there's nothing worse in the world than waking up in a bad mood. okay…there's probably worse things, but i certainly can't think of any right now. i barely got any sleep last night, so when the alarm started going off, all i wanted to do was punch it. i sleepwalked through my usual morning activities and somehow ended up here at work. talk about your rude awakenings…

i've had the usual assortment of crap on my mind over the last few days. not really knowing how to deal with it, i pull out the usual brian tactic and get all anti-social. standard fare for me, these days. i'm sure it's not the wisest move to alienate myself from everyone, but in all actuality…i don't really care. how's that for a happy statement?

on to some more positive junk…

i can't believe they got j. robbins to post. those jokers will never quit.

saturday was julia's birthday, so a belated public "happy birthday" to her.

i'm sorry, sorry…so sorry…

this morning i realized that no matter how big of a jackass i am on the road, there's always some asshole out there that's worse. nothing in particular to site as an example, but i just wanted to go on record as saying that sunday morning drivers are the biggest bunch of morons i've ever seen. myself excluded, of course.

i spent the majority of last night sitting around the house, procrastinating on the laundry tip. i ended up getting off my ass and headed over to a party at jim's house. there were actually a few people there, so i proceeded to down some cold ones and hang out for a bit. last night was "thunder night", which is the official kickoff to the kentucky derby festival. the whole derby thing has evolved into a two week party in the city of louisville, kentucky, using a horse race as a good excuse to get wasted. thunder over louisville, the big kickoff, is just what we affectionately term "the largest fireworks display in north america" or something like that. to tell the truth…if you've seen it once, you've seen it every year. but i guess being trashed and standing on a friend's garage roof (which is where i was last night)…well…it didn't make it any better, i guess. fooey.

so knowing i had to work today, i stopped being anti-social at yon party and just headed home. i ended up making a couple of quick drunken phone calls, then settled in for some reading before bed. i tell you what…i'm a boring motherfucker.

and i haven't had any coffee this morning…

first off: i saw fugazi last night. they played a phenomenal set that completely rocked me from beginning to end. now that that's out of the way…

i started yesterday off as slowly as possible, not wanting to get out of bed. we eventually left town right at the beginning of rush hour, which turned out to be quite a process. with a few quick re-routing decisions, we were on the right track, saving some time. well…time was saved until we got about 45 miles outside of indy and traffic was down to a dead stop. they whittled the highway down to one lane, but that wasn't what caused the stand still…no…the complete halt of forward progress was caused by an endless parade of brainless fuckers and shits, constantly trying to get ahead in a non-moving line. i big frowning to that damn intrigue, hot-rod guy, and that stupid person in the prism that just got off at the exit to try to speed ahead and gain two car-lengths on everyone else. frown.

we eventually hit the location of the show only about an hour or so late, with a minimal amount of confusion. fugazi was sound-checking, and after settling in, guy and paul had to go out and pick up some minidiscs to replace the ones that guy conveniently forgot. as soon as they left the building, fugazi ripped into closed caption, just to spite those of a more forgetful nature. nothing compares to standing in a mostly empty room, with fugazi wailing on one of your favorite songs, not 10 feet away. that made all that traffic shit worth it.

the show: a band called monster zero orchestra opened up. when i use the word "band", i use it very loosely. they were an 18-piece (or so) orchestra, kinda in the vein of rachel's, except they lean more toward a brassier edge. they did an amazing arrangement of the faraquet tune "cut self not", and just generally impressed me. i found out later that it was their first show ever. yowzers.

fugazi eventually took the stage and blistered through a set that was easily two hours in length. they played tons of your favorites, as well as anywhere from 5-7 new songs (look for the official tally when the show hits transmission3000). the new songs were an amazing mixture of full-steam-ahead rock and the more experimental stuff they were doing on end hits, with most of them easily clocking in at over 6-7 minutes long. they also whipped out "furniture", which has only been seen on the instrument video. as many bands as i may see in my life, none of them rock me near as hard as fugazi. and you can take that to the bank. the crowd was amazingly well behaved, and ian at no point had to ask the crowd to "take two steps back" as he is usually wont to do.

we decided to try to milk the names of some of the newer songs out of them, but guy just told us that most of them don't have names yet, and that we should just make up titles. we were also pleased to find out that the new fugazi record should be out sometime in september. mark that one on your calendars, kids.

so we got home really late. i was falling asleep most of the way back, but as soon as i got home, i couldn't sleep. i sat in front of the computer, chit-chatting with a couple other people who happened to be online at that ungodly hour. i finally hit the sack right around the time the sun started coming up, which is something i haven't done in a long time.

