I would have gladly given some of my lesser toes for such a system back in 1990.

T


he day was one spent mostly with computers and the things that attach to them. Though I mostly experienced successes, some things also turned out to be not so wonderful. Gabe, one of my co-workers who relieves me in the morning, gave me an old PS/2 Model 50, and this morning I managed to get a meg of memory and a modem card out of it and into the most-endowed of my PS/2 Model 80s. It now has 9 megs of RAM, 140 Megabytes of hard drive space and five expansion cards. I would have gladly given some of my lesser toes for such a system back in 1990.

Stefan, another of my co-workers (the guy I come in to relieve every night) had loaned me a 14,400 baud modem, and I managed to make a cable for it and hook it up to my big 486. But I'm still plagued with speed; the 486 processes too slowly to make Netscape 3.0 do anything useful. I'm disgusted with the fact that all modern software is bloated and slow. A 25 MHz 486 should be able to surf the goddamn web if you ask me!



Back in the days when the Smiths blared, I was just dandy, it was Morrisey who had all the problems.

D


ownstairs, the television is now on continually. Instead of the Smiths blaring incessantly, it's the mindless banter of commercials. They want to sell me cures for my car's status deficit, my yeast infections, my male pattern baldness, my lack of vaginal lubrication, my greying hair, the likelihood of my injury in an auto accident, my ignorance, my stained clothes, my anal itchiness, my weight, my morning breath, my acne, my hunger, my flagging sex appeal, my unusually copious menstrual flow. They carp about how unhappy I must be and then tell me they have the solution for only so and so ninety nine. Back in the days when the Smiths blared, I was just dandy, it was Morrisey who had all the problems. Why do Americans spend so much money on therapy these days? Because advertisers spend so much money convincing us we're miserable.

Nickelodeon was the most interesting network early this afternoon. That's when there's a kids' story time hosted by a critter called "Papa Beaver." I thought it was going to be an annoyingly sugary kids' show along the lines of Barney and Friends, but it wasn't at all. It was a series of extremely fast-paced tales (mostly from medieval and baroque times) illustrated with fairly good animation. Not only were the stories interesting, but they weren't watered down in an effort to make them overprotective-parent's-kid-friendly. Sarah "Rosy" Rosenthal came by while Monster Boy and I watched Papa Beaver telling his stories, and we were all most impressed.



I bought four CDs today:

• Thinking Fellers Union Local 282's Tangle (1989) for $8
• The Witch Trials's self-titled EP (1980) for $4
• Korn's A.D.I.D.A.S. (All Day I Dream About Sex) single (1997) for $2
• The Mekon's The Dream and Lie of... EP (1989) for $6

Back then they gave up guitar solos, now I'm distressed to find they've given up guitars entirely.

The TFUL282 is an an early work and lacks some of the gratuitous dissonance and weakness of performance I find in later CDs (this is also true of Westing (by musket and sextant), a collection of early Pavement). I'm sure, though, in its day Tangle was considered a riotous noisefest. It occasionally sounds like the interference of two radio stations, only to break suddenly, explosively, into surprising harmony. The cycles of chaos and order, weakness and strength, are important to the Thinking Fellers.

The Witch Trials are headed up by Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys. The music is sort of a minimal background din designed not to get in the way of the words, which are spoken, not sung. I've never much liked the Dead Kennedys or Biafra's voice, but the guy has lots of useful political/social points to make, and this is as a good a format as any for him to make them. I don't normally enjoy being preached at when I'm listening to music, but this, unlike real Dead Kennedys, isn't really music.

As for A.D.I.D.A.S., what can I say? This sounds like Nine Inch Nails. Gone, sadly, are the days when Korn was pushing the limits of metal. Back then they gave up guitar solos, now I'm distressed to find they've given up guitars entirely. Thankfully, they still repeat lyrics endlessly in a seeming effort to hypnotize. But they seem to think they've become a dance band. This CD consists of three different mixes of a song that largely says "I don't know your fuckin' name --so what-- let's fuck / All Day I Dream About Sex / All Day I Dream of Fucking" over pulsating synths. I like can like see like this like being like useful like at like a like rave like or like something. On the last song, "Wicked" they've become a hip-hop band. How very eclectic! Man, I want those menacing guitars back before they turn into U2.

The Mekons EP is a tiny little thing in a plastic diameter-increasing carrier. It's kind of lopsided and doesn't work in every CD player. I really don't think I got my money's worth. I wish I could get it to work here at Comet in the CD player with the good speakers. Oh...I just did. Hmmm... It's like I want it to be, good old school British Punk with that subtle gay-boy/British folk sound. I like them best when they do that Middle Eastern thing.

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T


oday I was feeling anti-social and more or less unwanted. The television and the weather seemed to conspire to give me the blahs. After advertisers tell you that you're miserable for the zillionth time, sure enough you are. As a result, I slept a lot more than is normally considered healthy.

I've also been letting my facial hair grow out as a sort of "because I can" experiment. Perhaps I'm inspired by my crazy brother's big bushy beard born of benign neglect. My "beard" looks horrible, of course, facial hair always does. But for some reason I don't care what I look like.



The storm appears to like it here and sees no reason to leave.

A


  hurricane is coming up along the East Coast, and it's been pumping lots of rain into the region. The roof here at Comet is leaking in two places, thankfully not over any of the machines. There's no wind; everything is happening sluggishly. The storm appears to like it here and sees no reason to leave.

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I've found a Faces of Fear site supposedly put up by an 8 year old who is worried about being abducted by a pervert, cut into pieces, and buried in an earthen dam!

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