ON-LINE JOURNAL OF CHARLIE DANGO: YEAR 2007

~ lost

~ lost

~ lost

And the beat goes on....
Saturday, August 25, 2007, 02:57 AM
Tonight erupted into an argument. What was the argument about, you may ask. Well, the argument wasn't necessarily over anything, rather it was a product of Chris' inability to comprehend the situation at hand. He is in a band with 4 other people. We four need to know exactly what amount of time we have available to dedicate to the band on a given week. We need to know each others schedules so we can coordinate a time that interfaces with our own and best suits everyone in the band. When one or even a majority of the band have open schedules, it doesn't really matter. The band's activity hinges on the few members whose schedules aren't as rock solid as the remaining members.

Enough pussy-footing around the issue. It is clear that Chris has absolutely no control over his own life. Frankly that wouldn't really concern me or bother me much except for the fact that I'm in a band with the guy, so my knowledge of his schedule is important towards focusing the bands efforts toward a positive goal. Sure, it may seem like week to week a new "weak link" of the band emerges throughout my diatribe, but it's not really as black and white as it may seem. This is and always has been an issue with the band, the only difference is the players involved in the controversy.

Chris has no ability to understand, nor absorb criticism. Everything is an attack to him. This is why I called him a child tonight. If he insists on perceiving situations such as the events that transpired tonight as a personal attack on him by the rest of the members of the band, then it's obvious he doesn't have the mental capacity to deal with the complexities of modern life. This may well explain many questions we have about Chris, but I don't like to assume things when it comes to my friends.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I'm not a teacher. I expect everyone my age (or near it) to have the same capacity of understanding that I have. The wisdom I've gained over the years has taught me not to judge people on the basis of their livelihood, yet when my actions are tied to others outside of myself, I can't help but feel as though our lives need to coincide with one another.

Here is what it comes down to:
We were trying to figure out a time over the next two weeks in which we could get together and practice. Everyone but Chris knew what days they would be available. We tried to work with Chris to find some day in which we wouldn't have to wait until 9PM to start practicing, but Chris didn't know his work schedule and kept insisting that even if he did it wouldn't matter because his place of employment changes his schedule every week. This is a cause of concern for me, as it is the rest of the band, but Chris seemed fairly adamant about not trying to resolve this issue.

One thing that Chris echoed throughout the discussion was that his lack of control over his schedule was never an issue before. What he doesn't understand is that things have changed. No one wants to wait around until 9PM to start practicing because we know we will end up buying beer and drinking until that time. Nothing positive comes from a night of drinking and tonight was a very good example of that.

Personally, I cannot continue to push aside my own desires to make way for others shortcomings. Also, I cannot continue drinking myself into oblivion every week. Of course, my wants don't really outweigh the scheduling conflicts of Chris. This is the way of things and I guess there is just no getting around it. I either have to go to HQ and sit there for 4 hours, waiting for Chris to become free, or I can go home from work, sit there for 4 hours, then drive back to Bluff Springs to practice, which is a huge waste of gas and I really don't have the money to be doing that sort of shit.

Aaron played a song he was working on for me tonight. He said it was a revision of some older song that they had before Sean and Randy joined the band. My first response to him was that it was a little late for him to be writing new songs and I still feel that way, only now I'm more frustrated by the idea that he waited until we were finished with the drum tracks to start bringing more ideas to the table. It pisses me off when he does shit like that because it's like he's playing against the group. I'm not saying that we only write new songs at specific times, but knowing we are in the process of recording a new cd, I find it a little strange that he would wait until the drum tracks are finished to announce to the band that he wrote a new song.

It seems that every week I grow more and more frustrated with the band. It's not as though I want the band to be something that it's not. I just want the band to be an open collective. When Chris takes to the defensive about his scheduling difficulties and Aaron withholds new material during the writing process, the whole thing starts to seem counterproductive to me. I love the band and I love the new material we're preparing to release, but for fucks sake I wish more people in this band (outside of Sean and I) would take more of an appreciation for what we're doing.

It's hard to determine an outcome, especially when so many of our friends are giving up the ghost. In the past 2 months we've learned of 2 bands that are calling it quits. Two bands that we do a lot of shows with and are pretty much on the same level as we are. It's discouraging in a way, but as I said tonight, it's also a benefit to us. I don't want to make is sound like I'm glad these groups are breaking up, but without them around we aren't guaranteed shows in this area. Also, we don't have a stable of groups to offer shows to when the need arises. We are literally being forced to fend for ourselves and to me that is a good thing (Martha Stewart).

I'm tired of playing local shows to the same crowd of friends and familiars that we usually play to. It's no measure of how well we are doing as musicians or as a band. We need to face the outside world and tackle everything head on. We need to venture outwards and find ourselves anew. If we can't pull our shit together enough to even find time to practice, then how are we ever going to pull off touring?

I worry about these things a lot and the thing that scares me the most is the thought that I am the only person in the band worrying about it.

I HATE COMPUTERS, PART II
Thursday, August 23, 2007, 03:09 PM
GRRRRR!!!

I finally got my shit together and cleared Vista off my new PC. Of course I took special precautions as to not screw myself later on down the road. I made sure to copy down all the hardware information and download all the drivers I would need to reinstall when I put XP on it. Success! Everything was loaded and running fine. I was happy...for a while.

After two hours of putting programs back on the computer I ran into a problem. Although the drive that Windows installed itself on was the correct drive, it assigned the disc the letter D and the backup drive was assigned C. Now for most programs this isn't a big deal, but this is cass and no one keeps copies of the setup files for anything here. I had to copy raw program files for our Adtec software over manually to the Program Files directory, so everything had to be configured on the system the same as it was from the system that I pulled the info from. Needless to say, when Windows is on disc D instead of C, that throws a monkey wrench in the whole operation.

So here I am reinstalling Windows XP AGAIN so the disc it's on will be assigned the correct drive letter. Also, anyone thinking about purchasing Waves software should reconsider. Again I've run into a problem where the program will not pull the correct authentication from the iLok key and again I can't use the fucking plug-in. I have to call Waves directly because thanks to their complete screw-job way of doing business, you can't send them tech support emails unless you pay them extra money. If they don't help me fix this so I can continue using this plug-in we paid SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS for, then they can go fuck themselves up their own asses.

I HATE COMPUTERS!!!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007, 02:15 PM
First, Microsoft Vista SUCKS ASS!! I can't do anything on that OS without triggering some sort of message or warning. Not to mention the damn system won't run the really important software that I need for work. Fuck Vista. I'm going back to XP.

Speaking of XP, only computers running XP with Service Pack 1 & 2 can have hard drives over 137GBs in size. Good information to have before you wipe out your only copy of about 50GB worth of data stored on your computer thinking your new 500GB HD is working properly....

You know what, fuck PCs altogether. Another delightful experience came today at lunch when I tried to burn a txt file to a CD-R at HQ so I could take it home and edit drum tracks together. I tried this yesterday, but the computer crashed halfway through burning the disc. GRRRR!!!!! Today, the CD drives (we have two) wouldn't recognize the disc I was trying to put in them. I spent the next 30 minutes hand writing out the notes to take home with me.

I would say I hate my Mac too, but I'm sure the problem I'm having with it is something simple that I just haven't figured out yet. I should just switch over to Mac full-time and spare myself the ongoing headache of Windows.. . . . ..

Why do I have to suck so hard?
Saturday, August 18, 2007, 08:57 PM
Today I was finishing the file transfer from my computer main hard drive to the new 500GB hard drive that Rusty sent me (thanks a bunch) when I totally fucked everything up and ended up losing a lot of shit in the process. Let's just say, I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to computers, so when I kind of just do what I've always done and this time it really, really fucked me.

I was spending a majority of the day trying to figure out exactly what happened as to why the new hard drive stopped working. I even went to Springfield to inquire about a PCI ATA host card as a solution to my problem. It wasn't until I was on my way home when it hit me that I might have done something to the computer to cause it to stop working. After all, it was working this morning. I got home and restored the computer back to when I first installed Windows and lo and behold the 500GB hard drive was once again accessible. All my shit was gone, but it was accessible nonetheless.

Now I'm getting my bearings (after thinking I lost my wallet) and decided to hook up the HD24 to the computer to dump our drum tracks in. It was at this point that I put the 120GB HD from my computer into the drive bay of the HD24 and powered it up. See, up to this point I had believed that the previous 120GB HD in the unit had failed, so like an idiot I scrambled for a solution to fix the problem without going over every possible means of discovering what might be the REAL cause of the problem. Well, sure enough the new 120GB HD wouldn't load either. Hmmmmm.......

Long story short, it wasn't the hard drive at all that failed. After all this time, it has been the HD24 itself that has failed. Drive A will not access any hard drive you put into it. I'm assuming this is due to months of operation in heat, smoke and dust. So basically I'm down to one drive on my HD24.....That sucks! Now even if I wanted to sell it I'd have to sell it at a far reduced cost thanks to this little problem. I'm really tired of all my shit getting destroyed.

What did I do to deserve this?
Monday, August 13, 2007, 04:11 PM
It seems we are going to have a new addition to the household. No, Sariah isn't pregnant. It would seem that Timmy, my sort-of nephew, is moving in soon. Why? Because he can't get the internet where his mom is moving and he just can't live without the internet..........*sigh*. So, my mom suggested that he could move to Jacksonville and live at my house. Great! Thanks for asking, mom! I guess Sariah was okay with it too when she talked to her. That I can't believe and I'm going to find out very soon if it's true or not.

Things are getting stupid at work again. Laymon's on his "Let's work weekends" kick and I hate it when he does that shit. I'll be glad when this is all over with.

Go away!
Thursday, August 9, 2007, 09:45 AM
I feel great!!

That was a lie.

I'm very bored today at work. I'm supposed to be editing a commercial, but I just don't have it in me at the moment. Last night the band got together out at HQ with a few additional folks and we hung out there for a while. Sean and I were able to get 3 more tracks done while also laying down some replacement verse parts for one of the songs we worked on Monday. After that it was booze-o-rama till one in the morning. Needless to say I felt like utter shit when I got home. That shitty feeling has carried over to today and I just don't think I can concentrate on anything at the moment. Not even this entry....

In the Heat of the Night
Tuesday, August 7, 2007, 08:48 AM
Last night Sean and I got together and laid down 2 more songs. We've got 9 more songs to go and 2 of them are still being written. I'm hoping we can get a bulk of the drum tracks done this week as I'm going to have to edit them all together into a stereo scratch track for the rest of the band to add their parts to. Once that's complete I'll probably lay down my guitar tracks immediately and then Bub and Aaron can come in and do their parts. Chris will be the finally as usual. I'm not sure why I always do the vocals last, but it's useful if we decide to change something in a song while we're laying it down.

Once Sean finishes his drum tracks the whole process should speed up quite a bit as we won't have to wait for Sean and he usually can't make it out until around 7-8PM. I can start recording as soon as I get off work and Aaron is pretty much the same. Bub will have to come on his days off, but we've never really taken a long time with bass, so I'm not too concerned about that. Chris is the same way, but with Chris not only does he have to have a day off, he has to have a sitter as well. The vocals will be a frustrating experience on this one as they'll end up taking a long time to finish due to his schedule conflicts. I don't know how he's going to make it over to Decatur to record vocals with Shane.

The Neverending Story
Monday, August 6, 2007, 08:28 AM
Getting ready for C-COR training at work. That ought to be nice and boring. Anyway, my weekend was shit. I spent all weekend at home because I was sick for some reason. This morning I got online to pay our car and house payments and realized that we didn't have enough money for both. In fact, we barely had enough money for either. Now we only have $40 in our checking account to last us the rest of the week. I don't know how we're going to continue on like this. Something definitely has to change soon.

Last week I was considering keeping my Rivera, but considering the debt level I'm in and the never ending lack of funds we have I'm going to sell it after all. I really don't want to sell it, but I don't have much ground to stand on when I can't even afford to pay my bills. Speaking of which, I'm also planning on selling my AKG solidtube pretty soon as well as my HD24. I won't sell the HD24 until after the band is done recording the new CD, but it's got to go. I desperately need to pay down some of this debt and I don't have any other way to do it outside of taking on a second job, which I might end up having to do anyway.

Slow ride
Thursday, August 2, 2007, 01:17 PM
The Adtec Duet is a horrible machine. I just got back to the office from Carrollton where I installed a new hard drive. Now I'm getting error messages when I try to send stuff to the unit telling me the hard drive is full. No it's not! I just put a new one in damn it! GRRRRR!!!!

Now I've got to go back to Carrollton, pull the hard drive again and replace it again and hope that does the trick. If Blake would stick around the office when I'm not here then I wouldn't have to keep running back and forth. GRRR!! I could have taken care of this while I was down there if I had my damn cell phone.

I've got two units in Carrollton with no commercials on them, which means we're losing revenue down there. It's going to take days for these commercials to transfer over to the head unit. I'm so pissed!

Last day of July
Tuesday, July 31, 2007, 10:35 PM
After a long wait, Sean and I finally got everything ready for tracking. Tomorrow beings the adventure of recording the next FCF cd. It should be challenging, but fun....hopefully fun.

Anyway, I just thought I would mention that.

Okay....Where to now?
Monday, July 30, 2007, 11:48 AM
I watched a video this weekend of FCF practicing in the basement of what is now Looker's Sports Bar. It was almost 6 years ago to the day when that video was shot and in some ways it seemed like it was yesterday. I didn't know what to make of it really. Bub seemed like he was enjoying himself a lot more in the video. Chris did the "shit-flinging monkey dance" that he hasn't done in a long, long time. Aaron actually seemed more stoic than he is today, which was odd. Randy was Randy, except he was much healthier and happier. Sean was Sean as well. Really it seemed as though there wasn't that much of a difference, even though this video was pre-FCF explosion.

The reality is that not much has changed for the band. The audience my be a little bigger than before, but that's pretty much it. Why FCF isn't playing everywhere is a crime to me. Six years and the band's only constant source of shows remain Beardstown, Jacksonville and Meredosia. If I wanted to play those towns all the time, I would join a cover band. Seriously! I would be making more money doing half the work and not nearly as stressed as I am now. Why are so many people into FCF? Why do people continue to come to our shows and buy our merchandise and listen to our cds? The answer is simple: They believe we are going to go somewhere.

It certainly sounds like I'm bitter and that's because I am. It's hard for me to face the fact that after 2 years of being in FCF we're still no more closer to achieving something greater than the band was before I joined. At times it feels like we're doing worse than before. It's not going to take much longer for our hometown audience to figure out that we're not doing anything with our music. Like all fires, FCF will extinguish itself if it is unwilling to fan the flames a bit. We need to prove ourselves again, not rest on the idea that the hard part is already done and all we have to do is play shows and sell cds. We have to take things to the next level or there won't be anything left for us to even grab on to.

With that said, the band is going to start recording the new cd this week. Hopefully it's not going to take forever to finish, but we've been picking away at it now for nearly a year in an attempt to make it the best effort we can possibly produce. I just want it to be a good representation of the songs. If we can produce something that sounds good and presents the songs in a pleasing manner to the listener, then I'll feel we've accomplished what we set out to do. That's the first part at least. Since we're getting 1000 cds made, I'm going to take about 100 of them and mail them out to clubs and whoever else I can think of along with a promo shot of the band and other promotional affairs. Hopefully from that we can start getting call backs from clubs wanting to book us, or at least get our foot in the door so we can play there once.

