Pains, Stains, and Occasional Rains

Real life has a way of crashing down on you. Failure, dissatisfaction, insecurity, malaise. Plain old misfortune, too. it can be funny at times, though. like when you get fish juice on the book you're reading, which happens to be your friend's first novel, which you're three quarters of the way through. or when a dog pees on your floor. or when you play a show and it rains, hard, as it has the last three times you played a show, and no one shows, and you know if you look up for a second, instead of focusing on the kit, you will stare down a near empty room. this last is funny only if you have to lug gear up seven flights of steps afterwards because the elevator is broken. a funny thing happened: I was folding my laundry and noticed that the shirt that Ife gave to me, the one from American Apparel, blue and tight fitting and comfy, was mysteriously stained-- a biggish, teardrop shaped smudge on the chest. How can a shirt become stained in the process of being washed? And how, exactly, can something so perfectly representative happen in the first place? i mourned the shirt as i mourned my little band. fuck it. i'll get a new shirt and a new band too. I will shout that shit out. incidentally, she did not participate in the late night gear lugging.

Back to the fish juice. the curious reader will wonder how this is accomplished, getting fish juice on your only copy of the only book that your friend has ever published. well, it involves equal quantities of poor quality pre-prepared salmon, faulty containers, and the lack of a proper book bag in which to place the book, thereby keeping it separated from the salmon. the result is that your book is rendered something on the order of radioactive, as you will only discover the next day, when you wonder why your fingers smell like piss, and, over time and many hand-washings, figure it out (the book is currently being blowdried in front of a fan after a somewhat experimental soap-and-water session).

Speaking of smelling piss, the dog. oh that cursed dog. see previous posts for more on that dog.

Well, as the song goes, you get down sometimes, but it could always be worse and it can be amusing. sometimes it just hurts though. i'll leave it to that ever curious, ever faithful reader, probably a relative, to figure out which is which. no, it's not the shirt, or the piss, Chris, Go to bed.