bomb the bass

I've always been a huge fan of the bass. Even back when I had adolescent daydreams about being in a band it was always the bass I was playing. Not just that I'm not a front-man kinda guy, I just love the bass sounds. Of course I never learnt to play - that would require having some musical talent in my poor clumsy fingers. I love the music though: twanging deep notes, slide swoops, thrumming grooves.. to me it's the instrument that holds the heart of the song: not in the pounding chest-thumping way drums do, but the throbbing flow like blood through the arteries.

Anyway, I'll not bore you with my adoration of Les Claypool and wanting to have his monstrously weird, polydactylian, genius children. Have a read of this Stylus round-up of 50 best basslines (always a subjective thing, but I agree with many of their choices if not entirely the ranking).

Choice excerpts:

"...a nasty wallet stealing bastard of a bassline..." - 'Hallelujah', Happy Mondays
"...the man most likely to play everything in a slapthafuckouttait style." - about Flea (of course)
"...a prowling, unstoppable slither of mystery and horror." - 'Would?', Alice In Chains
"...giving room for Fred Thomas' sublimely simple, impossibly earth-shattering four-note bassline to pour pure liquid pleasure into your brittle, brittle bones." - 'Make It Funky', James Brown
"So magic that even Vanilla Ice couldn't fuck it up." - do I need to tell you which song?

a rat by any other name...

On more inspection of the captive rodent s/he's been upgraded to rat status.

Jen suggested it's a Norwegian Hooded rat (I bow to your ratspertese, never having owned a rodent myself - although I did have a girlfriend who had a rat called Strangely Brown..). Not knowing any Norwegian phrases I can't test this - although I do work with someone who knows Swedish so I'll see if he knows how to say "excuse me sir or madam but what species are you?". It must be a common one in all the phrase books.

Many thanks for the myriad of interesting names you've all suggested. I particularly like Agamemnon, Teufel (devil-rat, how appropriate), Spanks, and Elvis but the one that wins out is Claire's ludicrous suggestion. Please welcome Cuntytitwank McFuckbollocks-Arsemunch. CMA to his friends or when any kids are around.

In other news: there's been a lot of traffic through my quiet corner of the interweb lately, thanks in large to a random linkage from Samantha Burns. God knows why. If you're looking for interesting stuff try the blogroll on the right there, I can't write for shit but have great taste in those that can.

So I'd like to say 'Hi!' and 'Welcome!' to you all. But that's really not me. So I'll stick to hollering at y'all, curmudgeonly-like, from my porch:

Get off my lawn you damn kids!

*turns on the sprinklers*

name my mouse

He's a little camera shy..

Current favourite suggestion: Garry.
Runner up: Elvis.

Any other ideas?

crack my head open & scoop out the gooey centre

Email is such a wonderful idea, but in reality I find it just as hard as papery lettery things to write and even harder to send. Because the other person is usually much better at replying and so I get an email really quickly which means I have to try and grind out another one in reply or the guilt becomes unbearable.

Well, unbearable up till about 3 months and then it's just a dull shameful ache..

I'm so crap at keeping in touch. I have several really really good friends who I've not emailed/written to in over 2 years.. Or even seen or spoken to them in that time.

I wonder if they're still good friends.

Unfortunately that's the way I am. I can not see someone for years and then just pick up the friendship again. Or at least try to, try to find out who they are now and if I like them. Most often I still do - people do change but there's a centre that always stays the same.

As long as the friendship was built around interlocking facets of your inner workings then the friendship will remain. Sometimes I find that the friendship was just a peripheral thing, not connected to the people that you are at the core. Then it's just like meeting a stranger, finding the person inside and seeing if there's a fit. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes I just can't find the person underneath.

Sometimes I can't bring myself to open myself, reveal my personality. Often nothing to do with the other person but to do with my own internal battles and neuroses.

I wonder how many of my friends have given up on me over the years due to lack of contact and, when they do happen, the unsatisfying meetings we have.

I never stop thinking about people.

Lovers, friends, acquaintances, flatmates, workmates, randoms.

All the people who I've at some stage connected with. I think about them, I wonder what they're doing now. I even sometimes make half-arsed attempts at contact.

An email started, never finished. A couple of pages of a letter. A card, bought for a birthday, never sent. A compilation cd made on a whim.

Almost never do I get any further.

Not because I don't want to send whatever it was that made me think of them, or that I lose interest. More that I start to doubt the relevance of anything I'd have to say. The appropriateness of a gift. Whether the humour in the card is what they'd find funny now.
Whether they have anything resembling my taste in music anymore.

So I stop.

The letter/email/whatever stops.

And sits.

Becomes yet another in the pile of unfinished correspondence that I can't finish yet can't throw away.

Because that would be admitting defeat, that wouldn't be an end or a finishing. It would mean a return to the beginning. But not a clean, start-over beginning. A beginning already tainted by apologies and explanations and excuses. Weasel words.

And shame.

...

And now I've run out of words to finish this.

confession

This has been on my conscience too long, I hate keeping things from you..

I've been stepping out on you:

I've got another blog.

This is still blog numero uno, I just needed somewhere else to post junk and the things that I come up with at work. So it's a somewhat more regularly updated blog but of much more questionable quality.

Meh. Make up your own minds.

Come one, come all to The Third Drawer Down.

R.I.P. Rod Donald, a tragedy and a sad loss to New Zealand.

louse mouse

So my cat, the great and fearless cockroach (and occasionally grasshopper) hunter, has stepped up his game a little. The other night he caught a mouse.

Now I've had cats for forever: Griffin is the 5th cat I've personally owned or, more accurately, the fifth that I've been indentured to. Cats don't have owners. As is evidenced by my former cat Livingston more than happily taking over ruling the burgeoning Splark & Kurly family.

(As an aside: Splarky & Kurly are my lovely friends who are pregnant again. Which means that since Splarky for some unknown *ha!* reason picked up the nickname 'Satan' at some stage in his checkered career, Kurly is now carrying the Antichrist. Jeez Splark, I always suspected you'd destroy the world someday but I was thinking something a lot less traditional..)

But I digress.

Where was I?

Griffin. Mouse. Yes.

So he brought this wee beast in the other night, acting all proud of himself. We duly rescued said rodent from his frothing jaws and found it a box in which to huddle out it's last breaths. If you've had a cat you'll have had to administer the coup de grace to various birds, mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, et al (remind me to tell you about the chinchilla sometime..) when they're brought in coughing their last. It's never pleasant. This one was, I thought, on his last legs so I opted for the less grisly 'put him in a box and toss out the body in the morning' method. Besides it looked like it'd been a pet mouse (pictures to follow) and wasn't acting afraid of humans so it was easier to just contain him (excuses excuses - lets face it, I'm just a softy).

The only problem was that in the morning he was chirpy and right as rain. Damn survivor.

Now I have a pet mouse.

Fucksticks.

Addendum: It appears that Griffin's hunting progression up the evolutionary chain has taken a dive: tonight he proudly brought in a leaf.