I'm tired of concerning myself with the "what ifs" of the future. I'm tired of trying to prepare for every single eventuality. I want to push forward with reckless abandon. I want to believe again in the idea that you can succeed in a rock band. I think the only way we're collectively going to make this work is if we all get a little selfish and put our band interests before those of our personal lives. Not right at this present moment, but in the future. If our significant others truly love us, then they'll support our decisions. I'm not even going to burden myself with doubt anymore. There really is no point in thinking about what you would do if something has happened in your life that hasn't happened yet. Especially when what hasn't happened yet is something you've been trying to make happen for years.

When the cd is complete, I'm pulling out all the stops. We may not get signed, but at least we'll get heard.

But what should I wear??
Tuesday, July 24, 2007, 09:47 AM
The next time the band and I meet up it ought to be nice and interesting. I was pissed off Saturday night after the show and I really let Aaron have it. Much like everything else I'm sure everyone is ready to dismiss it as me being drunk so we can just move on. I was drunk and I think that was the only reason I really felt as strongly about it as I did and the only reason I had the courage to just come out and say it. The fact that I was drunk doesn't dismiss what I said though. However the repercussions of that night extend beyond the scope of what was discussed and into much darker territory that even I don't want to admit to myself.

I feel like I've personally done a lot to help the band and really dedicated myself to pushing the band to continue forward. However 2 years after the fact I still feel nowhere closer to achieving anything as when I started. The fact is that most important decisions rest on me and therefore the burden of making sure everything goes off without a hitch rests in me as well. For the past 7 months the issue hasn't been can we all work together to produce music we can all be proud of and do our best to take it to the next level. The issue has been how drunk is John going to get at our shows and how bad is he going to fuck up the night.

Considering I'm in a band full of people who would rather make excuses than actually strive to personally better themselves musically, it's laughable to me that everyone's confidence hinges on my ability to play. Aaron can fuck up all night long, but the minute I fuck up it's a catastrophe. I guess everyone expects me to be more responsible and be better than that or something. Well I'm tired of being responsible for every little detail that is FCF. For my work, I'm met with bullshit. Bullshit I tolerate because of some phantom debt I feel I owe to my friends and band mates.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, let me just say that no one asked me to take on all this responsibility. I took it upon myself because I care immensely about the band and honestly feel that if I don't take charge of certain aspects of the band we simply won't accomplish anything. However, the band is more or less an idea comprised of songs and dreams. All the members of FCF have burdened themselves with inescapable responsibility that is crippling to the very fabric of a band. No one in the band (outside of me) is willing to admit this and to admit that even though our dream is a big bright one, the obstacles before us are greater than the ones behind us.

We've barely scratched the surface of what we should be doing, yet some members feel as though we should command a certain amount of money per show. Others feel as though there are certain bands we shouldn't play shows with because we're bigger than them and they'll just run our crowd off. Others feel like we should be playing all these places that we can't because of how big they think the band is. To this point, outside of Sean a little, no one in this band has tried to book shows outside of our little area here except me. They haven't been face to face with the reality that no club outside of this area have even heard of us. The one's that FCF have played before have long forgotten about us. You can't expect a club that has a show nearly every night to remember some band that played there 2 years ago. It might be fresh in the mind of the band, but to the club we're just one of a thousand bands that come through yearly.

I've felt a strong disconnect from my friends for over a decade. I feel as though we chose different paths, but still try to hold on to one another even as our paths grow increasingly farther apart from one another. I find myself back to where I started 2 years ago: wanting to break out on my own in video production. Much of me feels as though I should have just taken that leap back then when I didn't owe anything to do so. Now I will have to take out loans to make this a reality and it makes me nervous as I can barely afford to pay the bills I have now. There is a reality with this decision that I can't escape. I will have to work weekends. Unlike others who are just working for a company that schedules them on the weekends, I won't be able to reschedule or "call in". I'll be forced into a contractual obligation with a client.

Needless to say, this is going to cause problems later down the road for me and the band. One thing I've done since joining the band is increase my alcohol intake. I drink so much that I ignore my responsibilities and when it's too late to reverse the damage I've done I try to make things right by ignoring my safety and the safety of others and fulfill my obligation no matter the state I may be in. I can't do this kind of work hung over all the time. If I'm sure of anything, I'm sure of the fact that I will never quit drinking as long as I am in FCF. I've always known why I drink so much around my friends and it makes me feel ill that it is the way it is, but what am I supposed to do? I can't change the kind of people they are. The only thing I've been able to do is change myself. Since I can't change who I am, I can change how I behave, thanks to the power of alcohol.

Alcohol is a tool that I use to deal with people that in a much more sober existence I wouldn't have much in common with. I really feel as though I don't have much tolerance for anyone when I'm sober and there are so many people out there who think the world revolves around them. I like to be left alone and do what I set out to do. Like I've said before, I'm very goal oriented. I think of Bub's wedding as the best example of this. Before the wedding we had a lot of stuff to do. I wasn't extremely happy with it all, but I wasn't bitter or angry either. I had a few tasks set before me that I had to accomplish and I was there to accomplish them. Once the goal had been achieved, I no longer saw any reason to be there. I should say at this point that I don't consider existential goals such as "being there for a friend" as a goal. Those are life-long commitments and can be measured in a variety of ways.

Anyway, this is the conundrum I face. I am uncertain of my future with FCF. I face a challenging road ahead in my personal life and the last thing I need is to fuck myself up with alcohol and pressure from others to forget my own responsibilities. My friends have stated many times over that they will not continue on without me in the band and will most likely quit music altogether. Some say they will keep going, but I know how they all are. They're uncomfortable playing with others and it's understandable. I was only in outside bands for a short period of time due to my lack of comfort in the band I was in. Still, this is FCF and I'm sure someone would take up my position and be more suitable for the job. FCF needs a guitarist who doesn't have any plans outside of the band. Someone who doesn't want to get out of Illinois. Someone who doesn't mind drinking all the time and just having fun with the band.

I don’t want to make it sound like I’m giving up because I’m not. However, I think it’s time the rest of the band and I sit down and make some choices in our lives that will affect the whole over our future course. For starters, we stop drinking. About 80% of me says I might as well stop there, but I feel that if everyone else cares about the band and it’s members this is something we can do. Next, I feel as though Aaron and Bub should put in more of an effort to work on their playing as well as there understanding of the songs. If they are uncertain about anything, then they should talk to me and try to arrange a time in which we can come out together and work on the parts they’re having problems with. I’m not a teacher, but I’m willing to help in whatever way I can. I feel as though we all need to work together to do something constructive for the band instead of everything being put on me because like I’ve stated before I’m the one left carrying the burden and knowing the facts of what’s going on outside of our little world while everyone else sits back and has a good time. If we’re serious about trying to do something with the band then we all need to work together to make it happen. Which brings me to the last thing: we need to discuss what it is we want out of the band. If everyone wants the band to be nothing more than an escape or a release from whatever they’ve got going on at home or in their personal lives, then that needs to come out. That sort of information would help me greatly.

A part of me feels that even if the rest of the band truly felt as though they would rather just have fun with it and use the band as a release, they would never tell me so. They know I’m doing a lot to try and get the band back into a position where we can make a true run at getting our name out there. Also, I don’t think anyone else in the band is truly honest with themselves when it comes to this sort of thing. They say one thing, when it’s time to act on their words something completely different happens. Aaron will say that he wants to succeed and wants to go out on the road and play shows, but when it comes to putting our best foot forward he’s always dragging behind. The only time I’ve ever heard Bub and Chris voice their opinions on the matter, they’ve said they just wanted to have fun with it and play shows. Chris has told me on numerous occasions that it doesn’t matter to him where he plays as long as he can sing in a band. Sean seems as though he wants to do something, but he never wants to accept the challenge of doing it ourselves. He has always stated he just wants someone else to come in and do everything for us. I just don’t see that happening, but Sean is always adamant about us finding a manager.

Frankly, I don’t care which way the band wants to go. It would be much easier on me if we weren’t trying to get our name out there and promote ourselves so we could play Iowa, Indiana, Missouri and what not. At the same time, I wouldn’t feel as much obligation to do as much as I have in the past either. I think that’s the thing that keeps FCF what it is. Everyone in the band is just trying to have fun, but since no one in the band has any patience we end up forcing each other to compromise their personal situations a little. Each member has to be inconvenienced from time to time, but it still remains fun for everyone….except me. FCF is another job to me. It’s a job that I take seriously and want to succeed at. Sure I take pleasure from it, but it’s not like taking a vacation to Disney World or something. There is pressure and there is disappointment that comes along with being in this band and I try my best to take it all in stride.

There is one thing I am absolutely certain of though. Regardless of what we discuss (assuming we discuss anything) I am not going to allow the negative aspects of being in this band to impede my personal life. I am moving forward with my decision to go out on my own business-wise and cannot put that in jeopardy. If my friends and band mates stick to their six-guns of excuses then I’m afraid there will be nothing more to discuss. Those guys need to accept that I’m having a difficult time and if they want this thing to work, they need to work with me. I think together we can come out of this thing better off than when we entered it and be a lot happier with one another than we are now if we put aside the things that are holding us back and focus on the positives of the band. I’m not giving up over nothing.

I need to make a change in my life.
Monday, July 23, 2007, 07:21 AM
It's as simple as that.

Monti
Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 12:02 PM
My dog is sick today. I have to take him to the vet to make sure there is nothing seriously wrong with him. Last night he was shaking and it was freaking me out. Sariah and I got up and tried to give him some water. He seemed so weak and tired. Yesterday I was finding some really nasty diarrhea everywhere and didn't know which dog it was coming from. This morning Sariah woke up to more diarrhea on the floor and I guess monti pissed himself while on the bed. We're both kind of freaked out about it.

Speaking of which, I've got to get back to J-ville so I can pick him up.

Phone update..
Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 11:51 PM
I found my phone. Unfortunately I found it in the washing machine. I don't know if it still works, but if it doesn't I'll probably have to file an insurance claim with Cingular and get another phone. These are those times when you're glad you have insurance. It sucks though because I'm still going to lose all my important numbers.

Hopefully it won't come to that and the thing will power back up. I'm just going to let it dry for a day before I try powering it back on.

I think I lost my phone.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 08:43 PM
Damn it!
I had a lot of important numbers in that phone. I better not have lost it for good. . .

0001
Monday, July 16, 2007, 09:43 AM
I spent the weekend with my friend Chad Payne. We had a good time considering all we did was play his XBox 360. He's quit drinking and I applaud him for that. The easy part is the quitting, the hard part is sticking to your decision. Life gets pretty unbearable sometimes and it's just way too easy to slip back into the groove of drinking yourself happy. I'd say it's impossible for me to quit entirely so long as I'm in FCF. It's hard enough to go around your friends when they're drinking and not drink, but when they start pressuring you into drinking (because no one likes drinking by themselves) then it really starts to become an issue.

Another nice bit of news is that I've finally got my Rivera back. Of course it's going to be a short reunion as I'm pulling out all the stops to get it sold. I know I've said a lot about it not working here in my blog, but I wouldn't consider the problems I've had with it to be major issues. I'm sure if there were a major issue with the amp, the company would have resolved it. Outside of the power tubes, which are the same tubes I've had in it since I got the thing, it's fine. The amp is louder than hell and sounds fantastic. Unfortunately, my need for a more efficient live rig prevents me from keeping it. I think I prefer the sound of the Rivera to the Marshall in some aspects, but I simply can't say no to the versatility of the JVM. If I could I'd keep both amps, but I'm in a financial pinch and have to free up some money on my credit card.

Tonight we practice with Chris on vocal stuff for the show we have coming up on Saturday. I could say that I'm not going to drink before the show, but I think everyone knows that's a lie. I'm going to curb my drinking for sure though. As a result, I'm probably not going to be there for the entire show. I know that if I'm up there I'll end up drunk by the time we have to play so I'm going to find something else to do until about half way through NIL8's set and then make my way up there. That sounds like a plan to me. Of course the other guys will bitch and moan about it, but fuck 'em. As a matter of fact, I'm getting pretty tired of those guys bitching at me for choices I make when they're no different or better than me. Hell, they'll probably bitch about this post. Sometimes I think they care more about bullshit drama than actually getting shit done.

I think once I get this next check we'll have our bills caught up. The one thing that truly sucks is that we only have $50 dollars in our checking account and I'm out of shampoo, running out of gas and will need to eat for the rest of the week. Outside of $100 a month I get from my mom, we don't have any means of outside assistance with money. If we're broke, we can't run to someone as an emergency. We can't even go to my mom anymore because she's just as broke as we are. I'm pretty sick of my job, but I can't leave until I get some stuff taken care of. I know that eventually I'm going to have a conflict of interests between making money and making music. That's a burden I don't need, but it's one I'm already starting to carry because I know how these things work out.

I'm working toward building up my own video production company and for starters I'm going to have to do video production that I would rather not do, but with enough momentum could financially float me on it's own. I have to start out while still working for Cass, but even after I leave my principal work schedule will fall on the weekend. This is bad for the band considering our only time to do shows is on the weekend. Granted I wouldn't have to stay for an entire evening on shoots, but it does impact our ability to do distant out of town dates. Granted if business does well enough and I start getting more clients and more production throughout the week I could easily limit the booking of weekend production gigs to accommodate the band. I just know for the first couple of months it's going to be a bit of a struggle, but it's one that has to be made because I can't continue doing what I'm doing and making nothing for it. I think if I was offered a six thousand dollar a year raise I might actually stay, but I know that's not going to happen. They may make that offer once I announce that I'm leaving, but by that point I'll already be gone. Nothing will be able to keep me here at that point.

In the future I hope for only two things: A new place to live and a god damn pool. Everything else is what it is.

Duality and Deja Vu
Monday, July 9, 2007, 08:53 AM
I know I've said this before, but I think I'm going to stop drinking for a little bit. Lately I've felt extremely conflicted and I think a lot of what I'm feeling comes from what I do when I'm drinking. Last weekend was a typical example of me feeling as though I'm king of the world one minute and a complete loser the next. When I've had a few beers I become obnoxious and I can see it in peoples eyes when they talk to me (pardon me, when they endure my incessant drunken babble). Sober, I'm a completely different person. Actually, I think no one can stand to be around me when I'm sober because everyone is so use to me being drunk (including me). It's almost as though I forgot who I am when I'm not drinking.

I've posted about this before and yet no better understanding has been achieved, nor do I feel as though I can reconcile my grief. I don't know who I am, but worse yet is that I don't know who others want me to be. I know who I am when I'm not bonded to a group situation because I've lived that life for many years now. While I can say with certainty that I was far more bitter at the world when I was in this stage, I can also say that my bitterness really only manifested itself through alcohol. Also, I can say with a great deal of confidence that there were more happy sober moments than happy drunken times.

There is a layer of phoniness that comes with being drunk. I say phoniness, but it can be interpreted as confidence. Since I'm not a very confident person when it comes to communication with others, I have to consider that aspect of my drunken life to be the phony side of me. Granted people can counter by saying that alcohol limits or removes your inhibitions and brings out who you truly are. I don't really believe that. I believe that alcohol is confidence in a can (or bottle). It's not the same things as you being you, it's more like you have more of a heightened awareness of other people's presence around you and a diminished sense of shame. Strip away fear and replace it with a desire to impress anyone in sight and that's pretty much anyone drinking.

I'd have to say my true self is what you see when I'm sober. I'm shy and don't really like to converse with many people as I fear people constantly judge me. I used to tell Sariah that the key to being interesting is to limit the availability of personal information. I always felt that the less people knew about you the more attractive of a subject you became to them, especially if they're always seeing you around. Also, random people are less apt to approach you if they don't know you, you're not really being personable and no one they know knows you. It worked for the most part and I felt like I had control over my life as such. Age has a tendency to create urgency and the more time that passes the more I feel as though my time is running out. I guess that's why I've started opening up a little more to others.

