thraxil.org:

post 81

by anders pearson Mon 28 Aug 2000 15:02:35

<b>note from my "vacation" in maine</b><br /><br /> <ul><b>friday night</b> <li>bus 2 hours behind schedule <li>exhaustion </ul> </li> <ul><b>saturday</b> <li>trying unsuccessfully to sleep on bus <li>layover in boston at 4am <li>maine women get fat in their own unique way. most women become "pear-shaped"; maine women (at least the real trailor-trash, nascar watching, sticky screaming kool-aid stained child spawning maine women) become more and more spherical in the torso as time goes by but don't put any weight on their legs. the result (especially when they're wearing their favorite outfit consisting of an oversize stained t-shirt and tight spandex-esque pants) looks reminiscent of an apple being supported by two toothpicks stuck in the bottom. <li>corey (my sister) picks me up and we go run a few errands before heading home. <li>the code on the saw at the Home Depot in bangor is 1234*. high security. <li>shower and go hang out with cj (high school friend. drummer. currently living in virginia, but occasionally in maine). while dad plays with my guitar which i have managed to run through the stereo. </ul> <ul><b>sunday</b> <li>sleep on a futon on cassie's (cj's girlfriend) living room floor. wake up to find earwigs crawling on me. </ul> <ul><b>monday</b> <li>cj and i drive to portland to go to the music store. he buys 5 mic stands, i buy a large bass amp, a small guitar amp for some nice high end, a few cables, guitar polish and a 4-channel mixer. since cj forgot to bring the power adaptor for the 4-track up with him, we stop in radio shack and get a variable power adaptor. drive back to dexter. corey is attempting to make sushi. cj and i are, naturally, running late and mom gets mad that we aren't back when we said we would be (plus, she isn't happy that, as usual, i'm spending more time with my friend than i am with them). my mp3 cd player arrives in the mail. i go to corey's apartment, help her make (and eat) more sushi, and crash on her floor. </ul> <ul><b>tuesday</b> <li>cj and i finally get to try out all the new stuff that we bought the other day. everything is good except that the power adaptor we bought doesn't work with the 4-track. no 4-track; no recording. we jam for a while instead. the amps are very loud and and the excessive noise makes me happy. </ul> <ul><b>wednesday</b> <li>my parents drag me to bangor to buy some new clothes. i can be an enthusiastic shopper for a maximum of 5 minutes. after that i become a zombie being led around the mall by my mom as she paws through the sale racks looking for black clothes that will fit me (my only two requirements). mall crowds produce a chemical reaction in my brain that causes my IQ to drop steadily until, by the time we leave, i'm drooling on myself and pondering the finer points of different techniques for rubbing sticks together to produce fire. then we go watch x-men. overall, a very nice movie. the highlight: mystique. she's blue and scaly and the yellow eyes are indicative of hepatitis, nevertheless... damn she's fine. </ul> <ul><b>thursday</b> <li>not to be defeated by technology, cj and i pick up another, different power adaptor. this one doesn't work either. as i'm looking for some paper-clips to rig up my own adaptor, cj tries the adaptor from his nintendo despite the fact that it's a radically different voltage than the 4-track is supposed to take. miraculously, it works. we spend the rest of the evening trying to get the recording levels right and trying to rememver to actually hit record before we start playing. <li>i dye my hair black. hopefully mom doesn't mind the nice dark blue shade that i inadvertantly stain the inside of the shower and the towels to. </ul> <ul><b>friday</b> <li>up early and finish laying down a demo of one "song" before i have to pack up and head down to connecticut with dad. upon reaching my grandmother's house, i become instantly unable to breathe (i had long ago discovered that i am violently allergic to the air in connecticut; whenever i'm in the state, i turn into a congested, sneezing wreck) and to talk (i'm really not a talkative person in general but i'm not <em>that</em> shy. unfortunately, the more shit people give me about being quiet, the less i feel like talking. since my grandmother harasses me about it constantly, it's not uncommon for me to go the duration of a visit without uttering anything more than the occasional one word sentence).</ul> <ul><b>saturday</b> <li>my uncle is demonstrating his portable sawmill at the county fair, so dad and i go to check things out. i haven't been to a fair in a long time and i'd forgotten how much i dislike them. there was a tractor pull going on next to where my uncle was set up. i'd never been to a tractor pull before and had always wondered what people saw in them (actually, i'd probably never even given them that much thought before). after seeing one, i still wonder. it's really exactly what it sounds like. a bunch of overweight hick farmers get on their tractors and pull cement blocks from one end of a field to the other for hours and hours while hundreds of people stand watching; completely transfixed. </ul> <ul><b>sunday</b> <li>get on a bus in middletown back to new york. take the subway back to brooklyn, cab back to my friend's apartment. collapse in a sweaty, exhausted, sore, hungry heap. </ul>