I just wrote an entire album's worth of power-pop songs. Think 1997. Two minute, thirty second long songs that pack in at least two verses, two choruses and a bridge or intro in the more inventive tunes. Think Plow United meets Beezewax. *

I'm four songs into the new Cure album and enjoying it a whole heck of a lot more than I thought I would. I guess Ross Robinson isn't all that terrible. I mean, he produced Burn Piana Island Burn by the Blood Brothers, right? *

I'm still unemployed. Although I finally have an attractive offer in front of me from a very respectable, well-known company. The job is marketing and sales related whereas lately I've had an unexplainable urge to dive into the finance industry a whole hell of a lot. A friend of my parent's trades on the commodities market (think oil. think the people who terrorists want to blow up.) and offered to sign me up as his unpaid clerk so that I could run around the trading floor for a few weeks to see if I can find anyone willing to hire me to do whatever the hell it is that they do over there. The whole scene is pretty exciting. But it's also pretty damn risky and can end up being a total, total bust. Whoa is me. --

And so it begins.

* 'At Least That's What You Said', the first song on the new Wilco album pleases me.
* I am still unemployed. But I'm coming closer to real employment by the day. I could be in Brooklyn, Manhattan, or Jersey. It's heating up... the decision will come soon... which I'm sure will either lead to a new, fun blog that I will use to bitch in ad nauseum... or completely kill the damn thing. Either way I'm sure no one's too broken up.
* I enjoy playing Mario Golf more than I care to admit.
* Marissa will be heading my way with a truckload of her goods to come live with me while we sort out our employment and living situations. This pleases me very much.
* Word of advice... if you have the word "Sales" in our resume and want a halfway decent job... do not post your resume on Monster.com. You wil be flooded with calls from idiots who want you to sell shit to other idiots and pay you nothing for it.

Bitchin'. --

Passable verses. Catchy choruses. Blues riffs. Fuckin' A.

Catchy voices. Passable musicians. Blues. Fuck me. --

I don't know why it took me so long to actually command myself a copy of Single Frame Ashtray's 'Wetheads Come Running'. Better late then never. That's advice, folks. *

Being solitary all day long and most of the night makes my head wander down paths that I haven't allowed it to wander down much these past few years because of how goddamn busy I've been. Given the choice, I'd opt for the latter. Working hard enough to not have to try. The Good Life. Etc. *

That said, I'm still jobless. Still sitting in the sun. Still letting my head wander, fueled by bitter literature and hip music. *

This evening I'll be visiting some family in Kinnelon and later heading to Maxwell's in Hoboken to see Army of Me. A band I've never heard of. A band that nobody I'm going with has ever heard of. I'm psyched. --

12:21am. My skin is quite suntanned. That's what happens when you have nothing to do and read Palahniuk and/or Kafka every day on your parents deck from 12:30pm - 2:00pm in the early summer. I should probably start wearing lotion. *

Anyone that didn't download the Mitsuko MP3, you make me sad. Fix that.*

Today I had a musical eureka! of sorts. Funny thing is it came while fucking around with musical instruments that were all borrowed. Mostly Jeff's Martin. Knowing that I was going to be borrowing Jimmy's drum machine also led me there (which is sitting in my mailbox as i type. I forgot to take it out when I came home tonight. One last thing to do before bed). Plus synthesizers and borrowed copies of recording software. Use the tools at hand people. The future is now and tomorrow. So why live for yesterday? The project I plan on unleashing in time will most likely end up being dubbed The Metamorphosis, which looks a little bit funny when I type it. The name might have something to do with my newly rekindled interest in Kafka short stories or the idea of an unemployed white collar hopeful's desire to rock the fuck out in his off time. Regardless of the inspiration, I think it would look nice silk screened across your ass. *

I like the new Detachment Kit album. It sounds pretty much nothing like the last Detachment Kit album... which sounded like a less developed and less together Les Savy Fav. I've heard it dubbed as the coming of the new Modest Mouse. Which we apparently need because Modest Mouse's shittiest album ever is currently topping your US of A's Billboard 100 chart. I suppose if I had to stretch I could find some similarities between the controlled insanity of Of This Blood and The Fruit That Ate Itself EP... but it would be a stretch of Armstrong proportions. Comparing four songs and a few backwards tape looped intros to an exciting sophomore effort from a relatively unknown band that has recently taken residence just a few miles to my east in Brooklyn is just silly time-wasting. Let me not waste any more of your time then, go to the french kiss records site and find out more. Or Soulseek. Or BitTorrent... or whatever the fuck you crazy fuckers are using to get your kicks these days. I used Soulseek. *

