Coming out of the bar last night, tired and a little drunk after playing three sets with the Exhibit(s) and receiving quite possibly the best phone call ever, it felt nice out in the night air.  That’s a rare occurance in August in Birmingham; we’ve been suffering from brutal summers for the past couple of years, and the temperatures coupled with the Amazonian humidity make for positively unpleasant outdoor (and sometimes indoor) experiences.  But last night was a great teaser for autumn, my favorite time of year.

A few years back, I began compiling mix CDs of music for autumn.  These were all titled Waiting for October, after the album by local musican Chris Bentley (formerly of Tarantella, among others), and they represented a trip into an aural freezer, music for driving at night with your windows down and a fairly heavy jacket on.  Last night’s taste of a more pleasant climate has got me thinking about this year’s edition of the mix, and in an overarching sense, maybe a best of, since this will be the tenth version of the CD that I’ve made.

The prerequisites for inclusion on the CD: cinematic, night, cold, and at least slightly haunting.  Or maybe haunted is the better term.

This year’s candidates:

Hevein: A New Hope
Any song with cello (played without distortion, I should add, to prevent too many people from suggesting Apocalyptica) is a strong contender from the get go.  Even better, though, is the dreamlike quality of the melody, and then the twist at the end, which always brings falling leaves to mind.

Byla: Morning Looming
Perfect for sunset (I know, I said night, but some trips begin just before darkness falls, and those moments deserve a soundtrack as well).  There’s always a temptation to put just about any track off of Will Ackerman’s The Opening of Doors on these compilations, but this song sums that feeling up in 1:40, leaving plenty of room for other tracks.

3: Dogs of War
Moist: Breathe
Both of these songs are very driving type numbers, and remind me of that part of fall that never seems to hang around long enough around here, a very crisp moment that feels like the turning point of the universe, that point where you first realize that yeah, summer’s over for real.

Ned Mudd: The Black Dress and the Invisible Man
This is a strange one for me, because it’s mostly a sort of beat poetry over a bass/guitar/drum/trumpet track.  It’s loose and cohesive at the same time, the imagery is evocative, and it’s a longtime favorite of mine (if for no other reason than I’m one of a very few people that has a copy, and so I’ve never heard it way too much). Perfect for stargazing.

Paul Gilbert: Marine Layer
It’s a farly straightforward and simple song from the Racer X / Mr. Big guitarist, piano and acoustic guitarist, but it reminds me of high school days for some reason.  Not the part where I was a gigantic loner without the cool friends part, though.  Just a general feeling.

Blue Oyster Cult: Joan Crawford
Speaking of high school… It was the fall of 1988 when I first heard this song, driving through Hoover in Jason Chatham’s VW. It doesn’t necessarily fit the mood of what I would usually put on these discs, but it’s a great time machine, emotionally.

Porcupine Tree: In Formaldehyde
One of their rare tracks, off of Recordings, and one of their absolute best.  This really starts to carry you toward December, cold rain that might become snow if you’re lucky, and then that first kiss outside during the first cold snap that comes at 3:31 in. Perfect.

Sigur Ros: Glosoli
Okay, you could pretty much put anything by Sigur Ros on one of these discs.  This year, the honor goes to Glosoli.  It’s all CL’s fault on this one.

Dark Suns: Zero
Again, CL’s fault.  The piece perfectly sums up autumn for me (including the rain in the background, and the kids on the playground), but it’s the lyrics that put it on this year’s compilation.  It’s like a counter-reset for life.  Like I said: CL.

Dream Theater: Octavarium
I’ve planned on putting this one on this year’s mix since last December, when I accidentally heard it during a trip to buy my new car, and realized that it should have gone on last year’s disc.  Over twenty minutes long, and shifting from one section to the next effortlessly. I’m holding out hope that the version from their upcoming CD Score (performed live at Madison Square Gardens this year with a full orchestra) will be even more appropriate for this series.

Echobrain: Seven Seconds
Plaintive instrumentation and vocals make this a perfect nightcap in the fall.

Feel free to make more suggestions.  I’m always looking for new music and things that I haven’t previously been aware of, especially if they make it feel like October a little sooner.

God, October can’t come soon enough. Air conditioning or no…

Courtesy Skillzy, via Sarah…

From the Washington Post:

Hot sauce adds a kick to salsa, barbeque, falafel and hundreds of other foods. But some parents use it in a different recipe, one they think will yield better-behaved children: They put a drop of the fiery liquid on a child’s tongue as punishment for lying, biting, hitting or other offenses.

I’m  wondering how many parents in this country are still practicing spanking.  I’m all for it, myself, if it brings kids back into a disciplined world.  The hot-tongue thing — I don’t know.  I mean, I like spicy food, so it probably wouldn’t have done anything to me (although a selection from this page might have had some cautionary effects); on the other hand, I am and always have been reasonably averse to stinging pain on my ass, and so was reasonably careful to not do things that would result in a spanking.

Okay, I was careful not to get caught doing those things.  But it made me a better person (and by better, I mean sneakier.  Same difference).

Still, I’ve seen too many kids these days getting punished with time-outs, harsh words, inconsistent discipline if any at all… It’s no wonder to me that some days it seems like kids are becoming more willful and obnoxious. It might be that I’m getting older and turning into my grandfather, sure.  But why take the blame when I can place it elsewhere?

Any day now, I’m going to write that parenting handbook I’ve always imagined.  First, I’ll have to go back and watch all the torture scenes from the last five seasons of 24, but then I should have it down.

(Oh man — I just realized that Lisa Whelchel is Blair from The Facts of Life.  Weird.)

