Monday, April 9, 2018

2018: April 9th 4:55 AM



Yesterday was chock full of tension. Not bad tension, but the kind that accompanies just barely getting a bunch of stuff done that had to get done. Chief among these integral events was getting the Art ordered for my anthology's cover. This opened up a bunch of research I didn't realize I would have to do, like trim size and paper color. And ordering the art held up the day's bigger task, which was moving some of K's mom's stuff. That's going to be an ongoing thing over the next three weeks, and it's difficult. Still, it all went fairly smooth in the end. No time for a post though, so I'll try to miniaturize the day herein, beginning with the card I pulled yesterday, which was the Nine of Cups: Happiness.

Playlist from the 7th:

Grifteskymfning - Likpsalm
Myrkur - M
Blut Aus Nord - Deus Salutis Meae
The Ocean - Heliocentric
Lustmord - The Word as Power
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

Playlist from the 8th:

Myrkur - M

Card of the day:


This I take as a direct nod to the deep dive I'm about to pull on the first issue of Parish Fen, which is in need of some tweaking before I pass if back off to Grimm for the art, which has been started and looks absolutely Amazing.

Saturday, April 7, 2018

2018: April 7th, 11:07 AM

I've been clocking a lot of hours with the first album by Myrkur; first listens since 2015 when it made my best of list.



Playlist from yesterday:

Myrkur - M
Blut Aus Nord - MoRT
The Ocean - Heliocentric
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
Pigface - Gub
Morphine - Yes

Card of the day:

Hmmm...



Friday, April 6, 2018

2018: April 6th 6:57 AM



I cannot wait to read this:

From the Word Horde website:

It’s been years since the groundbreaking debut of black metal band Angelus Mortis, and that first album, Henosis, has become a classic of the genre, a harrowing primal scream of rage and anger. With the next two albums, Fields of Punishment and Telos, Angelus Mortis cemented a reputation for uncompromising, aggressive music, impressing critics and fans alike. But the road to success is littered with temptation, and over the next decade, Angelus Mortis’s leader, Max, better known as Strigoi, became infamous for bad associations and worse behavior, burning through side-men and alienating fans.

Today, at the request of their record label, Max and new drummer Roland are traveling to Ukraine to record a comeback album with the famously reclusive cult act Wisdom of Silenus. What they discover when they get there will go far deeper than the aesthetics of the genre, and the music they create–antihuman, antilife–ultimately becomes a weapon unto itself.
Equally inspired by the fractured, nightmarish novels of John Hawkes, the blackened dreamscapes of cosmic-pessimist philosophy, and the music of second-wave black metal bands, author David Peak’s Corpsepaint is an exploration of creative people summoning destructive powers while struggling to express what it means to be human.
Cover Art by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Cover Design by Scott R Jones
Pub Date: April 30, 2018

New installment of Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying went up yesterday. Read it HERE on Joup.

Playlist for 4/05:

Cypress Hill - III: Temples of Boom
Alice in Chains - Dirt
Soundgarden - Down on the Upside
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Preoccupations - New Material

Card for the day:


There is some extremely fascinating reading on this card HERE. I don't have time this morning to comb that particular text for correspondences to my daily life, so I'm going with the idea that The Magus reminds us of the creative Will that shapes all life. Self-manifestation, which fits because I intend to finish editing the last two stories in the anthology today or tomorrow, then it's just shoring up the cover art.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Terry Gilliam Finally Did It!



Mr. Brown sent me this first thing this morning! Can't believe it is finally happening.