It sucks when you feel as though everyone has you figured out. Not only is it harder to surprise people, it's harder to redefine yourself.

Btw, My computer just got zapped by a power surge and I thought I lost all of this. Thank you Firefox for caching my unsaved typing so when I restored my session it brought it right back.

JVM
Saturday, July 7, 2007, 03:37 PM
Why oh why can I not just stick with one amp.

Welcome to the fold Marshall JVM 410H

After dealing with the on-going drama of my Rivera I decided to try out the Marshall JVM yesterday. I wasn't expecting much as I'd already tried it twice before in the store, but they let me take it home and try it out with the band. Well, let me just say that I was turned around real quick. I always felt as though I didn't need an amp with that much stuff, but over the years I've realized that with as many different sound options as I've been wanting, it would only make sense to buy a 3 or 4 channel amp. Until the JVM, the only 4 channel amp Marshall had was the Mode 4. They had the 3-channel TSL 100, but after hearing Aaron's TSL I wasn't really sold on it's sound.

The JVM has 4 channels, each with it's own eq and reverb. Plus each channel has 3 gain stages and you can actually program the amp to switch the effects loop and reverb in and out of circuit one each individual gain stage. It truly is a mean and versatile amp. I wouldn't be sold on versatility alone though. The amp really does sound good. I especially like the crunch channel on the 2nd gain stage. To me that's as close as you can get to a JCM 800 without actually playing through a JCM 800. The cool thing is that it's not really a preset. Once you select the crunch channel on the 2nd gain stage, you still have independent control over preamp gain, master volume and eq so you can really sculpt the sound to what you want it to be.

Today I purchased the amp. I ended up trading one of my Krank 412s in the process, but it was worth it. Once I get my Rivera back it's going on ebay along with 3 pedals I don't need anymore and the Axess Electronics MIDI rig I was building. Oh, this head features MIDI control as well so right off the bat the CFX4 is useless to me now. I was thinking about keeping the MFC5 foot controller, but after practicing with the amp and all the pedals I use for the songs we've written I really don't feel as though I need an elaborate MIDI setup anymore. The JVM is so quiet that I really don't need the noise suppressor either. The TS-9 is going because this amp has enough gain for anyone's taste. The OD1 and OD2 channels are a little on the harsh side, but it's good for modern metal type stuff. With enough tweaking I was able to get a good sound across all 4 channels and I used all 4 while we practiced.

I weighed the options carefully before I bought it and for once I feel confident in the fact that I've found an amp I can stick with. Before I never really knew what I needed or what I was really looking for. The only prerequisite for an amp in my mind was it had to be loud. While the JVM isn't ear-bleeding loud, it does a good job holding it's own. The one oddity I noticed was that the clean and crunch channels are much louder than the OD1 and OD2 channels. I haven't got that one figured out really. Regardless I found use out of everything that amp has to offer and now that I don't need as many pedals, my stage rig situation has drastically improved. I'm down to 3 pedals and the amps footswitch. For what I'm trying to accomplish with these new songs I still need those 3 in particular, but that's still better than 9 pedals.

We might get together again tonight with Bub and practice again before going to Bath to watch Nighttime Addiction. We have a show in two weeks so we have to get ready for that. I just wish it wasn't so god damn hot in HQ. It makes it really hard to get anything done.

Let's see....
Friday, July 6, 2007, 08:53 AM
Later in the day on the fourth Sariah and I went to B-town to hang out with Sean and Jessi and watch the fireworks. Sean and I merged our money and bought the necessary ingredients to resurrect Jesus Christ. After the fireworks, we went out to Bob and Debbie Ottwell's house to have some more fireworks fun. We ended up staying out there for a while and Sean got really wasted.

Yesterday I was running all over creation for work and when I got back to the office I had a bunch of stuff I had to take care of. After that I went out to HQ to continue the work we had started on Sunday. It took a while, but we were finally able to get them built and glued. We still need to finish with the painting and a little bit more gluing before we can actually call the project done though.

Tonight I've got to go out to HQ so Chris and I can work on vocals. I'm putting up a big fucking sign on the outside of the door that will read:

ATTENTION!
Sensitive Work in Progress!
No admittance allowed!

Seriously though, I can't think of any other way to do it. We need to get our parts done and Chris' vocal stuff is more important than the rest of our crap put together. When a bunch of people come out and just want to party we can't get anything done. It sucks that things have to come to this, but no one up to this point has been able to restrain themselves.

Today is going to be a long day. At least I brought my shorts this time.

Fourth of July
Wednesday, July 4, 2007, 11:17 AM
It's the fourth of July and I'm sitting at home, which I'll probably be doing all day long, doing nothing. I haven't felt too hot for the past few days and I've been trying to get some rest. Yesterday I was supposed to go out to HQ, but I left work about to fall asleep and headed for home. I figured if I could get a couple hours of sleep I might feel a bit better then I would make my way to Beardstown. I slept a little longer than that. I didn't realize it till last night that Sariah had to work today. Oh well. I imagine she'll come home tonight and want to go do something today. I can't go nuts since I have to work tomorrow, but perhaps we may actually end up doing something after all.

Goal setting
Tuesday, July 3, 2007, 10:12 AM
Today I found out that we can't afford to live even with Sariah working a part-time job. She told me on the phone this morning that she refuses to quit spending money at the level she currently is. Once a princess, always a princess. It's tiresome to me because it's an easy thing to do. it's not like I'm asking her to stop going out to eat for the rest of her life, I'm just asking her to scale it back for a few weeks until we can get caught up on bills. Nope. She won't have any of that. So it's all on me and it's not like I can make a bunch of extra money any time soon. Sariah told me that she intends to get a full-time job. That pissed me off even more than her refusal to cut back. The whole fucking point of her taking on a part time job was to help out a bit while she expanded her bead business. She's taken steps in the right direction, but her problem is that she expects everything to happen immediately. Not to mention she doesn't do anything she's not sure she knows how to do.

Positive thinking is all anyone really needs to succeed. You have to visualize your goals and work to achieve them. In the end you may not achieve your goal perfectly, but as long as you reflect on the positives and learn from the negatives you'll do just fine. Sariah shoots herself in the foot before she even starts just so she can avoid even visualizing a goal. She's of the worker-bee mentality in which if there is a job you need done and she knows how to do it, she'll do it. If it's up to her to lead others toward a goal, she'll fall apart under the weight of her own self-doubt. Goals usually require dedication and a lot of blind faith. It's a gamble no matter how small and insignificant the goal may be.

Do people want what Sariah is offering? Sure. She's been selling jewelry now for a while and business is picking up for her. If she could keep better financial records she's have irrefutable proof of that. Sariah is a lot like many of my friends in the way she would rather not know the facts even if they might reinforce their own convictions. Then again, maybe everyone is like this. I think about stories of people who gave their lives to some cause that they believed in and they were championed as a hero. Still, life is a long, long, long road and I can't believe for the life of me that there is even one person out there who is capable of living for an idea. Everyone has moments of doubt either in themselves or in others and with life being as long as it is, it's impossible to imagine someone being single-minded that whole time.

Taking into account the idea that no one can be totally consumed by an idea, there are a large number of people in this world who a very determined to achieve the goals they have set for themselves. These people, whose determination is the principal deciding factor in their lives, have a greater tendency to succeed at their goals. You could be on a basketball team that might not be faring to well regardless of individual ability. If leadership is what the team lacks and you recognize this deficiency, then perhaps it's up to you to take on that burden of responsibility. If no one steps up to lead the group and bring everyone together on the same idea, then the team will never reach it's full potential. Being able to recognize the problem in a collective and working to solve that problem is an asset unto itself. What if the collectives deficiency is that no one shares the same goal or that each member is pursuing their own goal within the group and each one conflicts with the other in their attempt to reach said goal? Sometimes the only answer is to dissolve the collective in cases such as these. People can be very stubborn, especially when it comes to their goals. Recognizing that someone is pursuing a goal that conflicts with yours, but doesn't run parallel to it is worth learning. It can save a lot of headaches down the road.

In many ways setting and dedicating yourself to a goal is the only real way to get anything done in life. Happenstance is for those incapable of focus and rarely does it reward anyone with life-long satisfaction. The only thing I know of that can make me happy in life is knowing that I am pursing my goal. Even when times are their toughest for me I am still looking forward. I continue to look ahead toward the goals I've set for myself and recognize the challenge ahead as a purpose. I think suicide rates would skyrocket throughout the world if everyone just sat around all the time and did nothing. Life is long and sometimes hard, but without a path it can be impossible. I've always loved setting goals for myself and working to accomplish them. Some of them don't always work out and others feel as though I should have learned from trying that it's futile to try again based on a few failed attempts. I can never see life that way because to me nothing is futile. If I want something bad enough I will do what I have to do to get it and that includes change my life, change myself, change my home, change my ride, change my behavior.....anything I have control over in my life can be altered to best suit my needs. The things that remain out of my control are only out of my control at first glance. Persuasion is a powerful tool and you have to learn how to persuade people if you ever hope to accomplish your goals because not everyone is here to help you out. In fact, many are here to prevent you from achieving anything.

I used to get mad when I came face-to-face with people who had no goals. I could see their potential even if they couldn't see it in themselves, but yet they would bop around aimlessly waiting for good things to happen to them. Sometimes they would tease me with ideas of goal-setting, but they never followed through on them. I don't get mad at people like that anymore, I just accept them for who they are and let it be. I'm not going to stop hanging around with someone simply because they aren't setting goals and trying to accomplish something in life. A person's personality is separate from their personal ambition and it has taken some time for me to learn that. At the same time, I don't argue with others over their lack of determination either. If someone wants to believe that even though they failed they still tried their best, then that's fine. It's a delusion, but it's still fine.

The fact is that if you failed, it's 99.9% your fault. Why is admitting that you didn't put your all into something more difficult than blaming everyone else for your failure? I think the reason it's easier to blame others is due to one's own inability to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. Well, learning about yourself and accepting it are two different things. Defensive mechanisms within everyone start kicking in right around the moment someone starts telling them what they see in them. No one wants to admit that they may have problems. The reasoning behind this as far as I can tell is that if someone admits they have a problem, then they actually have to work on correcting it. It's called goal setting and many people would rather pretend everything is alright over taking control of their own lives.

What a long day
Sunday, July 1, 2007, 10:44 PM
Today Aaron and I began building diffusers for HQ. I feel completely exhausted. Last night we went to Jake's house for his wedding reception and partied down with him. We had a blast and got a lot of kick-ass pictures out of it too. Sariah and I didn't end up getting to bed until the sun was coming up. Five hours later, Aaron calls me (as I requested him to) so we could get started on HQ. Out in the sun all day, hung over and still drinking, building diffusers. We were supposed to build 10 of them, but we only got through five of them before everyone was too tired and we all retired to our respective locations.

I'm about to get some well deserved sleep, but I'm staying up in hopes that Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job is on tonight. I love that show and can't wait for the next run of episodes. I guess they were picked up for another 30 episodes and based off of the first 10 I know I'll have to watch every single one. Can't wait till they come out on DVD.

Getting ready
Friday, June 29, 2007, 11:35 AM
Last night was productive. It's the first productive night we've had in a long while actually. Sean and I got everything ready to begin tracking drums. The sound we got was good, but I think the hi-hat could be a little better. Also, I was thinking about throwing a condenser on the kick instead of what is on there now. Just for something to try out. I would prefer we don't move forward until we have a setup in there that will be something we can just leave and not have to worry about Ed taking down every weekend.

Though we have all the stuff set up very close to the way it's going to be when we start recording, we know that Ed is taking his board and probably most of the mics/stands with him. That sucks because we really need to keep that stuff in it's place and not be moving it all around creation. It will be much harder on everyone if we have to keep re-miking the drums before each day.

I'm going to call that music store that sent my amp off to get fixed and find out what the hold up is. It's going on 3 months now since I've last played through my amp. Truth be told, that amp has spent more time broken or getting fixed than it has in my possession. I'll be happy once I get it back, that's for sure. Speaking of things breaking on me, I lost the 150GB hard drive in my HD24 last night. That sucks because now we're left with only a 40GB and it's only giving us right around 5 hours of recording time. It should be enough time for us to finish our new cd, but after that there won't be a lot of space left over to do much else.

Upcoming things: Well tomorrow is Jake and Lauren's reception so we're going to be going out there and hanging out. We've started video taping again to preserve our progress. I think the recording process isn't going to be as exciting or fun as the writing process was in regards to the videos, but who knows for sure. What else.....I need to build a pedalboard for all my stuff, especially since we're playing Lookers on the 21st now. I was supposed to be putting together a midi loop and switcher, but now that my amp is getting fixed I really don't have the money anymore to get the last device I need.

Tonight I go back out to HQ to work on things some more. It would be nice if we could lay down a track or two, but I don't expect to. It would still be nice though

That's it!
Wednesday, June 27, 2007, 04:24 PM
I'm going home for the day. I've already begun another commercial and have damn near finished it too.

I'll do the rest tomorrow

Speed Editing
Wednesday, June 27, 2007, 03:50 PM
I just put together a commercial in one hour. It's not really all that hard for me. They're just 30 second spots and I've done it long enough now to pretty much already know everything I need to do before I do it. It's almost like I'm assembling pre-made footage.

I've got 3 more commercials to edit, but I don't think I'm going to get them all done before the end of the week.

News and news
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 01:25 PM
I read Jake's comment about posting the wedding pictures. I would if I could, but the battery on the camera is still dead. I was going to charge it up at work today and upload them, but I forgot to bring the camera like an idiot. I'll have to remember to take the charger home with me tonight. It would be nice if I had a similar camera so I could just swap the memory sticks and upload the pics that way.

Looking forward to Jake's reception this weekend. That should be a whole lot of fun assuming a bunch of assholes don't show up.....in that case I should probably stay home. Just kidding. Seriously though it's been a long month with all the weddings and other events and what not. My liver will be happy when it's all over. I feel like shit and I need to get the fuck out of here. I only got 3 hours of sleep last night, thank you Shannon's birthday party! I was going to go home tonight after work and get some sleep, but Sean and I really need to get things going for the drum tracks so we can start laying those puppies down.

Also we got our shirts in today.

The best part of waking up is nothing!!
Monday, June 25, 2007, 05:17 AM
It's 5:07 AM on Monday and I'm awake for some reason. I've been in and out of sleep all night long. I don't know why we have a king size bed when Sariah sleeps right next to me all night. I don't know.

Bub's wedding went off pretty well. I was in much higher spirits than I thought I would be even though I was in a tuxedo for the whole day. Things would have gone absolutely great for me had certain circumstances been different. While I'll concede to the fact that it's been 2 years after the fact, what I won't do is dismiss someone's feelings. It saddens me to learn that they may have been from a fake place, but nonetheless it's a subject of which I get emotional about. Ask me why right now and I wouldn't be able to tell you. I've been this way my whole life though. I'm an emotionally unstable guy.

I'm wondering how my tuxedo is getting back to Springfield. I'm taking it with me to work just in case Sean or Bub happen to come through on their way to taking the other tuxes back. I guess if I don't hear anything from them I'll just leave work early and make my way over to Springfield. I have to dump the huge number of pictures I took over the weekend when I get in today. I also have a bunch of work-related stuff that has to be finished this week. Tomorrow I have a shoot in Lincoln at 9 in the morning so I'll be taking the vibe home with me yet again. No idea when we (as a band) are getting back together. I know that we had talked about starting drum tracks today, but with this little of sleep I doubt I'll be in any shape to do anything come 5PM.

