I was checking my mail at Arun's house Monday night; my dad said that I got a letter from the bank stating that my last transaction bounced and that I'd be charged $20. Fuck. Whatever. Fine. Can't do anything about that.

And then I check my Amex account online, and there's a charge posted from yesterday for $29, because I had insufficient funds. Yet somehow the payment still went through.

I really can't afford to just burn $59 on air. Goddammit.

Shoot me and wipe my financial troubles away. This isn't fun.

(And yes, that was me in Studio X sitting on a beanbag, hands buried in face, while everyone listened to ‘wasted’. Scott said I made good use of reverb, though; others thought it sounded cool, I think; some said it reminded them of a washing machine; one said there's nothing wrong with minimalism, or something like that.

And yes, I saw the lead singer and former drummer of The Beauty Shop separated by several feet and walking in the opposite direction of me down Green Street.

And yes, I kept my shirt tucked in for most of the day. Hopefully never again.)

If I passed and greeted random people (a cute girl or two, even) in the same manner as that lady, and they replied nicely, that would theoretically make me feel better. And I'll probably need that to mask the embarassment of playing my tape study for the class.

(Don't put much thought into the report. Not that it's fluff, because I was sincere about what I wrote, but…bleh. Not complete satisfaction. Someday I'll have the study in MP3.)

Either I made a good cup of coffee this morning, or the butter-and-jelly bagel beforehand enhanced the coffee's taste. I'm satisfied either way.

But why, you ask? If you can't see them play, download them; and if you can't download them, read on, though I won't do even a half-assed job of explaining it.

Grand Ulena is to rock what Schoenberg and twelve tone is to classical. You'll struggle to find a real melody or some sort of progression. The bassist and guitarist and drummer just jam so hard and fast. It's crazy.

Especially the drummer: a fucking machine. I couldn't take my eyes off him. Amazing, awe inspiring, envy inducing, etc..

And how they opened was even stranger…a bald headed guy came out reading something, maybe in some fake language (but definitely not english), in a…creepy voice. Varying between low and high dynamic levels. I saw one girl actually jump back when he got loud the first time. People laughed as it progressed. Just weird stuff.

This is less and less about Wilco, so back to the headliner: Wilco was good. I enjoyed listening to them. Jeff Tweedy made some funny comments. People loved them. There were two encores. And I'm inspired to give the last album a closer listen since I couldn't jump between the 1700 other songs on my playlist.

Not to underscore them, but really, Grand Ulena was a truly new experience.

My brain don't want to think, and my soul don't want the peaceful weekend to end. I want out of this year.

This is unsettling.

I'll be paranoid from this point on and grab dishes and silverware with apprehension, fearing a startled adult cockroach running up the length of my arm and into my shirt. And I'll scream and rip my shirt off and bash my body against the refrigerator – or roll around on the floor – to destroy that most vilest of foes. And his kinfolk will swarm upon me in retaliation, in the hundreds – when I least expect it, when I can't run away – triggering multiple heart attacks from fear. I won't die. They'll retreat after feeling satisfied about the demise of my sanity, my livelihood.

I won't find and marry a cute foreign girl (I'm thinking French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Bangladeshi, or Dutch; Andrew advises against Italian), won't be able to pursue my dreams, won't have cute kids and an idyllic life.

The remainder of my days will be spent on a one-man vessel floating aimlessly in the ocean, living off fish and seagulls and whale urine. I'll only have broken gusts of wind and the constant overlap of waves to keep me company. And maybe that's all I'll need, because they'll remind me that cockroaches can't survive in the ocean.

Damned things.

Now, I have no idea what he really looks like, except that he has some sort of beard. I turn around and look at the guy that Dan says is Pedro (for my purpose, Pedro is David Bazan and not the group). Interesting. I take Dan's word for it and entertain the idea of actually going to his table or slyly taking a picture of the group while pretending to take a picture of one of us.

But we did nothing. Didn't really know much about him, didn't have anything to talk about, didn't want to bother the band. Plus, Dan has these other philosophies.

And then we went to the concert. There was what I thought were (and Pete confirmed as) emo kids. Many, many emo kids. I'd never been around such ‘company’ before. (One skinny, tight-shired, clean-shaven, rainbow-wristed kid stopped Dan on the way in, asking if he was 18; this emo boy and his friends were 17 and thus denied entrance to the show.)

But no use in trying to describe the variety of invariety there [?.] Maybe it was the vibe that also made me think emo: everyone was seated on the floor. At least until the bands started playing. Never seen that before for rock-ish music (barring outside venues).

The show was good, though; Scientific started off, then Seldom, then Pedro. Music got progressively better; all good songs overall. Standing up most of the time with a bag eventually killed my back by night's end. And I nodded off in between sets. (Who wouldn't with four hours of sleep and no stimulants? Besides Ryan.)

I did the dorky thing of getting a picture with Pedro and getting an autograph (though the autograph isn't for me).

Ah, so during the first and longest of Pedro's handful of questions-and-answers sessions, he asked the crowd what the mascot of the school was. Some people yelled ‘An Indian’, another yelled ‘Bullshit’. I think he said, ‘I sense a lot of hostility about this’.

