by way of an update...

to quickly tie up the loose ends from the last two posts: a police report was filed. we met with the principal, who expressed great concern, said she would follow up on it and talk to the teacher to see if this was perhaps a trend of which no one had become aware. she also informed us she would have to call the mother and talk with her. we said that was fine.

a few days later, no. 1 gets off the bus and said, "dad, i think me and [charles manson] are friends now." well, o my beloved non-existent readers, it goes without saying that i expressed great consternation at this, but asked him why he felt that way. he told me that the offender had apologized to him, and they had shaken hands. i attempted to be magnanimous, and said, "well, that is very nice of him." but here my graciousness ended: "but i still don't want you hanging out with that kid, or talking to him, understand?" no. 1 nodded assent.

on that front, let's hope that i never have any more to report.

in other news, school keeps me busy, the two classes i am taking having abnormal homework loads, but i keep on top of it. i got my graduation paperwork today, and if i maintain a's in both (we're halfway through the school year and i currently have a 100 in one and a 97 or 98 in the other, without any signs that this should change in the next two months) i will graduate with honors, despite an atrociously poor showing my very first year of college at byu. (they wanted to stick me on academic probation!)

s the drummer and i met up with a couple guitarists, one friend of mine, k, and one friend of his, m, to try and create a new band from the ashes of the old. apparently, s the drummer didn't like k, or his musical style, or something, as he only wants to jam with m. and apparently s the drummer and m are ok with just jamming in my garage and not really doing much to branch out further than that. k is more than interested in fleshing out the veritable cornucopia of original songs i have been dutifully jotting down over the years, with the intent of playing out. so i had one fun jam with s the drummer and m, where little was accomplished beyond blowing off some steam and having a good time, and then another weekend had a jam with k and another of our friends, sc the drummer, in which we nailed down two songs, one an original of mine, and the other a potential cover, and they agreed that emptyhead was a perfectly good band name, and we discussed regular practices with plans to work on a setlist. and, at the same time, we blew off some steam and had a good time.

the boys have, overall, been doing pretty well in school lately; as well as in life. i feel like they are making headway in following my directions and accomplishing the things i want them to accomplish. no. 1 is talking about cub scouts, and while i think i might get roped unfairly into doing much more as a scout leader than i really want, i think the benefits might outweigh the grumbling aggravation this might cause me.

not much of a post really, but for now, better'n nothin'.

darth sardonic

emptyhead (more commonly known as darth sardonic by himself) covering codeine's "cigarette machine" (this blog's namesake)

big dumb animal, "i must be doing something wrong"

as promised, a video clip of big dumb animal (my band) performing a song i wrote many years ago (but made a million times better by s-the guitarist's additions) entitled, "i must be doing something wrong" (and yes, i am singing. no, i am not even in the least bit sorry.)

sometimes nothing is a cool hand

wellp, my beloved non-existant readers (and i can never quite decide if that should be a hyphenate or a single word, hence the constant changing from one spelling to another), i am planted with my computer in front of me again. it has been nearly a week since it was taken to our computer tech's to be "cleaned", and boy o boy is it clean.

like we need to download nearly everything back in. and all the tracks i had recorded; gone. yep, gone. i was peeved yesterday, but the more i think about it the more i think that nearly every track i had laid down needed some fine-tuning, and what better opportunity to accomplish that? mostly, in my inimitable candide-ish manner, i piss and moan, shrug, and get set about redoing it all.

as a fun and added twist, for some sort of security thingie that is completely beyond my scope of understanding, we can only download in one setting and then have to make ourselves "users" to the downloaded stuff to be able to use it in our personal settings (or i would've rerecorded at least one song already!) now, i am sure each and every one of you much more enlightened techie types are nodding your head and saying "of course" and "makes sense" in your sage manners, but i am at a loss.

i am not a technophobe, in any stretch of the imagination: i love technology when it can help me enjoy myself more (i.e. porn, the ease of recording and mixing songs at home, producing dvds to view and what-have-you), but i am technically stupid. yes, stupid. there is simply no other word for it. it has to be explained and showed to me at least twice, and then i need to do it at least once with guidance over my shoulder, and then if for some reason, the process should change, i am skullfucked.

i also feel that, while technology is cool as fuck and makes our lives so much easier, somehow we end up missing out on simple pleasures. i still, despite the ease of typing on the computer, love taking a pen in hand and writing something across a virgin sheet of paper. it is calming. it is cathartic. it eases whatever pain i might be feeling, simultaneously bringing it to the surface so that i might examine it and discard it. i am a fan of vintage things, things from a "simpler" time and age.

but then again, i certainly am a bucket of contradictions.

darth sardonic

i snuck in your bedroom to steal some change for booze...

it occurs to me, as i reread yesterday's (yawn!) post that i seem to have survived quite a number of blogs. people just seem to quit writing. out of my pals, only mother hoodlum and lola were writing when i started. everyone seems to have lost interest or moved on to other things.

here's the deal though, i need need need to write. if i didn't have this, i would have a notebook or some other pen/paper form of capturing the goings-on in my cabeza. (actually, i still do have numerous "diaries" despite this easy-to-use grain of sand on the beaches of the world wide web.)

my time at the inner circle of pizza joint hell is drawing to a close. two more weeks, and i am all but marking each day off on the calendar.

i may have invented my own drink. i had some friends research whether they could find a recipe for anything like this: i like the tom collins, and liked the gibson idea, so i combined them. make a gibson (1&1/2 oz. of gin, 1 oz. dry vermouth, twist of lime, cocktail onion) and add tom collins mix. yummeeeeeeeee. i call it a tom gibson. can't for the life of me imagine that no one has already thought of (and patented) this idea, but not as far as my friends can see. by all means, if you know different, send me a comment. (looks in comment box, hears crickets chirping, wind blowing, and sees layer upon layer of dust and cobwebs.)

