In My Wildest Dreams...

... My world would have an official soundtrack and score. I'm not talking one of those cheesy "everyone can hear the music I'm listening to at any given moment" kind of things, I'm talking the full on Hollywood treatment. That means there are pauses when there is no background music playing, but think about it... when I hit the bar I can cue up my life soundtrack to damn near whatever goofy song I want and walk in with some kind of crazy swagger. If I want to get... "tender" with a lady, bam just sap my fingers and there's My Bloody Valentine's album Loveless, which most folks should know is hipster for "I want to make out with you."

But I'm not limiting myself to soundtrack here, folks. I'm talking full-on score. Flighty silly "riding on the bus" music, whistful piano music when I recline back in my chair and crisscross my fingers at the back of my neck, mambo music for when I'm making mischeif, and, of course, old-timey vamping piano music for when I walk down the street.

Some might consider that schizophrenia, some might think it's hints of synesthesia, but I think it's just a good hearty smattering of my life as seen through my eyes. Welcome to the madness.

Commitment to Shoddy Materials

This is my busted-ass DVD player remote control. If you look closely, you will notice that it is held together by tape where it is coming apart at the corner. Let me explain to you why this pathetic gathering of plastic, PCB, rubber buttons, and batteries is coming apart at the corner like a cheap suit.

First, let me explain one little thing - this DVD player is cheap. Like cheap cheap. Target no-name brand thirty dollar DVD player. But I tell ya what - it plays almost every DVD I can throw at it, even the Canadian DVD of Down By Law that I can't even get to play in a number of more high-end players. I know I could easily just get another one, but dammit, the DVD player still works fine, it's just the remote that has issues.

See, like the dumbass I am, I was neglectful of this poor remote when it was not in use, so I had a little battery explosion issue, which I only found out about when I went to re-commission this little fella. In the process of acidic erosion, one of the tabs that connects the battery was rotted through. Undeterred, I did what I do best - I popped it open and re-soldered the little tab back into the PCB board. Granted, part of the tab had broken off, but it seemed to be making due.

So probably six months after the initial repair, I began having issues again. Of course, again, within a few days, I have the remote in pieces and I'm poking around. I checked the previously offending tab and, much to my surprise, it seems solid and intact. I check around a little bit more, and lo and behold, there's a crazy little capacitor hanging loose at one end. Being the clever, resourceful, and intelligent guy that I am, I get another bit of wire, and spliced it with the wire on the capacitor, then soldered the whole mess together.

So after probably six weeks or so of quality remoting, it got finicky again. This time there was no intermittent "gee this isn't working right" period - it just flat died. Guess what? The battery tab came loose. This time, things called for a bit more drastic action. In straight-up MacGuyver style, I soldered a length of wire onto the offending battery tab, ran the wire through the hole in the PCB, soldered that beast in there, and cut the excess wire off the opposite side. Unfortunately, I had to give a little extra length on the other side, which led to the lack of sufficient closure on the casing. Solution? Clear packing tape. So now I officially have a sufficiently ghetto remote for my cheapo DVD player.

Why do I do this? Honestly, in part, because it's fun. Plus it makes me all manly and alluring because I can fix shit. Plus, there's a little part of me who really gets a kick out of the fact that I can mend things with extreme heat and molten metal. In my land, soldering is kind of like sewing for men - it's a domestic talent that most everyone should at least have a basic handle on.

Maybe I do have a bit of my dad in me after all...

Ughhhh

Alas, it's been another week since I've posted, but this week was actually filled with productivity...

Highlights of the past week include:

- Finishing Chapter Two of the great undertaking known as my thesis. Grand total: forty pages. I'm, theoretically, within spitting distance of being done. I even had a chance to enjoy a sit-down with my advisor. I felt like a real student again for a day and a half there.

- A full week of band practices (Tues, Weds, Thurs, and Sunday afternoon). All the bands sound good, new material is progressing, and my fingers are pleasantly hurting still.

- A pretty good weekend chock full of friends and good times. Hit the bars, did lunches, dinners, moves, the whole nine.

Lowlights included:

- Disgusting woman on the bus trimming her nails on the bus. I'm sure I've vented about this in the past, but that shit is just plain nasty.