Nonsense, I have not yet begun to defile myself.
Monday, June 18, 2007, 05:39 PM
I'm at home right now waiting for tomorrow. I'm waiting for something to happen I suppose. Knowing that Bub's wedding is only five days away and that I not only have to be in the wedding, but have to perform at the reception isn't a comforting notion, but I guess that's just the way it goes sometimes. You can't always do what you want. Not that I'm against Bub's wedding, I just don't care for the whole wedding thing altogether. I'm happy for him though and will support him through it.

After the wedding I fully plan on getting the drum tracks knocked out. Shit. I forgot to get a quote on t-shirts. It's alright though because I'm going to check a couple of places here in J-Ville to see if I can get a better price. I'm still tired from last night. Tomorrow is a shoot, but I have to edit a few commercials so I won't be doing it. Thursday I'm shooting Gasperoni's in Livingston again. After that I might just go home and then take Friday off since I still have so much overtime built up now. Who knows really... I'm just playing things one day at a time. Maybe that's why my weeks feel like they are dragging so much.

That sucks!!
Saturday, June 16, 2007, 11:48 PM
Tonight has to be the most boring night I've had in a long time. I've spent the past 7 hours out at HQ mixing down the last tracks we worked on so Chris and I could start working on vocal stuff. He'll probably never have the time to actually work on anything though. I'm at the office now fixing the damn disk printer again. This thing sucks and I can't wait until this project is finished so we can send the thing back and be done with it. It's obvious the thing needs to be constantly watched and we don't have the time to monitor the thing all the time with everything else we have going on. It just doesn't work, period.

I'm going to call Sariah in a minute to find out what her plans are for the night. I think I'm just going to go back to J-Ville from here if she's still out partying. . . . I don't know.

Knockin on Heaven's Door
Friday, June 15, 2007, 04:59 PM
Why do I drink so much?
I can't understand what compels people to repeatedly destroy themselves. There's obviously nothing I can do about this. I've tried over and over again to stop drinking entirely and/or limit my drinking. Nothing has been effective. I have a problem and I may need to seek assistance. I don't like where things are going and I'm afraid of what might happen if I don't do something about this soon. I'm really afraid that someone is going to end up dead and that just isn't going to work out for anyone, especially me.

I've got to go back to HQ tonight. . . I've been out there almost every night this week. I can't believe I'm going back out again, but I did set up a band meeting tonight so it would be really shitty of me to not show up to a meeting I pretty much called. I feel like shit though, but I can make it. Tomorrow I'm going into work to continue burning DVDs so we can finish up the History of Ashland DVD set thing. I'll probably have to go in on Sunday too.

Long week
Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 11:38 PM
After battling with a stupid machine all night I made my way back to Jacksonville. I should mention that I was in my mom's old car which Sariah has been driving for the past few months now. I totally forgot that the gas gauge was off up until the point I ran out of gas. Luckily i was in Jacksonville at the time. Even more luckily I was right in front of the J.P. Mart on the edge of town. Just when you thought I couldn't get any more lucky, I just happened to push my car in and get gas right before they closed up shop for the night.

So after all was said and done, I ended up with a smile on my face considering what could have been.

Slow down
Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 09:35 AM
Things have been progressing very slowly. It's fairly clear to me that this cd is going to get rushed. Over the past month our relationship with Ed has become strained. First, he lies to us about how much money he wants to do our show at the Central and takes more than what he initially agrees to take. Then he gets pissed off because I called him out on it and went to HQ and took all his stuff out and was heard saying that he was done with us. Since then he hasn't brought any of it back, but comes out and hangs out with us and helps us with HQ. I wouldn't be as upset were it not for the fact that he has a bunch of my stuff and if I had my stuff I could simply set it up and record what we needed myself. Sure that would put even more of a strain on our relationship with Ed, but this wasn't our call.

Ed wants to book shows and make some money, that's understandable. I don't know of anyone in the band who has a problem with that. However, when we're forced to put our cd on hold until Ed's ready to bring the stuff back out, that puts a damper on our ability to get things done. We've been dragging ass for 2 months now and really haven't gotten any closer to being done than when we started rerecording all the stuff. Sure, we made some changes here and there to a couple of songs, but we never did get any master copies made that Chris could work out vocals for. That was the whole point of rerecording it and we didn't even finish what we started. Now we can't finish it because Ed's got all the gear.

I've been thinking about taking my ethernet switch out to HQ and dumping all of our tracks to the computer out there so I can make some masters of the songs and that would give Chris an opportunity to at least hear the songs. We could even lay down some vocal stuff if we had a microphone cable. I don't want to come off as an asshole, but I need to get all my stuff back from Ed so if he ever pulls this stuff again at least we won't be completely helpless. I've been trying to think about what I'm going to do today. I want to go out to HQ and get all our equipment set up that way when Sunday rolls around I won't have to do that and set up recording gear. At least Jessie's going to be off the next few weeks. That will afford us the ample time to get the drum tracks completed.

Bub
Sunday, June 10, 2007, 05:33 AM
Last night was Bub's bachelor party. I had a damn good time and I think a lot of that came from me not drinking for most of it. I was especially proud of myself for keeping things under control. I probably could have went the whole night without drinking, but peer pressure can be a bit of a bitch. I forgot to bring my camera home from HQ so I can't upload the awesome pictures that I took of Ewop in the fire and the Karaoke jam we had afterwards. There was supposed to be a stripper I guess, but that plan fell through. I wasn't really looking forward to that aspect of it. I really just wanted to have a good time and be with my friends. It's odd because I'm with them all the time, but on special occasions things seem to take on a different light. It's really hard to explain.

Between horseshoes, kick-ass pork chop sandwiches and the overall positive vibe of the entire night, it would be hard for me to view Bub's bachelor party as anything other than a complete success. I guess Bub got really hammered and had to leave a little early because he was feeling like he was going to puke. I didn't really tell anyone they should pace themselves, but I felt I might lead by example. It didn't really work out. Still, I had a lot of fun and it gives me hope in the thought that I can have a life outside of alcohol. I've wrestled with my addiction for so long that I forgot that it was possible to let your guard down and just have fun without the assistance of Alcohol.

Right now I'm just tired and will be going to bed in a few minutes. I just wanted to type this out before I lost my train of thought.

Fuck!
Saturday, June 9, 2007, 01:35 AM
I've exposed more of myself tonight than I care to admit here. I wonder sometimes if what I think is really how I feel. I get confused a lot. I sometimes think that everything is better where I'm not, taking for granted the subtle nuances of my own life that provide me with something I don't really have a lot of - happiness. I guess what it all comes down to with me is that without swings it's hard to gauge how happy or sad you really are. My life remains in a constant state of mediocrity so I fail to recognize the spectacular and the truly horrific. I imagine it would be difficult for anyone to distinguish the appalling from the remarkable when they consider their life as banal minutiae.

I opened myself up to a close friend tonight and he was responsive and not judgmental. Not that I expected him to be, but I have grown quite the thick skin over the years about these sort of things. It's hard for me to tell whether or not my openness will be met with compassion or otherwise. I'm happy to have friends who know me and care about me enough to listen when I need someone to listen.

I'm looking forward to tomorrows party. It should be a fun time.

Too much stuff...
Tuesday, June 5, 2007, 07:31 AM
I'm anticipating a real shitty day today. I went home early yesterday because I felt so shitty plus there was nothing really going on at that time. Almost the moment I leave everything goes shit house. An Adtec unit in Pittfield is screwed and probably needs to be replaced. Speed channel in Virginia is still playing spots without volume. Blake couldn't connect to Williamsville to send his spots last night and I guess doesn't know how to reset the units in symcable yet. One of my ads got a number and Blake didn't send it out in my absence so I'm probably going to catch shit for that. Add to all of this the fact that Sariah and I are broke and can't even pay all of our bills right now and the ever looming bill for the repair of my Rivera head that I no longer have the money to cover and you have a very tense situation I'm in.

I have no idea how things have gotten so out of control, but they have. I told Sariah that all she would have to do is get a part time job and do her bead stuff and we would be fine, but with the way we're spending money it's fairly clear that isn't the case. Sariah constantly mopes around when she wants to go spend money and can't. I get frustrated and saddened at the same time. We used to be able to budget and save money, but that was years ago. It seems like now no matter how hard we try we always end up spending more than we make. Also, we hate where we live and want to get out. Sariah is little miss negative as usual constantly telling me that we'll never get out from underneath the house and that everything is hopeless. Frankly I'm getting tired of it, but I know it will never stop. She's been this way for as long as I've known her and if there's one thing I know for sure about Sariah, it's that she won't change.

Sheesh!
Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 08:13 AM
2 weeks ago I took out a loan for $1350.00. In the past 2 weeks we have spent nearly all of it. Granted I did use a lot of my own money to pay for band stuff over the past few weeks because I always forget to bring band money with me, but I added that all up and outside of the building materials I bought that I have to either sell or return, the band only owes me $115. So where the hell did the rest of it go?

I was originally going to pay for the MicroKorg that I won on Ebay and put the remaining $1000 on my Visa card to pay down that balance. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Why? Because I totally forgot to pay our power bill from the month before. That ended up being $250 I wasn't factoring in to our budget. In all honesty, we've spent well over that because I got paid and Sariah got paid, not to mention she deposited the money she made off of her last bead party as well. All in all it was around $900 that we've deposited in the last 2 weeks not including the check for $1350. We're down to $700 now. ????????

This means that when I go to pay bills on Friday, we'll have next to nothing left. That's not a good feeling.

You know what sucks?
Tuesday, May 29, 2007, 08:32 AM
...Being at work after only getting 4 hours of sleep. That's what sucks@!

Last night we fixed the roof and painted HQ, unfortunately I felt the urge to stay at Ewop's place till damn near 3 in the morning. Ask me why now and I couldn't tell you. I guess it made sense last night.

When Sariah woke me up this morning it was freaky. I thought she was just telling me I needed to turn the alarm off. Once I actually turned it off I realized that it was Tuesday and I had to go into work today....the whole reason I set the alarm in the first place.

I told the guys I was going to go out to HQ every night this week, but I don't know if I'm going back out tonight. I'm really tired and will most likely go home after work. We got a lot done yesterday I don't think there is much I'm going to be able to do today if I go out....

I totally forgot to put that vent in my car......

............
Sunday, May 27, 2007, 10:33 AM
I'm spent!
No more for a while please....

Friday..
Friday, May 25, 2007, 08:55 AM
I've finally finished mixing down our performance from last weekend and have started on None Taken. I've got more Beautiful Day cds printed up for today's show. I got my MicroKorg yesterday and was having some fun with it. I also bought a stand for it yesterday on my way back from Staunton so I won't have to figure out what the hell I'm going to set it on when it goes out to HQ.

Tonights show is going to be what it is. After last practice I don't know if we're really going to be all that tight for it. Oh well. I'm not really a stickler for perfection at shows anyway, that's Sean's job. I think if we're going to record a live cd, we really need to focus on our playing during those shows and make sure what we're laying down is okay. I don't mind mistakes at shows, but when you have to listen to those mistakes over and over after the fact, then it gets a little discouraging.

I missed poker last night so I could burn cds. Once I got back from Staunton I wanted to play, but when the task of burning and printing cds is on you, then you really have to get that shit done. I probably could have done all of this Wednesday night, but I felt so shitty that night that I just went to bed. Well, it's getting done and that's all that matters.

Oh daddy!
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 08:44 AM
I'm a wreck!
I feel like warmed over shit. Slept on the couch last night. Actually, fell asleep while watching a movie and woke up at 6 in the morning. I went upstairs and got into bed with Sariah to get another hour of sleep, but I could have used a lot more. I totally forgot to take my Vegas disc home last night so I have to go get that from HQ sometime today. I'm hoping to get the tracks from last weekends show mixed down so I can give a copy to the guys in HP and NT this weekend. Who knows though. I still have to burn more copies of Beautiful Day and California.

I really wish I hadn't burned away so much of my PTO time already. I could really use a day off right about now. Then again, this is going to happen a lot with me being in a band, so I might as well get myself hardened to the reality that I'm going to be working hung over a lot. Anyway, we practiced last night. Sean got there pretty early, which was kind of a shock to me because lately he's been showing up around 7-7:30. As happy as I was that he showed up early, we still didn't practice until after 9 thanks to Chris not getting off of work till then.

We spent a lot of time talking before we started practicing. Once we started practicing I started noticing that we were slopping our way through everything. At least it seemed that way to me. They told me that on some songs they didn't even work out certain parts and quite literally slopped them whenever they played them live. I guess Randy's guitar was so dominant in the mix that I could never tell before. The hardest part about being in FCF is getting those guys to come out of their shells. Everyone is stuck in this mode where they feel like things have to be a certain way simply because that's the only way they've ever been before. I don't think the driving force behind that behavior was deliberate, nor do I think it can be attributed to one individual. Collectively it's much easier to slack and let everything be instead of challenge each other to reach their true potential. Up to this point I don't think the band has been personally motivated to acheive anything other than just playing shows.

Anyway, if all goes well then tomorrow I'll have my MicroKorg. It's going to be hard to stay focused on the tasks ahead (mixing down last weekends show/burning cds) with a cool new toy to play with. Chris really wants to play poker tomorrow night, but I don't think I'll be able to. I really don't want to get drunk 4 times this week.

Man I'm so tired....

THE FINAL EPISODE
Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 10:25 AM
Last night I dumped all the tracks from the show last weekend. I have to re-install Vegas before I can start mixing them. I'm not going to put a bunch of work into it, but I'll try to make it sound nice.

Right now I'm working on the last episode of "the writing process". I was hoping to get the last bits of footage from Sean, but he keeps forgetting stuff. Anyway, The final episode will basically just be the last portion of our guest appearance on Bandemonium. I'm trying to make it somewhat interesting considering there isn't much to go on and the camera work really sucks, but hopefully I can get something worked out for it.

We're practicing tonight for our Friday and Saturday shows. From there it's no more shows until we're finished with our cd. Speaking of cds, I guess I need to burn off some more copies of Beautiful Day and California since the copies we took to Lincoln practically sold completely out. I think this time I'm not going to bring as many copies of California as I did last time. That's assuming I'm correct in thinking everyone in Beardstown already has a copy of it. I'll probably still print up 15 though since we'll be playing Bloomington the very next night. I'm not really anticipating much from that show though.

Anyhoo. I just finished the final episode of The Writing Process. I'm converting it now and will have it uploaded shortly. It's okay I suppose.

One down....
Monday, May 21, 2007, 02:33 PM
Everyone has posted something about this past weekend in their blogs so I guess I should too.

THE SHOW

Let's see....Shatter All Doubt was first. I didn't watch much of their show as I'm not really a fan of their music. I spent most of that time getting our stuff out of the U-Haul that Ed brought. When they were done playing we moved our stuff inside and then retreated to the van for a free beer.

Honest Pod was next and although I didn't hear the comment myself I guess Dan said something about all the pussy in the room and nearly got the show shut down. That's awesome! I talked to him a little before they went on and never got a chance to talk to him again afterwards. This always happens at shows. You'll want to talk to the bands, but never get a chance because they're too busy with the crowd, equipment, their show and whatnot.They put on a good show nonetheless. The crowd was a little stiff, but they seemed that way all night. I think their shows will pick up once they finish their cd.