some time ago, when i was playing with the band in our basement, and we were playing the song we simply referred to as "the angry song" (it should come as no surprise that is was a simple, yet extremely noisy punk song) wherein i would ofttimes punch (yes, punch) my bass strings for an even greater cacophany of sound, usually, it should be noted, with the fleshy and resilient heel of my hand, i made a grave miscalculation and punched the strings instead with my actual fist, and split the joint of my middle finger, bleeding quite a bit and no doubt smashing tendons and ligaments and growth plates and things of that nature within. i believe i probably uttered filth and foulness in at least two languages, followed by continuing to play for many more minutes (there are still blood stains on parts of my bass--of course, i am a bit slack about cleaning and polishing the poor thing.)

recently, i was playing the same bass, in front of the computer (recording) and somehow or other wracked this same knuckle upon the corner of the desk.

it lit me up like a firecracker.

i did the same lip-biting-hopping-bent-over-(why is it we bend over at the waist when injured, regardless of what part of us is experiencing pain?)-holding-my-hand-as-if-it-is-attempting-to-seccede dance i did on that night some time ago, and i am sure i repeated the same incantation involving much use of "fuck" and "cunt" and "joda" and "puta".

this would, in and of itself, be a mildly amusing story, except that a day later, i knocked a front door and managed to use this exact same finger joint. stoicly, though coated in a thin layer of perspiration, i managed to do the dance and incantation on the inside, lest the owner of the home open the door to discover their pizza delivery guy in the midst of groveling, crying, and cursing, until i could abscond to the semiprivacy of my car, where i observed a rusty-brown stain spreading under the skin of my middle finger.

lots of motrin and babying, and it is ok as long as i don't bump it on anything, but god damn! am i hard on my body.

paw.

darth sardonic

a bit of the nuts-and-bolts stuff that holds us together...

sorcha is no longer writing, and i can only vaguely remember how she came to be in my pals list to begin with, so i am going to delete her.

i'll hang onto lady sartre a bit longer as she did this before. she seems to be a bit of a summer writer.

anne is only still around cause she is indeed a real-world dear friend, and i understand that she gets excited for a project and then cools. it is possible she might return soon. or never. who knows? who cares?

got together with the new guy to jam on some hendrix and beatles and cream. it was lots of fun. i need to do a bit more personal practicing before we get together again, but i am sure that we will.

have been recording some music, but have been brought to a screeching halt by the fact that my acoustic guitar seems to be parting out on me. i am beyond aggravated by this, because it is a good guitar, and i love it, but it seems incapable of withstanding the pressure exerted by the slightly thicker strings i have put on it. until i either get it fixed or replaced, my home-recording stuff might be on hold (the jezebel acoustic factors greatly into most of the projects i am currently working on).

which makes me wonder why seemingly inanimate objects seem to take a sick pleasure in not functioning properly when i am around. want your computer to go on the fritz? sit me near it. want a car door to quit opening? sell me the car. and while not expensive, certainly not cheap either, a perfectly good acoustic begins to disintegrate before my very eyes as i pluck a song out on its strings.

we recently watched stranger than fiction, which was an incredible movie and everyone should rush out to see it. well, err, rent it, i mean.

but it made me think about stories i have written and the characters i have created. excepting the current magnum crappus, the vast majority of what i have written was straight from the inner confines of my often twisted imagination. also, much of it was in the form of short stories. looking back, i didn't deign to give most of my characters names beyong her, or him, and did little to flesh out their personalities. nearly all are dead by the end of the story, most often at their own hand, and usually so that the world might be a better place (yes, i absolutely loved donnie darko--yes, i am most assuredly a sick fucker--no, i am not seeking help).

so i guess i am safe from someone other than the real people upon whom characters in the current magnum crappus are based ever coming up to me and saying "i am the character in your story."

because the conversation might go something like this:

"are you darth sardonic?"

"yes. why?"

"i'm, umm. well, what i mean to say is..."

(me standing there, head cocked, eyebrow on full tilt, quizzical and amused smirk on alert.)

"that is to say, i'm him."

"him?"

"him."

"weird little goth-metal band from sweden, him?"

"no, you fucking idiot. him. the him from your story that goes off into the desert and slashes his wrists so that flowers bloom [this is an actual story i wrote, i believe my freshman year in college. i need to reread it, but i believe i didn't give the main character a name, but i gave his friend a single name, like smith. he does, indeed, go into the middle of the desert and slash his wrists and his last vision is of gorgeous roses blooming and spreading across the sands]."

"and? it's not a bad way to go. you make a desert bloom roses."

"well, that actually does appeal to me alot."

"of course it does, cause i didn't bother to give you any more of a personality than that."

"ah. well, which desert?"

"shit, i don't know. pick one you think would look good as a rose garden."

"hmmm. ok. thanks."

"anytime."

so it would seem to me that overall, i have been quite lackadaisical towards the characters i have created. do i feel bad?

nah, they'll be alright.

darth sardonic

o, that this too too solid flesh would melt...

i may have misquoted that a bit, just too lazy to do my research.

we've added another body to our house. we now have two cats slinking about, though i will be the first to say that pele is much more friendly and fun to be around than pepper.

he's finally quit taking her shit, and stalks and hunts and beats her, as opposed to the other way around. give it a few more days, and they will be adhesive mates.

little else going on in the world of the sardonics. some days just sort of blend, and we've had a string of those adjacently the past few weeks.

i have found other persons with which to jam, and we'll see how that goes, sposed to get together with one of em tomorrow evening.

hopefully soon, i will have something exciting, or a tidbit of witticism, or something more interesting than a couple lines about the new cat.

heh heh.

darth sardonic