2018: April 5th 4:54 AM


Happy Birthday Jake! Still miss you my friend. You've missed a lot... but then again, a lot of what you've missed isn't exactly great, so maybe you're better off. Still, I think about you damn near everyday. Here's one of our favorites:


I'm going to supersede the Divine Feminine thing I've been doing with my listening for a Jake day today, in honor of my one-time best friend who passed away when we were twenty-two. It would be his forty-second birthday today (let's be honest, there was no way he was making it this far). Jake and I had a lot of music in common; we'd spend hours smoking pot and just listening. Tried to do a few bands at certain points. One of those, Second Attention, was pretty damn good. Maybe one day I'll upload some of that stuff to youtube or, actually, I'll probably do a band camp. Regardless, Sabotage was one of those albums we analyzed endlessly, and Meglomania in particular, underwent heavy scrutiny to its lyrics, which are amazing.

New Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying going up later today.

Playlist from yesterday:

Jucifer - If Thine Enemy Hunger
Witchcryer - Cry Witch
Myrkur - M
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Foster the People - Torches
Ministry - Psalm 69
Curtis Harding - Face Your Fear
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Cocksure - TVMALSV

Card for the day:


"Physical prosperity, abundance, and material success."

Nice to see with annual reviews just around the corner and me working my arse off constantly. Also, always good to remember this card represents the total of the spheres of the Quaballahistic Tree of Life: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Geburah, Tipareth, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth - the last being the sphere of Disks as well as that of tens.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

2018: April 4th, 5:15 AM

This song:



I've been clocking a lot of time with the first Zeppelin record recently, both on the original vinyl and the remastered version available in Apple Music, and it's never sounded so damn good. I love all Led Zeppelin, but my binges with the band's music usually reach obsession level only once every two years or so and almost always skew toward the back half of their career. But right now, Zeppelin One is constantly haunting me, and this song is one of the reasons. I've probably not listened to these songs on headphones since the old mix tapes I made off WCKG's Get the Led Out sessions, back when I was a Freshmen or Sophomore in High School, circa '91/'92, and in plugging in directly to my ear canals recently with the remastered version, I've noticed a few things I'm unsure if I was ever aware of before. Chief among these is a faint, eerie backing vocal Robert Plant does around 1:41 in, where he pre-sings the "I can hear it calling me," part of the end of the verse. It chills me, and I like that.

Playlist from yesterday:

Sarah Brighten - Eden
Garbage - Eponymous
Luscious Jackson - Fever In Fever Out
Preoccupations - New Material
L7 - Hungry for Stink

Based on my Tarot pull yesterday, I tried to stick to feminine music and avoid anything aggro. About halfway through the day, I realized the Prince of Cups card had another interesting juxtaposition to my immediate days when I remembered that I've been reading Becky Cloonan and Andy Belanger and Lee Louhridge. It's one of my favorite comics right now and it has a very feminine vibe, which makes its dark, creepy and sometimes downright terrifyingly sexy (yeah, that's a thing) vibe very unique and extremely compelling. It also opens me up to a different tone than I'm used to for my thoughts, letting a little of that feminine side in at angles I'm not used to experiencing them, and that makes the machine feel like its running pretty good.

Card for today:


Obviously another Feminine card, what with Egyptian Goddess Nuit pictured, dousing herself in the waters of the Universe, Stars at her feet.

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

2018: April 3rd, 5:21 AM



I'd written these guys off a long time ago. When I first heard System of a Down, and it was this exact song, they made a good impression on me. Then I dove a little deeper and found the malaise of the down-tuned, trace elliot 00s guitar-driven metal storm left me cold enough where I wrote off most of the groups that 'made it' during that time. Eventually a few exceptions leaked through, some of them rather begrudgingly . A few days ago at work one of the newer guys on my shift and I were talking music and System came up. He's considerably younger, and had a completely different perspective. I decided to hit that first record back up on Apple Music and, wouldn't you know, I listened to it yesterday and really enjoyed it. Also, I've always dug their completely insane cover of Sabbath's Snowblind that appears on the Nativity in Black tribute anthology record, so I guess I never 100% discounted these guys.



