Killing with flange and with tape and with Hendrix
Hey: you know what’s annoying? When you’re on the bus or train, or wherever it is you see the masses hanging around in transit with their iPods on, and you actually see someone rocking out, doing a little drum routine on their lap as they listen to the latest Nickelback song. It’s a sad little demonstration of self, we are prompted to conclude, like putting bumper stickers on your car, and it makes us at the blogspot want to punch you right in the face. The only real exception to this rule, however, is if you happen to be us, in which case you’re veritably burning calories at your desk doing these same things, toe-tapping like a motherfucker, and only resembling someone with a severe case of mental retardation. One of my coworkers turns to me today and says, “You’ve had too much coffee again.” And the answer is an obligatory, Yes, we have, practically shredding the adrenal glands in the process. And it’s kind of sad to admit, here at the unambiguous age of Adulthood, that really, we just want to rock.

I got stuck in Goshen and that was sad
Drinks in Schodack, New York, because it’s my friend’s sister’s birthday and she works out there. Where are we? I want to know. I’ve never been out this far before, I say, like we’re encroaching the outer boundaries of some undiscovered territory, like they do it in A Space Odyssey. And we really are. It always suprises me that places like this exist, and that’s not to posit the fact that Albany, New York is the most exciting place on the face of the planet, but it’s potentially better than watching a bunch of bravado stricken men talk about running their pickup trucks into a ditch. “This place is kind of the end-of-the-line,” I offer, surveying the bar. “It’s like that scene in the movie where the character realizes he has failed and things are over, and that nothing is going to work out how he planned it.” More and more now, I find myself saying things like this, which to me seems very hilarilous, while all of the while occuring to other people as some great offense. Although, it occurs to me too, that maybe I’m just hanging out in the wrong places.

/ D Bm C - / / / Bm C D - /

At some point everybody disappears to smoke cigarettes in the frigid weather, as I sit listlessly at the bar and contemplate the life of the bartender. She knows everybody here, and I end up constructing a life for her in my head, which is fairly depressing. She dreams of bigger things, maybe, and what life would be like outside of this horrible bar. And then, through the din, a song by the classic rock machine Journey comes on. The opening chords sound and then the lyrics: “When the lights go down in the city/ and the sun shines on the bay/ I want to be there”. It seems almost inexplicable that somebody would play this song right at this moment, and I don’t know whether it’s my general sense of confusion over this song being played or the fact that I just don’t want to understand the implications of it which has me utter, “—What is this?” when what I was really conjecturing is, who would play this song in a place like this? The bartender comes around, and with equal parts indignance, delivers an answer to me: “It’s Journey,” she says, “Everybody knows that.”