In light of recent events...

...and in memory of the fallen trees in my front yard from this weekend's storm, I present to you the best love song ever about a natural disaster:

Lost images

A photograph found while cleaning behind the refrigerator.

Backronyms.

It's been cold here in the Southeast. Quite cold. Not Minnesota negative umpty-million cold, but temps in the teens are plenty frickin' cold in a state where buying anti-freeze is something most people will do maybe once in their lives. Water lines have broken in Jackson, MS. Miami got a killing frost. My ponds have been frozen for two weeks.

As a result, the uninsulated, dilapidated hulk I live in has been a cold prison for the last couple of weeks. I've been pouring wood into my heater like it was gasoline into a Hummer, in a futile attempt to keep the atmosphere in my living room above freezing. I've given up on warm. 47°F seems to be the best one can hope for, but you can't see your breath at that temperature, so it at least makes it seem more pleasant.

As such, I've spent a lot of time wearing a coat and sitting on my couch wishing the mercury in the thermometer to rise. Which, no offense to the Tibetan monks who supposedly can do this at will, it hasn't.

So being dark and cold and slightly poor (the state has a weird payment system and I don't get paid between Dec 22 and Jan 15) isn't the sort of thing that leads a person to be cheery. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder on occasion, and I have a handwritten note on my calendar for the month of February saying "It's okay, you'll be fine in March, calm down." But the combination of the weather and the poverty and the worn-out frozen feeling that my heart and bones had been replaced with those of an ice giant, have left me feeling that same old familiar wrung-out depression.

Fortunately, us music addicts have an easy route to self-medication. Mine has been the album "Weathervanes" from the Freelance Whales. A slightly dark, surreal, bouncy plate of "Hey-it's-not-so-bad-Bucko!" has kept me chugging along through the cold, dark nights. And hey, here's the band performing in a cold dark place, and they're smiling, so yeah. It works.

I've been busy.

Things have been... odd. I'll have more to say later.

Happy new year and all that.

Under the covers, at night.

She likes to hold hands under the covers.

I'll have my hand at my side, and I'll feel her slender, cool fingers slip past my palm, brush against my fingertips briefly before sliding down to lock in with my fingers and then a quick grip of my hand, which I instinctively return, and then she's gone again.

Maybe she just wants to be reminded there's someone else in the dark room. Maybe she heard me snort in my sleep. Maybe she just had a bad dream.

That last one makes me pause...

What do ghosts dream about, and what is a scary dream to them?

"What is cool?" According to JC Whitney, 1968,pt 7

Sure to attract attention!

"What is cool?" According to JC Whitney, 1968,pt 6

And you thought texting was a problem...

"What is cool?" According to JC Whitney, 1968,pt 5

An unusual, attention-getting pedal

Music for gray winter days.

I've been sick, and the weather here in the southeast has been more than accommodating for the past couple of days: rain, drizzle, condensation and cold winds combined with leaden grey clouds have created an environment more conducive to being morose and miserable than any other, with the possible exception of an IRS auditor's office. So I used the weather as a lead-in to indulge myself in more of my favorite, morose, winter music, because it was just that kind of week.

I took the opportunity to return to the work of Bon Iver, because it was on constant rotation pretty much all last winter for me, and always felt somewhat out of place to listen to on a sunny summer day. I was pleased to note that the music held up as well as I remembered after a year off, and found that the song "Blood Bank" has managed to get a death grip on my ear this time around.

I'm not normally a fan of songs that tell a story, but this one tells a neat compact little tale, with a few standout couplets that so that the narrative feels less like a novel, and more like one of Hemingway's short stories. Papa Ernest used to claim that the best and shortest of his stories only had six words: "For sale: baby shoes, never used." The story fills in the space between those words, so instead of feeding you the description, you are forced to work it out for yourself. This song works the same way. In the space of two and one-half verses, you get the gist of an entire life. The narrator tells a short, stream of consciousness story about visiting a blood bank and talking with someone who is never really identified but may in fact be a friend, a lover or a random stranger, about... well, random things. You're introduced to the story already in progress in the eponymous blood bank, looking at bags of donated blood and musings on relatives, mortality and connections. The song hinges on a kiss that isn't necessarily romantic, but more of a human longing for contact with someone, anyone on a cold winter day. And it all finally ends on a reflection on shared secrets, infatuation, and childhood.

I can't say exactly what I've been allowed to witness here, but I'm sure I've been there, and in the back of my mind, I still know exactly what the cold vinyl seats in the car smelled like...

You said "Ain't this just like the present,
To keep showing up like this."
As the moon waned a crescent,
We started to kiss.

Video by sklyrovka on YouTube, who managed to hit the nail on the head.

"What is cool?" According to JC Whitney, 1968,pt 4

Add sports car styling to any car!

"What is cool?" According to JC Whitney, 1968,pt 3

For restyling - for customizing - for street or competition.

Sparkly!?

from: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, Murnau, 1922

Once upon a time, back when I was in high school, remember sitting with my friends trying to figure out what supernatural creature would be the next unicorn. I laughingly suggested that in the future pre-teen girls would have posters of vampires on their walls, all pouty and brooding. We cracked up at that, because we were all fans of the gothic side of vampires, the stuff of Anne Rice, Nosferatu, and Bram Stoker. Creatures who were as far from teenage romanticism as possible. Creatures whose very existence was an affront to all that was holy or natural. Now I think of that conversation and sigh.

See, once the night was a lot darker than it is now. And people would sit in small cramped houses and hear things out in the night, and it wasn't a matter of flipping on the flood lights and seeing what it was that was going bump. You had pretty much two choices, you could go out and fumble around and maybe find what you were looking for by the light of a torch, or you could stay safe by the fire and tell stories of what you thought you heard. The best of the stories would circulate from house to house, constantly being improved on, and added to, much like a clay sculpture being molded and refined, until at last there was a visage staring back at you, full of the most horrifying and frightening creatures your mind could conceive of made flesh and whole. And then, your creature would take on a life of its own, but still you have the power to hold it back. Oddly enough you subtract by adding: garlic, silver, crosses, stakes, daybreak... all these additions bind the unbridled fear and allow you a handle to restrain your unholy offspring.

The problem is that eventually the unbridled fear of the original is watered down, and made fit for mass consumption. The glass slipper loses its razor sharp edge, the witch is spared the fire of the kiln, and the creature of the dark is free to move in daylight, but bereft of its ability to capture you and lead you into its crypt-like world.

But for one, night... on one particular night we pull all the old horrors out of the back of the closet and let them loose once more. The lids of the coffins creak, and we jump with genuine fear. We put on display all of the sins we revel in, and we let them own and control us, and we laugh because it's only for one night, only for show and only for make believe, but for one night, we let the vampires retake their fangs, and let them fly true and frightening again, and for one night, we make tales about the creaking floorboards, which spread from house to house...

'Tis I wonderful thing to travel, but 'tis far better to be able to return.

An interesting story of cross-country travel in the 1920's on a motorcycle. Highlights: fixing a broken frame with wire, pushing a bike across a railroad bridge, and dirt roads.

"What is cool?" According to JC Whitney, 1968,pt 2

Possibly not DOT approved.

Update: Want one? See here.

"What is cool?" According to JC Whitney, 1968

Just go easy on the speed bumps...