Playlist from yesterday:

The Fall - Early Singles
System of a Down - Eponymous
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I
Peter Gabriel - Us
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper
Soundgarden - SOMMS

Card for the day:


Gallantry, gentleness and a male in touch with his feminine side. This is me, to a degree. Since early 20s, I've always understood and respected the feminine aspects of my psyche, and I often pay homage to them with the music I listen to and how I relate to it while its on. Maybe I'll follow this side of things today and see where it gets me (I've been rather male/aggressive at work lately, not in an alpha male way, but with a lot of things going pear-shaped at month's end, I got pretty aggro. Today I'll play it a bit different, with this card in mind.

Monday, April 2, 2018

2018: April 2nd, 5:07 AM

This song. Wow.



Playlist from 4/01:

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III
John Coltrane - Giant Steps

Card of the day:

Two, as one drifted from the pile while I shuffled and made itself known, so to speak:


Ace of Swords was the actual card I pulled. This card is BREAKTHROUGH and I feel that's a direct reference to the fact that in all the busyness yesterday, moving and cleaning and whatnot, I actually managed to get a final edit done on two more of the seven stories for the anthology.


This seems to be piggybacking off the last two pulls in some weird, reverse energy fluctuation. I had the Six of Wands and the Seven of Wands, a influx of energy and the expenditure of that energy, respectively. Now I have the beginning of that triumvirate, where the energy amasses. Fits, if I'm going to make a push this week to finish the editing and the first issue of Parish Fen, which is exactly what I'm going to do, all while hopefully only working about 45 hours between now and Friday and taking an actual weekend off.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

New Zeal and Ardor!



Let's hope this heralds a new album or E.P. sometime soon!

2018: April 1st 10:21 AM

Yesterday was a sacrifice - finished the latest Drinking with Comics and put it up, worked in the middle of the day, cleaned and unboxed. Never had a chance to do the blog until later at night and by then March 30th, it's playlist and the idea of pulling a card were loooong gone. I do know that I woke up with this in my head yesterday though:



Nearing the end of Thomas Ligotti's Grimscribe and just finished The Dreaming in Nortown, easily one of my favorite stories in this collection of the author's earliest two anthologies. The story builds a nice, palpable dread by plumbing the depths of consciousness; that nasty little place where waking life and the oneiric plane intermingle. And Ligotti does this in a way that feels reminiscent of Lovecraft's best philosophical terror, i.e. the opening paragraph of The Call of Cthulhu, so there's a nostalgic harmony to my enjoyment of it, as well. That said, the slightly ineffective abstractions meant to masquerade as profound raison d'être for the characters wax and wane a bit in a kind of 'nothing is happening' way; not to say I'm complaining there's no action or monsters, quite the opposite. Once again though, as I have with other stories in this collection, I feel the The Dreaming in Nortown's end doesn't exactly payoff what the rest of the story sets up.

Also recently began Si Spencer and Sean Murphy's older Hellblazer story, City of Demons. So far, really good.

Playlist from 3/31

Tennis System - Technicolour Blind
Cash Money - Black Hearts and Broken Wills
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - The Very Best of
Childish Gambino - Because the Internet
System of a Down - Eponymous
The Verve - A Storm in Heaven
Pink Floyd - the Wall
The Used - Ocean of the Sky
Garbage - Eponymous

Friday, March 30, 2018

2018: March 30th 5:13 AM

Unboxed and shelved my CDs last night, and listened to U2's Achtung Baby for the first time in a long time while doing so. That's probably why I woke up with this one in my head.


U2 is a pretty polarizing group for me; they're a lot like Metallica or RHCP - I love the early stuff, hate the later/current stuff, and generally dislike the public personas they present to the world. That said, War and Achtung are two unbelievably strong records that help define certain moments of my early life, so they will be with me always.

Playlist from yesterday:

Luscious Jackson - Electric Honey
Silkworm - Firewater
U2 - Achtung Baby
Brian Eno, David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

I noticed that Stop Making Sense is currently included with Prime - I've somehow managed to make it 42 years without seeing it so I began remedying that last night, although we didn't make it far before I had to turn in. Today and tomorrow have the potential to be nightmares at work, so it may be a time before I get back to watch the rest. Thus far, three songs in, it is of course awesome.

No Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying today. Next week I'm back at that for sure.

Card for the day:


From the Grimoire: "Emotional depths honed by intellect - the airy aspect of water, or the intelligent aspect of emotion. I'm taking this as a sign to temper my emotions (read: anger) over the next two days as other departments play their little end-of-the-month games. Games that always fuck over my department. Okay. I'll keep my mouth to a minimum in the interest of the greater good (read: my paycheck).

Thursday, March 29, 2018

2018: March 29th 10:33 PM

Bit late today, eh? Looooooong day.



I'd forgotten how goddamn funny this song is. I remember when The King in Yellow was first released, Mr. Brown sent it to me with the comment that the chorus about the 300 lb psychic baby was hysterical.

It is.

Playlist from yesterday:

Singles OST
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Odonis Odonis - Hard Boiled Soft Boiled
Silkworm - Firewater
Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss
Dead Milkmen - The King in Yellow

Card for the day, which I actually pulled this morning at 6:32 AM, was indeed, following through from yesterday:


Energy that began with the five of wands Strife, ballooned with Six of Wands Victory, is now expended.

Also, the eye thing is totally a side effect of the prednisone and I am now, at my pulmonologist's recommendation, tapering off of it.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

2018: March 28th 11:59 AM


After the Astronaut is the Butthole Surfers album Capitol never released, back at the end of the 90s/early 00s. I don't remember the whole story any more, but basically in the great 'alternative buy-up' that occurred after Nirvana's success, when label execs were plugging their ears and counting their checks from Oh the Guilt, the major labels spent a lot of time scratching their heads and signing checks to bands they thought might be the next "big thing". As long-time stalwarts of underground madness, the Surfers were held in high regard by a lot of people labels deemed to be 'in the know' and they were signed. One has to imagine the man who signed them never went back and actually listened to much of the band's back catalogue, certainly not Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac. Anyway, I think Capitol released two records for the Surfers and then pulled the plug on releasing the third. I ended up finding most of the tracks on Napster back when that was still a thing - that's what I used the sight for, not pirating stuff I could hand band's money for - and have loved it ever since. Eventually most of the content was released as The Weird Revolution album - I've never bothered with that, as it seemed superfluous to my version and the version of my favorite song - embedded above - is just different for me to turn my head back to the one I know. Not sure how the band feels about the Weird Revolution or even who put it out, but that's really just a Wikipedia entry away I'm sure. Anyway, I love this song. A lot. Specifically the way Gibby delivers the lines about Macaroni hanging from his chin and Sadness filling the air for the hurt shirt. 

Playlist from 3/27:

The Wire Tapper #23
Captain Jack - For Ron
Black Sabbath - Masters of Reality
Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. #1
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Butthole Surfers - After the Astronaut

Card of the day:

While performing my standard, 3-shuffle pre-draw, the following two card leapt from the deck and landed on the floor.



My subsequent pull was:

I wasn't planning on doing an all-out spread this morning, but let's see what we have. So, going off of my notes in the Grimoire, we get the following:

Knight of Cups - Enlightenment, or perhaps Victory, is within reach, but there's danger of an emotional deluge. Act fast and be careful not to drown.

The Hierophant - a wise teacher, take advantage of opportunities to learn and advance in stature.

Six of Wands Victory - Energy has crested to reward, but this is a pinion card, caught between the fireball of energy in the Five of Wands Strife and the Seven of Wands Valour. This accentuates the 'act fast and be careful not to drown,' or maybe in this case it's be careful not to get burned.

Not sure how this applies to me for the day or moving forward, but it will be good to keep my eye open for it.



