Some kind of week that was
Chapter 1
Skip squelched down the hallway toward the bunker. This fishing trip had been productive. Not in terms of catching fish, because he didn't catch any (and he'd probably happily admit his ineptitude for angling if asked acutely), but in terms of not being there for a while. So, happily squelching along, empty bucket in one hand, fishing pole in the other, he found himself humming the Mission Accomplishable theme song. Through no fault of his own it morphed into the Batman theme, and that's when he knew he had returned to the nest (a robin joke? That was the perfect place for a Refreshments-style lures and bobbers joke. What the hell is wrong with me? ). Skip stopped and sloshed back and forth like a lazy tide, took one last deep breath of the lightly lemon-scented vacuum of the Infinitely Recursive Hallway of Doom, and patiently waited for the door to corporealize. For the sake of honesty, several more breaths ensued because my sci-fi magic door repair account is empty at the moment. Still works, just much slower than anyone would like.Chapter 2
Oh, hi, sorry, are you new here? Call me Bottle. I wear a lot of hats, but they all tend to acquire the same gunky grayish patina, so i'm never exactly sure which one i'm wearing at the time that is now. Totally confusing because the thoughts actually live inside the hats. If you've ever found yourself trying to lasso a grease fire, you'll know exactly what i'm talking about.
Anywho, welcome to Bottle of Beef. What do you mean, what do we do? WRWTFWW, just like the Swiss record label i borrowed that acronym from (i'll give it back, eventually). I guess technically i should say "we imagine we're doing whatever we do," but that seems needlessly fussy. Go find an office, there's loads of empty ones around here. Some of 'em even still have useful stuff in 'em. Oh, before that, though. There's a box of helmets just outside the door. I'd suggest wearing one, but i'm not the boss of anyone.
No, no, there isn't a boss at all. Not even a final one. I suppose technically i'm the guy who imagines the lights are on, and i can of course stop, but then i wouldn't be here either. Stupid considering i like it here, but i have been known to kerblooie the place when i'm in a really nasty mood. Don't worry, I try to avoid those as best as possible, usually by going away and leaving you all alone.
History? Herstory? Baxtery? Yeah, there's probably a library with books i wrote somewhere, but the hallways have rearranged so many times since then that i just moved on. I've lived a thousand lives, sneeze and 3 more whiz by; time inevitably keeps on slipping into the future. Welp, i've got people to see (other people, i mean) and places to burn down (hopefully not this one). Run amok, run aground, run in to me sometime later, just don't confuse the weather for the climate. Ceiling's the limit, i always say.
Oh, hi, sorry, are you new here? Call me Bottle. I wear a lot of hats, but they all tend to acquire the same gunky grayish patina, so i'm never exactly sure which one i'm wearing at the time that is now. Totally confusing because the thoughts actually live inside the hats. If you've ever found yourself trying to lasso a grease fire, you'll know exactly what i'm talking about.
Anywho, welcome to Bottle of Beef. What do you mean, what do we do? WRWTFWW, just like the Swiss record label i borrowed that acronym from (i'll give it back, eventually). I guess technically i should say "we imagine we're doing whatever we do," but that seems needlessly fussy. Go find an office, there's loads of empty ones around here. Some of 'em even still have useful stuff in 'em. Oh, before that, though. There's a box of helmets just outside the door. I'd suggest wearing one, but i'm not the boss of anyone.
No, no, there isn't a boss at all. Not even a final one. I suppose technically i'm the guy who imagines the lights are on, and i can of course stop, but then i wouldn't be here either. Stupid considering i like it here, but i have been known to kerblooie the place when i'm in a really nasty mood. Don't worry, I try to avoid those as best as possible, usually by going away and leaving you all alone.
History? Herstory? Baxtery? Yeah, there's probably a library with books i wrote somewhere, but the hallways have rearranged so many times since then that i just moved on. I've lived a thousand lives, sneeze and 3 more whiz by; time inevitably keeps on slipping into the future. Welp, i've got people to see (other people, i mean) and places to burn down (hopefully not this one). Run amok, run aground, run in to me sometime later, just don't confuse the weather for the climate. Ceiling's the limit, i always say.
Chapter 3
Princess Zanzibar slowly rose above the surface of consciousness, but refused to open her eyes. It felt wrong. Not like she was lying in pee like some other hungover princesses, but it did feel like a mattress and that wasn't right at all. "Maybe if i ease into it," she thought. "I'll just peek to the left. Damnit, Bottle! This is not my beautiful office! This is not my beautiful bean bag chair! Well? How did i get here?" The Bottle's voice in her head not so surprisingly responded "you may ask yourself..." in the most unhelpful way possible.
Why'd he have to go and make things so complicated? HR was so easy, it's already 2/3 of her acronym anyway, and he imagineered her office in a little hallway off the spiral staircase of the tallest tower. Princess is just a ceremonial vocation anyway, you don't actually DO anything other than stand there and look pretty. Telling Bottle to shut up was way more fun. May-er of Bottleville, do whatever you want, such a stupid pun. Likable, but stupid. Maybe she shouldn't have crashed that impromptu party, maybe she shouldn't have shotgunned whatever that drink the bartender in Courtney Love cosplay handed her-
"Maybe it's Maybelline," the discorporate voice of Bottle chimed in. Makeup. KISS and makeup.
"God, what an awful racket in here," came the reply.
Hold up. I didn't say that, pretty sure imaginary Bottle didn't say that, is that actual you, Bottle?
Guilty as charged, but i'm not a huge KISS fan. Can't keep anything simple, can i? They aren't bad, they just sound 40 feet away and like half of them are still asleep on the tour bus. Blame the EQ smiley face of Doom, i guess.
"Shut up, Bottle," she instinctually retorted. An invigorating shiver passed through her whole body as soon as she said it.
"Feel better," Bottle asked. "Come back whenever. I don't have the foggiest idea what we're going to do, but Skip's on his way back and i'm not sure i have anything worth editing. Plus, i've been seeing unfamiliar faces pop in and out and around corners. No clue why, totally discombobulating, i'll even double your salary."
S: Har, har, multiplying zero. Plus, i need to cut back on my salt intake.
B: Good one, whaddya say?
S: Ok, but try to include me in your plans before you actually attempt them this time.
B: No plans, no fans, no automovans. I, as they say, wing it.
S: Not this time, Bottle. It doesn't have to be definitive, or detailed, it just has to be plan-shaped, and we all need duplicate copies. Like it or not, there's a proper staff meeting in our future.
