There's a really good show up at Wilco's web page. It's from September of last year when they opened up for REM. The really neat part is that singer Jeff Tweedy barely sings and leaves the vocal duties to bassist John Stirrat. He's got a good smooth voice - unlike Tweedy's - but his singing style is sloppy like Tweedy's hence it's perfect for Wilco tunes.
I can feel a Wilco bender coming on. In fact, I think that after I hear "Misunderstood" - one of my favorite tunes by them - I'm gonna throw on A.M.. Haven't heard that album in a while. There's just something about them that feels like now. Ragged. Their music is ragged yet so melodic and catchy. And the lyrics are generally either a bit melancholic or just plain odd or both. But odd in a slightly caustic way. Jay Farrar writes some oddball lines too but his have less friction. I dunno. Maybe Jeff Tweedy just uses more hard consonant sounds or something. Whatever the case, brain says Wilco - ears get Wilco.
I had a meeting with one of my business partners yesterday evening. It went well but he told me something that, upon reflection, made me livid. He works for my former employer and was at a party recently held by one of the IT managers there. I know this manager a bit having been at his house a few times to fix his home PC. Anyway, at some point, this manager character starts listing the names of the homosexuals at the office. Then his wife pipes in and relates a tale of how she knows a gay man who, along with his husband, adopted a mentally retarded kid. She followed this with a comment like, "Can you imagine what they do to that poor kid?" This incident came up as my business partner is gay.
Driving home, the story ran in my head like a ticker tape. I'd always thought the manager to be a fairly nice guy, if a bit white bread-middle managementy. And I'd chatted with his wife on 2 or 3 occasions and she seemed nice. Well, that'll learn me for equating niceties with not being homophobic. Now, what in the name of fuck does this woman think those men do to the kid? Is she so detached from reality as to think that all gay men are paedophiles and go around indiscriminately sticking their cocks into every asshole owned by someone with a Y chromosome? This is exactly why I fucking hate small towns. They are dominated by small-minded dipshits who have no idea that heaven & earth really do have more than is dreamt of in their narrow, inbred, backwards philosophies. No amount of middle-class suburban sheen can darken that whiter shade of trash.
I spent much of yesterday morning reading more about Chinese medicine and re-reading sections of a book about the evolutionary origins of religion. In doing so, two things occured to me. Firstly, was just how interesting the Chinese (Oriental?) view of the world is. It is so incredibly different from mine - the West's. And I don't even know very much about it. As for the medicinal bit, I am getting lost. The task of remembering the various bits is in-and-of-itself daunting but add in having to absorb concepts foreign to my mindset makes the process even more imposing but ever so fascinating.
The first thing I came to terms with Yin and Yang. (And, as a local barista pointed out, the "a" in "yang" is pronouced like the "A" in...I dunno..."Reeperbahn".) Then came Qi (pronounded "chee"). And then the Spirits and Essence and now I'm on the Yang Organs. It's all neat and orderly in its way but I'm still getting used to the method of its madness. For instance, Blood is not the nice sanguinous liquid with which I am familiar. It's that and a whole lot more. Similarly, the Heart is not just that wonderful bundle of muscles in your chest either. This whole thing is going to require me to do a lot of re-reading and begging to Jolene for clarification.
It was a rather nice feeling to be reading something so wholly foreign to me. Most of the stuff I read is supplementary to what I already know. It fills in more details and adds to my knowledge of a subject with which I am already familiar. But now I find myself in unfamiliar territory. So I've decided this is gonna be my theme for 2004. I mean, since I can't come up with any resolutions to save my pitiful life, we'll just do what we can. So my bibliophilic inclinations will be steered towards topics and authors that are new and different - to me, at least. Same for everything else. Films, foods, people - the lot. So start sending me ideas and I don't care how odd or far-fetched they are - I want 'em. Tell me to read a particular author. Non-Western and/or female. I read books by virtually all white men. Know a good Mongolian folk band? Let me know. I've got a submissive side so threaten me with pain unless I cook tripe for supper one day. Think of all the stereotypical things straight white male atheist geeks like and do and give me the opposite.
As I said above, the other book I read was about religion or, more specifically, why our brains have it. I've read it before but, after reading some entries here by Xtians, I went back and re-read a couple chapters. Absolutely fascinating. Much better to my mind than Michael Shermer's mass mental negligence theory. As I sat there reading, two women sat down behind me. (I was at the cafe.) They were teachers and one was roughly my age and gorgeous. I felt almost embarrassed when I realized that she could see that I was reading an insidiously intellectual tome. I'm shy by nature so when I encounter a woman whom I find to be overwhelmingly physically attractive, I am a bit intimidated. (My Chinese medical diagnosis is probably too much Po or something like that.) The thing is, it's generally easy to overcome this or to turn the tables. I mean, I'm 6'2" and weigh about 225# (that's about 16 stone for all you English folk) so I'm almost always bigger physically. In addition, women whom I find to be stunningly gorgeous are usually dumber than a box of hammers. Ergo it would be easy in most circumstances to be kind of imposing, if I choose to be so. I dunno - there's gotta be some Freudian thing or Jungian complex at play here.
What's funny to me is that, in general, the women I find to be overflowing with beauty are seen as average-looking by my male friends. My female friends usually agree with me, though. I'll be in a tavern with some guys and point out a chickie across the bar to one of them. They'll usually say, "She's OK but her friend is hot!" This friend is almost always straight and thin. Pam told me in chat the other day that I was born in the wrong time. When I asked her what she meant, she said something like "Because you like women with long hair, hips, etc." Great. Well, I've never really been hip nor into fashionable things so I guess finding a woman that doesn't look like an extra from a Sally Struthers commercial is normal for me.
Oooh! Fishbone is playing now!
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