G'Nite, it's time to try and beat that nasty fifth course in Mario Golf again. *

ladies and gentlemen, this life is dangerous. --

So, it's been awhile. I'm sorry about that. The truth is that when faced with the option of signing on to your parents AOL account via modem to go on the internet or sit on my ass and do nothing all day, the latter ends up winning almost all of the time. This afternoon, however, I am painfully hungover and the thought of sitting outside in the bright sun makes my head want to explode. *

One-time in.circles poster Jimmy has been playing in a band called Mitsuko for the past few months. Band is italicized because the whole shi-bang pretty much seems to be a two person operation with a few outside contributors here and there. At any rate, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to check out this MP3. The song is entitled "Wallflower" and is bound to go bouncing around your head for days and days once you hear it. Think the Postal Service with Stephen Malkmus vocals and J. Mascis guitar noodling. A+. They don't have a website or anything just yet, but I'm sure if you left some feedback attached to this post Jimmy would be glad to address all of your questions. *

I've been interviewing for jobs. Looking for jobs. Posting resumes. Writing cover letters. It sucks and is no fun and I'm sure you don't want to hear about it. *

One of the coolest things about coming home has been that I have my entire record collection at my finger tips again. I only had a small portion of my entire collection with me in Boston. Being able to combine records old and new onto a cd shelf (or ten) has yielded come incredibly fun playlists. I mean... seeing J. Mascis and The Fog alphabetically next to Marilyn Manson, Kind Of Like Spitting next to KMFDM, and Ugly Cassanova next to Type-O Negative is incredibly amusing. *

I want to buy a car. Thing is, even if you have enough money for a very generous down payment, people don't sell you cars unless you have a job. So for now it looks like I'm still going to have to mooch. Sorry friends, I'll split gas with ya and pay you back once I get wheels. *

Marissa's gone home for a little while. I'll talk to you more about that next week... for now, I'm heading down the shore. --

The last time I really checked in I was sick as a dog due to excessive drinking and severe lack of sleep. Now, however, I am incredibly well rested and quite healthy. Instead of drinking until 4AM and being woken up far too early by the #1 bus rolling up and down Mass Ave I lay in bed unable to sleep due to the intense silence that comes with living smack in the middle of the burbs. I'm a college graduate, but I'm jobless. I don't have a car.

And it's all pretty much perfect. While it's sometimes frustrating being stuck in the house... I'll take reading a book outside in the sun over having to run out to work 8 hours a day fo-sheezy.

This is the longest vacation I've had since the summer of 2000. And I'm enjoying by doing nothing at all. Unless you count playing ping-pong with Marissa until 2AM doing stuff. Either way, like I said before... it's pretty much perfect. --

I'm alive. Haven't left the house much and am getting a little pastey down here in my parents basement. But I am indeed as alive as one can be without a high speed internet connection. I've been doing a lot of packing and unpacking.

We'll talk more later, for now it's off to a rock-n-roll show. --

heres my response to that question. if you're someone learned in this stuff you will see right away i had no idea what i was talking about. i got a b+ on the exam. upper respiratory infection drifting to the stomach, nuff said...

anselm of canterbury is as immortal in today's world as any god to grace the pages of history and literature. his piety earned him a permanent place in the minds of humans in the wake of colonialism and western conquest. the reason for this perpetual romantacized image of pure-white virtue is not rooted in exaggeration. during a time when greed held tightly to the masses and even infected the impenetrable piety of the church, anselm maintained his focus. as a theologian noone could better understand the human being and it's relation to divine mandate as did anselm. when education was not mature enough to recognize self confidence as the end to a means anselm wove this important facet of human existence into ideas fashionable to all alive during his time.
the apocalyptic myth which anselm rejected was regarding christ and satan in a struggle for man's salvation. to examine the ideas rooted in such an ideology one looks no further than humans themselves. the struggle of life is evidenced in the appearance of flesh and bone. what is life but a struggle for a cell to perceive and thus reproduce to manifest a physical appearance reflective of eagerness to understand. satans position laid foundation in the purely physical. eternal life is a symptom of satan's evil grip. one under this influence seeks to hold close all that defines them as a being.
christ comes in where selflessness is present. christ recognises the necessity of the being to cling to physical indulgences, but one absorbed in christ does not make the physical a habit. one rooted in christ uses their physical form as a vehicle to save themselves through self confidence and afterwards to promote this into the minds of others. man's salvation lies in an understanding and awareness; the fact that one cannot escape sin but may deflect sin in a manner which may be productive. thus two types of sin were cast.
criminal sin is in conduct of direct malice. one seeks to reinforce their physical existence through unjust means. sin, however, is pervasive; it washes over every human in the act of perceiving. greed can be vision, touch, and other sensory indulgences, but they are unavoidable because this sin brought the being into existence. the vibration of an idle cell reflected its rejection of eternal boredom in exchange for a predictable jaunt through a world of temporary sensory experience. the end is known, but soon as the being (cell) gets unsettled and seeks the physical it is cast into sin because all it can harbor in this plane of existence is futile as a result of impending death.
anselm understood these fundamentally HUMAN impulses and causes. what he presented to the masses was far different than what he felt, deep down, at the seat of his soul. in order for a harmonious experience in the physical realm this distinction had to be understood by those unable to grasp it.