B: Not. You're right, though. Fine. We'll see how bad i handle Skip's return to the void, and regroup in the sorta room.
S: The sorting room?
B: No, i lost track of the sorting room weeks ago, the sorta room. You know, sorta in between all of our offices, but not really an official room with furniture or wall decorations. That place where we intersect on occasion.
S: Oh, i always called that the crossway.
B: Same difference. I'd say toodles or something, but since we're just doing that spooky mind-melt dream-psychic thing, i'll just shut up and let you get back to waking up for real this time. Oh, but yeah, too late now and all, but yeah, never drink anything one of my imaginary bartenders hands you. Lucky your face didn't melt off like you watched the nazis open the Ark or something. Catch you later, metaphorically speaking. Unless you forgot how stairs work, then hopefully the minions literally catch you. This batch is a little more surly than previous batches, but that's climate change for you.
S: Shut up, Bottle.
B: Yes, ma'am. See you later.
Princess Zanzibar slowly rose above the surface of consciousness, but refused to open her eyes. It felt wrong. Not like she was lying in pee like some other hungover princesses, but it did feel like a mattress and that wasn't right at all. "Maybe if i ease into it," she thought. "I'll just peek to the left. Damnit, Bottle! This is not my beautiful office! This is not my beautiful bean bag chair! Well? How did i get here?" The Bottle's voice in her head not so surprisingly responded "you may ask yourself..." in the most unhelpful way possible.
Why'd he have to go and make things so complicated? HR was so easy, it's already 2/3 of her acronym anyway, and he imagineered her office in a little hallway off the spiral staircase of the tallest tower. Princess is just a ceremonial vocation anyway, you don't actually DO anything other than stand there and look pretty. Telling Bottle to shut up was way more fun. May-er of Bottleville, do whatever you want, such a stupid pun. Likable, but stupid. Maybe she shouldn't have crashed that impromptu party, maybe she shouldn't have shotgunned whatever that drink the bartender in Courtney Love cosplay handed her-
"Maybe it's Maybelline," the discorporate voice of Bottle chimed in. Makeup. KISS and makeup.
"God, what an awful racket in here," came the reply.
Hold up. I didn't say that, pretty sure imaginary Bottle didn't say that, is that actual you, Bottle?
Guilty as charged, but i'm not a huge KISS fan. Can't keep anything simple, can i? They aren't bad, they just sound 40 feet away and like half of them are still asleep on the tour bus. Blame the EQ smiley face of Doom, i guess.
"Shut up, Bottle," she instinctually retorted. An invigorating shiver passed through her whole body as soon as she said it.
"Feel better," Bottle asked. "Come back whenever. I don't have the foggiest idea what we're going to do, but Skip's on his way back and i'm not sure i have anything worth editing. Plus, i've been seeing unfamiliar faces pop in and out and around corners. No clue why, totally discombobulating, i'll even double your salary."
S: Har, har, multiplying zero. Plus, i need to cut back on my salt intake.
B: Good one, whaddya say?
S: Ok, but try to include me in your plans before you actually attempt them this time.
B: No plans, no fans, no automovans. I, as they say, wing it.
S: Not this time, Bottle. It doesn't have to be definitive, or detailed, it just has to be plan-shaped, and we all need duplicate copies. Like it or not, there's a proper staff meeting in our future.
B: Not. You're right, though. Fine. We'll see how bad i handle Skip's return to the void, and regroup in the sorta room.
S: The sorting room?
B: No, i lost track of the sorting room weeks ago, the sorta room. You know, sorta in between all of our offices, but not really an official room with furniture or wall decorations. That place where we intersect on occasion.
S: Oh, i always called that the crossway.
B: Same difference. I'd say toodles or something, but since we're just doing that spooky mind-melt dream-psychic thing, i'll just shut up and let you get back to waking up for real this time. Oh, but yeah, too late now and all, but yeah, never drink anything one of my imaginary bartenders hands you. Lucky your face didn't melt off like you watched the nazis open the Ark or something. Catch you later, metaphorically speaking. Unless you forgot how stairs work, then hopefully the minions literally catch you. This batch is a little more surly than previous batches, but that's climate change for you.
S: Shut up, Bottle.
B: Yes, ma'am. See you later.
Chapter 4
[Squelch, squelch, squelch, sque-]
B: Great news! Skip's back, everybody!
E: Hello, Bottle. I can't help but notice that my desk is not a mountain range of paper with all the potential energy of an avalanche.
B: Well, i haven't been busy, at least not in a way that creates things for you to do.
E: Why not?
B: Well, frankly, i'm existentially exhausted. My epic imagination muscles cramped up, but i'm a tad reluctant to give these horse tranquilizers a swallow. Catch anything?
E: Thankfully, no. What are we going to do then?
B: I dunno. Do you play chess?
E: Huh?
B: p(nmi)t left his non-parenthesized Lichess account open, so i've just been playing random strangers for fun and excitement.
E: Are you any good?
B: I'm a solid 800 Blitz player.
E: Is that good?
B: If you're a 6 year old who learned how the pieces move last week it's phenomenal. If you're a 42 year old jackass who gets easily distracted it's a good solid "meh."
E: So you're not very good?
B: I dunno. Ranking systems are completely subjective inside their contextual user base. I win more against against 700s and lose more against 900s, so it looks pretty accurate. I suspect it would be tangibly higher without all the distractions or longer time. It's 5 minute Blitz, so you can't afford to think much past 5 or 6 seconds. For comparison, the average rating of all people on earth is well below 100.
E: I thought we were an imaginary publishing company?
B: K, i'll write a book called Losing the London: Bottle's Definitive Guide to Getting Distracted and Letting Your Opponent Win.
E: Please don't.
B: Ok, i won't. Wanna flip for it? Heads we play chess, tails we have a stupid board meeting?
E: Aren't those both technically board meetings?
B: Ooh, look at Mr. Soggy Boots, all mentally refreshed and on top of things. Sorry, that was uncalled for, i told you my tiredness was sleepy, let's just all 4 of us go stand in the hallway and appear like we're discussing important stuff.
[Squelch, squelch, squelch, sque-]
B: Great news! Skip's back, everybody!
E: Hello, Bottle. I can't help but notice that my desk is not a mountain range of paper with all the potential energy of an avalanche.
B: Well, i haven't been busy, at least not in a way that creates things for you to do.
E: Why not?
B: Well, frankly, i'm existentially exhausted. My epic imagination muscles cramped up, but i'm a tad reluctant to give these horse tranquilizers a swallow. Catch anything?