Our show was a blur. I don't remember much about it except being stressed over my pedal situation and not really being able to hear what the hell I was doing. I think the beginning of A2M sounded like shit, but that was just on my side of the stage I guess. Everyone else said it was went really well. As far as I could tell, the only new songs that got a good reception from the crowd were A2M (because they've already heard it on our myspace page) and Bringin' Da Funk. Dango was met with the same kind of deer in the headlights stares we got last year when we were playing Mr. Positive for the first couple of times. All in all, I guess it went well. We'll have to check the tape to make sure for sure.

None Taken...I regret to say that I missed most of their performance. I was tired as hell and went back out to the van to talk to Rick "The Dick" about the show and about the whole recording thing which bothered me at first, but I guess it's only going to be a cluster fuck if the bands want me to mix the shit down. Shatter All Doubt didn't get recorded at all and Honest Pod only got the last 2 songs of their set. I didn't know that Ed hadn't patched anything in up to that point, so midway through Honest Pod's show I'm patching in the HD24 and readying a new project for the night. I need to get the recorder and take it home with me so I can dump all the tracks to my computer.

Running the pedal nightmare that was Saturday's show was a wake-up call for me. I need to finish the MIDI system, learn how to program it and get all my pedals put in a case or something so they are out of the way and definitely so I don't have to hook them up at every show. I'll be happy as hell when I get my Rivera back.

AFTER THE SHOW

I spent the first hour or so denying all the stuff I did the weekend before. The second hour was spent drinking, yelling into an adjacent cornfield and stumbling around. The rest of the night consisted of me molesting the members of None Taken. At some point, everyone decided it was time to go, so we left. I think it was just me, Lance and Chris by that time. Sean had passed out much earlier in the night and missed a lot of what happened (which meant he missed nothing). On the way back we stopped at Denny's to eat and that was it. I know it sounds very blunt and matter-of-fact, but really there is only so much you can remember when you were drunk.

I think the members of None Taken are secretly thankful when I finally leave.

BRB
Friday, May 18, 2007, 10:54 PM
I think the first thing I'm going to do when I get the Micro Korg is bring back Non-Zero. I miss having a nice techno project to work on and with this keyboard I'll really be able to do some crazy shit, so it will bring a whole new element to the process. The last cd I made was pretty much synth stuff I ripped from other sources and I always wished I had a synth to create with. Now that I'm getting one I can really see a lot of possibilities opening up to expand on what I originally created in 1994.

Chinese Water Torture is another project that I plan on bringing back too and Chris is really happy about that. That project isn't going to resurface until after the new FCF cd is released because I really don't want it getting in the way of what we've been working on, especially with Chris beginning his vocal work. I definitely think with our own dedicated "studio" we'll be able to work more efficiently. I'm hoping to throw in real drums on the new stuff and hopefully it won't detract too much from the overall feel of the project. With the computer out there we can sync everything to a click. If I wanted to get into computer sequencing I could control a great deal from the computer itself, but I think it's still a little too early to say where it's going to go for sure.

The shitty thing about these side projects is that outside of a select group of people who know us, they never really see the light of day. The most attention a side project ever got was when Rob Hansen and Ray Lytle were doing Bandemonium and Rob was playing Chinese Water Torture a lot. A few years later when Midwest Music Network was being broadcast on WUIS, Shane Bumgarner from Quadrapet was co-hosting that show and he played some Charlie Dango and Chinese Water Torture. That's about it. I think if I do Non Zero again I'd like to take it out and try to do it live, for shits and giggles.

I wonder what a Non Zero show would be like? I really don't think anyone around here would dig it, but who knows. How does one make the transition from hard rock to techno and back to rock? I don't know. Tomorrow's our show in Lincoln. That ought to be fun. I'm going to be a little jittery getting back up on stage after so long. It will still be a fun time though. I'm looking forward to it. I'm burning the last of the cds now and we'll have a total of 50 to sell at the next few shows (25 California/25 Beautiful Day). I am also looking forward to seeing how much of which sell the most. If most if not all of the Beautiful Day discs sell, then it's going to be a little weird for me since the cd we're getting ready to record sounds nothing like it. Perhaps we are moving away from the very thing that made FCF popular in the first place. Maybe we're moving into a completely new fan base. Only time will tell I suppose.

Might as well go for 4
Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 10:22 PM
I was thinking about buying this today.

It's tempting, but I don't think I can swing it with the keyboard and the other stuff I have to get. Who knows though.

I WON!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 10:16 PM
HA HA!
I won the auction on the Korg Microsynth for $300. Super cool.

I'll have to go to Springfield to get the money, but I can make that happen Friday. By next week I'll be swimming in techno goodness. HA HA HA!!!

A surprise...
Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 04:25 PM
Well I finally got my Pulsar pedal today, but it wasn't the one I was expecting.

Instead of this:


I got this:

Besides the case and the price ($20 cheaper) I don't know what's different about it, but I'm going to find out tonight. Also, I was finally able to locate a 7-Pin MIDI cable, but after messing with the gear today I'm not quite sure that was the problem. The problem seems to be that I don't know shit about MIDI and have to learn that shit right quick. I expected to have these problems though. I nearly failed my MIDI class in school.

Also, it seems as though I'm still high bidder on the Korg Microsynth that I bid on earlier today. There's only 2 hours left before the auction is over, but I somehow feel like I'm going to get outbid at the last minute. If I win this auction I'll have to borrow some money from Citi Financial again to cover it. I really don't want to do that (they say they'll fold it into my pre-existing loan), but I'm not going to have a choice really. I think I like putting myself in those situations too because it's the only way I get things done.

Speaking of getting things done, I've got 25 copies of Beautiful Day printed up and I think I'm actually going to stop at that for now. Next up will be 25 copies of California. I highly doubt we'll run out of cds at the Lincoln show, but if a lot of them get snagged up, then I'll just burn off some more.

Oh yeah, I've got to take down that video of Ed. Nuts!

Creativity BAM!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 11:45 AM
I'm currently bidding on a Korg Microsynth. Sean and I were talking last Friday and I mentioned to him that I wanted to change the guitar part in one of our songs to a keyboard part because I thought it would sound better. He thought it was a good idea too, but in order to make that kind of change, I'd have to purchase a keyboard. Why? Because if we ever intended on playing that song live I would need to be able to reproduce what I played, of course.

Should I buy a whole keyboard simply for one song? Sure. The future always holds possibility and with new toys the future can become even more exciting of a prospect. Also, I can finally work on some new Non-Zero and Chinese Water Torture stuff. I haven't really done much with those projects because I have had a lack of equipment for a long time. We already have a bunch of instruments and amps, a whole recording outfit and a space to work. I think it's time we opened the creative floodgates and see what spills out.

I still have to get that Axess GRX4 which is $250, get the tremolo pedal that the Rock Shop has ordered for me (but hasn't arrived yet) and pay for the repairs on my amp. Basically, I should have sold my cabinet when I had the chance. The only option I have now is to take out a loan that I can't afford to pay back and get all this stuff. I would prefer not taking out a loan, but then again I would also prefer not maxing out my damn credit card again.

If only there were an easier way....

btw.....
Friday, May 11, 2007, 11:15 AM
I know I said that we were going to write 16 songs before, but we stopped at 14 because a couple of the ideas we had were either too far out for us to grasp at this stage or no one but me really liked. Here is our list of songs that will be on the new cd:

1. Seven Degrees From Center *
2. Jimmy Buffet
3. The Saddest Song
4. Dr. Rockso
5. The Anthem *
6. Scream Dream
7. Cerberus *
8. Taken None
9. Stoned 2 tha Bone
10. Ass 2 Mouth
11. Locate 0
12. Bringin' da Funk
13. Hayseed
14. Dango

~ songs with a * indicate titles that we are keeping ~

Of the 14, my favorites have to be Scream Dream, Locate 0 (which is funny because a month ago I wanted to get rid of it), Hayseed and A2M. I'm anticipating a lot of people hating this cd. I guess it's just because of how different it is from all the other cds. It's definitely not metal and a lot of it is really just music I would define as good-time music, with the exception of maybe The Saddest Song and Cerberus.

We really just wanted to have a cds worth of songs that we wouldn't cringe at the thought of playing night after night. We came pretty close with this cd, but there are still some songs that each of us would rather skip. Sean would say that we need to work on those songs if that's the case, but I feel as though all the time in the world isn't going to improve these songs. They are what they are and that's that. We should be moving forward, not spending all of our available time trying to assess our current situation. we've said it a million times though and it's still true - the vocals are what will sell this cd.

The current phase of production is laying down clean tracks for Chris to get creative over. One more good session and I think we'll have it done to the point where Chris can start working on vocal ideas. While we've all talked about this numerous times, I think Aaron wants to be involved in the vocal process. I don't mind as long as he's not making Ottwell feel uncomfortable or trying to run his own ideas over Chris. I'll have to see what Ewop wants. I know it's probably going to be just me and him for most of it, but who knows. I'm really against the rest of the band being there because Chris needs to free up and not think about what everyone else thinks about what he's doing and just do what he wants. If everyone just relaxed and let him go he'd take care of the rest.

Worried is the best way to describe the band right now, but it's still fun.

I'll Be With You!
Friday, May 11, 2007, 10:53 AM
My posts over the past few months have become very dry and detached. I guess that's kind of the way I feel right now. The best way to describe it is to imagine a second person inside of me that is being pulled away from the top layer by a powerful force of energy. Constantly it seems like I'm struggling to figure out what I'm doing at the present moment. I guess I've got a lot of things to keep track of now, but I didn't really think things would get this bad. Even now I'm drifting away and it's hard for me to remember what I started typing without rereading it.

I'm constantly bothered by the idea that I don't do anything other than what I do with my close friends. Anyone who's ever met me would agree that I have two sides: The side that is ambitious/outgoing/friendly and the side that is reserved/apathetic/mean. I've met a lot of interesting people in my life, but I never let myself get close enough to them to get hurt by them. In the process I usually hurt them because they reach out to my more vulnerable side and aren't expecting the turn. I feel like I've squashed a lot of potentially meaningful relationships this way.

If there was a way I could change that part of myself I would, but the trauma I faced as a child prevents me from retiring my defenses. I think of Roger Smith, Cary Funk and the band Murder Theory when I think of people who've experienced the turn and probably got hurt in the process. I could apologize to them, but who would be giving the apology: Happy John or Bitter John? Of course it wouldn't be the latter because when I'm bitter I won't even think of stuff like this. I'll just think about how stupid everyone is and how the world is full of scumbags who don't deserve to breathe.

I can't take back my past and I certainly can't change my future. I guess all along I was to blame for my missed opportunities. I reserve myself to living in central Illinois and doing nothing with my life so I can be happy. The only happiness I know is when I'm with my friends. It's a love/hate relationship, but it's purpose and it keeps me going. I always seem to get myself into situations I later regret because somewhere along the line I lose purpose and without it I feel nothing. I feel nothing for the project I'm involved in nor other people involved in the project. When the purpose is gone I detach myself from the entire scenario and eventually end my involvement with it. That's how I operate.

Is the real me a pioneer or a complete asshole? If you ask anyone who knows me they'll say asshole. I guess in the end I have to agree with them. The friendly and outgoing side of me always feels staged. I feel as though words I speak are from a false place. Not to say that I don't mean what I say, but I choose my words carefully. I may not dig the bands around here all that much, but I like the guys in the band and I have respect for what they do and the energy they give off. I've never been secretive about my disdain for the music that local bands have to offer, but I always hoped that wouldn't hinder any friendships.

When I talk to a member of a band who's music I don't like I try not to turn the conversation into a solicitation for shows, likewise I do my best to avoid things ending up that way. There are a lot of people out there who are delusional about what they do. They constantly talk about how much they're doing and how much they love it and how much it means to them, yet the real issue is how good it really is. I don't think any artist can determine on his own what is good and what is bad. The only thing he can do is listen to the audience he/she is trying to reach and assess their observations. Now, if you're not picky then anything you produce can have it's fans. Just gather all your friends, pump them full of liquor and put on a show. If your music even remotely adheres to their tastes then the energy you exude in your show will close the deal.

I've seen it happen over and over again. For all I know, that's all FCF is: a band with mediocre rock songs who put on a memorable show. Everyone's always said that FCF are better live than on cd. I wonder why that is...I don't have to wonder why because I know. When all the fun is gone and the real work floats to the surface, no one in the band cares enough to make their parts good. . . . no, that's not it. That's internal band stuff spilling out. The reason FCF are better live is precisely due to the on-stage energy and not so much the music itself. At times I remember the moments of clarity I had before joining FCF and wonder why I don't have them anymore. Perhaps I was an enlightened fool. There was no great and easy way to approach music as most of my observations were arm-chair at best. Experiencing band life vicariously through your friends is not a solid foundation to build upon when discussing how to succeed as a band.

Still in all, from the inside to the outside and back in again I've realized that life isn't as much about the big picture as it is the small details. Your television isn't just one big picture screen, it's a series of little screens that work together to form an image. If you don't take care to ensure quality and care in even the tiniest facet of your overall performance then you will never see the big picture as clearly as you should. Imagination is a hell of a thing though and more people would rather imagine the big picture than actually see it in full resolution....sorry for all the television analogies, but I'm at work right now...I guess that's what keeps us all going in a way. Some need optimal clarity while others prefer soft focus.

Thursday already?
Thursday, May 10, 2007, 03:16 PM
This week sure did fly by. I guess I did miss work Tuesday. Speaking of Tuesday, Sean and I laid down drum tracks for all the new songs except one. Yesterday I went out to HQ to lay down my tracks and discovered that my amp is messed up. I don't know exactly what's wrong with it but it's pissing me off to no end. Since I couldn't record, I called Aaron out and had him do some of his tracks. That's when we learned that Sean screwed up A2M so now he has to re-record that when he comes back in to do the final song.

The tracks that Aaron laid down were alright. He didn't get through all of the songs due to me laying down guitar tracks on a few songs. I wasn't going to lay down any tracks of mine, but Aaron really wanted to hear the material with both guitars going so I just ran through his stuff. I'm a little worried about my amp situation as we have a show the following weekend. I don't think if I take it anywhere it will get fixed by the time of the show. I'd hate to have to use Toad's Dual Recto again, but what can I do?

It's only 3:12 and I'm ready to go home. I've got a bunch of website updates and stuff that I have to do, but it's tedious work. My eyes hurt and I'm kind of tired. I'm going to go home and just chill out for a while.

I hate your.....whatever!
Friday, May 4, 2007, 08:31 AM
I've been giving some serious thought to either selling off I Hate Your Band or totally remaking it into something else. I'm tired of it just being a forum for local musicians, not that I have anything against the local musicians that post on there, but it's fairly clear to me now that the central Illinois music scene of old is dead and the new scene is not something I'm really interested in.

The direction I'm thinking of taking is one of a comedy route. I don't know exactly how I would implement it, but if I got enough people involved we could come up with something. Putting together something of this magnitude would require a lot of work and a lot of balls. Work on the part of the people writing and orchestrating the back-end and balls on the part of the actors portraying characters. The unfortunate circumstances are that my friends don't ever have the energy to do anything other than their daily routine so asking them to be involved is a challenge. When it comes to my friends in FCF, I can't rely on any of them as they really only take time out for the band.

I always say that I need at least one of my friends to be involved or I can't do it and I used to assume that was just an excuse. Maybe it is, but it's definitely true. Everything I've tried without support has died a pitiful death. The one thing I think Sean and I were interested in doing together outside of the band was Opaque Productions, but that kind of hinged on Tim's involvement, which at the time was sketchy. Now that I have full audio and video capabilities at my fingertips, I can't imagine anything standing in the way of progress.

