Valamity!

Beware, miscellany awaits you!

I can’t tell you how fortunate it is that my shocking, come from behind advance to puberty was coincided by a steep rise in the amount of razor blades society has deemed fit to put on a razor. I understand that there were devices that existed before the Era of Many Blades that claimed to protect the user from turning his face into a bloody, crosshatched parody of itself, but I am comfortable enough with my shortcomings as a man to tell you, under no uncertain terms, that I would still have a valiant go at it. I think I’ve even managed, through studied obstinance and a complete lack of fore, during or afterthought, to cut myself twice on my four-razored, vibrating (why? because it CAN) behemoth. Oh, sure, there are those electric razors, but when using an electric razor, I have a difficult time shaking the insane fear that it will suck my face skin into its whizzing maw, grind it into a bloody, chunky pulp and spew it across the bathroom walls like so much mulch from the proverbial lawnmower¹. I deal with enough irrational paranoia and overblown, self-inflicted angst without having to stare death in his empty-lidded eye every time I want to remove my pencil-thin scraggly mustache and the half-dozen hairs which point out at odd angles from my chin.

At this time, I would like to thank Julianne for this post and the five albums contained within. I love free music, especially now that I am at college and the RIAA has affixed its beady-greedy eyes on yours truly, and although I haven’t gotten around to listening to all of them, Harvey Danger’s Little by Little is worth a download purely so you can enjoy Wine, Women and Song. As an interesting addendum, googling² Wikipedia for Wine, Women and Song reveals an amusing list of tripartite slogans from yesteryear. Were I a wino and unattached, I’d be tempted to adopt this rousing motto for myself, but unfortunately I’m as sober as I am Leila’s boyfriend. So it goes.

I’ll reciprocate Julianne’s generous gifting of this quite good album by pointing the rest of you in the direction of some free music which I enjoy.

Brad Sucks (Brad Turcotte to his mother and friends) winkingly refers to himself as a “one man band with no fans”, but of course that isn’t true because I like the hell out of the guy. Brad Sucks releases all his music under Creative Commons, which is admirable in itself, but he also produces rockingly monotonic songs full of that confused, neurotic whiteboy soul that speaks in some manifest way to the confused, neurotic, criminally white part of my being. His sole LP is titled I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, and if there’s a better explanation for the human condition than that…well, damn.

I’ve realized that I don’t have any idea how to properly communicate what music sounds like with words. I’m not a musician, and I have no understanding of what appeals to me about music. If I like it, I will occasionally feel compelled to sing the words wildly offkey and dance/air guitar (whether the song contains guitar sounds or not). So, with that in mind, I’ll deliver to you my four other recommendations sans explanation but with the added bonus of exclamation points.

<ARGH. I tried to put this behind a cut, but the cut somehow ate my many links.>

Shorter List!

• Jonathan Coulton! Baby Got Back
• Defiance, Ohio! Kathleen, Are You Hungry?
• Bear on Bear! Better Than Nothing (really, this song rocks)
• Parker House & Theory! Bury It Low

¹ Interestingly, there is no proverb in current circulation that prominently features a lawnmower. Such is the state of our times.

² Yes, I’m stuck on finagling this into the lexicon.