E: Thankfully, no. What are we going to do then?
B: I dunno. Do you play chess?
E: Huh?
B: p(nmi)t left his non-parenthesized Lichess account open, so i've just been playing random strangers for fun and excitement.
E: Are you any good?
B: I'm a solid 800 Blitz player.
E: Is that good?
B: If you're a 6 year old who learned how the pieces move last week it's phenomenal. If you're a 42 year old jackass who gets easily distracted it's a good solid "meh."
E: So you're not very good?
B: I dunno. Ranking systems are completely subjective inside their contextual user base. I win more against against 700s and lose more against 900s, so it looks pretty accurate. I suspect it would be tangibly higher without all the distractions or longer time. It's 5 minute Blitz, so you can't afford to think much past 5 or 6 seconds. For comparison, the average rating of all people on earth is well below 100.
E: I thought we were an imaginary publishing company?
B: K, i'll write a book called Losing the London: Bottle's Definitive Guide to Getting Distracted and Letting Your Opponent Win.
E: Please don't.
B: Ok, i won't. Wanna flip for it? Heads we play chess, tails we have a stupid board meeting?
E: Aren't those both technically board meetings?
B: Ooh, look at Mr. Soggy Boots, all mentally refreshed and on top of things. Sorry, that was uncalled for, i told you my tiredness was sleepy, let's just all 4 of us go stand in the hallway and appear like we're discussing important stuff.
Chapter 5
B: Hello, me hardies. Anybody wanna be in charge of whatever this is? No, no, don't all volunteer at once, he said to the silent stares. Ok, i'll start.
First, let it go. Let it all go. Forget i blew up the place, forget that p(nmi)t is lost in the woods, and probably frozen too... not even a sniff or a groan? C'mon, that was a good one.
We went through a global pandemic and emerged out the other side somewhere around 2013, financially speaking. People by and large proved that they would much rather be helpless, hopeless, and agitated than do anything productive. You can't really blame them, they've had all imagination grinded out of them to the point that they actually take pride in seeing people be more miserable than they are. They think that's important.
The way i see it, we're an empty canvas just waiting for someone to teach a raccoon to fingerpaint. Well, my fellow trash pandas, what should we imagine that looks like?
S: That might be the worst pep talk in the history of not taking pep talks serious.
E: Agreed, i think you should rewrite the whole spiel as a greeting card poem, then never recite it out loud.
B: Harsh. Compy, got any slings and arrows to hurl at me?
C: No. I mean, thank you for what i think was a backhanded Shakespearean compliment, but are you going to start reviewing albums again?
B: Tricky one, that. I don't have much in the old entertainment fund at the moment. I still have that gift card from last Santa time, but if i want spinny discs instead of paper cuts i have to show up in person. The Bottlemobile will probably fall apart halfway there, so that's a bad idea. Little bit of wiggle room on the karma card, but i'd rather keep that for emergencies. Plus, there just isn't enough time and/or energy in the right configuration to find a new point (assuming i ever actually had one). I'm totally fine just solving chess puzzles all day. My puzzle rating has gone from a 1200 plateau to an apparently equally plateauish 1500 in the last couple months, but i doubt anyone would call that productive.
S: Hardly. What if we tried selling them, like the Bottle's Music brainstorm?
B: But that would mean selling my records. I like keeping them just fine. I'd be happy to sell other peoples' records, if that's what you mean, assuming i had any. What's it cost to sell records, Compy?
C: Off the top of my head, it's like 10 to UPS 'em and 2 for the cardboard to wrap them in. Assuming you had them, of course. Probably have to buy them first.
B: I was afraid of that. Welp, Sandra, good suggestion, but i don't think it's doable at the moment. Any other suggestions?
C: You could give blood or plasma.
B: I could redeem aluminum cans for the 5 cent deposit, how will that help?
C: I don't know.
B: Me neither. Skip, any useful ideas?
E: No. I could suggest unuseful things if that will help?
B: It might, but we're 0/2 already so maybe save 'em for a better opportunity. Have we looked suitably important for long enough? Unanimous agreement? Perfect, let's pretend we never had this meeting and just go back to wasting time. By all means, holler if you think of something.
S: Hold on, though. Isn't the post office significantly cheaper?
B: Yes, but we have a rural post office with no office staff and no good place to drop off multiple packages. Plus, it takes way longer to get there and the tracking is hit or miss. I want it to go straight there and have a person i can call who can do something if there's a problem. Should i put the rant in it's own chapter?
E: Yeah, that's a good idea. Much less confusing that way. We'll all wander off and you just ramble to yourself.
B: Ok, sounds good. End scene. See ya.
Chapter 6
I don't want to do business the way business tells me i'm supposed to do business. I don't want to sign up for a buyer's club card and spend all my time barking at passing strangers about terrible mainstream party compilations. I want to make actual albums happen from bands you've never heard of and talk about how great and weird they are. You take half and sell them, i take half and sell them. There's a very simple reason why that gets bafoonishly complicated, and it's because nobody wants to actually pay for it. Well, i do. I want to pay for it. I want to pay to make albums exist. Why does that have to be so damned difficult?
Well, basically you have to find a bunch of people who want to buy records from you first, and those people need a way to play them and that's what spirals out of control. Let's instead invert that.
The thing you're buying is kind of irrelevant, so there's no reason to put that as the foundation of our thought process. Instead, first i have to get it to you, second i have to not lose money on the deal, and finally we have to add the cost of the item. Again, doesn't matter what you're buying, it's gonna cost you $15 to buy it from me. Is that unreasonable? I don't think that's too terrible, actually. I mean, the most ridiculous scenario i can think of is that you want me to walk out into my front yard, pick up a rock, and then mail it to you. I have lots of rocks, so we'll just say they're free. Average of probably like 9 bucks UPS, so you're paying me 6 dollars for actually getting the rock and boxing it up and driving to town. A used record i bought for $4 would cost you $19, a $20 umbrella would cost you $35. That's really not too bad, you just have to decide that buying whatever it is from me is worth spending $15, assuming it's not ridiculously heavy or too big to fit in a normal box. The only real trouble in that way of thinking is how much i paid to obtain that thing.
Let's take CDs. They really do cost about $3 to create in any meaningful quantity, so you'd be paying 18 for 1. 2, though, that's 21, so already you're only paying 10.50 for each. 3? That's 8 bucks and change. Sure, if you're buying 3 of my CDs then you're a serious audio-masochist, but that's not the point. The point is that Economics actually works backward from the typical way we describe it. Paying the meaningful cost of production is more valuable to the economy at large that buying random crap at random times, ergo you get a better exchange rate for being a reliably consistent customer. I call it the "i like this person discount."
