, 1980) – Unlike better known punk stomper “Can’t Stand the Midwest” this is an excellent bit of art-damaged punk/postpunk and is more representative of the Indiana-based outfit’s unique sound.

X – When Our Love Passed out on the Couch (from Wild Gift, 1981) – Many songs with ambitious titles fail to deliver the musical goods, but this track isn’t one of them.