hey zack.

by the way, gang…a certain mr. bob weston assures me that the pool out there at pachyderm is truly something to behold. you lucky fuckers. glad you're having a good time, regardless.

it's laundry day, people…what am i doing sitting around gabbing with you?

just a quick note: ben has updated the kilowatthours website, complete with a new message board. head over there and post your hearts out. have a blast.

sitting at work on a glorious payday. i don't care where you work, or how much you make, payday is always the best day of the week. even after the shitty morning i had. on my way into work, i like to stop off and get me my beloved mocha (extra chocolate, please). well i was short of the ol' cashola this morning, so i pulled into the bank right across the street from my regular coffee depot and saddled up to the trusty atm machine. the digital wonder was sitting there peacefully, humming and waiting to dispense me my hard earned dead presidents. that is, until i got my card about an inch from the slot and the machine made a strange whirring noise and then reported that it was "temporarily out of service." frustrated, i went to the local gas'n'go-type place to use their evil fee-charging atm, all in the quest for my sweet, sweet mocha. upon arriving back at ye olde coffee emporium, i had to wait in a hellacious line, missing my usually razor thin window of quiet oppurtunity. but the coffee gods smiled and i was granted my nectar. all was good with the world.

did i mention that this whole ordeal made me 10 minutes late to work? well…consider it mentioned.

from the nitro bio page:

"If this album doesn't rock your ass off," warns Gillette, "you better call the coroner 'cause you must be dead."

also available for your perusal: nitro vs. the beatles. [much love to kerroo]

has anyone else been completely unable to pull up ain't it cool news lately? what's up with that?

first off: i've recently posted a live ramones set from 1986 over at transmission3000. you know what to do.

on to the events at hand…

a good friend of mine was fired from work yesterday. this came as quite a surprise, and there seems to be a bunch of hullaballoo surrounding the whole ordeal. this has just left me feeling more paranoid than ever around the workplace. watching my back…checking the corners…making sure the spies aren't coming down on me.

the hollywood stock exchange has completely sucked me into it's deadly embrace. false fortunes, made and lost by the second…

on the plus side, work has been incredibly slow. honestly, my life is going incredibly slow. i seem to be stuck in a constant state of melancholy, no matter how hard i try to shake it. i've got a couple of trips on the books for the next couple of weeks, so maybe that'll help. i'm going up to indianapolis on friday to see the world's greatest rock band, fugazi. say what you will, but you cannot tell me that they don't lay down the rock like nobody's business. we're recording the show for transmission3000, so expect to see it up there by sometime late next week.

and then in a couple of weeks, i head back out to new england. new hampshire, to be exact. i'll be out there for a long weekend, enjoying springtime in the north east united states. can't beat that, huh? it looks like i'll be escaping derby hysteria by just a hair, as i'll be out of town for the entire derby weekend. ironic, considering leslie was just discussing a possible visit to the louisville area to join in on the madness that is derby. oh well…such is life.

it's comics day, so i gotta post this real quick before i head out the door.

this little flash animation is pretty kick ass, if you'll pardon the pun. haven't had time to poke around to find any other goodies on the site, but rest-assured, i will.

ok, now it's geek time.

well, i'm back now from my short weekend visiting my folks and my little bro, and i'd have to say i had an enjoyable time. seems like a whole lot happened in a 30+ hour period. saturday afternoon i spent pretty much all my money getting my oil and other various fluids replenished, so i ended up having to ask the 'rents for money (for the first time in a thankfully longish time) to get me through until payday. if my roommates would stop giving all their money to their stupid evil girlfriends, or spending it on guitars, i could probably actually do more than just pay bills with my money. (to set the record straight, brian has actually been the most consistent and responsive rent/bill payer for a while now, so the guitar comment is more of a friendly jab than an actual complaint).
i seem to inevitably end up in the "godfather" role, where i'm the one handling all the bills and my roommates end up owing me large sums of money. i don't anticipate having these problems when we move in with paul, even though the roommate i'm taking with me is the one who owes the most money. but, i've pretty much decided that if he doesn't catch up soon, i'm going to have to open up the proverbial can labeled "whup-ass"–either on him, or on that evil bitch of a girlfriend (who owes him probably a couple thousand dollars and keeps asking for more despite the fact that they both make about the same amount of money and she's living with her parents).

