Friday, October 28, 2005:

Been compiling soundtrack music to my iPod for my flight to North Carolina tomorrow.  There's some truly excellent music that comes from scores out there, much of it transcending the film from which it came.  Hans Zimmer's work on THE ROCK and TEARS OF THE SUN, James Horner's A BEAUTIFUL MIND, and even the soundtrack to DIABLO II (yep, the videogame that ate a large chunk of my life a few years back).

One of the reasons that autumn is my favorite seasons, in spite of being ultimately so miserable for me, is that the weather is so open to allowing music to be transportive (totally made that word up, I think).  Summer and spring just don't inspire me to make mix CDs of music -- while I have plenty of music that fits the warmer air, the reemergence of the green, none of it ever really takes me anywhere.  It's not as cinematic, I guess -- or at least, not the kind of movie that I enjoy watching.

On top of the soundtracks, I pulled out Type O Negative's OCTOBER RUST, one of the most aptly titled CDs ever.  It's got a fair shar of memories attached to it's songs -- it came out in '96, back when I was dating Maria, and while wistful, it brings back a lot of happy times for me.  But it also perfectly captures October: cold, getting colder, no green but a lot of color in the trees and in the sky, nostalgic and looking forward at the same time.

I'm not sure if it's the mood swings, me piling on top of those with my music choices, or the cold weather (likely a combo of the three and then some), but my drinking goes up this time of year.  And the worst thing about that is that I don't drink beer (never quite developed a taste for the aftertaste of it), and I'm trying to spend less money on it, which puts vodka out of the picture (damn you, Red Bull!).  The only alternative, however, are the malt liquor drinks like Barcardi O and such -- yup, the girlie ones.  And while I'm secure enough in my sexuality to drink whatever I want (after a six-pack, I'm inured to the comments of the other bar rats, at any rate), it's not conducive to meeting girls to be seen drinking things that are too effeminate for them.  Fortunately and unfortunately, I discovered that I have a taste for Woodchuck, a cider that comes delivered both in kegs and a sufficiently manly green bottle.

The unfortunate part is that something in it really sets off a reflux-like condition that I suffer through daily.  After my second, I'm usually not feeling too well; after my sixth, it's time to vomit. And that's not an issue of being drunk; I've built up way too much of a tolerance for that over the years, sadly for my wallet. The drunk vomit, in my experience, is not unpleasant, if only because you're relaxed and fully aware of the fact that you'll feel much better once you've purged the poison from your system. No, this is more violent, the body's way of saying that this shit needs to be gone, and now. It usually hits me after I've been asleep for an hour or three, and its a sudden, no-holds-barred, and very unfun way to be awakened.

This started about two years ago, incidentally, and only seems to happen during the fall and spring months.  And I'm only aware of it because it seemed, when it first happened, related to the onset of my CIPD symptoms.  Happily, I've not experienced those in nearly two years -- but everytime I have another Woodchuck nightmare, I become very over-conscious of the amount of feeling in my fingertips and toes.  All day long, I've been tapping my fingers against things unconsciously, just to make sure they're not going numb.

If nothing else, the coughing jags from twenty years of smoking remind me that I'm still alive -- and frankly, they're not so bad after a fifteen minute early morning purge. so violent that I pull a muscle in my back.

It's not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden and abrupt cessation thereof.