F*cking Lasers...

This is a big weekend coming up.

Firstly, Stereo Agency's last show, ever ever ever, will be at the Old Brewery Tavern on Friday the 28th at 9 PM. I'm glad it starts early. I'm not going to want to end the night by packing up and unloading our crap and spending 20 minutes total with friends.

The rest of the weekend will be devoted to celebrating the nuptials of a dear friend and Steelers fan up in Long Island. It's a high-profile affair: Ethel Kennedy is going to be there, and I must have a dance with her. As rocking a time (Bon Jovi is also to be in attendance) as this is sure to be, it nevertheless means I will be missing out on what sounds like an absolute gas in the form of the Living Dead party at the Sexional to celebrate Major Bludd's return to the breathing segment of humanity. After discussing the idea recently with Mistress Armada, I wrote a small verse about skipping the wedding celebrations to attend the bash (as a former infamous Director of the FBI).

'Twas the night before Sunday and Ethel was pissed
Cos J. Edgar Hoover was late for their tryst.
In fact, he was one hundred miles due south
In Philly, cavorting with 'Cane in his mouth.

He looked very sharp in his suit (double breasted)
And a straw pillbox hat upon his head rested.
No one had an inkling, it was not revealed
That a 36A brazier this get-up concealed.

The party was attended by famed living dead:
Prez Lincoln, A. Hepburn, and Erik the Red.
They stood at the table and played drinking games
With Janis Joplin and the young Jesse James.

Pope John Paul the Second was drinking his Dewar's
Boadicea was sucking down bottles of Coors.
And in this grand setting, with booze all a-splashing
J. Edgar decided to go ventricle-smashing.

By the time the dust settled, not one heart was spared
To Dresden and Hastings the night was compared.
The assembled party-goers decided—there and then—
That young Mr. Hoover never come back again.

Play

Somebody finally went and did what I've been hoping and praying for. A documentary about the evolution of video game music and its effect on all music created in the last thirty years. Godspeed to these indy bastards and their quest.

http://www.myspace.com/VGMmovie

Bow Down to the King of Long-Winded Post Threads

It was great fun to hang out with Storm Shadow and his fiancee, who I've yet to come up with an alias for. Yinz are all right. I was offered, and immediately snapped up, the opportunity to be a groomsman for them. Wedding=not nearly soon enough. And Hunter Hearst Helmsley is the man. Someone get me his entrances musiks, "The Game" and "Bow down to the King" on CD immediately.

Quick notes on the immigration issue:

The idea that we need illegal immigrants because they do work that American citizens won't do is misleading. It would be better to say that they do work that American citizens won't do at such illegally low wages. In a recent speech, John McCain offered to pay $50/hour to anyone in the audience willing to pick lettuce for an entire season, and when none of the assembled grad students and businessmen took him up on his offer, he smugly thought the point proven. I am searching for his email address right now. Hopefully, I'll have a new job by day's end.

The idea of amnesty for illegals is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. It's disastrous in the practical sense: unless they're talking about a mass amnesty, there is no way they're going to get ineligible illegals to register and voluntarily go home. Furthermore, the INS is still processing people from the last illegal amnesty twenty years ago. But most importantly, amnesty of illegals is a slap in the face to the rule of law (to say nothing of those who go through the long and tedious legal entry process). Maybe our immigration policies need to be reformed, but that decision is up to the men and women we have elected to represent us in Congress. In the meantime, some 11 to 12 million people have violated United States law by entering the country illegally. To reward them with citizenship is to devalue all American legislation, for it sets a precedent that if a group of people is large and vocal enough, laws can be disregarded and overridden, at which point any pretense of representative government becomes a shell around government via polling and mob justice.

My quest to become a Metroid person, backwards, is progressing nicely. Metroid Prime 2 is a terribly fascinating and engaging game. Play with caution.

By the way

It is the opinion of some fine Crimson Guardsmen that the Lehigh Valley is a stasis field and the people in it have stagnating lives. I feel compelled to pontificate (swallow my words with a saltshaker if you so choose).

These observations seem to be based on evidence collected between roughly October and April, i.e. the cold fall months and winter. Inertia and an attitude of quasi-hibernation sets in because the weather turns cold and the days become short, discouraging industriousness and, for the most part, restricting activity to moving via auto from one heated indoor space to another. The dark and cold sucks the life from most of nature, and that reflects on our own behavior.

The coming of warm weather has always brought with it a spirit of change, celebration of life, and generally takes from us the inertia that kept us from translating thought, fancy, and ambition into action.

In summary: During cold weather we hang out and live the status quo, enjoying whatever's right with our lives, but paying far more attention to our flaws and things we'd like to change. When the warm weather comes, we are finally spurred to action, and try to improve our situation as much as we can by the time October rolls around again, and with any luck we will have established a more pleasing status quo than before. The period of re-evaluation then begins anew.

It can suck sometimes. But for my money I'm glad I am growing up in the American Northeast. If I lived in a cold-weather place all the time I'd have no ambition. If I lived in a warm-weather place all the time I'd have no perspective. I'm glad I live in the Lehigh Valley, too. We have pretty much every luxury and amenity that big cities have, without the traffic and the jaded jerky attitude. We have (though who knows for how long) the beauty and tranquility of open spaces and wilderness too, without an overwhelming redneck population and crippling illiteracy.

Point is, relax. All is as it should be. Except the Pirates, who opened their turnaround season by getting swept by the Brewers. Whatever.

Update

Seeing as how I'll be working full-time hours this summer, and I desperately need something to distract myself with, this seems like an opportune summer to get interested in baseball. Of all sports, this is the one that I have paid the least attention to over the years (due, in large part, to the Pirates consistently sucking), so I have a lot of catching up to do. As a nice coincidence, most fans I've spoken to believe this is the Pirates' year to start turning things around, so that should be nice. Even if they don't, it'll be fun riding that train into the cellar. I like the abuse.

A series of medals are hereby virtually pinned on Baroness for the sweet-ass t-shirt she brought from Caliwaii. You will have to see to believe. She is currently infiltrating one of the more densely populated centers of higher learning in the state of Pennsylvania, the better to recruit young impressionable jerkoffs into becoming Alley Vipers.

It was also a pleasure to be a part of a brilliant April Fools' joke, masterminded by Mistress Armada and her cronies. Another COBRA bastard child enters the world of legend. Woo hah!

Everyone keep an eye out for upcoming Stereo Agency stuff--April 14th, Good Friday, at 9:00 PM we are opening with an hour set for some band at Jelly Beans in Allentown (if you don't live in A-town don't bother) and then the next night, Holy Saturday or whatever, we return to the Funhouse to lose our friggin' minds. We are playing with some new toys, and I have a feeling that show will be one to remember. Mark yer calendars.