Conversely, if you're the kind of person who's gonna complain about walking up to the exit only door, then dick the kid around about the cost of de-rimming a pile of tires you hauled in on a trailer, then i'm gonna "hhhhh" loud enough for you to hear it and get up to walk across the parking lot to Dunkin Donuts so i don't have to hear it. Not that that solves anything, but maybe a tiny brain cell of guilt will blossom in that guy's brain and that's really all i can do short of being a complete jerk myself. I never have to deal with that guy again, but i do have to live with the memory of it. Anywho, moral of that story is that the Bottlemobile now has less potetially explody tires than a couple chapters ago, so yay me for adulting today.
B: Hello, me hardies. Anybody wanna be in charge of whatever this is? No, no, don't all volunteer at once, he said to the silent stares. Ok, i'll start.
First, let it go. Let it all go. Forget i blew up the place, forget that p(nmi)t is lost in the woods, and probably frozen too... not even a sniff or a groan? C'mon, that was a good one.
We went through a global pandemic and emerged out the other side somewhere around 2013, financially speaking. People by and large proved that they would much rather be helpless, hopeless, and agitated than do anything productive. You can't really blame them, they've had all imagination grinded out of them to the point that they actually take pride in seeing people be more miserable than they are. They think that's important.
The way i see it, we're an empty canvas just waiting for someone to teach a raccoon to fingerpaint. Well, my fellow trash pandas, what should we imagine that looks like?
S: That might be the worst pep talk in the history of not taking pep talks serious.
E: Agreed, i think you should rewrite the whole spiel as a greeting card poem, then never recite it out loud.
B: Harsh. Compy, got any slings and arrows to hurl at me?
C: No. I mean, thank you for what i think was a backhanded Shakespearean compliment, but are you going to start reviewing albums again?
B: Tricky one, that. I don't have much in the old entertainment fund at the moment. I still have that gift card from last Santa time, but if i want spinny discs instead of paper cuts i have to show up in person. The Bottlemobile will probably fall apart halfway there, so that's a bad idea. Little bit of wiggle room on the karma card, but i'd rather keep that for emergencies. Plus, there just isn't enough time and/or energy in the right configuration to find a new point (assuming i ever actually had one). I'm totally fine just solving chess puzzles all day. My puzzle rating has gone from a 1200 plateau to an apparently equally plateauish 1500 in the last couple months, but i doubt anyone would call that productive.
S: Hardly. What if we tried selling them, like the Bottle's Music brainstorm?
B: But that would mean selling my records. I like keeping them just fine. I'd be happy to sell other peoples' records, if that's what you mean, assuming i had any. What's it cost to sell records, Compy?
C: Off the top of my head, it's like 10 to UPS 'em and 2 for the cardboard to wrap them in. Assuming you had them, of course. Probably have to buy them first.
B: I was afraid of that. Welp, Sandra, good suggestion, but i don't think it's doable at the moment. Any other suggestions?
C: You could give blood or plasma.
B: I could redeem aluminum cans for the 5 cent deposit, how will that help?
C: I don't know.
B: Me neither. Skip, any useful ideas?
E: No. I could suggest unuseful things if that will help?
B: It might, but we're 0/2 already so maybe save 'em for a better opportunity. Have we looked suitably important for long enough? Unanimous agreement? Perfect, let's pretend we never had this meeting and just go back to wasting time. By all means, holler if you think of something.
S: Hold on, though. Isn't the post office significantly cheaper?
B: Yes, but we have a rural post office with no office staff and no good place to drop off multiple packages. Plus, it takes way longer to get there and the tracking is hit or miss. I want it to go straight there and have a person i can call who can do something if there's a problem. Should i put the rant in it's own chapter?
E: Yeah, that's a good idea. Much less confusing that way. We'll all wander off and you just ramble to yourself.
B: Ok, sounds good. End scene. See ya.
Chapter 6
I don't want to do business the way business tells me i'm supposed to do business. I don't want to sign up for a buyer's club card and spend all my time barking at passing strangers about terrible mainstream party compilations. I want to make actual albums happen from bands you've never heard of and talk about how great and weird they are. You take half and sell them, i take half and sell them. There's a very simple reason why that gets bafoonishly complicated, and it's because nobody wants to actually pay for it. Well, i do. I want to pay for it. I want to pay to make albums exist. Why does that have to be so damned difficult?
Well, basically you have to find a bunch of people who want to buy records from you first, and those people need a way to play them and that's what spirals out of control. Let's instead invert that.
The thing you're buying is kind of irrelevant, so there's no reason to put that as the foundation of our thought process. Instead, first i have to get it to you, second i have to not lose money on the deal, and finally we have to add the cost of the item. Again, doesn't matter what you're buying, it's gonna cost you $15 to buy it from me. Is that unreasonable? I don't think that's too terrible, actually. I mean, the most ridiculous scenario i can think of is that you want me to walk out into my front yard, pick up a rock, and then mail it to you. I have lots of rocks, so we'll just say they're free. Average of probably like 9 bucks UPS, so you're paying me 6 dollars for actually getting the rock and boxing it up and driving to town. A used record i bought for $4 would cost you $19, a $20 umbrella would cost you $35. That's really not too bad, you just have to decide that buying whatever it is from me is worth spending $15, assuming it's not ridiculously heavy or too big to fit in a normal box. The only real trouble in that way of thinking is how much i paid to obtain that thing.
Let's take CDs. They really do cost about $3 to create in any meaningful quantity, so you'd be paying 18 for 1. 2, though, that's 21, so already you're only paying 10.50 for each. 3? That's 8 bucks and change. Sure, if you're buying 3 of my CDs then you're a serious audio-masochist, but that's not the point. The point is that Economics actually works backward from the typical way we describe it. Paying the meaningful cost of production is more valuable to the economy at large that buying random crap at random times, ergo you get a better exchange rate for being a reliably consistent customer. I call it the "i like this person discount."
Conversely, if you're the kind of person who's gonna complain about walking up to the exit only door, then dick the kid around about the cost of de-rimming a pile of tires you hauled in on a trailer, then i'm gonna "hhhhh" loud enough for you to hear it and get up to walk across the parking lot to Dunkin Donuts so i don't have to hear it. Not that that solves anything, but maybe a tiny brain cell of guilt will blossom in that guy's brain and that's really all i can do short of being a complete jerk myself. I never have to deal with that guy again, but i do have to live with the memory of it. Anywho, moral of that story is that the Bottlemobile now has less potetially explody tires than a couple chapters ago, so yay me for adulting today.
