By the Way.....
Now Playing: Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails
By the way, the blog is back after a brief hiatus. I thought it was kind of pointless and meandering, but my friend Mike said it made him laugh, so I'm putting it back up. Hopefully it will make others laugh, too, if not with me, then at me.

Oh. Here's to eighteen years of Nine Inch Nails, for no particular reason other than I love them. Trent Reznor is a god. I would never have survived high school without my vast collection of Nails. So there.

Poseurs of the World, Unite!
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Love - The Cult
There are some things you can fake, and some things you can't. For instance, we all have feigned illness at one time or another, whether to avoid work, school, family functions, etc. (Although the idea has occured to me more than once, I have yet to try calling in dead.) Perhaps we have feigned glee at the prospect of sitting through a friend's mind numbing vacation photos. Perhaps we have falsified sympathy at another's troubles, when we really just wanted them to shut the hell up. Maybe we have even stifled laughter at a funeral. (Not that I have ever done that.) However, piercings and tattoos are not something one should, as an adult, attempt to fake.

That's just retarded.

Case in point: available for purchase in malls across the land and on the world wide web are faux large-gauge earrings and tattoo sleeves. First I'll attack the fake-out gauged earrings. For those of you not in know, gauged earrings are when the opening the earring is inserted into is stretched to a predetermined size, allowing the wearer to decorate her/himself with a larger size of jewelry. The sizes go from fairly small to being able to cram a Coke can through your ear lobe, if you were so inclined. A zillion possibilities! The jewelry used in this ranges from plugs (cylindrical objects held in place by little rubber o-rings,) grommets, (like the ones on your sneakers, they hold the hole open, allowing to look in the mirror and be able to peer through your own ear,) hoops, tusks, twists, etc. The offending fakey jewelry has a regular-sized earring post in the center, allowing the wearer to appear as if they have, say, 4 gauge plugs in their ears, when in reality they have two discs with a post in between them.

Lame.

(Just FYI, my ears are gauged to a two and yes, I have marvelled over the fact that "I can see the closet door through my ear lobe!" Direct quote. And yes, it hurt. Stop asking.)

Now the deceiving sleeves. I discovered these thingies existed when I searched for ideas for sleeves for women. Now, anyone who is familiar with the world of tattoos knows that a sleeve is just that - a sleeve, whether full (shoulder to wrist), half (shoulder to elbow,) or three-quarter length (you get the idea,) of solid ink. Sleeves can be either an armful of blobs or an armful of art, depending on how the work is done or whether you took care of the damn thing during the healing process. The falsified tattoo sleeves are basically skin-tone panty hose decorated with various tattoo-esque designs that you wear over your arms. This apparently makes passerby think you are truly hardcore and have sleeves, when in reality you're just a moron. Now, back in the day I used to wear hose on my arms. (They were always black, ripped, and with the tight elastic-y part cut off, thanks. I wore fishnets too, although they lose their elasticity pretty quickly.) That being said, I obviously think there is nothing wrong with wearing hose on your arms. (For that matter, there is nothing wrong with wearing them on your legs, or, if you plan on knocking over a convenience store, on your head. I don't advocate the latter, though. You would be even more of a dumbass than the people with faux-gauged earrings and fake sleeves.) However, pretending to have an armload of expensive, painful, time-consuming tattoos that would, were they real, take hours and hours of work and dedicated aftercare, is just f***ed up.

If you want tattoos, grow a pair and get tattoos! If you want large-gauge earrings, have those babies tapered and gauge up to the moon! Piercings, tattoos, and body modification in general takes time, dedication, and a willingness to realize that, particularly with tattoos, your art is with you forever. If you're afraid of the pain, don't want to spend time and effort in the aftercare of your work, or would just like to take part in trend that will be over in five minutes, then don't go near the needle. I love my piercings and I love my tattoos, and I have shed blood and sweat and skin cells for them. Make your mods mean something, for heaven's sake!

Or, just be a moron and roll on your full sleeves! And don't forget your fake 8 gauges!

The Cult!
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: 'Love Like Blood' - Killing Joke
I am so excited! The Cult is going to be at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, OK next month. Since Tulsa is only about an hour and a half away, I am going to do my best to go. (A friend of mine saw them play at a festival a few years back, but he isn't a fan and didn't enjoy it. He told me, "We saw some band called Cult .45 or something like that. Everyone in the crowd went, 'Aaaaah!' but they sucked.") I am going to smash myself against the barricade and go crazy. It's been awhile since I've seen a band that wasn't a friend's band, so it should be a good time for all. Morrissey, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, and Ministry are also playing (separate) shows at the same venue, but I'd be pushing my luck to get any of my friends to go with me. It is generally accepted among all of us that I have the most questionable taste in music.