I can't do this on my own and that's for sure. Be it close friend or not, I need assistance in putting something like this together as well as presenting it to the world. I need to find out who's interested in helping me and set up a meeting of all interested parties and just lay the groundwork for others to build on. Hopefully, collectively we can accomplish something new and exciting.

Away from the sun..
Thursday, May 3, 2007, 08:58 AM
I can believe how tired I am, I just can't accept it. We practiced last night and the ended up drinking a lot and doing horrible karaoke till 1:30 in the morning. I didn't get to sleep until around 2:30 and woke up at 7:00 to get ready for work. I feel horrible, but I've got too much to do today so I can't leave. I have to go to the Pittsfield head end tomorrow and hook up the mysterious 4th unit that I didn't know existed until today. I think after that I'm just going to go home. I could use the overtime, but who knows.

Laymon and I have a meeting with LLCC today to discuss some production for them. I really don't know what we're going to discuss. Laymon is always in an advertising frame of mind and doesn't understand what long-form production consists of so I'm getting the feeling that I will be running the show today. Not to say I know a whole hell of a lot about it, but I know that it involves a lot more preparation than we have for most of our advertising work. After that I have to finish the Petefish, Skiles and Company Bank commercial that has been on hold for nearly 2 months due to weather and scheduling conflicts. I told them I would have a copy ready for them by Friday so I have to get that done pronto.

It's times like these that I really wish I had a pool.

First, I got together with Sean and Aaron last night to work on the end of one of our new songs. It's cool. Unfortunately Bub had to leave because he's been sick too. Chris had to work, so he didn't get there until we were already finished. I really wish we could get together one more time this week, but I can't see that happening since Sean's baby sitter situation is bleak and Jessi is working all the time now it seems. It sucks not having enough time to do anything, but I've come to accept it. You don't spend 10 years of your life in bands with guys who have kids without learning some patience.

Anyway, things at work are stupid as usual. Laymon is going insane with his power trip antics and apparently won't stop until someone lets him go, which won't happen. I'm keeping my spirits up by reminding myself that I only have to deal with it for as long as I am unwilling to shower the earth with resumes. I really want to get out of here and I'm pretty well sure I can do so if I actually try (other than online searches), but the band is keeping me from doing so. I don't want to focus a great deal of energy on seeking another job when I know the inevitable outcome is me leaving FCF.

Still, I would rather leave the band than quit my job and lose everything I have. No point in getting dramatic about it. I don't see anything happening anytime soon.

I don't feel right....
Monday, April 23, 2007, 08:35 PM
I've been sick for the past 5 days and the way things are going I'm probably going to be sick for the remainder of this week too. I can't bring myself to eat for some reason. I can't explain what's going on, but I just feel like if I eat I'll puke. However, the more I don't eat the more I feel like puking. It's a catch 22 situation now, but I still can't bring myself to eat.

Laymon forced me to go to a doctor today because he thought I had Strep throat. 2 hours and $20 later, of course not. The doctor gives me a prescription for the same antibiotic I've been taking for the past 2 days only in a higher dosage. I don't think he knew I was taking antibiotics before I showed up. I may have had Strep last week, but this week all I have is a sore throat.

The only thing that happened today that was interesting is that I found out I've lost nearly 20 pounds over the past 2 months. I thought it seemed like I was losing weight, but I just didn't know for sure. We'll now I know. It's also day 5 without a cigarette. The only time I really think about smoking is when I have nothing to do. I've been cleaning up the house for the past half hour so I could not think about smoking, but unfortunately you can smoke while you clean so it didn't really help much at all. I'm not thinking about smoking now and that's good.

I'm going to settle in for the night and watch some old episodes of Futurama/hopefully pass out during...I think if Sariah got me some cottage cheese, I'd eat it.

Makin' Changes..
Saturday, April 21, 2007, 09:07 AM
It's 8:57, Saturday morning. I've been awake for about an hour, but then again I went to sleep only 3 hours ago. My nights are miserable as I can't relax or get situated between being too hot or too cold. My diarrhea hasn't stopped either. I'm starting to wonder if this sickness is something more severe. I guess I'll find out by Monday because if I still have diarrhea and a fever by then I'll have to assume that there's something really wrong and go to a doctor.My throat hurts and I have a headache too. It's almost like the worlds longest hangover.

Speaking of which, I think I'm going to quit drinking altogether. I know I've said that before, but it seems clear now that my body is handling my drinking in a very negative way. Also, I'm going to try to quit smoking again. I haven't smoked in the past 2 days (because I've been sick, of course) and I want to stop again because I think it's having an adverse effect on my health as well (getting random sinus colds a lot more than usual). If I quit drinking and smoking I think my health would greatly improve overall, but it's going to be difficult to do in a band with people who drink to the extreme. Only time will tell really.

Stupid sickness!!
Friday, April 20, 2007, 04:51 PM
I've been sick for the past 2 days and it sucks. Yesterday I had a fever all day long and that went all through last night/this morning as well. I tried to go into work today, but ended up leaving after coughing so hard I threw up and I've been having diarrhea all day long since. I knew I was getting sick earlier in the week, but I had no idea it would get this bad.

Sariah got a job at Burger King working with her old boss from Pizza Hut. It's not the greatest job in the world, but it will give her enough free time to do her bead stuff and still bring in enough money for us to not end up going broke. I'm happy for that at least, but she doesn't seem to happy about it. Man......I've got to go to the bathroom again. I just got off the toilet 5 minutes ago.

I hate being sick..

CFX4
Monday, April 16, 2007, 08:04 PM
I got my Axess Electronics CFX4 today. I'm going to have to get power supplies for both my MCF5 and CFX4 before I can use them, as well I'll need a MIDI cable to connect them together. From here I'll just need to get the GFX4 loop router and the Electro-Harmonix Pulsar and I'll be ready to go for live shows. I've got a little over a month to secure these items and I'm hoping I don't go broke in the process.

Time's are real tight for Sariah and I and I don't know if she's going to be able to find a job soon or not, but she really needs one because after this month we're pretty much dead in the water. I'm not worried though. I guess I don't really care. I'm just interested in pursuing the future and hopefully this year is going to be a good one for FCF because that's pretty much the only thing I have going for me here.

I think everyone wants me to bring out my new stuff, but it's pretty uneventful when it's not hooked up to anything; just two black boxes really. The amount of money I'm still going to need to spend is bothering me a little though. I'm definitely going to need to sell my Krank cab to cover what I've spent. I don't want to because I'd rather Aaron buy it, but he's pretty much made it clear that he isn't going to do so. It's really going to suck when he goes back to using his old Carvin cab.

All in a days work.
Friday, April 13, 2007, 03:00 PM
It's Friday and I'm dumping mpegs to DVD-R so I can get them off of my computer. I've got over 60GB of these files on my hard drive and I need them to disappear. It's a long process, but one I have to work on. Laymon just came down to look for some disk. Blake is working on a bunch of tapes. I'm also transferring some older commercials from one raid to another so we can free up more room on our server for additional projects. I was going to get memory for my computer, but the store we went to the other day quoted me one price and then jacked it up $100 when they called back. I definitely need more memory though. I didn't realize how little I had until Blake and I were messing around with his new Mac.

I'm pricing RAM now..
Laymon found the disk he was looking for.
It's 3PM.

I think I'm going to leave pretty soon.

Another day in paradise.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007, 07:34 AM
It's Wednesday and I'm back to work after a long, depressing weekend. Today is either going to be a breeze or really stupid. I'm pretty sure the shoots we had lined up for today are going to be canceled due to weather so that gives me enough time to get caught up on some things that need to get done fairly soon. Well, it will either be that or I'll have to endure a bunch of shit from Laymon today as I'm fairly certain he's learned of my disdain over the whole taking the website away from me thing. I have absolutely no desire to discuss it with him. He's already made his decision and that's that. I'm not going to sit there and listen to him try to explain to me why he decided to stab me in the back. If he tries to make an issue out of this, then it's going to be a really short day for me as I'll just go home.

Like I've already said, today is either going to be a breeze or it's going to be stupid.

I hate worrying...
Monday, April 9, 2007, 05:51 AM
After the most recent developments at work I've come to realize that I can't stay at Cass no matter what I may want to do. As long as Laymon is running things I will never have job security. I always used to believe that Tim and I played essential parts at Cass and couldn't simply be replaced on a whim, but after Laymon took the website away from me for no reason I can't see things the same way. I can't even relax. I feel as though I was stabbed in the back by the guy who was supposed to support me when things like this happened. I don't have anyone in my corner at Cass because the only person who sees what I do for the company is a man who will sell me out at the drop of a hat.

It sucks and I know it's going to hurt a lot of people, but I can't stay at Cass. I'm already frustrated enough as is over what's going on and I just don't know how much more of this I can take before I do something irrational like quit before I have another job. A lot of my future plans rest on me living and working here, but I won't make as much anywhere else as I am making at Cass. The money doesn't matter really, it's more or less the level of debt we're in that requires me to make a certain amount per hour. I just want a job that doesn't stress me out to the point where I'm waking up in the middle of the night thinking about the shitty deal I'm being forced to take with a smile.

What options do I have? It's not like I can stand my ground because he'll probably just convince Jerry to fire me. Jerry is about as far removed as one can get from a company and still call themselves president, but he trusts Laymon and that is a really bad combination. Knowing this, I now realize that my job is not to do the work that is expected of me, it is to kiss Laymon's ass. I'm not an ass-kisser. I do a job and I do a damn good job at it too. Unfortunately, Cass Advertising is not a professional media company. It's the whim of a man seeking nothing more than acceptance.

Molly has talked about leaving this year, but she's pregnant again so she may never leave. I think it's a bad move on her part if she stays. The stress is going to eventually get to her, especially trying to raise two kids in the process. I know for a fact that I'm leaving, I just don't know how or when or where I'm going afterwards. The most ideal post-Cass environment would be a job similar to the one I have now only with a different company located around here. The chances of that happening are slim though since there really aren't that many options to choose from. The next would be to get a similar job for a different company elsewhere in the nation. The drawback to this is that I would have to leave FCF, which is something I don't want to do and will try to avoid if at all possible. The next would be if Sariah got a job at Nestle and I simply quit. We could stay here and be making the same amount of money we're making now, but it would be harder down the road for me to get back into the video field if I leave Cass for nothing. The least ideal situation would be me just quitting with no job to go to and Sariah still being out of work. We would surely lose everything we have in the process, but if I continue to feel as bad as I do now for the next 3 months, I don't see any other way out.

I feel like....
Friday, April 6, 2007, 07:19 PM
..going out tonight, but I don't know what's going on. Most likely nothing. A call is coming in....

...it was Tim. He wants to get together for lunch tomorrow.

I think everyone expected me to quit when Tim left and I don't know why they thought that. I guess they knew we were really good friends and that if he left I probably wouldn't want to stay. The new guy is nice. I like talking to him and the more he gets comfortable with things at Cass the more I like talking to him. If I leave everyone will probably say it was because Tim left, but that really has nothing to do with it. I don't even have any strong leads right now so It's not like my departure is going to be anytime soon.

I really wish I could do something tonight, I just don't know what the hell I would do. We don't have a lot of money, but for some reason I kinda want to go out to a bar. I'm not going alone. I might as well drink at home if I'm going to do that since it would be cheaper. I don't know what I'm going to do. I guess it's time to start calling people....

Why God Why???
Friday, April 6, 2007, 01:31 PM
Well, my boss just stripped the company website away from me. He went to the owner of the company and orchestrated a plan to have a new website created for the company by Tippy design. Why? Because that's the way Laymon wanted it and to prevent anyone from getting in his way he bypassed me and Don Bell, the vice president of the company, to get it.

I am growing more and more tired of dealing with this and him. I talked to Don Bell during lunch and it was shocking to see how things like this are handled. It's like being kicked in the nuts and expected to just stand their and take it. This really sucks for me because I was feeling pretty good about things and was in a pretty good mood about work after coming off being in such a sour mood for the past month.

I feel pretty
Wednesday, April 4, 2007, 10:39 AM
Although I don't really have the money, I'm bidding on the 2nd item I need to complete my effects routing system. If I win that then I'll only need one more device (plus the cables and power supplies for everything) and I'll be ready to roll with the new setup. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not looking forward to not having enough money to live. That time is rapidly approaching since our power bill has been $150 over what I thought it was going to be for the past 2 months. I'm juggling so much stuff right now I just don't feel as though I can keep it going very long before the whole thing comes crashing down all around me. Still, I'm keeping a positive frame of mind. I really can't explain it, but I've been feeling pretty good these past couple of days. I'm in high spirits and even work isn't bothering me as much as it has in the past few months. I can't explain it, but I'm enjoying it.

Back to work.....
Tuesday, April 3, 2007, 09:49 AM
Here I am at work again. At least it's not boring today. I've got a good amount of work to do, so I'll be busy for the rest of the day I suppose. Still, I could just as easily be out of stuff to do in a matter of hours. It sucks, but there's nothing I can really do about that.

I imagine the guys will want to get together in the next couple of days if not tonight. I haven't heard anything from any of them so I don't really know for sure. I don't really have a lot to say at the moment, as if you couldn't already tell.

still sick...
Friday, March 30, 2007, 09:18 AM
Man I can't believe how shitty I feel. It's been like this all week, but I've been fighting my way through it. Wednesday I ended up leaving early thinking that if I got some rest I could get better, unfortunately that didn't help and I ended up in some strange delirium throughout the night. I woke the next morning feeling even worse, but I ended up going on a shoot we had scheduled in Greenville anyway. It was an important shoot for Greg and I knew he had been working on that contract for a long time. He was nervous about the whole thing and so was Blake (the new guy) so I ended up going just to make sure everything went okay. I got home at around 5PM and went straight to bed and there I stayed until around 6 in the morning today when I got up and went into the office to make some changes that needed to be made. I left at 7:30 to come home and get some more rest, which I'm doing now.

I can't swallow anything without being in tremendous pain so I haven't eaten anything in over 40 hours. I'm hungry, but I just can't eat. I was supposed to get together with the guys to work on songs last night, but I felt horrible when I got back from the shoot. I still feel as horrible as I did yesterday, but I just don't know what to do about it. I've already tried to sleep it off and that obviously isn't doing anything. I really don't know what to do. I just hope I feel better by Monday because I really don't want to miss anymore work.

The end of . . . .
Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 10:59 AM
I finally finished all the stuff I had to do and now I'm back to being bored once again. I'm going to go up here in a little bit and see how the weather is. I'm sure it's still shitty, but I'm going to bail early if it's still bad because I feel like shit, we're not practicing today and I have absolutely nothing to do. I'd have something to do had Laymon not hired someone else to take Tim's spot, but whats done is done and now I'm bored again.

What to do?

Future War
Monday, March 26, 2007, 09:56 AM
I guess I really should take Tim's name off the Cass website. I feel like taking my own off in the process. Things have slowed down so much. I'm bored out of my mind and I really just feel like going home. I've got a shoot today and pretty much every day this week except Friday. Had last week not turned bad on us we could have shot 2 of these commercials then, but now we have to jam them all together into one week. Will that make things any busier for me? Hell no. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this job doesn't require two people.

I didn't mind so much when Tim was here. Well, I didn't like doing nothing all day, but at least when things got really boring I could always talk to him about whatever and just shoot the shit. That element of the job is gone and Laymon has been pestering me more and more ever day. He's that person you work with who constantly comes around and talks about their weekend and all this personal shit, even though you didn't ask them how their weekend was or even want to talk to them for that matter. At this point, the job would be tolerable if he would just put some distance between himself and me, but he wont. I'm going to end up having a confrontation with him eventually. I would probably just go start one up now, but they never help my situation.