- "our bar" had a miniature makeover. Now I no longer feel like I own the place - I just feel like I'm renting it on Saturday nights.

- 3:30 am Tuesday morning, I was wrapping up a day's work on my paper when a moth flew into my head. I swear, I can't make this stuff up. It must have been retaliation for the spider party I broke up the other night. But yeah, imagine that. Bill sitting down in his basement hovel, working to stay awake and crank out the last dregs of creative writing for the night, when I hear a fluttering and *whap* this nasty fucking bug smacks me upside the temple. That is not what you want to snap you back into consciousness late at night.

- Heartburn has come back. I don't know if it's the whiskey, the increased coffee intake, or the decreasing amounts of sleep, but this stuff is kicking my ass again.

Sorry for the lame posting, but I've had a headache creeping on. The nine to five (or nine to six fifteen today) grind has not only taken the piss out of me, it has reduced the exposure that I'm used to for interesting and bizarre folks who are usually the fodder for the blog mockery that happens right here. Hopefully I'll be exposing myself to weirdos some more later this week. Pun intended.

Post-Valentine haze

Not a whole lot to say tonight... The weekend has thus far proven more fun that I had hoped for, and the next two days will be, as I have dubbed it, a few days full of "textual escapades."

In the ongoing "excitement" that is my life, I arrived home this evening to discover perhaps the most frightening and jarring sight in my room: apparently a handful of spiders had decided to throw a little party behind my bed. One of the stragglers led me to the party where I discovered a whole little coven of spiders had decided to get together to have a few little spidery cocktails and plot out how they were going to make my life a living hell and possibly kill me once they had driven me crazy. It's no secret whatsoever that I am incredibly terrified of spiders. So this was essentially the equivalent of me pulling my bed away from the wall and finding the gates of hell opening wide while a host of demons plotted their attack on me.


I saw this picture via the twittospere, and to be completely honest, I thought it was one of the most romantic things I've seen all Valentine's season. So I figure I can share it with you all...

Four and a half minute vacation.

I'm in a funk, as those of you who read this blog regularly may have noticed. As a means of combating this, I give you quite possibly the most ridiculous and absurd music video I've ever seen.

That's right, it's Riskay's mega-hit "Smell Yo Dick" I couldn't come up with this tripe if I tried.

And one more for all my peeps who love meme mash-ups:




Now I'm going to hide under the weight of my own funk.

Getting Antsy.

This is never good - I can tell that I'm just getting really anxious about something or other these days and I can't put my finger on what it is. I don't know if it's the pending romantic holiday that I despise so deeply, the pending day on which I officially get a year older which has had a nasty habit of bumming me out far more than it used to, or if it's just the fact that I am planning on taking an extra day at the end of my three day weekend in order to finish the latest chapter of my thesis.

More than anything, I think my schedule is starting to get to me. I'm getting some four to six hours of sleep in general, and I end my nights too tired to do any significant work on my paper. I run from work to band practices to shows to coffee, and of course to the bars, but that leaves very little time for sitting still, let alone sleeping.

But enough bellyaching. That's not what this blog is for (not entirely at least) and there are far more interesting things to talk about. For instance - movies. I've had a little stroke of fortune: I was able to land a copy of the movie Barfly on DVD. For those of you who don't know, it's a glorious 80s movie based on the work/life of Charles Bukowski starring Mickey Rourke, who is a far more depraved and belligerent drunk than Matt Dillon's interpretation in Factotum. Still, the reason this is so worth mention is the simple fact that it was never released on DVD here in the States, but I was able to find a Region 1 (therefore American DVD player-compatible) copy from a guy in Greece who was selling it on eBay. I tell ya, I'm rife with Bukowski now -- I watched Factotum the other day, I'm watching Barfly as I write this, and I've been re-reading his book Women on my commute. It's been sweet.

25 Things about Me

I did it for Facebook. Might as well put it up for public view here. It's little to no surprise that in addition to being about the millionth person to do one of these lists, I'm about the eight hundred thousandth blogger to post this with a similar intro paragraph. Oh well.


