Random Thoughts Before Bed

1. Keep your eyes posted to Oneirophrenia, my updated-once-every-two-years fiction blog, for a "new" story called "Hands like Snakes Sow the Seeds" tomorrow. I started it in 2003, actually, shortly before the Jennifer debacle, but considering I saw CTHULHU PIRATES GETTING FUNK-AY yesterday, I just had to finish it up and post it since...well, it's kinda like hentai, only not. There most definitely are tentacles involved, though. And sex. But don't get too excited, people--this is sooooooooooooo manifestly not erotica. But if you get jazzed up from it any...hey, more power to ya, you sick bastard. :)

2. Eat n' Park in Uniontown on a Friday night is a surreal experience that I haven't had the opportunity to enjoy for five years, at least--that is, until tonight! My buddy Joe who has just moved back from Arizona took me there with his nephew Mike and Mike's girlfriend Natalie (you can see all these people on the Pegritz.comn Picture Pages). We got very loud, very silly, and very stupid. All without even the slightest amount of booze! We seriously entertained a couple of middle-aged women who thought we were hysterical, and annoyed a bunch of teenage hipsters (yes, even Uniontown has hipsters)--although the one girl was really, really cute. I don't get that: middle-aged divorcees are brought to tears by our abjectly retarded antics, yet teenagers find us abrasive and crude? Something ain't right here...because we've always considered ourselves to be little more than overgrown teenagers. I think Cute Girl got a kick out of our singing "And the girl in the back said everyone attack and it turned into a Cock Block Blitz" in staggered four-part harmony, though.

3. Mega-Sex Adult-O-Mart is an incredible name for a mall made up of nothing but pr0n shops.

4. I want to be a robot. Yes, still.

5. I have a number of LJ friends and acquaintances whom I just realize I've never actually met, physically--or, at least, I certainly don't remember meeting them. aidinslevel, mellawyrden, and hackess, this means you folks. There a few others, too, but I can't remember their handles offhand now. Anyway, hopefully that'll change someday, 'cause y'all are good people.

6. Referring back to number 1...I have an inordinate love of tentacles lately. And things with tentacles.

Proper use of Trademark names.

Adobe Systems Incorporated explains the proper use of the Photoshop trademark.

What a complete and utter waste of ASCII text. Sorry, Adobe, whatever you proclaim as the "correct" way of using your trademark in writing and speech, your opinions and prescriptions mean zip when it comes to how people collectively use your products' names in their daily parlance. The little circle-R following your name holds weight only in the sense of registering your product name so that other businesses or software makers cannot release a similar-but-different programme called Photoshop and create all manner of bad, business-wrecking confusion for customers. It doesn't have a single thing to do with how people use the terminology in language. People photoshop a picture, xerox a document, wipe their noses with a kleenex, google information on the internet, and buy a house from a realtor. Deal with it...and take pride in the fact that your product's name has entered into the collective parlance of the English language all over the world as THE term for enhancing or otherwise working with digital images. Long after Adobe is gone and Photoshop has been outmoded by something bigger and better, people will still be using software to photoshop their images and your existence will be immortalized. So quit whining.

Hands Like Snakes Sow The Seeds

So...do you like tentacle pr0n?

Do you like weird stories that ultimately go nowhere?

Then read my new tale "Hands like Snakes Sow the Seeds" on Oneirophrenia.net.

And don't forget to leave comments here or on the site! Let a brotha know what you think! This goes double for you, greygirlbeast and castironlocust. :)

A little about the story: I actually wrote the first draft in 2003, shortly before my two-year relationship with the girl I now affectionately call Bighead Jennifer ended. I recall letting her read the draft, at which point she looked at me funny and said, "I just don't understand you." I should've known then that things were Over. I mean, if a girl can be with me for two fucking years and not know that I'm a weird bastard with a serious tentacle fetish, then that's obviously a sign that she hasn't been paying attention. Nonetheless, it's not actually a tentacle-pr0n story--more like a story that just kind of hints at it...but I am working on an explicitly hentai story now called "Strangler's Fingers" or something like that, which is all about tentacle rape, sucker wounds, cephalopod love, and One Night Stands in the ruins of Y'ha Nthlei. HPL most certainly would NOT have approved!

Yes, you CAN trust the Insekt!

You can trust the Insekt to put out goddamned fine, hardcore industrial albums that make you want to boogie while mushroom clouds are blooming in the distance and the Borg are knocking at your door. THIS is what industrial is all about, people. Insekt's new album, Teenmachine, is sooooooooooo well done. Yes, some of the songs have the good ol' thud-thud-thud beat...but even if they do, you can rest assured that Insekt's driving, vicious oldskool synthwork, vocoded vocals, wonderful sense of catchy melody, and pissy attitude will alwayscome through to keep you interested. "Damage Done" is an awesome slower work that seems equal parts FLA and Terminal Sect. "Teenmachine" is stompy ol' sonic middle-finger aimed at pop music in general. "Bambifucker" is the only song on the entire album that could even vaguely be considered contemporary industrial or "EBM," mainly for its propulsive techno beat and rather average synthwork, but even that song turns out to be fun as hell thanks to the lyrics. Hell, even the Funker Vogt remix of "Bambifucker" is listenable--although it sounds so much like the original it can only barely be considered a remix. But still, it's tolerable--which is saying a lot, considering how much I absolutely despise Funker Vogt in general.

Nonetheless...this has so far been a pretty decent year for industrial. FLA and Gary Numan have great new albums, Downliners Sekt put out their free album, and now Insekt has a new offering as well. Maybe industrial isn't quite dead yet.

COPE! In Uniontown?

Holy cow. I picked up the paperback edition of Myron Cope's 2002 memoir, Double Yoi!, last week. I've had the hardback version since the day it came out, but strangely enough I've never read it....Just never seemed to get around to it. And now the paperback has finally come out with 75 more pages of Cope's reflections of Troy Polamalu's hair, SuperBowl XL, his last year in the booth as a commentator, and what he's been doing now that he's retired.

And that's all cool, but...the coolest thing of all? In his memoir, Cope reveals that he used to live in Uniontown! He worked for a furniture company as a salesman--a very BAD salesman, by his own admission--and check it out: the furniture company is still around (though under a different name now), and I make ads for them all the time! TRIPLE YOI!

(Good lord, my allergies are killing me today, too.)