For the record, Mr. Paul, not only are you welcomed here... I honestly feel that content from Jimbo and yourself is probably the only thing that will save me from shutting this thing down in the long-run. So ante up, biatches. Step to the plate if you'd like.

So here I am at work, on my very last day of a job that I have quit and returned to three previous times. I'm sick enough to feel like I have something the size of a tennis ball stuck in my throat and fear that drinking anything other than water will feel like razor blades in my neck after being swallowed. I've spent five of the past six nights living the dream, so to speak, that is... acting like a college student one last time: drinking approximately 8 hours each day and sleeping approximately 4 hours a night. It's been a freakin blast, but it's also caught up with me. On my last days of work at previous jobs I've spent the day going through all of the work I've done and building a portfolio of my work, etc... today I'm just going to stare at my monitor and watch the clock move slowly towards 5 o'clock, the time in which I will leave one hour early.

I graduate college in four days and move out of Boston in eleven. Ga-damn. --

im at school and i just did a midterm during the second to last week of school. im pretty sure i did not do well but i enjoyed responding to the essay question. there were 3 essays you pick one. since i had no clue about any of them ill show you the one that i had the least, no-clue about.

iv. although anselm of canterbury was a monk who rigorously followed the rule of st. benedict, nevertheless he argued as a theologian that we must take responsibility for our own eternal salvation.
(1)describe the apocalyptic myth (which anselm rejected) of the cosmic struggle of christ and satan for man's salvation;

(2)the ecclesiastical courts of the time, following abelard's theology, distinguished between criminal sin and sin: contrast the two

(3)why is this distinction important?

you know, writing this im curious if chris even welcomes me here anymore. between doing presentations on desmond tutu and biting my ass for nicker nockers its like shooing my zooble dew. ya see.

as much as it seems i dont, i really do.

have a passion for the material that was on the test. thing is everything i read(yesterday), of course, was not on the test. i got as far as the norman conquests. taking this class and arabic history at the same time has really helped me see that history is stupid and amusing at the same time. could you see juicy coutre pants on my plants. well, cnut was cool, i just dont really recall the cool stuff he did. i know i underlined fulk, of the angevins, too... you know the story, he did cool things. the other day i was reading a book and a name came up, margaret clitheroe, 10 pts if you can tell me who the fuck she is and how much weight they pressed her under. 1586, irrelevant to the reading im doing for school, anthony burgess wanting seed shit.

i swear tho, if there is any chick hotter than eleanor of aquitaine i will kill puppies in a puppy store and become a druid preist. we need people to read about her so they can be just as hot as she was. after i do my paper on her ill give you the degrees... see you in a year or so

Update: It has been released and is quite good.

My Internet ADD is out of fucking control. Three sentences into reading the Les Savy Fav "Inches" review on Pitchfork I open up a new browser window to check my main Hotmail e-mail inbox. Once I see that I have no new mail there I check my secondary Hotmail inbox and then flip over to Eudora to check my work email. As that happens I get an MSN Messenger IM from my boss asking me what I have on my plate today.. which I promptly ignore so that I can use AOL Instant Messenger to ask my friend if the LSF disk is out yet. He doesn't respond, even though he's not idle, so I open up my third browser window to check out frenchkissrecords.com for an official release date. As the Frenchkiss site is loading I realize that I never finished the review, so it's back to Pithfork. Two sentences into the second paragraph I don't feel like reading the review anymore because there's already no doubt in my mind that the comp. is going to rock the fuck out, so I close that window and click back to Frenchkiss. The splash page looks awkward on my high res screen and 5 seconds into trying to locate the link to get past it I get an IM from my girlfriend telling me that she's going to sign off for a bit. I send my goodbyes to her and on my way back to Frenchkiss I receive an email via Eudora concerning the Pub Crawl in which I will be participating in tonight. I write a quick response and realize what the goddamned-fuck have I accomplished in the last twenty minutes? Absolutely nothing! I should be fired! I should just leave and go to Newbury Comics and pickup the Les Savy Fav disc.. but shit, I STILL DON'T EVEN KNOW IF IT'S FUCKING OUT YET!!!! *