anyway, enough about that. my mom cooked her usual excruciatingly good meals while i was home, and i, of course, brought little samples back with me to help me survive 'til payday. today it's leftover country ham… mmm good.

my brother's been getting more and more interested in computers in the past year or so, so quite a bit of our conversations this weekend centered around that (he wants to buy a new computer, and m&p have agreed to front the money if he stops acting like a holy terror for a while.) so we discussed his options, and we've pretty much decided we'll build him a system like the one i'm planning to build, and probably come in under the parent's budget constraints. he wanted to buy an iMac, but it was about $500 outside of his range, so we're talking a PC. it's cheaper, and there's tons of free software (hehe). i also helped him out a little this weekend by acting as his computer merit badge counselor for Boy Scouts. basically i just asked him a bunch of questions, he gave me a bunch of answers, did a few little things on the computer, and everybody was happy. and, this may sound like neandarthalic chest-thumping, but i surprised myself with some of the stuff that i knew about computers and computer history.

sunday was fun, we were in the kitchen standing in the patio door with an air rifle (BB gun) trying to see who could shoot the ears of corn in the squirrel feeder (no animals were harmed in the making of this blog). then we ended up talking about my prowess as an archer from my own Boy Scout days (me insisting i was good, my dad insisting i was… well, maybe not that good). dad ended up busting out my old little kid bow and an arrow (probably the only one left intact from my days of shooting trees, stumps, the ground, and the garage). after my bro hung a soda can from a tree limb, i tried to shoot it with the bow and arrow. took me four tries, but i nailed it. after that, of course, for like an hour the three of us were standing out on the patio trying to shoot the can with dad's different bows. i think i was the only one who got a good solid hit on it several times, dad and javan each either hit around it, nicked it, or "bumped" it with the shaft of the arrow. so, i guess i was pretty proud of myself for proving to my dad that, hey, i really WAS good at it.

so, all in all it was a good weekend, a little of mom's home cooking, some family bonding time, and some good driving (amazingly enough, there wasn't a single spot of construction on the entire Western Kentucky (aka. William H. Natcher) parkway).

but i'm back at work now, bored as hell. half our servers are down because the AC went out in the server farm area and they overheated. hehe. ain't technology great.

oh, and be sure to check out my sister's posts about underwear (Mon., Apr. 9) and French radio and music (Thurs., Apr. 12). very entertaining stuff.

and also, sharon–continuing her sometimes theme of posting "forwarded emails" with commentary– has a nice post (Fri., Apr. 13) with some guidelines for interacting with and/or understanding the opposite sex.

i've fallen hopelessly into a new obsession: hollywood stock exchange. i'm trading in both movies and music, with a heavy radiohead portfolio. i'm currently losing my shirt on some weezer stock. head on over there and find out what the hell i'm talking about. if you sign up, put my username (transmission) as a referrer so i can get some bonus cash. i'd do it for you…

yesterday i ventured over to my aunt and uncle's house for a little easter dinner. since i don't eat ham, i was stuck devouring deviled eggs and a swiss cheese sandwich. i made up for the lack of food with beer, so i guess it all evens out. i ended up ducking back over to my house in the early evening for a nap before heading over to my cousin chris' house to play some playstation2. as you can imagine, i didn't really do much. it was mostly a day of lying to my family, telling them i love my job.

last night, while watching jackass, i was startled to discover that joey ramone passed away. this came as quite a shock, and i only vaguely remember hearing about him having cancer. he will be missed and never forgotten.

rainy sunday morning. it just happens to be easter. i just happen to be at work. cold mocha sitting on my desk. down to that syrupy more-chocolate-than-coffee bottom. it's as unappealing as you are probably imagining.

good to hear all of the lowdown of the hey mercedes recording session. i was listening to their first show in the car on the way to work this morning (like it's not still morning), and it's nice to see that i'll finally get to hear studio recorded versions of some of these songs.

paul and i spent the saturday like a sunday yesterday. we just sat around in a lazy daze, both of us commenting on the lack of things to do. we got out and about, but our "adventures" were so uneventful that i can hardly remember what we did.

damn you hellboy.

snl was alright last night. nothing too terribly funny. i don't think paul and i actually even watched the last skit. we were both pretty tired and i was ready to turn in for the night, anyway.

matt's down visiting his family for the weekend. paul's going down to e-town today. me? i'm at work, not even getting holiday pay. i'm sure my family loves me for this. honestly…they're probably happy i'm not there to get drunk and obnoxious. maybe i'll get off early and get over to get some easter dinner. when you live on your own, big free dinners are a major plus.