How do I know that I'm a music lover?

Forget the obsessive self-taught musicianship, the fetish for vinyl discs, the love of recording, and my unhealthy predilection to be a walking Trivial Pursuit: UnPop Music Edition.

No. What really does it is the fact that music makes me choke up with tears. And unlikely bits of music, too. Usually old ones. Right now, I'm listening to Curtis Mayfield's classic, "Move On Up." Incredibly uplifting and inspiring stuff, especially considering its historical context (ie coming two years after Dr. King's assassination, at the beginning of the decade-long hangover of the '70s). I shed a tear also to wonder where our generation's Curtis Mayfields are now that the original is passed on as well. Our idea of politically and socially aware music is shaggy-haired, skinny white boys whining about being bored in suburbia, or your choice of a kazillion Alanis/Fiona/Tori/Ani clones commingling bad breakups with the White Male Power Structure in bad coffee-house poetry. On the other hand, you've always got Toby Keith talking about kickin' some Ay-rab ass.

Since I'm not at all familiar with the whole fascinating world of hip hop and R&B, where you might assume a modern day Mayfield to be most likely working, I'll leave that discussion to others smarter than I.

Things are looking up for the moment

The last couple of days have been unusually fruitful as far as my old creativity and lust for life are concerned. I've actually been fairly productive and *gasp* coming up with some cool graphic ideas at work. Pity it's only coming back to me now that I have only a couple of weeks left at my job. Hmm...it's like, things are wrapping up, I don't have quite the amount of pressure as before, or something, but at least for now it feels like something got unblocked, like a drain trap stuffed with ancient globs of greasy hair, and things that used to make me inspired and happy are starting to flow through again.

Take the anime-on-YouTube thing. Used to be that if I could be bothered to pay attention to anime at all--even though inside I felt tormented by impotent nostalgia and latent love for the good old days at Tri-A and Otakon and such--I'd just let it slide by. It felt different this time...like, for the first time in ages, I actually feel that I'd like to watch some anime for the sheer enjoyment of it, and go to a convention or a club meeting somewhere, and fraternize with other otaku.

It's like (I'm saying "it's like" a lot tonight, aren't I?) my job has forced a soulless, joyless kind of adulthood on me these last few years--ie financial difficulties, the pressures of trying to build a career and a middle-class lifestyle on a tenaciously entry-level salary, a basic aversion to the 9-to-5 routine, the concomitant despair of getting nowhere very slowly--and now that I can see past it to my future in New Jersey, a bit of that carefree twentysomething attitude is starting to reassert itself. Whee!

I hope it's not just an illusion caused by the onset of nice weather or some other mundane reason.

Damn, I've been writing a lot lately

This is fun. Gotta keep it up.

Food TV

No, not the network, since I've allowed the cable service to lapse.

I'm talking about free-for-viewing broadcast programming, in particular one compelling bit of weekly nastiness that is definitely not for the weakly.

I wasn't really paying attention to Gordon Ramsey and his not-so-merry group of grabasstic pieces of culinary shit this evening (on FOX, the first network to drop the word "ass" from its list of Words You Can't Say On Television, but who still sees fit to bleep over 50% of Chef Ramsey's speech every week), as I was wading through mountains of old videotapes and CDs and dust that I'm trying to organize and pack away. It seems that they were all more pissed off than usual, judging from the amount of screaming and bleeping. The Big-Dumb-Sexist-Pig-Looks-Like-An-OSU-Linebacker character offered to quit and go home in the middle of service, then was cajoled into not quitting, then got voted off anyway. Good effin' riddance. I predict the little Asian guy with the glasses and the Mohawk will win.

Cobraaaaaa!!