Living with bipolar disorder and managing and adjusting my life to fit, I sometimes like to read or see case studies about other people and how they’ve dealt with similar issues.  One of the best so far — because he’s blogged about it, day by day, and so you get to walk alongside him (to the extent that you can with one entry a day) — is Rick Reynolds, over at The Happiness Project.

I first heard Rick’s work in about 1992 or ’93, when I got the cassette of his one-man show, Only the Truth is Funny.  It’s a great monologue, one that I finally managed to track down when they reissued it on CD sometime in the past year or so.  The intro to that monologue is included in the first episode of his new web-series, which can be streamed or added to your iPod podcast subscriptions.  It’s seven minutes long, and has one of the funnier lines I’ve heard in quite some time (listen for a mention of bad breath).

Always good to see other people dealing with their lives, whether through therapy, medication, or pure determination.

Scott Ian has a sense of humor. Whod’a thunk?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chiVMrWMHko]

Teen arrested after mom found in freezer – Crime & Punishment – MSNBC.com:

…People close to the family described the teenager as very quiet and a good student, with no history of violent behavior…

Seriously, everyone: if they ever somehow miraculously manage to track down the secret burial ground where I’ve hidden the bodies (not to mention connecting the evidence, no matter how badly decomposed and tampered, thanks to a flame thrower, gallons of lye, and my own napalm-like recipe of gasoline, packing peanuts, and toothpaste), I want you all to say this about me when talking to the media:

Yeah, we wondered when this was coming. I mean, he had a clean life and his background checked out, but we knew it was only because he paid the right people and killed the rest. For chrissakes, he almost failed out of high school, and anyone that anal-retentive who listens to heavy metal well into their thirties has some problems, you know? Frankly, I’m just surprised it took you pigs this long to catch him. He’s not that smart, you know. Hmmm. I guess just lucky…

Fine. For the sake of my mother, who hates when I joke about such things as me finally breaking the Green River Killer’s record for “Longest Trail of Bodies Left by a Single Unidentified Person” : I’m not joking.

Okay! Alright. Stop hitting me. Statistically, you really don’t have to worry about me. Most serial killers are between 18 and 34, male, single, loners… And see? I turn 35 this year. And I’m not really single, at least in the sense that I’m fairly sure that CL would notice if I were gone for long, unexplained stretches of time. Of course, I could always blame that on her blood sugar problems…

Hang on. I’m just making myself a little note, here.

Okay, I’m back. Where was I? Oh, yeah. No worries about me, unless you look at the fact that I like to defy common knowledge based on statistics. Or unless you consider that I might have gotten started years and years ago — say, when I was between the ages of 18 and 34. Or if you think about the fact that it’s middle-aged men that have sudden bursts of anger that translate into massive body counts, usually in the workplace.

But seriously, it could happen.

No, I just like keeping people on their toes, making them wonder a little here and there. Oh, and don’t fire me. And CL, you might think twice about this before you ever have an affair. Or leave me because I’ve started talking back to the voices in my head at really audible volumes. Or burning my dinner.

*I’m kidding here, people. I promise. Of course, by kidding, I mean, “tossing the idea out there to see what kind of response I get, just in case I ever decide that, hey — maybe a prolonged killing spree followed by a nomadic life on the run punctuated by occasional random homicides (just to stay in practice for the eventual invasion of the alien overlords from Sirius that the voices assure me will happen in my lifetime)… Yeah, that sounds like a really good way to break the monotony of a Saturday afternoon.”

It’s unfortunate that normalcy is such an ugly word for me.

See why I like change so much?

I’ve spent the week struggling to figure out why my computer was acting like a bartender who has suddenly been denied their cocaine supply (yes: slow, whiny, and prone to irrational behavior that makes sense only to other crazy people).  Today, I decided that I’ve had enough, and performed what used to be a biannual ritual: The Great and Wonderful Secret OS Reinstall.

Apparently, I’ve waited far longer than six months to do this this time around, even with the new motherboard.

So here I am, waiting on the first of many rounds of Windows updates to download and install. Meanwhile, a beautiful woman is 20 feet away from me, sleeping soundly in what some (me) would see as an inviting, spoon-shaped position.

Some priorities I’ve got, eh?

At least I got my three scripts turned into Sidewalk today. So the timing could have been worse…

It’s funny, this writing thing.  Not this writing thing, particularly, though there are days when you feel like there’s nothing really to say, but still, those site hit stats sure are hot when they occasionally cross into the double digits, and without new content, readers go away, so you throw something, anything on the screen and hit publish…

No, the writing thing that involves novels and screenplays that I occasionally do is what I’m referring to.  And it’s kind of a bitch sometimes (now).  There’s an art and a craft to writing, and times like this are proof that I’m not much of a craftsman when it comes to my art.

Muckfuppet came out of me in a three hour burst of typing, fully formed.  Very few edits were made to the first draft, and those were mostly correcting typos.  Pentium Lad and… Chip? was a quick hour and a half knock out with a revised ending (because the first one [arguably the whole thing] sucked).  Even The Beauty of Distance — a 90 page feature screenplay — was kicked out over three weeks between me and Lance, with I think one revision pass after the first draft was done.

And yet there are some stories that sit in my head and won’t come out, no matter how long I sit in front of the keyboard.  If I start typing them, they come out wrong, or something else altogether comes out.  So I start surfing, playing around with Acid on a song for CL, or writing blog entries.

The really sad thing about this is that these stories are finished products in my head.  All the details are there, full pictures that might as well be alive.

So why won’t they come out?

These are some damn good stories, too.  Award-winning, if maybe a little on the (very) (shouldn’t ever see the light of day, at least with my name attached) dark side…

Sigh.  Where are my loop CDs?