Sariah mentioned something to me about going to Nestlé and that they may be hiring soon. If she does, she'll be starting out at right around what I'm making now. If she gets a job there, then I will probably end up leaving Cass. I'll stay for a couple of months so we can get some things we've been wanting to get like a new bed and maybe a different car for me and then I'll quit. I can't really say that it's going to be the smartest move on my part, but after this whole things with Tim leaving and Laymon screwing me over I have no desire to try for this company anymore. Assuming this all works out, it will be a blessing in disguise of sorts for me. Without a full-time job I won't have to worry about not being able to tour with FCF. This is all speculation of course, but at least it would bring us a step closer to achieving what we set out to do with the writing of this new cd.

I've got to go to Jacksonville and take pictures of a few places. I might as well get that done now.

Damn it all to hell!!
Sunday, March 25, 2007, 01:25 PM
Last night I went to a show in Meredosia to see Nighttime Addiction and Vilified. Everyone from the band showed up and I had the right amount of beer in me to come up with an idea that at the time I thought would be pretty cool, however in retrospect I really don't think it was a good idea after all. We ended up playing one of our new songs before Vilified's set and not really at their request. As far as I know, they were all cool with it, but still it was kind of like us forcing ourselves onto their shit. They probably just let us do it because they were afraid that if they said no that we would be pissed at them or something. I truly feel like the worlds biggest asshole for doing that. . . . even though it felt really, really nice to play the new material in front of people.

We'll have time for playing the new material in 2 months when we do the two shows with None Taken and Honest Pod. If nothing else it was just another stern reminder that I need to just quit drinking entirely. I got pretty tipsy at the bar, but I never got drunk. Most of the time when I'm at a bar I have to put on a show for everyone around me because it's a lot easier than being me. Nobody likes me, they just like the performance. I've been me on occasion around close friends and they don't even like it. I guess it's not that hard to understand really; I'm nearly always frustrated and bitter. It comes from having a mind that's speeding along at a million miles per hour while my life is creeping along at the pace of a turtle. In other words, I think way more than I do.

Anyone who spends a little time around me could tell you that I will occasionally do this thing where it looks like I'm having some sort of mild seizure. It's because I've got so much shit going on in my head that I have to literally stop what I'm doing and try to focus. I think sometimes I prefer to be alone because at least when I'm alone I don't get as frustrated. When I'm drinking I feel like I can relate to everyone a little better because the high-speed traffic in my head slows down drastically. I can actually absorb whats coming in a lot better after a few beers. Were I not an alcoholic I would probably drink 3 beers a day just to make it easier on me to cope with other people.

Monday the new guy starts.
That ought to be interesting......

Guitar Heaven
Thursday, March 22, 2007, 12:33 AM
I won an auction tonight that I wasn't really sure I wanted to win, but am glad I did. I've been looking for a way to switch my amp and pedals all in one shot so I didn't have to tap-dance my way through songs live. Part of the solution to that problem is what I won on ebay this evening. I've also bid on another component which will help in that pursuit as well, but only time will tell if I win that auction too. If I win both, then I'll have saved quite a bit of money on the overall cost of this stuff, which would have been $710 plus shipping had I bought it new.

Assuming I win the next auction, the last device I'll need to buy will probably have to be purchased new, but that's no big deal. I'll still be saving well over $100 total. I am going to need this stuff for when we start playing shows again and that time is rapidly approaching. I just have to say it; I'm in love with my current rig. I don't think I've ever been happier with a guitar set-up as I am with what I'm running now. My Ibanez RGA121 gives me all the tonal variance that I could ever hope for in a guitar and in combination with my Rivera K100 and Krank Rev1 412 I get such a wide variety of tonal options.

I'm trying to get Aaron into the game as well. The new songs pretty much demand the ability to shift guitar sounds rapidly and right now he's still sticking with his trusty distortion on/distortion off method. It's worked for him up to this point, but the new material really demands unique tones and he has to switch things up at least as much as I am. Our new songs vary so much in sound that it seems impossible to me to even fathom playing them without a versatile rig.

I'm probably going to end up selling one of my Krank cabinets. Aaron wants to buy it, but I'll have to wait and see if he's just screwing with me or if he's actually serious. I really don't want to sell it, but I have to replace the money I'm spending on this new gear somehow as I'm not really in the best shape money-wise.

We worked on some songs tonight. "Bringin da funk" and "Southern Asshole" were the two highlights of the night and I really think they are coming along pretty well. It's cool that we're not getting caught up in the whole "this sounds too much like that" debate which has plagued every other band I've been in up to this point. Basically we're drawing from our influences and just letting loose whatever we have. It's really nice to be comfortable enough to just do it like this and have it turn out really well. Since we've been playing music for over 15 years, our musical influences vary quite drastically and we're definitely not shy about exposing that on this new cd.

Hopefully something good comes out of this because I really can't imagine us producing a better cd than the one we're gearing up to record. The real question is whether or not the audience is ready. So often, FCF gets pigeon-holed into a certain type of music that no one in the band is really fond of. While we're moving on as a group there is still a contingent of listeners who wish the band would have continued on in the tradition of "Beautiful Day". Regardless of Randy dying and me joining the band, the band's sound was growing and changing with each year. It was inevitable that the band was going to move away from that material eventually.

I think everyone is happier than they have ever been musically and that makes me happy. I'm happy because I get to share in that and help FCF mature into the band everyone in the band was hoping it would one day become. I just hope that comes across on the cd.

Ass to Ass......ASS TO ASS!!
Thursday, March 15, 2007, 09:31 AM
I finally finished my presentation video and gave the presentation yesterday. I don't make any extra money for doing that shit so I don't know why I even bother with it. Tim's not here today. He said he probably wouldn't show up, so I'm not really surprised. I'm currently finishing a commercial for Jennings Beardstown and that's about all I've got going on. I'm thinking about going back to Jacksonville for lunch, but I'm just not sure.

Last night was fun. I got together with the guys and we worked on some of the material we had been writing. It was pretty cool because nobody was arguing and for the first time in a long time it seemed as though everyone genuinely wanted to be there. We finally put together a song from the riff that Aaron came up with called "headache". The song is pretty cool now, it definitely ranks pretty high on my list of favorite songs from the new material. It's now called "Ass 2 Mouth" (long story). We also worked on the Charlie Dango song I wrote and one of the songs that Sean came up with. To top it off, I put down a riff that is going to bridge riffs written by Sean and I together into one song.

As of now, we have 14 ideas:

1. Seven Degrees From Center
2. Jimmy Buffet
3. The Saddest Song
4. Dr. Rockso
5. The Anthem
6. Scream Dream
7. Cerberus
8. Taken None
9. Stoned 2 tha Bone
10. Ass 2 Mouth
11. Locate 0
12. Bringin' da Funk
13. Southern Asshole
14. Dango

We need 2 more before we can start refining them and working them down into full songs. Really we've already gotten pretty far with a lot of them and I can't imagine it taking too much longer before we start recording the material we have. I'm pretty excited about playing these songs live. I think they have a lot more energy to them than previous songs and I really hope the crowd digs it. I also hope that we as a band have more nights like last night because it was definitely an excellent time.

Late For The Sky
Saturday, March 10, 2007, 07:20 PM
It's 6:48 on Saturday March 10th.
I'm thinking a lot about the future.

I wonder sometimes if I really know what I want to do with my life. A certain part of me wants recognition for my abilities, but the hard facts are that I don't really appreciate what I get. I guess I always think my work is more valuable than it really is. I've reflected on the past 10 years a lot lately. Sending resumes out will cause a person to do that as they are forced to evaluate the course of their life in terms of accomplishments. How do so many people spend their lives building a resume of accomplishments? For the past 10 years, I've contemplated life and my place in it. I've thought long and hard about what I wanted to do and what my next step should be.

Life doesn't stop for anyone. You never have the time to really give yourself a chance if you never had one to begin with. As I sit here now doing pretty much the same thing I was doing 10 years ago, I have to wonder if things will be the same in another 10 years. Will I be 40 and still feeling incomplete? As I contemplate these things I wonder what it will take before I feel like I've done something I can be proud of? Will I ever be proud of anything? The one thing I know for sure is that I have to get out of the midwest. While I understand the same obstacles await me wherever I go, I can't help feeling that I will never find what I'm looking for here.

It's times like these when I feel like my opportunities are gone, lost with age as though only the young can achieve something. Why I feel age has anything to do with it is beyond me. I suppose it has to do with the fact that most of my desires and interests over the past 10 years have revolved around things that only seem relevant during those years. Playing in a rock/metal band at my age, competing with people half our age nearly every weekend and trying to maintain a hope that one day our efforts will be recognized is beginning to feel less like a reality and more like a fools dream. This isn't the first time I've said this stuff. As a matter of fact, I used to say this stuff when I was still in high school.

My focus is wrong. I want to make it somehow and can't seem to accept the fact that a mundane life is pretty much all I'm going to get out of my remaining years. Even the way I describe it is negative. I always say that I'm not going to be in a band that isn't interested in making it, but the more I think about it the more I realize that I am in that band. I like being in a band, but maybe what I'm starting to dislike is the music we're playing. Maybe my musical horizons have expanded to a point where I don't feel as though mindless rock is something I can take any pleasure from. I've always considered being in a band as being in a rock band, even though there are many different styles of music out there that I like. I guess it all came down to ability over actual taste. Could I play anything other than rock/metal?

Right now, I'm listening to Late For The Sky by Jackson Browne. It's the title track for his 1974 album of the same name (duh). I listen to this song and wonder why I can't be in a band that plays music like this. Every element of this song is heartfelt. It requires a strong love of music and a dedication that I haven't been a part of in the past 17 years of my musical life. Right now, the songs I'm involved in playing are juvenile, even the ones I've helped write or have written myself. They don't express emotion the way other songs do. You really can't defer any sort of feeling from a dynamic-less, hyper-distorted and frantic guitar riff or equally frantic drum beat. I want so much to make music that has a pulse. Songs that invoke feelings on their own which are amplified by performing them live. Songs like "The Musical Box" by Genesis. Open and full of expression.

When you're in a band called Funky Circus Fleas, it's hard to imagine ever creating beautiful music that you can express yourself through.

Friday
Friday, March 9, 2007, 05:12 PM
This weekend should be all about relaxation, but it looks like I'm going to end up having to come in tomorrow and work on this video more. I've still got a long ways to go before it will be ready.

I'm dumping footage from the latest Jennings Beardstown shoot now. Thanks to poor planning Tim and I ended up waiting at Jennings for 2 hours for Jeff and Ellie to show up. Once again, an opportunity for me to work with the client and coordinate a production taken away by Laymon and his constant inability to accept the fact that I can handle my own job. I guess everyone here considers me to be mildly retarded or something. I don't know.

I think I'm going to go to bed as soon as I get home....but who am I kidding. I won't be able to.

I'm just spent.

Hell On Earth
Wednesday, March 7, 2007, 07:16 PM
I'm half-way through the week and half-way through my presentation video which is probably going to require me to work overtime on Saturday just to complete. I've been running around like crazy getting footage wherever I can and I'm probably still going to need to tap some more people to help me out on this. I was kind of freaked because when I dumped all the footage I only ended up with 14 minutes worth of stuff, but that was before I added sample commercials and also before I realized that I still have a lot left to shoot. I only have one more school involved (hopefully) and really need to make sure they can do the parts I have set aside for them. I'm also going to need to get some people from work to read some parts as well to help round out the overall product. I'm probably going to be doing the most on-screen stuff, but I was anticipating that from the beginning.

With Tim's announcement, Laymon being typical Laymon, this project and a shitty sinus cold all hitting me at the same time it's been a very frustrating week for me. I can't wait for it to be over with so I can relax for a bit. Tim isn't leaving until the 22nd, so that gives me at least a week to relax before I have to cover the tasks he performed. Laymon better give Tim some time to train me on a few of the things I haven't been taught yet or we're going to be fucked with a capital F. Even if he screws me over, I really don't care. This project is the last thing I'm going out of my way on for the company. Why should I spend my efforts trying to help Laymon build the department? All he's done since I was hired is lie to me. If he actually valued me as an employee he wouldn't shut me out, especially during this period of transition.

Let's try this again
Monday, March 5, 2007, 06:19 PM
After careful consideration, I've decided to censor myself. HA HA!!

Anyway the long and short of it is this; Laymon decided he needed to hire someone else in the production department and I've decided that being treated like a child isn't my idea of a happy work environment.

That sums it up pretty well I think....
You never know who might be watching..

Enjoy the Silence
Sunday, March 4, 2007, 10:50 AM
I feel like shit. My body is always out to sabotage me when things like this happen. I need to shoot a bunch of stuff for work all this upcoming week and put together my presentation video before March 14th. I'm going to appear in the video as well, so I'm going to have to wait to shoot my stuff until I feel better. Even after I get all the kids who want to be involved on tape, I'm still going to have a lot of space to fill. I wonder who else will be in my video?

What more is there to say than.....
Friday, March 2, 2007, 05:49 PM
...I'm content.

Tim made his announcement to everyone at Cass that he was leaving and it's impact was as expected. Laymon and I had a shoot we had to attend, which offered us the perfect chance to discuss the future. I proposed to him my idea of being the sole videographer for Cass and explained how it could work. We will be discussing it in length over the next few weeks. I suggested that we bring someone in part-time to handle the capturing, converting and transfer of spots we receive from other production houses and suggested hiring students from local high schools, but he had some plans of his own that I wasn't aware of until today. One of our new salespersons will be learning some of Molly's job for when she goes on maternity leave in October. Laymon suggested we train her how to do this and keep operations in-house. That sounded fine to me.

The final hurdle to overcome was the tech side of Tim's job in maintaining the ad insertion units. I discovered today as well that Laymon and Donnie have been discussing this eventuality for some time and have determined that Mark or Adam from the internet division would take up that responsibility. I could have learned from Tim how to maintain the units, but I really didn't want to and this keeps the tech end separate from our department the way Laymon and Donnie wanted all along. This basically frees me up to do only commercials and get more involved in the creative end of things in our department. This is a job that I can handle on my own most definitely.

The next step will be renegotiating my pay, since we're basically reorganizing the department as is and I really need to make more money since Sariah is out of work. I'm hoping that this step will meet the same favorable end as the last, but it's hard to say. We'll be saving money by not hiring another videographer, but I'm afraid that they still won't budge on pay. These are things that I will discover over time and I'm not ultra-concerned about it either. My main concern was making sure Laymon didn't hire someone else since there really is no need for it.

The third and final step will be my attempt to get out of the basement of the Cass building. If all goes to plan, I won't be doing outside ads or tech stuff, so the only real reasons for me to be physically located at the Cass building will no longer be obstacles in my path to get out of that damn basement. Still, this relies a lot on Donnie. I'm not sure he'll want me out of the building, but it's really hard to say at the moment. Again, this all will take time to sort out.

Today is the day
Friday, March 2, 2007, 07:38 AM
Well, it's time.

I'll update this after he makes his announcement and I have a chance to talk to my boss. It's going to be strange, that's for sure.

Update..
Thursday, March 1, 2007, 12:15 PM
I placed 2nd in that tournament I was in. The only reason I placed second was because I had to get it over with so I could go to lunch. I think that's still pretty good for my first online tournament. I don't think I would attempt it with real money, but it's fun to do them for play.

Okay, so today's not the day...
Thursday, March 1, 2007, 11:06 AM
Damn Tim!