Chapter 7
B: Compy?
C: Yes?
B: Think $20 Adventure Time is even possible at this point?
C: I dunno, but why so stingy?
B: Well, i did just buy 4 tires, but mostly because when i tried to go get cash on Friday all the ATMs were out of order. I have this otherwise assortment of a 20, a 5, and a 1 that's not good for much else. Waddya say?
C: I'll give it a shot. Be right back...
... Ok, best i could do is 50/50. Two records with "car" in them and two CDs it seemed reasonable for you to review. 26 on the nose.
B: Well, i guess since we are doing it actual back-assward, that's totally reasonable.
C: Not sure I follow.
B: No, of course not, you're out in front of me in the wrong direction. My yesterday Friday is your today Saturday, and vice versa.
C: Oh, ok, at least that's sensible nonsense. Now if you'll excuse me, i'm trying to work on that webstore future you asked me to build last week.
B: Hmmm, interesting. Did I tell you to tell me that?
C: Yeah, you said you couldn't remember where the idea came from, so we'd better play it safe and Star Trek IV the whole thing.
B: Good enough for me, let's take a peek at this here Kim Carnes album.
B: Compy?
C: Yes?
B: Think $20 Adventure Time is even possible at this point?
C: I dunno, but why so stingy?
B: Well, i did just buy 4 tires, but mostly because when i tried to go get cash on Friday all the ATMs were out of order. I have this otherwise assortment of a 20, a 5, and a 1 that's not good for much else. Waddya say?
C: I'll give it a shot. Be right back...
... Ok, best i could do is 50/50. Two records with "car" in them and two CDs it seemed reasonable for you to review. 26 on the nose.
B: Well, i guess since we are doing it actual back-assward, that's totally reasonable.
C: Not sure I follow.
B: No, of course not, you're out in front of me in the wrong direction. My yesterday Friday is your today Saturday, and vice versa.
C: Oh, ok, at least that's sensible nonsense. Now if you'll excuse me, i'm trying to work on that webstore future you asked me to build last week.
B: Hmmm, interesting. Did I tell you to tell me that?
C: Yeah, you said you couldn't remember where the idea came from, so we'd better play it safe and Star Trek IV the whole thing.
B: Good enough for me, let's take a peek at this here Kim Carnes album.
Chapter 8 - Kim Carnes - Voyeur
She's got Bette Davis's eyes in a jar of formaldehyde and she brings them out for parties. Real conversation starter. And that was just the warm up, ready for the main course? Trust you'll cringe. Look, if we're objectifying eyes here, then i'm gonna have to point out that all things considered, Bette Davis's eyes are not in fact much observably different from Peter Lorre's eyes. Go ahead, you know you totally want to google photos of both of them to compare.
But that's not why we're here, we're here to hear the Kim Carnes follow up album, because i have a real fascination with the things musicians did right after they earned the ability to do whatever they actually felt like doing. Post Gadda Iron Butterfly, Freedom Suite Rascals, Genuine Imitation 4 Seasons, every Hanson album after we all fully processed the reality of Taylor as a boy, that kind of stuff.
Hold up, hold up, i know i just made all that up as context, but there's something so familiar about the artwork/design. There's the pen and ink detail on the cover, and the kind of art deco design work. Taylor, why is the name Taylor in my brain? Ohohohoh i remember, that Duran Duran/Sex Pistols album thing. Andy Taylor, that's it. It can't be the same art designer, can it? Well i'll be damned, it is. Those are both albums designed by English designer Kosh (famous for his work with the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera House the Beatles and stuff). Small world.
Moving along, i'd consider Kim Carnes a comprably successful songwriter. We could do a rundown of famous collaborators and whatnot, but i think we can all agree the highlight of her pre-pickled eyeball years has to be her joke single under the pseudonym Connie con Carne entitled She Dances With Meat. Bottle of Beef approved, that one. No, not kidding, that song became a Pinkard & Bowden staple.
Voicewise, Carnes is often compared to Rod Steward, because raspy. Conceptwise, her 7th album Voyeur is all about that Noir. Critics are kind of divided, some say the previous Mistaken Identity is better, but most say Voyeur is more solid and coherent. Musically speaking it's a bizzare combination of New Wave, Synth Pop, and Hard Rock but from a strange kind of Kenny Rogers, Showtune Country style. It doesn't sound Country at all, but it sounds like a Country songwriter wrote it, if that makes any sense. No? Fair enough. Ok, it's just weird in its romanticized mundanity. The Motels get name checked quite a bit, and that's a reasonable comparison, but this isn't nearly as quirky. The Motels just feel completely 80s, while this feels more like the 80s version of the 40s/50s. But is Voyeur actually arousing?
The sweeping ballad that is Breakin' Away From Sanity is kind of out of place even at the end of Side A, sort of exactly like Drive is on The Cars' Heartbeat City. That's the most logical comparison, to me anyway, it's the same kind of quirky Synth Rock as The Cars. This is '82 and Shake It Up was '81 (amazingly enough we'll hear that album next). And yet, there's an unmistakeable feeling like Van Halen just announced Jump as the next song, but then played The Pointer Sisters' Jump instead. It's good, but not what you were expecting. That's voyeurism for you. As an album whose concept is observing the private sexy time of other people, it's appropriately weird. Stellar album in that respect.
I of course make all this stuff up as i go, but i'd say this is a fantastic meta-concept. It's not about you, it's about putting you in the perspective of observing others as they apparently are, not necessarily how you'd prefer to fantasize it. Songs like The Arrangement and Thrill of the Grill really highlight that disparity, pronoun confusion in the former and "buzz it boss, you don't understand" in the latter. I personally love it when the song that's sung subtley differs from the song that's written.
The downside is that of course this isn't a mainstream album, no matter how much it wants to be. It's not really satisfying background music because it kind of demands that you feel a little awkward listening to it. The dark industrial noir-filled exterior is the fantasy, inside it's just the reality of people being people, complicated and awkward as they're wont to be. I believe it was The Doors who said "no, you're the one who's strange," and Harvey Danger (who probably doesn't drive a '55 Merc) corroborated "yeah, if you're bored then you're boring, not me. I wanted to be a wooly muffler around your naked neck, remember?"