—We hate Indians!… They broke our treaties!

That was the height of Pete's jackassness when he yelled that out, and it was a damn good laugh. And Dan saw Joe after the show; talked to him and tried to recruit him for the band. (Correction from Dan.)

Speaking of which, the lead singer of The Beauty Shop, a weird-haired, kinda big-stomached guy (with an odd look on his face) kept circling the floor of Courtyard Cafe. Very weird. A couple of policemen talked to him at one point, but we don't know why.

I think it's a bit strange to see ‘online people’ in the real world without actually knowing them. Should you ever give an unsolicited ‘Hey _____. I recognize you from your site and nothing else. Attempt uncomfortable small talk from here…’?

(I broke in my scarf last night and [still] wondered what the draw was of waiting in line – and possibly paying cover – to get into a packed bar weekend after weekend, ad nauseam.)

The joys of being simple-minded.

I've decided to put my Elph on my key clip. The lens cover always opens up in the bag, which could invite dirt and scratches; that's my biggest reason. Besides, I won't have to dig through my bag to find it when I need it. And I can say with some certainty that there's an Elph hanging off the side of my ass.

Haha…

Now it's time to finish that overdue paper.

[Care must be given to a dangling camera-on-clip. Can't just throw the damn thing around anymore.]

Answer: ‘Do you know what a multicock is?’

The best part is that this is true, though I should set up some context to save myself:

I'm at jummah (Friday prayers) talking to my friend Imad from Springfield (coincedently, he graduated last spring, and I haven't been to jummah on campus yet). He's asking me about eng199, I think, or maybe it's about SILA. He asks if I've gone camping with them. I say no but that I've gone camping in the past. He then mentions something about some brothers and sisters, if I know them and where they live, and ‘[Blah blah], she agreed to a multicock’.

In my mind – at the time – I was thinking of a communal hammock; that made sense, given the nature of the conversation.

And then the question sprung up.

I was watching CNN maybe two hours ago, disappointed that the sniper thing could end so anticlimacticly. And then I started to think of The Legend of Mystical Ninja and UN Squadron, which in turn filled me with joy (because I love these games, I suppose). So I called Game X Change and they had both in stock. Made a trip there a few moments later and soon wasted $30.

Now there's a bigger list of games I want to get, after glancing through all the titles on display, which include: Actraiser, Contra III, Final Fight, SimCity (did anyone else wake up at 5 AM to play this before school, or was it just me?), Final Fantasy III, and Secret of Mana. There are quite a few more that I can't recall at the moment.

But Secret of Mana must be a rare find, because it's $50. Sigh. It was a beautiful game when I played it, though. Once I get a positive cash flow going…

Now I have to wait for my parents to bring the console up on Sunday. And some might be wondering why I'd buy those games if I quit Zelda: A Link to the Past halfway through and have yet to really touch Super Metroid (though the Game Boy version is absolutely wonderful, peerless)? Well, I don't know. But I'll get back into the groove of playing games again; it's nice to know that I own them, anyway.

Blah blah. I terribly need a job but no one ever wants to call me back, and that's starting to weigh on my conscience. I might explode.

(You're going to take your spare key away from me, aren't you, Derek?)

Leptocephalus: i'm passing the time using the thesaurus to come up with new names for derek
Timmy Teabags: haha
Timmy Teabags: !
Timmy Teabags: i was writing a quick email yesterday
Timmy Teabags: while at the group meeting
Timmy Teabags: to derek
Timmy Teabags: so i said "hey fellatio. blah blah blah"
Timmy Teabags: and my group members were like "uh....so guys, what's going on?"
Timmy Teabags: they thought i was writing my gf or something
Leptocephalus: i've decided on concubine
Leptocephalus: hahah
Leptocephalus: pretty much
Timmy Teabags: haha
Leptocephalus: adultress, advoutress, courtesan, prostitute, strumpet, harlot, whore, punk, fille de joie; woman, woman of the town; streetwalker, Cyprian, miss, piece; frail sisterhood; demirep, wench, trollop, trull, baggage, hussy, drab, bitch, jade, skit, rig, quean, mopsy, slut, minx, harridan
Leptocephalus: mopsy
Leptocephalus: i like that
Timmy Teabags: haha
Timmy Teabags: mopsy
Timmy Teabags: yes
Timmy Teabags: mopsy mcbergmann
Leptocephalus: hahahahhah
Timmy Teabags: can you go germanic-irish like that?
Leptocephalus: why not
Timmy Teabags: i'd buy that for a dollar
Leptocephalus: hell, you could probably get more than one go round for a dollar
Timmy Teabags: haha
Timmy Teabags: "Tonight at the Vu: Mopsy McBergmann lets it all hang out and bends over [backwards] just to please you."
Leptocephalus: hahahahah
Leptocephalus: Leptocephalus: you abominable jezebel
Leptocephalus: you trollop of the gentiles
Leptocephalus: peddle your carnal wares, elsewhere, you godless wretch
Timmy Teabags: haha

—Hey, look! He looks like a fuzzball!
—He is a fuzzball.

