Inkpen?

Oh, Long Johnson.  Oh Don Piano.

I’m trying to decompress from a soul-draining kind of day.  You know, the kind of day where you don’t really do a lot, so if someone asked you to write down what you did it wouldn’t look like much on paper, but it’s draining nonetheless?

Or, as Paul Westerberg of The Replacements said: “a person can work up a mean, mean thirst after a hard day of nothin’ much at all.”

Or something like that.  I tend to remember things incorrectly, so I probably paraphrased him, but I don’t care enough about perfection to look it up on the interwebs.

If I had access to my storage space as I typed this, I’d take a picture of my original Westerberg art.  I was hanging out on his tour bus on one of his solo tours looking through a big pile of paper objects.  There were a few paper plates, all of them covered with words and drawings.  He was using them as sketch pads!  I took my favorite, an inkpen drawing of a cat sitting in a window, and asked him to sign it.  So now I have a signed, original Paul Westerberg sketch of a puddytat on a papew pwate.  Sorry about that.

I think I’m putting together, without realizing it, a collection of rock star paper plates.  (Nice sentence construction, by the way, he said to himself).  I have a setlist that Kurt Cobain wrote on a paper plate from the time that my band opened for Nirvana at the 9:30 Club on the Bleach tour.  It has songtitles that ended up changing by the time they were on Nevermind.  Like “Imodium”(sic).

The other day, while walking to the car on the way to work, a leaf was released from the confines of its limb, pushing itself free, like a fingernail twisting its way off of your finger, and it started floating towards Earth.  Hoping to land in the dirt, to more quickly break down into a loamy peatpile of fluffy wormfood, but instead it drifted back and forth on the breeze, left, right, left, right, down…and I caught it.

I don’t remember many instances where I caught an Autumn leaf as it fell.  It’s like Fall’s garbage.  But the leaves are beautiful.  And to catch one means good luck.  Or so I imagined.  So far, it’s not working.

For the story above, I couldn’t think of the medicine that helps slow down your runny bowels.  I asked someone “what’s the name of that stuff, it starts with an “O”, and it stops you from pooping?”  Once supplied with the answer, I laughed and said “yeah, it starts with an O”.

She pointed out something that is SO true.  And I quote: Every time anyone says “it starts with a (blank)”, it NEVER starts with a (blank).

I’m sorry I decided to blog today. Quite obviously, I have absolutely nothing to say.  I am sitting in a leather easy chair with my dog Spider at my side, furiously trimming her toenails with her face.  I’m wearing a pair of jeans given to me for free by my pal Squint.  My feet are resting, not on the floor, but atop a pair of weird orthopedic-looking maroon shoes that I bought in Paris.  They’re like wearing shoeboxes on your feet.  You put your foot in the oversized oversoft monster and wrap the velcro flap around the ball of your foot.  (Well, the top of the ball.)

Then you fasten the strap over your ankle, feed the plastic doohickey into the slot until it clicks, and you’re ready to rumble!  They’re cushiony, and very thick.

I have things to do.  I can’t keep wasting your time and mine.  I’m not getting anything done because I’m writing this, but I’m not writing anything worth reading.

I can only say I’m sorry.  If I could take this entry back, I would.  And yet for some reason, I’m still typing.  I’m making it longer.  What’s wrong with me?  Why am I doing this to you?

I need to eat something and go to bed.  Or bed something, and go to eat.  But the only living thing here with me is my dog, and I’m not going to have sex with her, no matter how much you want me to.

I like imeem.com because it has songs on it that I don’t expect I’m going to find.  I can get on there while I’m working and whip up a batch of songs to listen to like these.  Sometimes I’m surprised that someone has taken the time to put particular songs online.  Because a few years back, it was hard to find much of anything weird unless you went to Kazaa and got loads of viruses along with them.  Now, there are fairly uncommon songs within easy reach.

1) Cheap Time - People Talk

2) Mick Ronson - The Empty Bed

3) Elliott Smith / Heatmiser - Not Half Right

4) T.Rex - Rip Off

5) Amon Duul II - Archangels Thunderbird

“When the everywhere-eye
Asks you who is the emperor of the sky
Take the archangel’s thunderbird,
Rent a destroyer and sail to Cape Cod
There lives a lion, they call him God
There is no elevator to Eden, but a hole in the sky”