Tuesday, March 27, 2018

2018: March 27th 4:22 AM

Starting the day with The Wire Tapper #23, specifically at the moment a track called "Sevilla Una Maravilla. I wanted to embed this here, as per the norm, however the track is not on youtube and the information provided on the liner notes of the disc point in the direction of a warm circuit.com, I'm guessing a label, which is no longer operative, due to the fact that if you click that link you'll see the domain is up for sale. First another track, the subsequent one on the disc, which I really quite like:




Not finding the warmcircuit or Windup track brings to mind the idea that in this 'high speed age', things appear and disappear quickly, and amazingly almost without track. The Wire Tapper disc itself is a free anthology that would accompany Wire magazine back when I bought it ravenously every month or other month - can't quite remember the schedule - circa 2009/2010. I stopped simply because of the mounting financial issues that culminated with my personal apocalypse in 2015, and the fact that I stopped working at Borders and they went out of business in 2011. Sure I could have subscribed, even felt guilty sometimes that I didn't, as Wire is a truly, completely independent magazine, owned and operated by the staff, who bought the publication out from its former publisher sometime in the mid-to-late 00s. It's still available, and what's more it's available online here, every issue ever for the 2.50 lbs a month (a new concern of mine is space - I just had to throw almost all my old issues away in the move).

Playlist from yesterday:

Singles - OST
Preoccupations - New Material
Genghis Tron - Board Up the House
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I
Sepultura - Rise
My Bloody Valentine - MBV (Vinyl)
The Soft Moon - Eponymous
Black Sabbath - Sabotage (Vinyl)
The Dead Boys - We Have Come for Your Children  (Vinyl)
Angelo Badalamenti/David Lynch - Twin Peaks Archive

Card of the day:


From the Grimoire: "Indicates trouble earlier on that is now revealed/healed. Rest/recuperation. Find the high ground to gain perspective."

Okay, this is of particular interest to me, as today's pull appears to answer directly an insight I had upon waking this morning. If you've keep up with this page you know I've been pulling The Fool a lot lately. This has had me wondering if I'm on more of a 'journey' than I originally assumed, something more than an allusion to my move, now 90% complete. So why still pulling The Fool? Well, there are other interpretations, but that's not it. I hang with my gut on these, and my gut says journey. At the same time, in my everyday life, I've noticed over the last few days, specifically since the move, my eye sight has become horrendous. For example, yesterday at dusk I drove the five minutes to the nearby beer palace for a sixer, and had such a hard time with my night vision that I returned home essentially terrified that I'm going blind. Dramatic? Maybe, but I've begun fearing degeneration due to my Sarcoidosis, a disease I am currently treating with a first six-week salvo of Prednisone, but one that is known to affect the eyes. I've apparently had Sarcoidosis for a long time, possibly over ten years, and because of repeated missed diagnosis by medical professional fools, it was not until I was somewhat dramatically thrown in a local hospital's quarantine area for three days last spring that someone finally figured out what was wrong with me. Well, no, it wasn't at the hospital they figured it out, it was later, when I was first introduced to my current Pulmonologist, who is fantastic. So if I'm finally treating it, shouldn't any symptoms be diminishing, not escalating?

This is the question...

For the record it's not just at dusk or in the dark that my eyesight bothers me, and it's not consistent. I drove to work in the dark yesterday morning without incident, and yet my daylight drive home yesterday was a massive strain. Even over the weekend, Saturday specifically, the day after the move, I had moments of confusion and stress due to not seeing properly in broad daylight. So with all this mounting, I woke up pre-alarm this morning, and the first thought in my head was about what The Fool is trying to tell me. And I thought, "hey, my eyes feel better - maybe I'm just exhausted." Normally I nap at least once a week, but I haven't had that luxury since at least a week before the move. And even if I stay up late, I generally do not sleep in. So I wake up and the first thing I think is, "Maybe my eyes are a symptom of being exhausted?" and then I pull the Two of Swords and, to reiterate for effect, "Indicates trouble earlier on that is now revealed/healed. Rest/recuperation. Find the high ground to gain perspective."

