I am not burning the candle at both ends. Rather, I have decided to take the entire candle store, dowse it in gasoline, and set a match to it.

It is better to burn out than to fade away. However, not considered in this comparison is the utter joy of 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. That is better that burning out any day of the week, except Monday, when burning out makes for a wonderful spectacle.

I imagine that working too much and not sleeping enough is a bad way to die. Too slow, for one. But at least I get to enjoy a few shots along the way. I wonder: at this rate, will the cigarettes get me before the impending neurotic breakdown? And will I be sober enough to care?

Random thought: what if spontaneous human combustion is just god playing with a magnifying glass? You know, like we all did with ants when we were little? Do you think ants have a word for spontaneous bug combustion?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Dull, but finanacially stable for the first time in his adult life. And really, really sleepy.

And if one more person tells me to work smarter, not harder, I’m going to punch them in the throat. And then tell them to tell my bosses to pay me smarter. And tell them to think smarter, not harder.

God hasn’t always been listening to me
Hell has a way with the prose
Give me the strength
Give me the strength that I chose
- Strapping Young Lad, Decimator

If you ask a bunch of people at random to answer random questions about you, you get some interesting results. For instance:

• Lots of people have my back in a fight. Now, who’s got my front? Sides?
• What, exactly, is it about me that would lead people to guess or think that I sleep with no clothes on? Not to say that the statement is inaccurate (and there goes the last chance I ever had of any woman ever wanting to sleep anywhere near me), but I’m curious as to why…
• No one has heard any rumors about me lately, which either means that I’ve been successful in dropping off of the grid like I planned, or Wade has lost his voice.

This seems like a valid experiment process. Next time, I’ll just have to design the questions a little better — make ‘em a little more pointed, as it were…

There’s niche blogging, and then there’s this.

God, I’m sad for the human race.

Nothing is more powerful than beauty in a wicked world.
Amos Lee, Soul Suckers

Perhaps I should have gone into astronomy. I still recall a jigsaw puzzle I had as a child that had pictures of galaxies and stars and other astronomical features on it. And I still recall the dream that I had at some point in my life — I think it was during my marriage to Melissa, but I could be wrong — that involved me standing in a football stadium, and the “dome” was the edge of the universe, and I could see, not one hundred feet above me the pictures on that jigsaw puzzle. Nothing I’ve ever seen before or since has ever left such a mark on me — sort of a soul-deep magic.

I still get hints of that same dream echo when I see a lot of today’s current space imagery. Thus, I could kill years at the TRACE site — those with broadband can even see movies of solar activity.

…is in the latest issue of Birmingham Weekly, out on stands now. This is the annual official guide to City Stages (or, as I’ve taken to calling it, a reminder of what we used to listen to), in which I write about the local musicians fortunate enough to have an opportunity to melt in front of crowds of three to fifteen. This year’s lucky victims of my mangled short plugs: Caddle, Bloodlet Signature, The Shame Idols and Kiss Me at the Gate, among others.

Go, pick up a copy. You can always put it to use later when you need to wrap your dishes next time you move.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Friday night had come and gone — while we’re down at Base Camp playing a really slow show to a really small and uninterested crowd, the guys at the bar are having one of Those Nights — the kind where everyone makes a shitload of money. Meteorite was playing, so I knew they would be packed (I wish that helped explain why we weren’t, at Base Camp, but I don’t think it really offers much of a clue).

One of Those Nights, apparently, also included a throwback to a year ago or so, when full moons were a guarantee that something violent would happen in the bar. Usually, two or three violent things, actually; and so it was with little shock that I learned that not only had I missed out on a nice fat envelope of cash by playing instead of working, but also on (if counts are accurate and fair) four fights.

One of the participants in the night’s festivities invited me to have a shot with him, one to help settle his nerves. I’m far from averse to free shots, mind you — although this one had a string attached. This wasn’t call your own shot, but rather, as he put it, “Something brown.”

So, I’ve missed out on money, live-action human pinball, and now I have to drink whiskey. Fuck.

Brown is the color of dirt, poo, and things that I don’t really want to drink. Double fuck.

I’m talking later with Jason and Garth about whiskey and beer. Garth especially has a tendency to divide alcohol into two categories: whiskey & beer, and all that shit that women drink. I know full well that he doesn’t entirely mean that, as I’ve witnessed him happily drinking just about anything you put in front of him. But still, it irks me, seeing as how I have a tendency to avoid anything in the beer and whiskey families.

In fact, I drink like a girl, I am told repeatedly. For bottles or draught, if there’s no Woodchuck around, I’ll head straight for vodka (usually with Red Bull). For shooting, I prefer Jaeger, though I’ll drink my share of the girlie mixed shots, too — honeydew, Washington Apple, liquid Chronic…

I keep hearing that I need to keep drinking beer until I like it — that beer is an acquired taste. Ditto bourbon, or scotch. But then I wonder: who is it that discovered the concept of an acquired taste? Under what circumstances?

There’s a doomed man walking through the desert, no sign of civilization on the horizon. For days now, he has collected his sweat and urine, eventually growing thirsty enough that he swallows every drop of the foul concoction. And as each day passes, he gradually notices the taste less and less, even coming to crave it…

I don’t think so. And for fuck’s sake, beer and scotch aren’t the only choices out there for anyone, not even a doomed alcoholic at Marty’s.

If I tell you that licking toads is a great high, and then give you the choice between licking toads and eating a tab of tasteless blotter acid, would you still choose the toad? If you knew that it was the same high? What if I made fun of you for taking the girlie way out? Okay, fine, I’ll tell you that it’s an acquired taste…

Fuck you. You would not.

And besides, having watched all of you with your beers and whiskeys, I’ll tell you right now that I can drink any of you under the table any night of the week. As soon as you can hold your alcohol (and by the way, Woodchuck has a higher alcohol content than your pussy Bud Light) better than me, you can make fun of what I drink.

Actually, you can go ahead and make fun of what I drink. I’ll be right beside you, making fun of the girl you’re with. But hey, maybe ugly and overly-talkative is an acquired taste, too?

I ended up taking today off to burn off a soon-to-expire personal day from work. Good move, I realize now; I had too much to do, having finally and officially fallen behind in my outside-of-work-and-band life. Just little things, really, like shopping and laundry. No big deal.

And so I’ve spent the day caught up in the mundane minutiae of life, and I’m still feeling like I’m light-years away from where I want to be. I think maybe this nihilistic frame of mind might stem at least in part from the dream I was having when I woke (dreams involving ex-wives, places that we lived eight years ago, and extreme details like a telephone ring that I haven’t heard since then — those dreams are never going to end well, nor start the day properly).

But I did manage to enjoy a movie (The Station Agent) in the dead quiet heat of my apartment over my predictable Mexican dinner, and it’s still early enough that there are decent odds that I’ll hit my bed before midnight. So I guess it’s not all off-kilter.

Except that that makes it off-kilter…