in case you are not maria and don't know that i bought a blender...

i did. i bought a blender. we won't get into the details of how persuasively maria shoves doubt directly into my brain. we'll save that for another day. besides, she's the one that deposits cash through the atm so who is she to judge? anyways, blender. mainly for smoothies. seems like i've found the one thing trader joe's does really well: cheap frozen fruit. ok, so i'm making smoothies. turns out there is another bonus besides the obvious delicious health benefits: it forces me to shower on my days off. these things make me so damn cold, like to the bone cold (i'm literally replacing my marrow with this icy goodness. i mean, i think i am), that i've no choice but to jump into the shower for no other reason than to get my body temperature up to something approaching normal. this, in turn, makes me feel less of a lazy slob on my days off. physical AND mental heath benefits. who knew?

psychic...powerless...another man's cat

maybe i just woke up on the cranky side of my bed but today, in the shower, i was thinking that next time, and i'm sure, unfortunately, there will be a next time, i need a roommate i will adopt a strict no cats policy. i don't care how clean and attentive a cat owner you are i do not want to live with in their filth anymore. i don't want to have my everything covered in their hair (i'm already covered in my own, thanks). i don't want to smell their wet food or feces or urine. i don't want to walk through their litter. and i don't want to hear their bitching when they are hungry. get a fucking job, cat, and provide for yourself. all you are to me is a houseplant with the ability to knock shit over.

the mustache is the bangs of the beard

that said, when i trim mine no one says it looks cute

this thing, this metal thing

i will say this about my newfound oldfound love of what is called heavy metal: it has re-awakened my musical curiosity. see, when i was a youth there was nothing i loved more than reading reviews and buying music i had never heard based on album cover (you're living all over me) or label (metal blade) or what have you. as i grew older that curiosity waned as more and more stuff just kind of sat there in my ears doing not much. i became that guy, telling stories of yore, you know, when indie rock was actually independent of something and metal didn't sound so cartoonishly scoobie doo. i eagerly awaited the new built to spill and mark eitzel records with nothing much in between. then i went and saw the sword at intonation and that thing that was dormant was released a bit. the riff came back into my life. megadeth started putting out good records, dave lombardi re-joined slayer, and the classic anthrax line up played the house of blues. the cagey veterans were rejuvinated and so was i. long story short(er), somehow when i wasn't looking a pretty fucking great underground metal scene had been chugging along. the 90's weren't so much the barren wasteland of neu metal as i thought. high on fire led me back to sleep which led me to om which showed me the way to electric wizard which brought me to relapse records and kemado and rise above. yesterday i bought a burning witch 2-cd retrospective purely because it looked boss and was on southern lord. fuck yeah i did.

the month (or so) of living uncomfortably

just washed all 3 new pairs of levi shrink to fit 501's. now comes the hard part: making these seemingly unflappably rigid motherfuckers conform to my will. mind you this is not a complaint. i face this challenge with the same glee as always. i'm old hat at this. call me a jeans whisperer if you will. there's nothing i love more than taking what seem to be a brick wall of pant and turning it into a second skin. worn in levi's are pajama pants in my book. pajama pants that at first have to be forced around my waist, shown a belt regardless of the need, and stretched and bent and buttoned and unbottoned until they slowly learn my shape and desires. and they will. and one, inevitably, will be neglected at first and fall behind. but quickly he too will make it into the fold and for years to come my pants and i will grow old and soft and frayed. but we will do so with dignity and grace for we are a timeless classic.
weather permitting this story will be also true for that new pair of converse i plan on buying. spring is almost in the air and with it comes the strange march forward that more than anything is a march to the past.