Not sure at this point how the "Find the high ground..." might factor in, if at all, but I think the rest speaks for itself. And I realize that, whether it's a case of 'if you've convinced yourself, that's great' or not, pulling a card a day and making the effort to reengage with my Thoth deck and the Tarot/Jungian system in general has had a similar turn of results as my dream journaling/meditation experiments from 2015 - the more you engage, the more the results become exponentially interwoven in your daily life and, eventually USEFUL.

How's that for Magick?

Monday, March 26, 2018

2018: March 26th 7:25 AM



Currently listening to, my favorite track - thus far - off Preoccupations new album, appropriately titled, New Material. It dropped last Friday and I've been jamming it since Saturday. Really enjoying how this band's sound is carving its own niche. They sound like no one.

Rounding the corner on the Thomas Ligotti. Still not loving it, although the current story I'm on, Nethescurial, will probably bring me back into focus if I can stop my mind from ping-ponging around my new pad, trying to solve everything that needs solving all at once. You can actually read this story on Ligotti.net. Anyone who follows the link and reads it, let me know what you think in my comments; at this point it's really hard to know if my lack of bonding with the bulk of this book is the writer, me (when it's one of those, it's the other as well) or all this upheaval in my life.

Playlist from yesterday:

Preoccupations - New Material
Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Fire Walk With Me - OST
The Antlers - Familiars

Card of the day:

Now I need to look into why this one keeps coming up.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

2018: March 25th, 8:49 AM



Establishing a new routine for the new pad. It's good that the first thing I want to do when I wake up is write, and now I have a desk with all my stuff on it directly next to the bed.

Saw Annihilation yesterday, the 'second'* film directed by Alex Garland. It probably will not last in the theaters past this coming Friday so I'll just say, if you have the chance, go see it. Now, if you can. As in, right now. It is gorgeous, nightmarish and utterly breathtaking at times. That bear scene... wow.



Playlist from yesterday:

iPod on shuffle
Preoccupations - New Material
Nikka Costa - Everybody's Got Their Something
Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair (first LP played on the turntable in the new home, seemed a good choice)

Card for the day:


From the Grimoire: "Financial/material/domestic trouble on the horizon." - for my money this is representing the fact that we just moved into a new place, so I have a bunch of financial 'plates' spinning right now, and they're all going to come down around the same time. I've got a large tax bill, my half of the move-in (which luckily gets us to May 1st, so that's not a huge deal), as well as all the little expenses that sneak up after a move like this. We're in a good place and all of this is doable, it's just until I'm over that tax line I'll be a little anxious, or worried. Now, what the Grimoire goes on to say here is a very good 'fix' for that anxiety, because:

"Worrying about encroaching threats only feed them. Emphasis in understanding and working with this card is it represents the anxiety of the threat, not the threat itself. Under the influence represented by this card, the worry becomes it's own threat."

It goes on to suggest a pattern interrupt; also says, "physically write down the object/cause of the anxiety," which I just did above, so that already feels as though I've transmuted some of the nervous energy.

There's an interesting site on this card here.

...............

*Second in quotes because it recently came out that Garland directed Dredd.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

2018: March 24th, 12:16 PM


Well, yesterday's blog came and went - it's down right now but I'll re-post it with the correct time-stamp in a bit. Had a weird problem with HTML I had to figure out, which basically meant re-writing the entire thing. And as usual, what do we re-learn from re-writing? Everything always benefits from a re-write.

Lots of stuff to do to get the new place in order but it's my birthday and I'm going to try to enjoy it. Going to see Annihilation in a few hours, going to walk to the Comic Bug (yeah, we can do that now!), and then probably and evening of chill. I'm fighting the urge to throw a lot of stuff I own away, and I'm also trying to figure out how to arrange the entertainment center in the house; may have to purchase separate speakers for the U-Turn record player. Not loving that idea, as the last thing I want right now is more things, but if I can't get some room-volume music that's not coming out of a portable bluetooth speaker soon, I may loose my mind.

First world problems, eh?