No, I'm not counterbalancing vintage anime with vintage American propagandimation. I'm simply tooting the fact that I also found a website for a company (one of a skadillion) that produces a kit replica of the venerable AC Cobra. A ridiculously cheap one, as these rich men's playthings go: approximately $13,000 for the basic version, $19,000 for the everything-but-the-motor-and-tranny version. It's designed to take the mechanicals of the 1984-93 Mustang, particularly the GT variant. So if I can find a junker donor Mustang for a few hundred, and one of these kit thingies, I could conceivably have a kickass replica of a legendary sports car for slightly more than a loaded Honda Civic...which is really a comment on how far the Civic has come since the tin-can-on-a-roller-skate '70s. Today's cheapo prole car is known as the Hyundai Accent.

Well, Hyundai sounds sort of like Honda, at least. Honda, who once boasted in a TV commercial that the Civic was the lowest priced car in America, makes at least one supercar these days. As far as I know, Hyundai doesn't. However, Hyundai, unlike Honda, does also make computer hardware.

Neither of those jokers makes canned tuna. But Mitsubishi, standing ignored off to the side, does. So there.

Wait. How the hell did I get from a fake AC Cobra to tuna fish? Don't ask me. Maybe it's the dust from cleaning the attic fugging with my brain.

Getta Robo Go Go Go

Thank heavens for YouTube. I checked out a few vintage anime clips today:

1) Both the US and Japanese opening credits for Speed Racer. Yes, the 1967 original.

2) A compilation of opening credit sequences from several giant mecha series of the mid-70s.

3) 2/3 of an episode of Getta Robo G (better known, if such can be said, in the US as Starvengers), I actually have an execrable-quality copy of the same episode (US version) on a crappy commercial VHS tape. The differences are quite interesting.

4) The opening sequences of all five of the Force Five series...including Starvengers. Gotta love those disco-style theme songs.

I was then inspired to draw up, as I did in carefree days of yore, several manga-style sketches.

Inspired. What a novel concept! I may re-pick up my old anime habit yet. It's sashimi for the soul. Or is it sake for the soul? Itadakimasu!

Analog television

It's rather like the old telephone network that my friend Evan Doorbell celebrates. The technical quality of this antiquated technology is sometimes udder crap, but that's what makes it so interesting. Not to mention that it represents a living, if barely tenacious, lifeline to an earlier, simpler time. Do you realize that our soon to be euthanized analog color TV standard has been in place since the early 1950s, and represents basically a color overlay atop an even older standard? When you strip the Dolby 5.1 stereo surround sound, color, digital subcarriers, closed-captioning, and all that junk, you're watching the same basic black and white signal that flickered to life on 5-inch round picture tubes in the days before Pearl Harbor. I have images of the RCA Indian Head test pattern accompanied by a 1kHz test tone at 3:00 in the morning. No more. TV post-2009 looks more like full-screen YouTube. Sterile. You can hear a pin drop. And no fuzzy, distant stations between channels to fascinate geeky kids on early Saturday mornings. (Not that there's anything unique anymore on Saturday mornings that said kids couldn't get any other time and day of the week.) Digital signals are either there or they aren't, or they're frozen in an ugly mosaic of stuck pixels. Uck. Plasma TVs are pretty neat, though, if you watch them from a distance. And even if you don't, you don't have to worry about what my mom used to call "radiation" frying your sensitive little brain right where it sits, like an egg in the microwave.

And in the utilities department...

We came home to find that the cable was shut off, so Cherie just dug out the old rabbit ears. We're back, for the moment, to good old, almost-obsolete, analog off-the-air TV. No Food Network till at least Friday, I reckon.

Old buddies, or: ain't the Internet the shit?

I googled Kai, my old roommate from Germany, found his email, and sent him a quick message. In it I apologized for not writing in German, since I was at work, didn't have my Langenscheidt's, and in any case I'm way out of practice schreibening auf Deutsch (bad! bad!). I sometimes worry that with all the utter bullcrap my government's been up to in the last decade, my old friend mightn't be particularly in the mood to fraternize with those of the American persuasion. Then again, he might just be busy. He's a management consultant.

