Purple

Damn! I take 1 day off and everything malfunctions like nobody else knows how to do anything. No overnight transfers to check in, UPS label mixups, corporate software changeover confusion, now i guess i'm on call for potential jury duty from April to July. Everybody all "bottlebottlebottle, what're we gonna do?!," but i'm like "none of this stuff is hard or meaningful, or even remotely important." It's all stupid pointless complexity for the sake of someone who isn't me getting a merit badge or unlocking a new achievement and it's exhausting. 

Like, seriously i got asked why the shipping cost of a 45lb box from Marietta GA to Badger IA was $289. I get that that's exorbitant. It is, we call that "prohibitive pricing," you're supposed to find some other alternative. Regardless, i have to explain that UPS charges the higher of package weight or dimension weight. An actual 45lb box would only cost like $25, but dimension weight is cubic inches divided by 139, so the box in question got billed as a 300lb box. I then demonstrate that if i were trying to send this exact box back to sender it would cost $505.05, so $289 seems like a pretty good deal all things considered. I'm capable of cheating and leaving off the dimensions, but if UPS gets mad and starts auditing our shipments or if corporate yells at me then the jig is up and you're going to get gouged with a rusty pitchfork. What part of any of that is A) a thing any reasonable person should have to deal with, or 2) a magic secret bestowed only to me from the eldrich tome of UPS Terms of Service? They're a private company charging as much as the market will bear, exactly like you keep voting for Republicans to "conserve." Pay it or find someone willing to do it for cheaper, those are the rules of your own game, and you're the one who keeps demanding i enforce them. I lie to UPS out of the kindness of my own heart, but they can totally call shenanigans if they want. How long of a boycott do you think it will take to get them to change that policy or go bankrupt? Can you quit shipping UPS cold turkey? My $30 record that cost $70 to import from Australia got loaded on a plane last night. I can do this all day, but i shouldn't have to. At least today is over, time to enjoy listening to a record. 

Purple is inarguably my favorite Stone Temple Pilots album. It's also widely considered their best. Musically speaking it's just plain lovely, an amazing mashup of alternative rock riffs over lush complex harmonies inside a dense swirling cloud of psychedelia. The concept is what really sells it: it's an impenetrable artifact of an invented culture you the listener don't understand. It's an album about being alienated and isolated from mainstream culture, confronted by completely obscure and esoteric symbolism, understanding the words but having no real idea what they're supposed to actually mean. 

For example, what actually is a "meatplow" and what does that have to do with the mashed up metaphors of blackmail/tv news, what does it even mean to hear "the pig whisper sweetly," and i think we can all understand what "flies in the vaseline" is supposed to metaphorically represent, but why and for what purpose? "Her dizzy head is conscience laden." Does she regret getting or things she did while drunk? Does that turn into the subconscious source of John Rzeznik's "dizzying up the girl" 4 years later? Is "falling faster in my car" a reference to Panama from 1984 like listening to these albums in proximity to each other implies, or is it total coincidence? Why is the album title the Chinese character for "purple," and why the baby riding a dragon in front of i assume concubine angels? Why a birthday cake but no track list on the back? The verb switching in Still Remains, and the actual original recording of Richard Petetson's Second Album, hence the "12 Gracious Melodies" written on said birthday cake. We can all largely grasp THAT these things are supposed to be meaningful, but WHAT they actually mean is a total mystery. 

Obtuse. This album is obtuse. And in point of fact, all this nonsense symbolism is exactly that, nonsense. I prefer to call it garbage, but i don't want you to feel like i'm intentionally insulting you. Celebrating birthdays is totally wonderful, but i think we can all agree that at least once you've tried to not let anyone find out today's your birthday, and at least once you've misinterpreted someone not wishing you a happy birthday as some kind of personal slight when it's objectively not. To borrow an obscure gag from Martin Mull, liesure suits cause cancer! Wishing a friend or relative a happy birthday is a meaningful gesture, having someone make a birthday cake with the title of the hidden track on your second album is sarcastic vacant symbolism. 

Hold the following lyric in your head: 

"Somebody showed me i was the last to know" 

Or how about, 

"Gotta gotta now gotta find the reason why a woman ain't a man" 

Delicious. I often feel like i'm coming unglued. 

Like i've said a million times, there ain't no morals to these stories. They're just a stream of consciousness marked by the passage of an album. A random one, at that. If there has to be a point, that point is i have a real actual album and 4 books. You can totally buy them directly from me by going to bottleofbeef.com, or you can search for the album on bandcamp or the books at any corporate retailer. Unlike anything related to my day job, they are meaningful to me. 

I'm still totally impressed you guys and gals keep reading this far. Unless you don't. I know, we'll test it. If you do read this far, comment with your favorite type of soup. Unless you use you favorite type of soup as a password or security answer, or you're afraid you'll be the only person who actually reads these things. In that case don't comment, i don't really need to know your favorite soup.

Ziggy Stardust