And we laughed heartily at Bush (Ryan so generously found a videoclip) and Kerpal (I miss the Jerky Boys now). And then an episode of The Family Guy rounded out the night after half the group left.

Three hours disappeared; I didn't get to cover open mic at Zorba's, and I could potentially be screwed for my paper unless I decide to cover Jazz Night at Zorba's tomorrow, in which case I'll be up all night to put things together because I'm in the studio for four hours starting at 9 PM.

So I should probably get some sleeping in tonight. But group meetings are usually fun.

DB lacks all the fancy power-up moves and Super Saiyan and stuff, yes, but it also has more interesting and cute and random characters. Like Arale (in today's episode) and her two little angel-thingy friends that ate a car, and all the other inhabitants of this area that made an appearance. (Sour Man? Heehee.) They're not all annoying sidebars like in DBZ; the content is also less contrived, filler humor.

It's more fantastical and childlike, to paraphrase the ending theme song. In short, it's an overall good time.

And that's My Views. Here's Tom with the weather…

And so Derek said to me, ‘Get me Hall & Oates. Get me “Out of Touch”’. I said the pleasure would be all mine.

And so I dicked around with Fruityloops to get the melody down – a quick task, since I'm good like that. The trickiest part were the durations and rests, but after a few minutes of tweaking things, I gave him

the best cellphone ringing song in the world.

Rejoice!

(That bold line is more dominant that the post title, isn't it?)

Beer still sucks ass, I'm sorry to say.

Though flattering, I'm a bit disheartened that the only two compliments I got for my ‘dress’ today were from guys, one being ‘You look nice’ and the other being ’You look stylish…the colors match your skin tone’. Ah well. At least they were friends and not random guys. (Big sigh of relief.)

So aside from that girl at the Digital Underground concert, I wonder if I'll ever get ‘hit on’ again.

(Bokononism seems more interesting now; I'd never even thought of having the soles of my feet touch with someone else's, but I'd much like to try that. It sounds very sweet and nice and stuff.)

My mind and body were one when they both realized I needed more rest, so again they decided (as they always do in this situation) to shut the alarm off while my conscience slept. I snapped awake when I realized that maybe I'd slept too long, four hours too long. (Had an interesting dream prior to that. Part of it was influenced by last week's episode of Dawson's Creek, since I basically didn't go through with what the hot, bitchy actress told me to do. And there was something with floating blocks containing moving gears and some toy I was playing with, whose pieces I kept losing in the gear and kept trying to recover without falling into the void or sky, underneath.)

Anyway, my music project took a turn for the different in the studio when I realized I just didn't want to do what I'd planned (not enough patience; definitely not enough time). It's actually closer to my first idea, about working against the clock, being pressured. So I'm ripping off the general idea of ‘Pinion’ (maybe subconscience at work again, because I listened to it on Friday and thought, Damn, I love this).

And that brings me to Derek, who I went to pick up at the airport at 2:30 – of course, he missed his flight. But he sent a message saying 4:30, and I thought, ok, I guess this is a valid reason to skip class. But the next American Eagle flight from St. Louis arrives at around 5:30, though it departed at 4:30. Earf. I killed 20 minutes by driving to Wal-Mart to get an Icee.

At Wal-Mart. The lady at the snack counter kept asking me what flavor I wanted when I said I'd have both [Coke and sour apple] mixed. She then gave me a sample of sour apple. Tangy. I said I'd still have it mixed.

—Are you sure?
—Yes.
—Are you sure?
—Yes. Flash a charming smile.
—Are you absolutely sure?
—Yes. Another smile.
—Alright…

She handed me the drink and said, ‘You must be a glutton for pain’, and talked about how it hits you in the throat, unlike Warheads, which hit your mouth. (And she won't try those, either.) I said I liked to experiment with flavors.

I've had strange luck with the Wal-Mart ladies when it comes to Icee: one expected me to have an accent, was totally blown away that I lacked any such thing; the other gave me and Arun a free one for some reason, said she couldn't ring us up; and now this one.

Sour apple doesn't taste like whiskey, though, and that's a hella good thing.

Speaking of which, some folks should wish Paige a happy 21st birthday. I think I'll drink on a Monday night, in her honor.

Or not.

(Oh, and apparently some lady had a seizure, so that 4:30 flight (which he failed to mention was coming from Chicago) got delayed. So I get to make a third – and final – trip. Or he can catch a ride with a stranger like I had to do sophomore year when certain friends forgot to pick me up.

Kaiser glowers at you menacingly.)

My first At the Drive-In album and a gift certificate were purchased afterwards from Best Buy, then a very large clipboard from Michael's (because it's easier to write on my custom- and pretty-designed tabloid-sized track sheets with). $2.14 down at Wendy's, and it was all good.

Pete is a funny fellow. Strange, too. But that's also all good. Beastiality – or anything else, for that matter – can be tasteful, we figured. And so long as it's tasteful, it's all good.