I also got one from my college classmate Sandy, who now lives in Atlanta. He has sporadic internet access. He's a great guy; I'm happy to be back in touch with the old chap. He says he'd love to come visit us in New Jersey after we move. You know, he used to work in NYC, for a book publisher. Speaking of books, he recommended one to me to help with my anxiety/stress excess. I forget the title, but I'll have to look it up.

My posts lately have been rather functional and inelegant, haven't they? I don't feel particularly thrilled by the beauty of language at the moment. Eh. I dunno, I'm just reporting. This sucks.

Headachey again

Three weeks or so to go.

Funny that I should put it that way, because I used the same exact words over ten years ago in a journal I was keeping while I was in Germany, in reference to my impending return to the States. I ran across it while Cherie and I were upstairs, finally making a little progress on cleaning and packing the attic. She read it, occasionally busting out in her trademark laughter, other times with a sympathetic look on her face. I reacquainted myself with my 21 year old past self, was a little shocked at some of what I wrote. I came away with three observations: First, I was seriously fucked up emotionally--bitter, angry, depressed, self-absorbed. Second, I was absofuckinglutely capital-O Obsessed with women and with losing my virginity. Which I spectacularly failed at, which understandably contributed to my continued fucked-upness. And third, all that youthful angst and stoppered up hormonal pressure also resulted in my most creative, eloquent, artistic and literary effort. My creativity as it existed circa 1995 shames me now, when I am old and jaded and beaten down by the responsibilities of adulthood, too tired to give a crap anymore. These days, all I worry about is which bills I can afford to slack off on this month, and how the hell I'll be able to pay for the car, car insurance, health insurance, and credit cards, which I can't afford to slack off on, next month. Nothing sexy about that. Those were relatively carefree days, even if I was sometimes suicidally depressed. Joie d'vivre. Froelichheit.

I think one of the motivations for me running away to New Jersey is to attempt to revive some of that sense of adventure in my life, with some obvious differences. For one, this time I'm not alone. I have my honey, the love of my life, with me. I'm not quite as wet behind the ears. It's in a place that I can at least speak the language. I'll hopefully have an actual means of supporting myself besides a limited fund of savings in a faraway bank account. And this time it's for real, permanent.

In all likelihood the financial pressures will get worse. I'll have to work, maybe harder than ever, to pay for everything.

On the other hand, every day will be a new experience. And I can always hop on the train and go explore New York City.

My head hurts. I'm gonna go take an Ibuprofin, lay down, and continue this later.

Cleaned up

Just hopped out of the shower. Hair's all wet, window's open. Feels nice and warm, for a change. Did you know that I shaved off my goatee over the weekend? I also hopped on the scale at work today, and it told me that I'm currently 253 lb., which puts my BMI at about 35, which makes me, like, "obese", which we all know is bullshit. I still intend to start exercising again. Thinking about trying jogging, even though I prefer to swim or bike. Except I need a bike to bike, and I'm too poor to buy a bike, even a Wal-Mart one. Jogging is the great equalizer among fitness methods...no fancy equipment or expensive memberships to filter riff-raff proles like me out, no barriers to entry other than a decent pair of running shoes. Which I'm also too poor to buy at the moment. DAMN.

Speaking of which, I want to get into geocaching too. Sounds like a fun way to get out of the house and explore the neighborhood. Except--you guessed it--I need a GPS receiver. Cha-ching!

I wonder what kind of job I'll find in New Jersey.

For the life of me this is the most creative title I can think of

Oh, man. I think I've come to a conclusion: I am officially suffering from burnout. All the symptoms are there. Google it. I am so fucking glad that I have less than a month left in Columbus. Of course there's the little matter of being very close to broke with lots of people to pay off and no jobs lined up. But at least I'll be in new surroundings. Oops, food's done, gotta go eat. Wasn't this stimulating conversation?