Goodbye, Syd.

I had to put my 15 year-old cat to sleep today. He had cancer. He was diagnosed about two years ago, but was doing ok. Over the last few months his tumor had gotten really large. I had already decided not to do chemo, so I was prepared for the worst. He had stopped eating the last few days, and he moved very little. I decided to take him in to the vet today. I got to say, "Goodbye," to him.

He was a great cat. He was very affectionate and even natured. He loved people. He was a gentle soul. He was also polydactyl; he had extra toes. His front paws looked like he was wearing little gray boxing gloves. Syd was a smart cat. He would come when his name was called. He understood other commands, too. He was very clever. He would pull my hand out from under my pillow with his paw as I slept. He would then drag my hand over to his head to be rubbed.

He loved to get in the shower right after I used it. He would wait until I left the room and then jump in the tub. He loved to drink water from the tub. He didn't drink water in the normal way that cats do. He would dip his paw in the water and make a little paw-cup with his thumb.
I miss him very much.

Heavy Pet-ing

This is an animation featured on youtube. Even though millions of people will see this, I had to post it because it is so damn charming. A student named Julia Pott at Kingston University made this as her final project. The short film consists of animation of cartoon animals synched with audio interviews of various people talking about there first crushes.

Civic Duty

I'm not a car person. Never have been. I never understood the love for an automobile. I just recently bought a '97 Honda Civic. I can't say that I love it, but I do enjoy it more than I have ever enjoyed a car before. I had to get it because I just got a teaching position in a town 33 miles away, and my wife and I can no longer carpool to the university. Plus, the gas for driving the Jeep everyday was killing me.

This is why I enjoy my "new" car - it's economical, kinda bland looking, no frills, yet enjoyable to drive. I like to think I now own the automotive equivalent of myself. Kinda weird and egotistical, like the old tv show "My Mother the Car" as an ego driven masturbatory fantasy.

Still, I really miss riding my scooter everyday, and hope to one day have a job in Denton that allows me to take 2 wheels instead of 4 everyday to work. Either that, or I'll live in a city with real public transportation.

Psych!

So I stumbled across a BBC2 radio special on the history of psychedelic music. Some of the interviews are really cool, especially with Joe Boyd and Mike Heron. However, some of the interviews are lifted directly from the tv documentary Rock and Roll: An Unruly History.

Unfortunately, the narrator adopts a kind of jaded a holier-than-thou attitude and thinks it is necessary to make dismissive jokes demonstrating how naive and ridiculous everyone involved in the 60s counterculture now looks. If you can get past the self-conscious narration, the series is pretty good.

For the Record

In honor of my friend Matt, I am going to try and post the LPs I have been purchasing of late.

From Half-Price in Dallas 9/10
Robyn Hitchcock - Invisible Hitchcock
Pentangle - Cruel Sister
Brinsley Schwartz - Nervous on the Road
Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead

Ebay
Incredible String Band - Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Fairport Convention - Unhalfbricking

From Recycled over the past month
Willie Nelson - Phases and Stages
Rolling Stones - Through the Past Darkly
Mike Heron - Smiling Men w/Bad Reputations
Pentangle - Solomon's Seal

From Forever Young
Incredible String Band - 5000 Layers of the Onion
Kinks - Lola vs. Powerman...
Incredible String Band - Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (accidentally scratched and immediately replaced - see above)

Waterloo and Cheapo in Austin
Neutral Milk Hotel - Aeroplane Over the Sea
Pogues - Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
Palace - Days in the Wake


I have also raided the $.25 bin at Recycled and grabbed a bunch of stuff from Fleetwood Mac to the Clash. I'm also building up my Dylan and Pink Floyd catalogs.

Up Rotoscope

Here's a nice little rotoscoping animation set to music of the wonderful band, Neutral Milk Hotel. I spend a good deal of time scoping youtube for interesting animation. I really need to focus.

The Vinyl Solution

I have never been a huge collector of stuff. I usually own just what I need. I tend to have a lot of books because I'm an information junkie plus I just finished writing a thesis, so my shelves right now are brimming over. However, I'm usually not the kind of person who fetishizes the object and surrounds himself with knick-knacks and curios as a kind of expression of identity or as a shield against the world (excuse my over-simplified psycho-babble). As a matter of fact, I'm known for purging my belongings every few years when I get the feeling that I have amassed too many material goods. However, recently I have started collecting vinyl records at a rate that threatens both my physical living space and my budget. I attribute this need partially to the huge changes I have recently experienced in my life which have rendered the near future as a gigantic question mark.

I have spent the last near-decade working as a clerk selling used lps and books at an amazing independent bookstore. A small portion of our clientèle consists of vinyl fetishists who are so annoying, weird, and compulsive, that any interest I had in lps was quashed by these strange men who spend insane amounts of money on music that nobody else in their right mind would ever buy in a format that is antiquated and obsolete. "Yes, yes!" I cry. I am aware of the archival stability of records, and I am certainly no stranger to acquiring music that could rightly be called, if not obscure, then at least not top 40. However, my need to purge every few years, coupled with my distaste for the collector mentality, has rendered my collection of lps to an amount that never exceeds more than two small 1' ft. square boxes. I am a huge music fan, and I do work at a great music store, so I always have plenty of music on hand. It is simply that I don't feel the need to hold on to things forever.

During the last few years, I have become a big proponent of digital music, my hard drive is filled with around 80 gigs of music at any given time, because it allowed me to acquire a huge library of music, without the material build-up. However, I have recently found myself unsatisfied with this as my sole means of musical acquisition in that the music itself seems temporary and ephemeral. I really like the thing-ness of an album.

I think that this is only half the equation. I think that my recent graduation with an MA, and my uncertain future have driven me to turn to material goods as a kind of security blanket. I have had mini-occurrences like this before, where I balanced instability in my life with material things, only to purge later on. However, I think that this time I might hold on to these albums a little while longer. I feel a real kind of sea change coming regarding both material goods and music. I don't know what it is, but I feel that there is something deeper and conservatory about keeping these records. I'll let you know when I find out what it all means.
I promise to post more in the future.