So this is how I find myself now, on the waydown off a three hour caffeine high prompted by this morning's 24 Oz. iced coffee with extra cream and sugar. And the people in the cube next to me are watching porn. The boss is at a trade show this week and my entire office is out of control. PORN, for Christ's sake... can't you get arrested for that kind of shit? *

I will be participating in a Pub Crawl tonight, Northeastern / Boylston area bars. It should be pretty boss. - I will be going to Mohegan Sun to gamble and drink my ass off next week. - I will be going on a booze cruise next week. - I will be enjoying my "last day of work" and entering the large population of unemployed folks out there next week. - I will be graduating in one week and two days. - I will probably develop liver cancer *

It looks like both my beloved Devils and Yankees are suffering from hypocrisy issues and lack of heart as of late. It's difficult to watch one time heroes fizzle out and become shells of their former selves, but it seems like what I'm looking at here. *

I didn't get through the whole thing... but I'm guessing that this article has a quote from a music industry momo attributing increases in record sales to the crackdown on file sharing, while anyone who's attended approximately one business or economics class knows it has everything to do with economic turn-around. *

Within the next two weeks I will have decided whether or not to quit my current job, buy a car, or move out of boston. Just after that I'll have graduated - and if all goes as planned, I could be moving to one of a few cities including Atlanta (keepin my fingers crossed there), Philly, or Chicago. I could very well be living with Marissa in one of those places. It's all very exciting and scary and I don't even want to write too much about it in fear of jinxing it or making myself look like an idiot later.

If none of the following works out I've decided that my plan B is to drive my dads old shitty car and spend my weeks after graduation bouncing back and forth between my parents house and my aunts house on the jersey shore.. or just bumming around Boston jobless until I find something. Even my plan B is fucked up... shit's crazy, dogg. *

So, how do we all feel about the new Modest Mouse? --

This morning, while racing down the four flights of stairs I must combat every morning to get to work I turned my ankle in an insanely awkward way and fell down like a feeble old man. My usual 15 minute walk from Downtown Crossing to the office took me about 45 minutes, with a quick stop at CVS for some Maximum Stength Advil. I've spent all day here with my keyboard on my lap and my bare foot covered with an ice pack elevated on the chair next to me. Everyone feels too bad to give me more work to do, which I'm enjoying.

However, I don't currently have health insurance... which I'm not enjoying. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that this sucker starts to heal asap so that I can avoid that whole X-Ray / put me in even more debt thing. *

Yesterday I downloaded Type O Negative's Life Is Killing Me, KMFDM's Xtort, and Pig's Sinsation. I also played the brutally bloody Manhunt for Playstation 2. Throw that on top of last night's squirm inducing Sopranos episode and you have a slightly shell shocked Christopher. Is it a coincidence that I fell down the stairs this morning? Was it God trying to turn me around from descending down the path of transforming into a 14 year old goth girl? Don't worry, big man... I outgrew wanting to dye my hair black about 11 years ago. So, as much as I appreciate your concerns... no more bone injuries please / thanks. *

"Did you see what God did to us man?"
"That wasn't God, it was you...you're a fucking narcotics agent, I knew it!"

I am exactly .013 GPA points away from graduating with honors this May 1st. Cum Laude or whatever they call that shit. It puts me in an interesting position because the train that's keeping this educational journey of mine moving along has run out coal, gas, or any other kind of earth material that somehow enables big metal machines to move. In the fall the conductor came outside and pushed a little bit... but now he's tired, unshowered, and hung over most of the time. - I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope that the BS still sticks to the wall a little while longer. *

I was very happy to see Mr. Jimmy finally accept my invitation to write for this weblog after about a years worth of begging and pleading. He's not just a pretty face anymore, ladies and gentelmen... he's a living breathing human being and fucking-A he knows how to use BOLDFACE! *

Apparently I'm going to be visiting Europe for about a week after graduation. My parents have offered this to me as a present in lieu of something like a down payment for a car. But my question for them is... how the fuck am I supposed to get to the airport?

Har, har, har. *

Someday soon I will not have to force these entries into the five free minutes I get once every three days. I will no longer be balancing three jobs and school but will be working one job, with normal hours that allow for normal social interaction with other individuals and even time for relaxing. When that occurs, folks, I promise you a more well thought out in.circles that relies a whole lot less on the words 'fuck' and 'shit' and a whole lot more being worth reading.