Here we go -- more than you'd ever want to know about the Bill. I was resisting doing one of these, but hey, I've been tagged in like 4 or 5 of these things now. This proves to be a tad more difficult since I've covered a number of different things in my blog from my dislike for Jared Leto to my literary tastes, even my pet peeves.

1. I received a recruitment letter to play the tuba in college, which led to a partial scholarship. Despite this, I've never owned a tuba of my own.

2. I own probably three times as many graphic t-shirts as I do socks. I own a lotta socks.

3. There's a decent part of me that is ashamed that I don't know how to speak or write Swedish.

4. I'm a snob. About a number of things -- music, food, grammar, you name it. I just have the common courtesy to keep things to myself.

5. Despite my seemingly outgoing nature, I'm really quite wildly shy. I think that explains the current state of my love life.

6. Of the standard run of alcohol one can find almost anywhere, I like vodka the least. I like whiskey the best. And of all alcohol, Everclear is the devil.

7. Seeing pictures of me from the age five or younger makes me almost want to cry every time.

8. I would drink even more coffee than I already do these days if my digestive system could handle it.

9. If I could eat three things for the rest of my life, it would be pizza, burritos, and steak. I would die happy and morbidly obese.

10. One more food one: I am a fan of peanut butter and orange soda. I don't know why, but it works. Don't knock it until you try it.

11. I've never broken a bone, despite a number of chips and hairline fractures. My knee, on the other hand, is a disaster area.

12. I was pretty much a self-motivated reader. My parents read to my older sister all the time as a kid, and she claims she's hardly finished a book since college. I've finished four in the last month.

13. I make up for rabid procrastination with excessive amounts of order and structure.

14. I'm not really a pet person. I love fishes. If I were to get a traditional pet, it'd probably be a cat.

15. I'm a die-hard baseball fanatic, but I've never played fantasy baseball. I prefer to enjoy the game for the game, not for the stats.

16. I don't feel quite as smart or as funny as I was about four years ago.

17. I obsess over my fingernails. I never let them get particularly long, and do all I can to keep them clean whenever possible.

18. According to my co-workers, I peel an orange like someone with OCD.

19. A whole hell of a lot of people have over-shared waaaay too much personal info to me over the years. 99% of the time I try not to reciprocate.

20. I've never felt a strong calling to do much of anything, I've always just been working on making due with finding jobs that keep me interested and involve things I believe I'm good at.

21. I had perfect attendance in high school.

22. When I get old, if I get old, I'll be a dirty old man who has earned that position.

23. I'm a dyed-in-wool loner. That's a big part of the reason that I don't do roommates. While I love seeing friends and spending time around those near and dear to me, I like to come back to an empty room.

24. I miss my old Cadillac more than I'll ever admit. A vast majority of my favorite memories of the past somehow involve that car. It was unreliable, and had a nasty habit of dying when I needed it most, but that car and I had a creepy connection to each other.

25. I quote stuff obsessively. From books to movies to poetry to TV. Some folks love it, some folks hate it.

Not Enough Hours in the Day

Let me tell you something, folks, it's incredibly difficult to balance being a working stiff, a rockstar, a grad student, a blogger, and a regular joe. Unfortunately, it has become routine for me to get about a post a week, give or take, up here. Hopefully, once I wrap up my thesis (which will hopefully be sooner rather than later) I'll be able to focus more both on blogging and getting together with the people I care about. That's really been the big loss in this whole time crunch - I don't care all that much that I don't get a chance to blog as much as I'd like to; I really feel bad that I'm left with a week a night at the very most to see my friends.

See, I know I'm fortunate that I can see a number of them on a somewhat regular basis, but there are far too many of the rest of you that I don't get to see but once every two or three months at this point, and it's kind of starting to drive me just a little nuts. To be honest, for as much of a loner as I am, I still derive tons of pleasure in catching up with old friends, so right now I'm kind of up that silly little creek. I really feel like I have got to buckle down and get this thesis done ASAP -- while I have time to finish it at my leisure, it is just something that has been weighing on the back of my mind recently way too much, especially with things picking up at work.

So if you're reading this and I haven't seen you socially recently, I apologize. If you are reading this and I have seen you recently, thanks for working with my crazy schedule, and if you're reading this and we've got plans to hang out, I hope to high heavens that it all works out.