if you wanna win, put boobie in

It's amazing how four interminable hours of work (a laughable amount to complain about I know, but I'm telling you it can be absolutely soul-crushing down there with no natural light [1] and nothing to do but verify, verify, verify addresses and phone numbers of former students who, chances are, have no interest in making the huge gifts my employer is after) can melt away after picking up a few new records. [2] The latest cash-in from my own personal indie rock gods Pavement came out today: a 2-cd expanded reissue of 1994's classic Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I also picked up the Friday Night Lights soundtrack, which features new material from Texan post-rock icons Explosions in the Sky. As a matter of fact, Michelle and I saw that very film earlier this evening [3] and we both enjoyed it. The music fits the film very well, and added, for me at least, a measure of something like gravitas to the essentially unfortunate feeling I get from high school football in my home state. [4]

I haven't yet had a chance to really listen to either disc yet, but since I'm on the topic of new music, it's time for me to give overdue shout outs to a couple of bands you may've already heard of. If you haven't, it's cool, but there's no time like the present. First is the Unicorns, an unhinged Canadian rock band that oscillates between the bizarre and the sublime. I've been listening to Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? [5] quite a bit of late and the best term I can think of to describe it is sui generis. [6] These guys sound like nothing else (or at least nothing else I've heard), and that's what makes their music so exciting to listen to, time after time. Even when you know where these songs are going, it's still kind of surprising each time that it happens. If you're feeling adventurous, give the Unicorns a chance. Their next album will probably sound nothing like this one. [7]

The second and final spotlighted (lit?) band also hails from the Great White North and are apparently leaving the east coast devasted by their live performances. [8] They're called the Arcade Fire and their upbeat first full length is called Funeral. Since I hear blogs are supposed to have links, here's one to the Merge Records site, where you can stream a few tracks. That is if you're scared to get on the P2P networks due to those stickers they're putting on CDs now. This is much more straight forward rock music, but done in a really compelling fashion. At times they get a little bit Bright Eyes on us [9], but the pretty music gets us through that. Plus, on the last track the female lead sounds kind of like Bjork! But don't get the wrong idea; these guys rock like beasts. [10]

In other business, the game described in the previous post is called "Odell Lake." I googled for an image capture or some such nonsense because Michelle didn't believe it was real, but all I found was that apparently this game is impossible to find. Which is of course odd considering the surplus of Apple IIes being used today. And in other news, Ashley is sick but don't worry fellows: she's going to the clinic tomorrow and should be clean and back on the circuit in a few days. Marvelous things they're doing in medicine, simply marvelous. [11] We give Ashley our best wishes, but remind her to contact all of her most recent partners after her results come back (it's only polite, after all).

Footnotes:
[1] And no Natural Light (trademark)
[2] Yes, I am in college and still buy non-digital music frequently. Gotta support the scene bros!
[3] For free!
[4] After all, I'm first and foremost a basketball man. But go Coyotes!
[5] An awfully good question, I might add
[6] meaning, 'altogether unique'
[7] For better or for worse; Pitchfork has recently reported that the band is "going hip hop" and has formed a production team, a la the Neptunes or DFA.
[8] I am pledging, right here and right now, to never describe a performance by a rock band as being "incendiary," unless, of course, a fire is actually started.
[9] Read: "weepy"
[10] Stephen Malkmus said that once.
[11] And all because of stem cells, you know. You did know that? Good for you!

how am i not myself (x5)

In most cases, when decorum is the order of the day, it is typically expected of one to apologize after a prolonged absence. But this is the Internet(s), and decorum is as passe as one of the those green and black Apple IIes I grew up playing Number Munchers. I began this line of discussion as a glib and more or less pointless bit of nostalgia but I've become reminded of another game that I'd like to elaborate on.

(and anyways I'm not sorry for my lack of updates. if I feel compelled to write, I do. and if I refrain from posting some piece of drivel or other, it's not much of a loss at all. this is all obvious, probably, but let me get back to the errata)

There was another game, whose name I cannot recall (it was probably boring and overly descriptive anyway, involving no great puns or even feeble attempts at humor) that involved fish, and their lives. Now, I know what you're thinking: fish, and the lives thereof, are the perfect subject for a video gaming entertainment! Or maybe you're thinking that it'd be near impossible to conceive of a more boring premise. You may think that, but you'd be wrong. This game was awesome, and it has more wisdom for prepubescent children than any number of books about anthropomorphized aardvarks or bears or big red dogs (etc).

This is the game: you are a fish. Chances are, you're starting out as a small one. You've got to work your way up- life is a Darwinian struggle in this badly rendered world aquatic, and you have to work your way up from (near) the bottom. There's also plankton, and if you're the smallest fish, that's all you can attack (and eat) without getting consumed yourself. Those are your two options when you encounter another organism as you float on (okay): eat or flee. Fight or flight. And it's always a fight to the death. The results are either tasty or terminal. There is no in between: you're a pixelated fish being controlled by a jam shorts-wearing kid with uncombed hair and grass stained knees- an innocent.

But after a few episodes of getting eaten by something twice your size (or snatched out of the water by that winged deus ex machina the osprey (with its terrible, terrible squak that never failed to surprise (and sort of frighten)- next time remember to stay deeper! ever deeper! with the translucent, hideous fish that have developed lighted antennae and thick skin to withstand the incredible pressure of leagues and leagues of ocean)), learning occurs. You start to make it, getting bigger every few trips across the screen- in this lake evolution is measured in minutes, not generations. After all, we can microwave our meals in seconds; why should we not see similar results in our ponds and marshes?

What a game it was. I was all set to write something big and sprawling and meaningful about the nature of existence and identity (see subject line, then see "I Heart Huckabees" for more information) when I was sidetracked by a decade-old memory of some archaic computer game. The fish game was probably the best one we had; it was a hell of a lot better than that Number Munchers crap. It didn't need to teach us about mathematics or grammar or what have you; it was teaching us the way of the ocean. Natural law. The natural law that John Locke wrote about, the natural law that so enfatuated our founding fathers, the natural law that proscribes just how each perfect can of Natural Light is engineered, brewed, and passed through the collective swollen yellowing bladder of our nation's young adults, be it bonged or shotgunned or otherwise injected into our system.

This has turned out to be more important than I had originally thought. Remember this, next Saturday/Sunday morning when you're laying in bed half awake, half alive, with the taste of last night's decadance in your wretched mouth and the stench of your breath inviting you to vomit yet again, as you glance down at your body, your earthly vessel that you continue to abuse mercilessly, never learning, why can't you fucking remember not to mix liquor and beer, it makes you puke (and you hate puking with a passion that is itself worthy of a play) and gives you a hangover for what feels like days months decades, it's interminable, you just want it to end, never again, never a-fucking-gain, no sir, this time'll be different, this time will stick, this won't be happening again next week oh God please let me remember this because I'm just a stupid kid and I don't mean to abuse your temple, just make this headache go away, oh God never again never.

Next time that happens, remember this. And watch out for that osprey. It'll always hit you when you least expect it, just like that rat bastard Jose Cuervo.