Nothing in my head upon waking but the lingering strains of last night's beer, so here's what I'm listening to as I write this:


Playlist from yesterday was virtually non-existent. Actually, it may have been completely non-existent. Wow, a day with no music. That's f*&ked up.

UPDATED: I was incorrect on the 'no music' from the 23rd - we woke up to the last morning in the old pad with The Cure, Collector's Curiosities, Vol.#1, particularly for Carnage Visors.

Card for the day:


The journey continues...

Friday, March 23, 2018

2018: March 23rd, 4:34 PM



It’d been quite some time since I’d jammed the Singles OST. For an album that was a staple of my earlier life, Singles has essentially sat dormant on my shelf for years. Last night however, after spending another commute home with The Verve’s A Storm In Heaven as a soundtrack to unexpected Southern California rain, Singles caught my eye in the newly stocked CD wallet that now inhabits my car. The thought of traveling back to that sonic space rooted in ‘grunge’ seemed just what the doctor ordered.

And it was.

Later, driving to the new pad to sign the lease and take possession of the keys, the rain-slicked streets of Redondo Beach and balmy beach air* felt welcoming in the same way San Pedro now feels dismal. After the formalities, I drove over to my favorite beer store - now five minutes by car - and picked up some celebratory beverages: a twelve of Sierra Nevada in bottles and a six of Three Weavers’ Seafarer Kolsch. Windows down and Singles once again cranked, Eddie Vedder’s voice sounded like pure rocket fuel for a future where maybe all this highfalutin ‘re-contextualization’ might pay-off with some of the disparate or abandoned elements of my personality coming together into something stronger and more productive. It felt good.

Now, today, we’re almost finished moving. Keller and Kenta are irreplaceable in their fervor at moving my shit from the location they know to the one we will all acclimate to together. Tonight we dine and unwind in the new crib. 



Playlist from yesterday:

The Verve - Storm in Heaven
Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
Mastodon - Once More Round the Sun
Interpol - El Pintor
Converge - The Dusk in Us
Singles - OST

Card of the day:




Makes sense - I feel as though I am definitely on the right path. 

Thursday, March 22, 2018

2018: March 22nd 4:35 AM

Woke up with this firmly entrenched in my head. Great song:



Two nights ago I watched the newest Hellraiser movie, Hellraiser: Judgement. I'm a huge fan of the first two films, and maybe a fan of number three, although it's not been since Hell on Earth was first released to video (while I was in high school!) that I've seen it and, in spite of liking it then, I've grown suspicious of it due to the fact that Part 3 is essentially where dimension films began to try and shoehorn Pinhead into being another Freddy-sized horror icon in a cookie cutter franchise series. Maybe cookie cutter isn't the correct term, but all I know is there are not too many instances where Hellraisers 4-8 are spoken of nicely, if at all. Judgement, however, was good despite its ostentatious nature, particularly in The 55 Ludovico Place sequences, which are gorgeous but suffer from a certain one-upmanship to its grotesqueries. You can almost hear the writer's process during these sequences, something along the lines of, "Oh, what if then the blood the Surgeon unleashes... um... gets sprayed from industrial piping built into the table and... soaks down the demon chicks' naked tits? Yeah! Holy shit! That's gnarly!" I mean, I loved the sequences in question, bloody naked breasts and all, but there's a certain contrivance that goes along with both the presentation and my appreciation. Regardless, in spite of this and a slightly tired biblical serial killer storyline with a predictable twist (for my $$ Se7en opened and shut the door on this concept), I really liked Hellraiser: Judgement.



Playlist from yesterday:

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Screaming Females - All At Once
Ghost - Infestissumam
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
The Verve - E.P.
Touche Amore - Eponymous
Antlers - Familiars
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country

Card for the day:



"Incredible energy to physical matters." Yep. That's moving. I've worked non-stop since Monday, coming home after work and physical grinding out the packing, cleaning, condensing, purging. Hard work pays off tonight when we sign the lease, pick up the keys and finish final preparations for the move tomorrow!