Well, that was fun. Check out Kim Carnes's Voyeur, and join us later when we Shake It Up.
She's got Bette Davis's eyes in a jar of formaldehyde and she brings them out for parties. Real conversation starter. And that was just the warm up, ready for the main course? Trust you'll cringe. Look, if we're objectifying eyes here, then i'm gonna have to point out that all things considered, Bette Davis's eyes are not in fact much observably different from Peter Lorre's eyes. Go ahead, you know you totally want to google photos of both of them to compare.
But that's not why we're here, we're here to hear the Kim Carnes follow up album, because i have a real fascination with the things musicians did right after they earned the ability to do whatever they actually felt like doing. Post Gadda Iron Butterfly, Freedom Suite Rascals, Genuine Imitation 4 Seasons, every Hanson album after we all fully processed the reality of Taylor as a boy, that kind of stuff.
Hold up, hold up, i know i just made all that up as context, but there's something so familiar about the artwork/design. There's the pen and ink detail on the cover, and the kind of art deco design work. Taylor, why is the name Taylor in my brain? Ohohohoh i remember, that Duran Duran/Sex Pistols album thing. Andy Taylor, that's it. It can't be the same art designer, can it? Well i'll be damned, it is. Those are both albums designed by English designer Kosh (famous for his work with the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera House the Beatles and stuff). Small world.
Moving along, i'd consider Kim Carnes a comprably successful songwriter. We could do a rundown of famous collaborators and whatnot, but i think we can all agree the highlight of her pre-pickled eyeball years has to be her joke single under the pseudonym Connie con Carne entitled She Dances With Meat. Bottle of Beef approved, that one. No, not kidding, that song became a Pinkard & Bowden staple.
Voicewise, Carnes is often compared to Rod Steward, because raspy. Conceptwise, her 7th album Voyeur is all about that Noir. Critics are kind of divided, some say the previous Mistaken Identity is better, but most say Voyeur is more solid and coherent. Musically speaking it's a bizzare combination of New Wave, Synth Pop, and Hard Rock but from a strange kind of Kenny Rogers, Showtune Country style. It doesn't sound Country at all, but it sounds like a Country songwriter wrote it, if that makes any sense. No? Fair enough. Ok, it's just weird in its romanticized mundanity. The Motels get name checked quite a bit, and that's a reasonable comparison, but this isn't nearly as quirky. The Motels just feel completely 80s, while this feels more like the 80s version of the 40s/50s. But is Voyeur actually arousing?
The sweeping ballad that is Breakin' Away From Sanity is kind of out of place even at the end of Side A, sort of exactly like Drive is on The Cars' Heartbeat City. That's the most logical comparison, to me anyway, it's the same kind of quirky Synth Rock as The Cars. This is '82 and Shake It Up was '81 (amazingly enough we'll hear that album next). And yet, there's an unmistakeable feeling like Van Halen just announced Jump as the next song, but then played The Pointer Sisters' Jump instead. It's good, but not what you were expecting. That's voyeurism for you. As an album whose concept is observing the private sexy time of other people, it's appropriately weird. Stellar album in that respect.
I of course make all this stuff up as i go, but i'd say this is a fantastic meta-concept. It's not about you, it's about putting you in the perspective of observing others as they apparently are, not necessarily how you'd prefer to fantasize it. Songs like The Arrangement and Thrill of the Grill really highlight that disparity, pronoun confusion in the former and "buzz it boss, you don't understand" in the latter. I personally love it when the song that's sung subtley differs from the song that's written.
The downside is that of course this isn't a mainstream album, no matter how much it wants to be. It's not really satisfying background music because it kind of demands that you feel a little awkward listening to it. The dark industrial noir-filled exterior is the fantasy, inside it's just the reality of people being people, complicated and awkward as they're wont to be. I believe it was The Doors who said "no, you're the one who's strange," and Harvey Danger (who probably doesn't drive a '55 Merc) corroborated "yeah, if you're bored then you're boring, not me. I wanted to be a wooly muffler around your naked neck, remember?"
Well, that was fun. Check out Kim Carnes's Voyeur, and join us later when we Shake It Up.
Chapter 9 - The Cars - Shake It Up
Listening to Shake It Up as a the chrono-reversed response to Voyeur is pretty fun, but i'll let you do that on your own time. Let's instead try to get a handle on The Cars as a whole because i have their first 5 albums now, and that's The Cars for me.
Why not their 6th and 7th? Well, they broke up in 1988, and Ben Orr died in 2000, so the 2011 reunion for Move Like This is a different band in my mind. 1987's Door to Door is a little more complicated. By the time they got to Heartbeat City, they were more machine than man. Seriously, with each album The Cars relied more and more on studio equipment and production to the point that they were really not much more than the people who created the samples from which their albums were assembled. Phil Collins might have enjoyed programming drum machines instead of playing, but David Robinson didn't. Long story synopsisized, Door To Door was a reaction to what The Cars had become, so in my mind it's an epilogue not a finale. The story of The Cars is bar band to assimilated cyborg pop stars, and you can't mulligan your way out of it.
Don't get me wrong, this certainly isn't a story of the parobolic slide from best first album to worst last album, or even a band transitioning to 4 uncompromising space cadets like The Beatles. In fact, just like The Beatles, Ric made his first solo album right after Shake It Up, and his 2nd after Heartbeat City. You can try to shrug that off, but it clearly indicates that there is an inside and an outside to The Cars. Not surprising really, they had always thrown most any session song that didn't make the album in the garbage can. What happened? Quite simply, Panorama was the last of their "we're just a band albums." Shake It Up was their actual breakthrough and it didn't have anything to do with the actual band. We're gonna have to stick an "R" in there, because something major happened in 1981.
No, not Iran releasing hostages, or Sandra Day O'Connor or IBM's first personal computer with MS DOS, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or even the first production of the DeLorean DMC-12. August 1, 1981 was the birthday of MTV. Whole books could be written about the fertile marriage of MTV and New Wave, they probably have been, but The Cars were in perpetual heavy rotation because they were all about the cutting edge. Elvis Costello and Will Powers were technically first in using computer graphics in their promo videos, but i consider You Might Think to be the first proper music video made using computer generated animation. It was also the first music video collected by the Museum of Modern Art. The Cars became a brand in the truest sense of that word. Ironic that one of the biggest pioneers rebelling against "corporate rock" became the epotome of "corporate rock." That puts most of them playing on Ric's second solo album in 1986 then breaking up in 1988 into a bit of a different perspective, doesn't it? Almost like they were dancing (or more crudely pissing) on the grave of their original punk-derived DIY origins. Granted, being cutting edge is hella expensive and someone has to pay for it, but everybody has a breaking point. You can't go back to just being a band, you can only go forward into being a different band than you are now.
