Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").

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decay & ruin
Biosphere II
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dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

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Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

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   relentless schitzophrenic
Monday, January 6 1997 In the early afternoon I purchased two used CDs: Pod by the Breeders and Chaos A.D. by Sepultura. The latter was an especially rare and beautiful thing; one never finds Sepultura in the used section. But then again, someone appears to have liquidated a metal collection lately. Lots of Ozzy, some Megadeth, and cheesie stuff like late Def Leppard. If there was ever any Metallica you can bet it was snapped up quickly. I probably scooped up all the Pantera.

Pod, the Breeders' CD, came out in 1990 and has a strong proto-alternative sound. Being the musically naive poser neophyte that I am, I come to an appreciation of the Breeders late through an appreciation of such Nirvana albums as Incesticide. Hearing Pod (particularly track 6, "When I was a Painter") it becomes readily apparent where Kurt Cobain picked up much of his guitar style (though I actually still prefer the noisy abandoned "fuck if I care" sound of Kurt's guitar). Furthermore, this album sounds very like a Pixies album, which is no surprise since the Breeders are really just a variant on the Pixies membership (though later Breeders albums sound unlike the Pixies). Being a Guided by Voices nut, of course, I pick up on similarities between the Breeders and GbV (since they both come from Dayton Ohio and know and like each other). And there are more similarities than I've been told to expect (listen to "Opened," track 9, which lurches between both the sounds of Guided by Voices and the Pixies and "Metal Man," track 12, which, with the exception of Deal's voice, could be a GbV tune).

Now as for Sepultura, I have to give Chaos A.D. (1993) credit for being one of the heaviest albums I have ever heard. The vocals are exceptionally good (I love the ring Max Cavalera gives his "Rs"), and the rythms, while occasionally repetitive, do exactly what needs to be done. Flipping through the novella-sized liner notes, I was struck by how politically motivated (verging on and then surpassing punk) many of the lyrics are (for the most part I'd made the lyrics with which I was familiar into dreamy surreal poetry). I was entertained to discover that the words read like the way Cecelia the Brazilian Girl speaks, bearing the peculiar staccato poetry, machine marks and artifacts of translation from Portuguese.

just released from the mental hospital with a prescription of methadone which she gladly shared with her friends
After hearing some of the Sepultura at my house, I headed for the Corner with tea-flavoured gin in my ketchup bottle. I quickly came across Jesse and Morgan Anarchy gathered around Jesse's scratched up dullish red pickup truck on the corner of Wertland and 13th. In the cab sat a girl, heavily made up and wearing frilly white gothic girlie clothes. She reminded me a little of Heather Bissel with her bright red lipstick and her lacey white dress. But this was a much sadder case. This was the Aquarian heroin addict, just released from the mental hospital with a prescription of methadone which she gladly shared with her friends. She didn't recognize me, though she'd been introduced to me in Theresa's apartment. Not being on heroin, she was loud and obnoxious. But she was a girl, and as such was meeting with remarkable tolerance in the presence of Morgan and Jesse. I lingered awhile to watch the peculiar circumstances. Jesse was pulling broken plastic grill off the front of his truck and tossing it in the street and making the thing look ever more like a piece of post-apocalyptic punk rock art. Eventually they all busied themselves with red acrylic paint, decorating their leather jackets with the sort of jagged abstract images that cause mothers concern.

Bored, I continued on to the Bakery, where Peggy had just come with a carload of friends. These were two female friends from the Philadelphia area, stopping in Charlottesville on their way back from Texas: Jaleelah and Joanna. The Joanna is the same one who drives around in a van with her boyfriend Forrest (the most interesting story about her is that she likes somewhat older men and once had a torrid affair with Jamie Dyer back in late 1994 in the early days of the Malvern invasion). We chatted about a number of things, including that Sara Poiron is donating her eggs to the fertility industry. By the way; Sara Poiron left a long message on my phone mail stating that my Big Fun in Philadelphia had gotten her in trouble with her housemates and that she might know a Christin who knows me. She sounded like she wanted to talk endlessly but the machine was all that was listening. In other things, Peggy said that she was moving back to Philly for awhile. That would be the last of the Malvern Girls to finally abandon Charlottesville.

The day had been a good one before the toothless schitzo began hounding me so.
Steve Weiner had come in the car with Peggy, and he was making a real nuisance of himself. All he really wanted to do, it seems, was goad me with news that Jessika wouldn't be coming back to Charlottesville ever again. He said things like, "a real man would go to Philadelphia and tell Jessika that there is no place like Charlottesville." He claimed that he calls Jessika every night and when he doesn't talk to her he talks to her mother. Then, in front of Jen Fariello no less, he proceded to goad me further that he'd heard I'd been acting psycho to "news that her love may have been misdirected." I didn't want my nose rubbed in such shit. The day had been a good one before the toothless schitzo began hounding me so. What I found myself hating especially was the humiliation of having it made clear that my relationship with Jessika had been a big joke all along and that I was a fool to have ever wasted so much time with her. As for whether or not she is staying for the rest of eternity in Philadelphia, that question weighs as heavily on my mind as the issue of who shot J.R. Steve went on to apologize to Jen for being overly aggressive with his amourous pursuits of her at one time in the past.

I temporarily augmented the Bakery sign with some long stale loaves of Italian bread.


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