The new Smashing Pumpkins album...

...is actually pretty listenable. I'm four tracks in, and I'm not coughing and spluttering or anything.

It sounds the same as it did in '96, but it feels different; that might be because I have an adult brain in my skull now.

Don't be afraid to spin it, especially if you were put off by MACHINA. Good job, Billy and Jimmy. Melodic, sprawling guitars and spacious, underrated drumming as usual.

Dreaming out loud

I was driving around in North Georgia, in places I've been all my life. (Of course, everything had that derailed difference about it that makes it feel like an alternate universe version of what you're familiar with. I really enjoy that quality of dreams.)

I drove past this house that was so large and tall, it could've been a hotel, except that it was made of wood and was very badly deteriorated. It was crumbling far past the point of condemnation for any real building, such that it was barely standing. It must have been thirty stories high - at least - so this was a feat of gravity defiance.

I decided after turning the bend that I needed to get some pictures of this crazy house so I could use them in some capacity for the band. After returning, I parked my car and crunched along a narrow gravel driveway with this unbelievably tall wreck of a house hulking over me, blocking out the sun.

I was intending to snap a few shots and get out of there, but there were lots of windows in the lower floors, and the owners saw what I was doing. I waved to them, they waved back, and came outside. I explained my reasons for being there, and they told me to take all the pictures I wanted. As they walked back inside and I tried to do just that, some fiendish animal runs out their door and attacks me.

I don't remember the rest, but I'm always dreaming about oddly located buildings with strange architecture, or bizarre versions of natural settings. Gigantic 18th century mansions embedded in limestone cliff walls, dilapidated cottages sitting on top of buttes so steep you'd have to use a helicopter to live there, subterranean caverns, open-air marketplaces beside jungle rivers infested with 200-foot snakes, abandandoned train depots, museums, ice rinks and amusement parks, beaches overflowing with living and rotting sea monsters as far as the eye can see, mega-tornadoes that fling you into space, beautiful mountains that are incredibly easy to fall off of...

Most of my dreams take place in a dead or dying world. Things are never very "normal." There are a few exceptions - like a painfully bright, future-version of New York you can fly through in air-taxis - but they're unusual.

My dream-self often feels alien and out of place, yet simultaneously expecting to find himself in these places and situations. I never stand around in my dreams questioning the oddness of where I'm at or what I'm doing; I'm too busy falling in love with the weirdness of it all. It's such a drastic departure from waking life that I can't help but enjoy it, as if the experiences were the world's most immersive video game.

Ranting. Raving.

Here's some for you:

• I walk around the house barefoot. Sometimes at night, if I need to get something out of my car, I'm too lazy to put my sandals on and I just try to rough it out to the driveway. I'm wincing the whole time because I'm stepping on fallen walnuts or pecans or something. Why can't I just put my freakin' sandals on? Stupid.

• Are there any Republican Senators who aren't jonesing for their next Gay Bathroom Sex event? Sheeeeez, guys. Ease up on the soliciting gay sex in public. Could be good for your career. I dunno. I'm not a campaign manager or anything.
  

• I got a Metro PCS phone yesterday. T-Mobile thinks they can send me a $300 bill, hold my service hostage until it's paid, and keep me as a customer? Uh, c-c-c-can-I-please-give-you-all-my-money-pleaseNOOOOOOOO. NO, I will not give you all my money, T-Hobile. Even as you employ the trophy wife of an aging successor to the Cryptkeeper's Throne for your spokesbroad, I can still resist your siren song.

Oh yes. I can resist your siren song.

• I need to start eating breakfast.

• Hey parents - when your kid is swinging on the playground and you spend 5 minutes yelling at him to "come on right now" and he ignores you as you grow increasingly angrier and louder, then repeatedly tells you "one more minute!"...you can go ahead and clock out. Why not see if you can pay the daycare a few extra bucks a day to just, you know, just keep him there for the evenings. Maybe, maybe let him sleep there. Yeah. Then you won't have to yell at him on the playground when he decides that he's the parent and you're the kid.

People. Please stop fostering a generation of insolent brats just because you're too milquetoast to parent your kid. If you want to indulge a child's every passing whim by abdicating your intelligence and maturity, couldn't you do it with your nephew or something? Go be a pushover Uncle; at least then, somebody else can take the kid home to a place where they're actually children and are not trained to be adult-impersonating circus monkeys because there aren't any real grown-ups around to give them any guidance or structure.

I feel sorry for these brats. How bad must it suck as a small child to know that you're in control of your parents? How frightening must it be for a child to be sitting alone in his room, five years old, suddenly realizing that he can't trust the adults in his life to be the adults in his life?

Realizing he has to be his own dad?

That's heavy. I'm freaking myself out here.

"C'mon, let's go, schlep-rock!"

I want you to watch this, one of the best scenes in a fantastic movie - Boiler Room.

I have intense admiration for this character. Not for his obvious materialism, but for his complete and utter lack of fear. The guy comes in the room, says his piece, and gets out, but not before instilling a potent double-whammy of intimidation and hope upon the listening ears of his charges - all in less than five minutes.

I see some comments underneath the video calling the character an "arrogant asshole." I've worked with those before; arrogant assholes do not gently and serenely inform an unsuspecting seat-stealer "I'm sorry, man, that's my seat," and then graciously accept the apology of the newly wised-up. No, it's over-simplification to label him "arrogant."

I think it's more accurate to describe this man as having zero tolerance for bull. If the world in general (and you and me in particular) could lower our collective tolerance for bull, how could it not make things better?

In my humble experience, BS never makes anything better. It slows us down, wastes our resources, dilutes our value. BS is what allows concepts like political correctness, equal opportunity, affirmative action, fairness doctrine and hate speech to exist and thrive.

I'm dedicating myself to an anti-BS crusade. I want to eliminate bull from my life as thoroughly and globally as I possibly can. Life is short, and time is worth too much to piss it away on bull, be it in the form of people or ideas. The folks who don't understand this attitude can either honestly seek elaboration or get out of the way, but there will be no mounting a defense for BS. I think the Affleck character believes the same.

I'll give you some context later on about why I'm even talking about this, but I can't divulge secret plans right now.

Weapon of choice

Yours truly, rocking an E Minor on my first acoustic in the Y2k.

This thing was an Epiphone; I don't remember the model. It was the lowest one of the lowest series (E). E-100, maybe. It should've been called the POS-100 because it wasn't fit for human use. For the non-inspectors, I'm connected to a Dean Markley pickup that makes an already toyish-sounding guitar plink like a metal ukulele piped through copper plumbing. The few recordings I made with that setup (didn't have an instrument mic) are unlistenable.

I had four el cheapo acoustics before coming across my Larrivee; take it from me - if you want to play guitar, buy a guitar. Don't buy a toy.

After you've spent a grand total of $800 on four cheap guitars and you keep selling them because they all suck, you'll realize you should've just bought something decent in the first place. Anything under $200 is a toy. Anything under about $500 is still going to be (with some exceptions) questionable, unless you're getting an incredibly unusual deal on a used axe. The playability and tone of high end guitars cannot and will not be replicated by bargain-basement players.

PS: here's some inner-band gossip for you: I think Jake's guitar sounds like a banjo.

PPS: if you haven't read his essay on censorship, go do it. It's quite good.