Chapter 10 - Good Charlotte - The Young and the Hopeless
I thought i was going to hate Good Charlotte's sophomore album, The Young and the Hopeless. I don't know why, though, their singles were all great and i love Pop Punk with Emo mascara. Maybe i was just giving them the Godsmack "this is not new to me" cold shoulder.
Before we get to my glowing review, i do have one old-man criticism to level. The sub-harmonic bass on some of these tracks is ridingadangdonculous. The actual bass is fantastic, but at times its like a commercial freighter is just laying on the fog horn for whole verses, and that's annoying.
Regardless, turns out i actually love this album. It does pretty much everything i like. It has a legit intro, and most tracks legitimately seque from one to another. If absolutely nothing else, it's a coherent listening experience.
There are obviously recognizable tropes from other bands, you can definitely hear Blink 182, Sum 41, New Found Glory, and even a twinge or two of Rancid and Social Distortion, but Good Charlotte maintains a unique identity in spite of all that.
There's an orchestra here. They don't overuse it, but string pizzicatos and swells, lush harmonies, and dense textures like their more Emo peers The Used and My Chemical Romance. Love or hate any particular song/style, there's no room to argue this isn't real music.
Some of their attempts at sappy ballad writing just don't work, but every single song is in some way incredibly catchy and sing-along-able. Subject matter aside for the moment, these songs are extremely well written and high quality; transitions and sections happen right on cue in the proper order, and that's an often ignored component of songwriting: the drops. You can obviously do all sorts of creative things and wander wherever, but if we never actually arrive somewhere once in a while, then it just feels totally lost in the woods.
As for the actual concept happening here, it's predominantly an album about the world through the lens of kids whose dads ran off. Dad left us, we're poor, fuck all that we'll make it on our own. Obviously it's a much more detailed painting than i'm painting it to be, but the overarching context is kids who've been left to fend for themselves, and i think the fairly obvious moral of that story is that it sucks. Saliva might unfairly call that "cryin' ass bitchin'," but i won't. It doesn't sound whiny, it sounds honest. Maybe they occasionally overcompensate by creating and resolving as many leading tones as physically possible, but that's their business, not ours. They certainly aren't afraid to take the Doo-Wop chromatic slide when the opportunity arises, and harmonizing in parallel 3rds and 6ths is rarely a bad thing.
And we end with Movin' On. The hard times will come and we'll keep movin' on. We don't have anything to prove to anyone. That's life, make the best of what you have.
Good stuff.
Chapter 10
Yay! I don't have to wish anymore, Compy found me a physical copy of Jagged Little Pill to enjoy. I think i said pretty much everything i could possibly say the first time i reviewed it, so go read that if you haven't (or even if you have).
https://albumsforeternity.blogspot.com/2022/05/alanis-morrisette-jagged-little-pill.html
Listening to Shake It Up as a the chrono-reversed response to Voyeur is pretty fun, but i'll let you do that on your own time. Let's instead try to get a handle on The Cars as a whole because i have their first 5 albums now, and that's The Cars for me.
Why not their 6th and 7th? Well, they broke up in 1988, and Ben Orr died in 2000, so the 2011 reunion for Move Like This is a different band in my mind. 1987's Door to Door is a little more complicated. By the time they got to Heartbeat City, they were more machine than man. Seriously, with each album The Cars relied more and more on studio equipment and production to the point that they were really not much more than the people who created the samples from which their albums were assembled. Phil Collins might have enjoyed programming drum machines instead of playing, but David Robinson didn't. Long story synopsisized, Door To Door was a reaction to what The Cars had become, so in my mind it's an epilogue not a finale. The story of The Cars is bar band to assimilated cyborg pop stars, and you can't mulligan your way out of it.
Don't get me wrong, this certainly isn't a story of the parobolic slide from best first album to worst last album, or even a band transitioning to 4 uncompromising space cadets like The Beatles. In fact, just like The Beatles, Ric made his first solo album right after Shake It Up, and his 2nd after Heartbeat City. You can try to shrug that off, but it clearly indicates that there is an inside and an outside to The Cars. Not surprising really, they had always thrown most any session song that didn't make the album in the garbage can. What happened? Quite simply, Panorama was the last of their "we're just a band albums." Shake It Up was their actual breakthrough and it didn't have anything to do with the actual band. We're gonna have to stick an "R" in there, because something major happened in 1981.
No, not Iran releasing hostages, or Sandra Day O'Connor or IBM's first personal computer with MS DOS, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or even the first production of the DeLorean DMC-12. August 1, 1981 was the birthday of MTV. Whole books could be written about the fertile marriage of MTV and New Wave, they probably have been, but The Cars were in perpetual heavy rotation because they were all about the cutting edge. Elvis Costello and Will Powers were technically first in using computer graphics in their promo videos, but i consider You Might Think to be the first proper music video made using computer generated animation. It was also the first music video collected by the Museum of Modern Art. The Cars became a brand in the truest sense of that word. Ironic that one of the biggest pioneers rebelling against "corporate rock" became the epotome of "corporate rock." That puts most of them playing on Ric's second solo album in 1986 then breaking up in 1988 into a bit of a different perspective, doesn't it? Almost like they were dancing (or more crudely pissing) on the grave of their original punk-derived DIY origins. Granted, being cutting edge is hella expensive and someone has to pay for it, but everybody has a breaking point. You can't go back to just being a band, you can only go forward into being a different band than you are now.
Chapter 10 - Good Charlotte - The Young and the Hopeless
I thought i was going to hate Good Charlotte's sophomore album, The Young and the Hopeless. I don't know why, though, their singles were all great and i love Pop Punk with Emo mascara. Maybe i was just giving them the Godsmack "this is not new to me" cold shoulder.
Before we get to my glowing review, i do have one old-man criticism to level. The sub-harmonic bass on some of these tracks is ridingadangdonculous. The actual bass is fantastic, but at times its like a commercial freighter is just laying on the fog horn for whole verses, and that's annoying.
Regardless, turns out i actually love this album. It does pretty much everything i like. It has a legit intro, and most tracks legitimately seque from one to another. If absolutely nothing else, it's a coherent listening experience.
There are obviously recognizable tropes from other bands, you can definitely hear Blink 182, Sum 41, New Found Glory, and even a twinge or two of Rancid and Social Distortion, but Good Charlotte maintains a unique identity in spite of all that.