On Emo
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea - The Cure
I picked up the latest copy of Alternative Press magazine this week and found myself totally mystified upon opening it. The whole thing is devoted to emo or screamo or whatever it's called. Now I realize that, hence the title, the magazine is devoted to the alternative music scene. I have heard of a few of these bands, namely Thrice, Thursday, Saves the Day, the Starting Line, and Coheed and Cambria. (If I'm lumping genres together here please forgive me my ignorance.) I've heard Thrice, Thursday, and Coheed and Cambria before, but I'm not familiar with there music. (The only thing that really stood out to me is that the dude who sings for Coheed and Cambria is this big tattooed guy with a really high tenor. When I saw one of their videos that wigged me out, it was so incongruent.) The thing is.....I don't get this kind of music. I don't grasp what it's about or what it means and what the attraction is to it. I'm not saying it's not a legitimate art form, I'm just saying that I missed the boat on this one. Maybe I'm just showing my age, and I'm by no means old. I guess that ten or twelve years ago, when I was the age of a lot of the kids who seem to have embraced these bands, it was the same different story. Then, in the early nineties, people who were the age I am now probably didn't 'get' grunge either. I remember hearing Pearl Jam's Ten and thinking that someone was finally saying everything I thought and felt, and that was a wonderful thing. When Nirvana hit, the reaction was the same. From there I discovered Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone, and the riot girl movement - which I embraced wholeheartedly and still do. Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill) was like the anti-Britney Spears for that generation. L7 and Hole were huge influences on me as well. I'm sure that people who were in their mid-twenties and beyond at that time didn't understand the grunge movement. Let's be honest, Nirvana's Nevermind was the final nail in the coffin of hair metal. (Although I still bust out Skid Row's greatest hits CD at times.) Music shifted from wanting to rock and roll all night and party every day to a raspy voiced guy swearing he didn't have a gun. I'm not sure if emo has yet made the impact that grunge did, but then again I may just be way the hell out of the loop.

I find it incredibly sad that two of the most influential musicians of my lifetime are now dead - Kurt Cobain in 1994 and Layne Staley in 2002. (?) (On that note, misanthropy will only get you so far. And a heroin habit the magnitude of Staley's will kill you eventually.) Cobain, Staley, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and the rest of those guys and girls definitely impacted my life, and the lives of others. It was such a beautiful thing that I hope young kids now find that same sort of catharsis and release through today's music, whatever it may be. I'll never forget the first time I heard Ten, the first time I heard Nevermind. (It sucks that Eddie Vedder has grown mumbling and incoherent in the intervening years.) It was literally something that had never, ever been done before, and like it or not, those bands were our voices. We were all able to speak out just by pushing play. I know now that I'm old enough that, musically speaking, that will never again happen for me - but it's great to know that someone's carrying on the torch of change.

Ribbed for No One's Pleasure!
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Behind the Wall of Sleep - the Smithereens
I saw a piece on the news about a new 'anti-rape' condom that will soon be marketed in South Africa. Apparently South Africa has one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world, not exactly a feature you'd include in tourism brochures. To combat the problem, an inventor has created a latex condom that is held in place on the would-be rapist's junk by rows of sharp barbs. (Sounds unpleasant to me.) It can only be removed through surgery, although I'm sure some depraved moron will try to remove one himself in order to avoid the hassle of hospital waiting rooms and, you know, getting caught. According to the article, the thingie has been tested on women, who claim it's comfortable. As for whether this contraption will be actually be a deterrent, it has "been tested on a plastic male model but not yet on a live man."

How would you like that be the guniea pig for that?

Thoughts on the Hurricane
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: Hollow Hills - Bauhaus
I staggered in the door this morning after a long, exceptionally boring night at work, only to be confronted with images of the latest hurricane's handiwork. I cannot believe the scope of the destruction, but can anyone who isn't there really fathom it? All night I sat behind my desk and wondered about how the high gas prices would affect my lifestyle, how I wanted to do this or that, blah blah blah. I realized this morning, as I have realized many times in the past (haven't we all?) that I'm actually pretty lucky to have what I do have. I have a home, a car, a few toys and I know where my loved ones are at. I have the luxury of air conditioning and a safe, comfortable environment. Splashed across the television screen, the newspaper, and the Internet are stories and photographs who now have nothing, nowhere to go, and no one left to lean on. How would that feel? I cannot imagine it. There have been times in my life where I have felt utterly alone, but in retrospect I was never alone. What a terrifying thought, to be alone, without shelter or the daily necessities of life, with no immediate relief in sight. The great tragedies always happen to someone else, but what happens when you are that someone else? Sometimes I worry I don't feel enough, that maybe I'm kind of cold, but at times it seems that if I were any more emotional I would just implode or something. What is wrong with a world in which gangs of armed thieves roam the streets of a city that has been all but destroyed? What do they have to gain from doing so? Do humans really hate each other that much?

According to the National Public Radio's Marketplace website, we have spent $22 billion dollars on the Iraq war. (The website costofwar.com, by the National Priorities Project, has a running ticker of the cost of the war, and when I viewed the site the total stood at over $191 billion.) It has been days since the hurricane hit - why are we not helping our own people?