Until then... fuck. --

"Did you guys hit the deer?"

We're trailing a cop home from a local hippie-type watering dookie. Gunna get pulled over. Gunna fall asleep. Tasty beer, strange people, good juke, early last call. I'm thinking, 'ah, a turn-a-bout of the controls, he can't do anything to us from up there.'
"You guys see the new cop cars?"
A minute later I'm sneaking through some bushes to watch a female officer laugh with her co-workers, and proceed to shoot a deer in the head. I've never actually heard a shotgun blast before. Much more quiet than in the movies. Even quieter than the first one. The other one got away. Alive. Dead. Probably the best thing to do, hell I wasn't gunna nurse the thing back to health. Care enough? Lazy. I did make sure my kitty was around to greet me when I got home. It's way too late, and I'm way too tired to make any sense of it. Doesn't matter either way. this beer. that beer. together. apart. dead. alive. I started reading 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus and I'm listening to 'Charles Manson - Look At Your Game Girl'. I'm gunna sleep a little closer to her tonight, and make sure I pay more attention when she gets out.

Last night I dreamt that I was record shopping at The Sound Exchange, a record store I grew up frequenting. There were new owners, not the guys that at my tender young age of 13 would correctly insist that I'd be better off picking up records by Pop Will Eat Itself, Pigface, and Fugazi instead of whatever other crap I was probably buying at the time. I went to the register to pick up my copy of the Iron & Wine album and had an altercation with the gentleman ringing me up about the amount I gave him, the cost of the album, and the disparity between them and the amount of change he gave me.. I ended up leaving the store without the album, claiming that I would never listen to music ever again.

Sorry, I just wanted to see if that dream was just as fucking stupid written down as it was in my head. Turns out it was. *

Yesterday I drank my balls off. I'm talking non-stop from like 10:30AM until about 7 at night. I suppose that's par for the course in South Boston on the day of their big St Patty's parade... however, the fact that I was on the clock made it quite interesting. Four of us were DJing a bar on the parade route. The initial gig-time was 12-2, but the owner offered us $250 cash, on top of our (shitty) hourly wage if we stayed until 5. As much as I get annoyed with my part-time job for eating away at my precious and few college weekends... playing rock music for five hours, getting shitey with a bunch of Irish cops for free, and making about $200 ain't a half-bad way to spend a Sunday. *

Why is Jimmy's picture over there on the left side of the weblog, a few folks have wondered, when he's never actually contributed? The answer, my friends... is to promote traffic to the site. We needed a pretty face to lure in the little lovelies, and I couldn't think of a better way to do it. --

So how do we all feel about Braid getting back together for a reunion tour? Personally, I'm excited to be able to see one of the many bands that I've always wanted to see live but never thought I'd get the chance to (believe it or not my band was asked to play a show with Braid in 1998 at the Melody Bar in New Brunswisk, NJ and we turned down the offer because we thought that the haul to South Jersey was too far for a school night!?). Although I must admit that the whole thing is a bit curious in an out of left field kind of way. Regardless of the intentions, hearing songs off of Frame and Canvas live will probably bring me right back to being 17... which I remember being quite fun. If I had my way, this tour would turn into more than just a one time thing, spawning a glorious follow-up to Frame and Canvas that far surpasses anything that Hey Mercedes or any of Chris Broach's side projects have been able to attain. *

Don't forget, new Iron & Wine album out Tuesday. --

If there is one thing I've learned from doing this weblog - and I'm sure it's fairly obvious that I haven't learned much more than that many things as long as i've been doing this - it's that if you talk too soon or too much you'll most likely end up kicking yourself for it later. So excuse me if I've been quiet lately... I've been pleasantily, ableit busily, living my little life.

I know that not talking about things going on in your life goes against everything that a personal weblog stands for, and I'm fully prepared to respond to that statement by saying: sorry, i'll figure out how to deal with that later. *

One thing I can always talk about, though, is music. Musica, if you will. These past few days I've been listening to Holopaw, Plow United, and new tracks from Reubens Accomplice and The Descendents. I usually tend to stick to one genre at a time... so I honestly can't explain the delving into electronically-tinged southern folk, hard pop-punk, wimpy emo, and melodic pop-punk all at the same time. But it's been the happy little soundtrack to the life that I'm restraining from talking about. *

I will tell you that I blew out my much beloved Marshall Valvestate guitar amp on Friday night, while drunkenly performing an improvised Happy Birthday death metal song for my roommate. --