There's an orchestra here. They don't overuse it, but string pizzicatos and swells, lush harmonies, and dense textures like their more Emo peers The Used and My Chemical Romance. Love or hate any particular song/style, there's no room to argue this isn't real music.
Some of their attempts at sappy ballad writing just don't work, but every single song is in some way incredibly catchy and sing-along-able. Subject matter aside for the moment, these songs are extremely well written and high quality; transitions and sections happen right on cue in the proper order, and that's an often ignored component of songwriting: the drops. You can obviously do all sorts of creative things and wander wherever, but if we never actually arrive somewhere once in a while, then it just feels totally lost in the woods.
As for the actual concept happening here, it's predominantly an album about the world through the lens of kids whose dads ran off. Dad left us, we're poor, fuck all that we'll make it on our own. Obviously it's a much more detailed painting than i'm painting it to be, but the overarching context is kids who've been left to fend for themselves, and i think the fairly obvious moral of that story is that it sucks. Saliva might unfairly call that "cryin' ass bitchin'," but i won't. It doesn't sound whiny, it sounds honest. Maybe they occasionally overcompensate by creating and resolving as many leading tones as physically possible, but that's their business, not ours. They certainly aren't afraid to take the Doo-Wop chromatic slide when the opportunity arises, and harmonizing in parallel 3rds and 6ths is rarely a bad thing.
And we end with Movin' On. The hard times will come and we'll keep movin' on. We don't have anything to prove to anyone. That's life, make the best of what you have.
Good stuff.
Chapter 10
Yay! I don't have to wish anymore, Compy found me a physical copy of Jagged Little Pill to enjoy. I think i said pretty much everything i could possibly say the first time i reviewed it, so go read that if you haven't (or even if you have).
https://albumsforeternity.blogspot.com/2022/05/alanis-morrisette-jagged-little-pill.html
Chapter 11
E: Was there a point to these reviews, Bottle?
B: Not that i'm aware of, why?
E: Well, i mean, you aren't paying us, we aren't actually doing anything collectively productive, why do we keep going?
B: Because it's fun. Good Carlotte and Alanis Morissette summed it up great for us: we keep movin' because that's life. I don't have anything to prove to anyone, and no matter how much you pour into a bottle with holes in it, it's never enough. There's always some jack wagon with a trailer full of old tires trying to be as obnoxious as possible out loud. I felt bad for the kid who had to deal with it, but if it were my tire store i would have counterproductively told that guy to march his bad attitude out of either door. The entrances may be one-way, but you can leave in whichever direction you'd like. They did that so people weren't just coming in to use the restroom and/or trade drugs for money through a door employees can't monitor. So, i went and bought a donut instead of listen to it. Granted, i had to say "that's more than i'm willing to spend" and "no, i don't want new wiper blades," in my own quest to buy 4 new tires, but it required no rudeness on my part. His job is to upsell, just politely tell him no and spare the rest of us our Saturday sanity.
E: But it feels like we're just treading water.
B: Sure, i get that. Look, i know what i'd rather be doing, but i don't actually have the means to get there, nor can i afford the price tag for paying back a loan or the credit card version of that loan to force it to happen.
I want to pay for new albums to exist, write about them, and sell copies to people who equally enjoy listening to new albums they've never heard before. I need some kind of functional store to do that, plus enough money to buy a worthwile minimum number of copies of stuff. I'm not opposed to selling books either, but it'd be the same kind of thing. I don't want to be a corporate retailer, i want to be a dealer in obscure esoterica, aka weird shit.
Then again, as this weekend proved once again, there're just so many people out there spreading their garbage as far around as possible. Enjoying the world just gets harder and harder to enjoy because everyone's being such dirtbags for no actual reason. If 90% of any customers are gonna be like that, then no thanks.
I guess if there has to be a point, the point is it's always a stalemate and nobody ever actually wins. That's not mopiness, that's honesty. It might not be an accurate assessment of your reality, but it is of mine. Maybe not the most interesting Adventure Time, but we got an 11 chapter story out of it, and a full set of rubbers closer to redeeming that gift card 51 miles away from here. Now if i could just find a day to waste to actually go do it....
E: Was there a point to these reviews, Bottle?
B: Not that i'm aware of, why?
E: Well, i mean, you aren't paying us, we aren't actually doing anything collectively productive, why do we keep going?
B: Because it's fun. Good Carlotte and Alanis Morissette summed it up great for us: we keep movin' because that's life. I don't have anything to prove to anyone, and no matter how much you pour into a bottle with holes in it, it's never enough. There's always some jack wagon with a trailer full of old tires trying to be as obnoxious as possible out loud. I felt bad for the kid who had to deal with it, but if it were my tire store i would have counterproductively told that guy to march his bad attitude out of either door. The entrances may be one-way, but you can leave in whichever direction you'd like. They did that so people weren't just coming in to use the restroom and/or trade drugs for money through a door employees can't monitor. So, i went and bought a donut instead of listen to it. Granted, i had to say "that's more than i'm willing to spend" and "no, i don't want new wiper blades," in my own quest to buy 4 new tires, but it required no rudeness on my part. His job is to upsell, just politely tell him no and spare the rest of us our Saturday sanity.
E: But it feels like we're just treading water.
B: Sure, i get that. Look, i know what i'd rather be doing, but i don't actually have the means to get there, nor can i afford the price tag for paying back a loan or the credit card version of that loan to force it to happen.
I want to pay for new albums to exist, write about them, and sell copies to people who equally enjoy listening to new albums they've never heard before. I need some kind of functional store to do that, plus enough money to buy a worthwile minimum number of copies of stuff. I'm not opposed to selling books either, but it'd be the same kind of thing. I don't want to be a corporate retailer, i want to be a dealer in obscure esoterica, aka weird shit.
Then again, as this weekend proved once again, there're just so many people out there spreading their garbage as far around as possible. Enjoying the world just gets harder and harder to enjoy because everyone's being such dirtbags for no actual reason. If 90% of any customers are gonna be like that, then no thanks.
I guess if there has to be a point, the point is it's always a stalemate and nobody ever actually wins. That's not mopiness, that's honesty. It might not be an accurate assessment of your reality, but it is of mine. Maybe not the most interesting Adventure Time, but we got an 11 chapter story out of it, and a full set of rubbers closer to redeeming that gift card 51 miles away from here. Now if i could just find a day to waste to actually go do it....
Comments
Post a Comment