This is Really Wrong
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Muhammed My Friend - Tori Amos w/ Maynard James Keenan
Gas prices are soaring, we are involved in a fruitless and losing battle in Iraq, and George Bush still has three years left in office, but this, this, really pushes my buttons!

I was reading the entertainment section of Yahoo! News when I stumbled across this little tidbit from the Associated Press:

NEW YORK - "Lestat," a musical inspired by novelist Anne Rice's best-selling "Vampire Chronicles," will have its world premiere Dec. 17 at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.



The show is a first for the songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, but John's third Broadway musical, following "The Lion King" and "Aida." Hugh Panaro ("Les Miserables," "Side Show") stars in the title role.

"Lestat" is scheduled to play San Francisco through Jan. 29, 2006, before opening on Broadway in March 2006, according to the show's public relations representative, Wayne Wolfe.

WHAT?! No! You can't make a musical out of an Anne Rice novel! I read Rice's Vampire Chronicles starting about ten years ago, when the film version of Interview with the Vampire was released. My girlfriends and I went to see it, accompanied by our moms, mind you, as none of us were old enough to get into R rated movies at the time. I don't know if we went to see it because it was a horror movie, or because Brad Pitt was in it. (For the record, I now think Brad Pitt is quite the lame ass, and would he just fall off the radar already?) I had never read any of Rice's novels, so I enjoyed the film for what it was and that was that. My mom, a book junkie like myself, had fallen in love with Rice's novels and encouraged me to read them. She gave me a copy of Interview and I hastened to my bedroom to find out what she was making such a fuss about.

I don't think I emerged from my room for the rest of the day.

I was utterly enthralled. Rice had painted a picture with words, a lush, gorgeous picture that had me totally in its clutches. Her prose and style were stunning - she seemed to have come from a time when writers savored every detail. Reading the book was like being transported back in time. The novel was based in New Orleans, and it seemed I could almost feel the steamy, humid bayou air, see the opulent plantation homes, smell the Mississippi river and the salt breezes coming in from the Gulf. I think I read Interview in two days, and immediately went on to The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, and all the rest.

By the way, a few words about the film version of Queen of the Damned.....what a waste of time and money! That's two hours of my life I'll never get back! And for those of us familiar with Rice's vampire novels, will they never get the character Armand right? First they cast him (in Interview) as a raven-haired thirty-something, then, in Queen, as a blonde who looks like a grunge band reject.

That said, I'd really like to see the stage production of Gregory Maguire's Wicked. I hear it's awesome.

I Have Succumbed
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Lucretia (My Reflection) - Sisters of Mercy
Today is the day. I have now become one with the masses and created a blog. What the hell is this thing, anyway? Is it an online journal? What's the attraction to blogging and why does every moron on the planet feel they must have their own blog? Perhaps I will answer my own questions as I become more adept at this.

That said, I really have nothing interesting to write about today. I was just sitting here with my coffee and cigarettes, listening to music and being really, really bored. Years and years ago I kept a journal, but I was consistently frustrated because my brain works faster than my hand when it coming to actually writing. In a perfect world, I could type everything! Maybe this will become a journal of sorts, who knows?

I suppose that I should provide a little bit of personal background, so we can all get to know one another better. It's probably pretty obvious that I like to write, but as far as hobbies go I am an avid reader, coffee drinker, cigarette smoker, (a nasty habit, yes, I know,) news watcher, unapologetic fan of seventies and eighties punk, goth and new wave, and a music junkie in general. Oh, and I still play Vampire: The Masquerade (a live action role-playing game, for those of you not in the know,) several years after it ceased to be cool to do so. My website, (which probably let you here) isn't the first website I've built, in fact I've built a torn down quite a few over the years. At 19 I decided late one night to teach myself HTML, and the rest is history. The first site I built was devoted to the care of giant green iguanas and leopard geckos, which seemed like a good idea since I had both in my house at the time. (Ziggy Stardust, the gecko, lived a long, happy life and Iggy, the iguana, grew to an enormous size and now resides with a local herpetologist.) From there I built a website for the industrial band Bile, and was fortunate enough to be able to correspond with their guitar player, Dave, and singer, Krztoff, during the construction of the site. They were swell guys, unfailingly polite and kind, and were a big help. (I actually kind of miss that site, it looked cool.) Feeling that I'd honed my skills if not to a fine point then at least to a blunt edge, I embarked on building the site I currently maintain. Needless to say, it ate my soul, and has continued to do so in the five years hence. Along the way I built a site for a friend's business and a site for a friend's now-defunct band. I felt clueless at first, but it was a lot of fun to be able to depart from serial killers and criminology for a bit. However, my site The Criminal Mind is my baby, and I hope to continue it far into the future. Like a child, it's fun and fascinating to watch it grow.