I'm playing in a play money tournament right now on FullTiltPoker.com and I'm doing pretty good. The tournament started with 90 people. It's now down to 11 and I'm leading in chips. I have 6,000 more than the number 2 guy and he has over double what the 3rd ranked player has. I just cleaned out the person who had the second highest amount of money at my table by slow playing the nut flush from the flop. It was beautiful. I'm glad Chris turned me on to this site because it's pretty fun. I don't think I'll fair too well in this particular tournament since I have to leave in an hour and I know it's going to take longer than that to finish it, so I'm going to have to make a lot of silly moves and rush things to either lose all my chips or win really fast.

A small step for man......
Wednesday, February 28, 2007, 10:51 PM
Tomorrow is the first day of March and I'll be taking the first steps toward a new life. Tomorrow appears to be the day in which Tim will announce to our boss that he has accepted a job in Topeka, Kansas and will be leaving Cass in a matter of weeks. Tomorrow will also be the day I propose to my boss that he make me a supervisor over the production department in Tim's absence. I don't know how it's going to go, but I'm hoping for the best. At least some questions will be answered, like how much I'm valued as an employee at Cass. For Tim, the question was answered 3 years ago when our boss had Tim's cable internet installation duties stripped from him. He's spent the past 3 years doing his part for the company, but seeking additional education on his own time and doing what he could to advance himself beyond the company. It was the best thing for him since the company had no interest in offering Tim an avenue of advancement.

Tim's announcement is going to be a powerful one and will most likely bring about a lot of hysteria amongst upper management, especially our boss. This is why I want to propose my idea to him before Tim breaks his news. Even though he may dismiss the idea at first, once Tim announces he's leaving he'll at least have that fresh in his mind and may be more willing to act upon it. After all if Tim's leaving, who's to say I'm not next? I desire more responsibility and a greater sense of affirmation from my job, something I'm not going to get if things stay the way they are. In my mind, this proposal is not just a chance for me to advance in the company, it's the only thing that is going to keep me at Cass.

I've given it a lot of thought and by staying with Cass under these conditions, I'm doing nothing more than denying myself the ability to advance in my career path. I've wanted to propose this for a while, but out of respect for Tim I didn't as he has more seniority at Cass than I do and it wouldn't have been right for me to be promoted to a supervisory position over him. With Tim leaving, my hopes of reaching that next plateau are now upon me and I have to take action before I miss my opportunity. If our boss decides he wants to keep things the way they are, then he will force my hand in pursuing outside employment. All things come to an end and I'm hoping what comes to an end are my days as nothing more than a videographer for Cass. The alternative is not one I'm too fond of, but it will be all I'll have left.

Assuming our boss refuses my request, the inevitable conclusion will be me leaving Cass, but the truly bad news will come in the form of where I'll be relocating to. See, there aren't really a lot of jobs in my neck of the woods for a videographer/multimedia engineer, so I will be forced to go where the jobs are....and that isn't here. The closest I could hope to find a job would be Chicago, however even one of the largest cities in the US has a limited selection of available options. Were I to find a job that required me to locate so far away, I would be forced to leave FCF as there's no way I could keep driving back to practice and play shows. This prospect puts me in a very awkward position as I don't want to leave the band, but at the same time I don't want to stay at Cass if I'm not happy.

If my journal is any indication of how my mind operates, it should be no mystery to anyone that there's only so long I can stand to work somewhere I hate working before I up and quit. There is no way I can just quit since Sariah doesn't have a job and even if she did she couldn't make enough to cover our debt level. I'm not going back to those days when we had nothing and Sariah was the only one working, but will I endure year after shitty year to do so? As usual I'm jumping so far ahead in the story that I'm probably scaring people who are reading this. I have no reason to believe that my proposal will be denied. My boss and I work together well and he's even mentioned to me before that he wanted me to assume a position of greater responsibility because he felt I was a person he could count on to make sure things get done. He knows I care about the department and he's been very generous with me up to this point. I honestly can't see him turning me down, but there's really only one way to find out.

Tomorrow is the beginning.

It's about time!
Wednesday, February 28, 2007, 12:45 AM
I may have finally figured out how to solve my little effects loop/channel switching problem I was eyeballing a pedal by Carl Martin called the Combinator 2 to solve my problems, but it appears as though even this device isn't versatile enough to handle my needs. I thought of a millions different ways to make something else work, but kept coming up short. Now, I think I've found it.

A company called Axess makes a midi-controlled loop router for guitar amps as well as a midi-controlled channel switcher. If I were to buy these two units and run them together I could effectively program my channel switching/loop routing via a midi foot controller. The best part is that the combined price of all of this comes in under what I would have had to pay for the Combinator 2. With these devices I could keep all my pedals in a secure area back by my amps (limiting extensive audio cable runs) and control everything from one foot switch.

I don't know how I'm going to pay for it all, but I really need to get this before we start playing shows. It will be worth it though just to get rid of the tap-dancing and potential pedal destruction that awaits not doing it.

Waco Charbroiled Corpse-Burger
Saturday, February 24, 2007, 12:13 AM
Well, I didn't go to HQ tonight so I got to spend a night at home getting my head back in order. I don't know if I succeeded or not, but I've been having a good laugh at least. Tonight I decided to bust out some really old material that me and the guys recorded back in 1997/1998. One of the highlights was Palestinian Suicide Squad, which was a one-off recording project featuring me on vocals, Sean (Dynamo) on Guitar and Tim (Screamin' Chim) on drums. We recorded that on cassette tape back in 1997 shortly after I got back from Florida. It was one of many fun times we've had with a few instruments, a recorder and lots of spare time.

Some more gems include Chemikal Burn, our acoustic group featuring Tim, Sean, my wife Sariah and me on a variety of instruments including bongos, a recorder (the wind instrument) a violin and assorted acoustic guitars. Some other great recordings came from the year 1998 when Sean, Tim and myself got together at my apartment back when I lived in Beardstown with nothing but a guitar, a keyboard, a shitty radio-shack mixer and a mini-disc recorder. This was also the period when I came up with my alter ego Charlie Dango. I'm currently listening to "Rainbow Parade" the second song from that recording session.

I think back to that time and how truly happy I thought I was, but really I don't think I was. It definitely seemed like I had a lot more creativity back then. I couldn't sit down with a guitar and a mic and record this many songs in one setting again if I tried. Granted the songs aren't really any good, but they sure are funny. The funniest part is that I used to make my friends listen to this stuff all the time. I was really proud of it at the time....not so much anymore. Really it's just a snapshot of me at a more innocent time in my life.

Tomorrow I will probably be getting together with Damon, but who knows. I know I won't have a car so he'll have to come to Jacksonville and that might end up being a deal-breaker for him. I guess I'll find out tomorrow. If he doesn't show up then I really don't know what I'll do. Tonight the guys got together out at HQ without me. I wonder if they got any more done? Again, another thing I won't know until tomorrow.

I feel exhausted...
Friday, February 23, 2007, 10:28 AM
Even though I had Monday off, this week has just seemed like it's taken forever to get through. It's Friday now and I have some plans for this weekend. I've gone out to HQ every night since last Sunday night. I don't know why I went out there last night, but I did. I guess I wanted to practice a little bit. I know that I've found myself at the end of my work day pondering the idea of going home and doing nothing versus going to HQ and doing nothing and for some reason HQ seems more inviting even though it's usually cold and there's no one else out there and nothing really going on.

I'm not going out to HQ tonight simply because I really need to take a break from going out there. If I don't then when I need to go out for something I probably wont want to. Anyway, this weekend Fred Cawley may be stopping by HQ to mess around and just have some fun. Sunday we're going to be guests on WQLZ Bandemonium. I hate doing things on Sunday night because I usually don't want to go to work the next day, but I'm the one who set this thing up so it would be pretty stupid of me not to go. No, I'm not thinking of not going, I'm just grumbling a little about having to go.

Aaron hasn't been out to HQ all week. I've heard rumors of him using quite a bit recently and I just don't understand why he would want to do that to himself. Perhaps it's his lack of confidence, I don't know. I don't even know if it's true, but he has seemed preoccupied lately and hasn't been seen for the last week. Maybe he got around to reading my journal and was upset by what I said. If that were true I'm sure I would have heard about it by now.

We've gotten pretty far with this writing process and although it hasn't gone according to plan, we're still making things work. It just seems like a rift has formed in the band between those of us who want to take this thing seriously and those who are either too busy doing other things or simply don't care how it turns out. I believe with all my heart that Sean, Chris and I all care deeply about this new cd and it shows by how much we've gotten done so far. Aaron has yet to re-record his parts and add more to the song ideas he's started. Bub hasn't re-recorded his parts either and while he did come out Wednesday night to work on an idea he had, I kept getting the feeling that the only reason he came out was because he felt like he was being pressured into it.

I tried last night to come up with some more stuff and really couldn't come up with anything. I'm spent. There's not even a fragment of an idea rattling around inside my head. It's really up to the rest of the guys at this point to come up with some more song ideas. I've been somewhat disturbed by the last times I worked with Aaron and Bub on song ideas. They both had an idea that they wanted to bring to the table, but they didn't want to own it. Both of them seemed as though they wanted to just show me a riff they came up with and see where I would take it. I guess there is a role of leadership that has to be assumed in times like that and I'm that guy that everyone looks to. I have a hard time assuming that role because I feel awkward in it. I would rather everyone act as their own leader when it comes to their ideas.

I wonder how long it will take before the cracks get too large to cover up and things begin falling apart? Perhaps I'm just assuming too much. Whenever Sean and I spend a considerable amount of time together I become a really bad psychic with paranoia issues. The truth is that if you spend enough time talking about someone without giving them a chance to present their case or defend themselves, you're just building up a wall of cynicism inside yourself. Every assumption is a brick stacking the odds against them that they'll ever break through. It's safe to say that I am not the type who reaches out to people in need. I wait for people to open up to me. This isn't the best maneuver in delicate situations as I am a matter-of-fact kind of guy and when people open up they are exposed and don't respond well to frank dialog. Typically the result is the other person never opening up to me again and I'm left wondering why.

I'm single-minded, but scatterbrained. It's easy for things to slip right by me without even knowing anything was going on. I get scared every time I think about all the stuff I don't catch even though it's right under my nose. To others it's the most obvious stuff, but to me it's invisible. Since I can't spot the real problems, I manufacture hypothetical problems to worry myself over. I imagine Sariah gets pretty tired of me asking her if anythings wrong all the time. I know there's something wrong though and it's pointless for me to ask her if there is or not because I already know, yet I ask her constantly.

I sometimes think that everyone preferred me in a role where they didn't have to deal with me. People liked me more as a person they could talk to about the problems they were having in the band, not as a source of the problems. I think of the ideology behind being in this band and the prevailing attitude that we should just have fun and live in the moment. Well, I'm 30 years old and I'm finding it harder and harder to live in the moment. FCF has been living in the moment since it's inception. 10 years later, the band is still in the same place doing the same thing. Sure the audience has grown a little, but the rest of the country awaits. I can live in the moment on my own time. I can hang out and do things with my friends outside of a band setting. The band isn't my excuse to pursue freedom. I think for some members that's really all it has been for them - an escape. They don't think beyond the escapism aspect because that's really all they wanted out of the band in the first place.

Escape. Escape from what? Life is hard sometimes and it's rewarding others. There are ups and downs and not everything goes according to plan. You get used to it and try to make the best with what you have until you have what it takes to get more. I really can't sympathize with people who say life is too hard. Life can be hard for everyone, but it doesn't have to be. Every decision you make throughout your life has repercussions later on. Making the right decision today to better your future tomorrow is the only way. To me, that is living for the moment.

Moving right along..
Monday, February 19, 2007, 11:35 AM
Yesterday was quite productive. Sean and I went out to HQ at around 2PM and we started re-recording all the material we had written up to that point. See, we had recorded it before, but due to equipment malfunctions and moving our equipment from room to room, we ended up with a bunch of songs where the tracks jump around so randomly that it was really hard to listen back to what we had. We listened to the drum parts first and then played them again and recorded them so we could condense everything down to an 8-track scratch pad for future use. Also, we gave the songs temporary names so we could all refer to the songs by a name rather than trying to play mouth guitar.

The tentative song titles are as follows:
1. Seven Degrees From Center
2. Jimmy Buffet
3. The Saddest Song
4. The Anthem
5. Scream Dream
6. Dr. Rockso
7. Stoned 2 tha Bone
8. Headache
9. Cerberus

Stoned 2 tha Bone is the song Ottwell came up with and that he and I spent the remainder of our Friday practice working out ideas for. Sean liked it and we decided it was good enough to keep. Cerberus is something new that Sean and I wrote. It's very much in the vein of Isis, which is totally cool to me. Of these 9 songs there is one that is questionable and that's The Anthem. I don't know if we're going to keep that one or not, but I guess when we all get together again we'll have to talk about it and decide whether or not it stays or goes. Sean and I also killed another song we had recorded before which was some cheesy 80's rock song I wrote. We recorded something with acoustic guitars, but we couldn't listen to is because of the set up we had going out of the Alesis, but I don't even remember us getting that far with it anyway.

Of the 9 songs we have, only 2 of them are completed music-wise. If memory serves, 2 of them are 3/4 finished and 3 of them are 1/2 finished. 2 of them are only one riff and still need a lot of work. At first I thought we would have to push back our proposed release from April to May, but if we can stay focused on what we're doing and whip out more songs like what we already have then we should be able to keep our April date after all. I'm sure some other people in the band are going to be upset with Sean and I when they learn of what we did, but both of us agree the time has come that we all need to sit down and decide what we're all going to do in relation to this new cd.

Turn that shit down!
Sunday, February 18, 2007, 02:34 AM
I've been thinking of scaling down my rig for a week or so now. A few entries ago I mentioned the Mesa Road King, but after Friday night's writing session I'm going in a different direction. Outside of the drama that seemed to dominate the night, I was experimenting with new sounds and trying to see if I could back off the gain a bit and still have a sound that worked with what we were doing. I reduced my full rig to just my Rivera and one Krank 412. At first I set all the controls as I would normally, but soon realized that it was just too much. I started working with the controls a bit and ended up reducing my gain to around 6 and disengaging the channel boost, which up to this point was always on. The difference was night and day in comparison to my old sound.

I started playing a riff to one of our new songs that I always felt was too cluttered and mushy. This time the chordal tone was fantastic. I could make out the full spectrum of the chord, rather than just the root, a fifth and a bunch of saturation. I decided to leave my amp on this setting for the duration of the night and found that I was free to vary the dynamics of my playing. I started slipping into a groove, using more pickup positions on my guitar than I have previously used, varying my pick attack and (gasp) actually adjusting my tone knob. I plan to keep things this way for the duration of the writing process and quite possibly on into recording and playing live.

Since I've done this I've been giving considerable thought to getting a different amp. It's not that I don't like the sound I'm getting from my Rivera because I do. I just feel that if I'm going to alter my sound to this extent I really don't need an amp with enough gain to make it a metal amp. Also, with a years worth of shows ahead I have to start thinking about hauling my stuff from show to show. As it is now, I'm preparing for a future purchase of a live-in amp head case with 6 space rack mount for the Rivera, the Peavey M2600 and a few of my effects. This is going to run me around $500-$600 and it's going to be a real pain in the ass to lug around on top of two 412 cabinets and a 212 combo amp (assuming I ever get that Deuce put back into one).

Wouldn't it be nice if I had a simple 212 combo amp and extension cabinet and that's it? I've been looking into a Vox AC30 as a replacement for my Rivera. I would run into a slight problem with the effects, but nothing I couldn't get around with enough tenacity. I've never played through one before, so I would really need to test it out first. It's only 30 watts, which makes me wonder if it would be loud enough for practical use as our shows get pretty damn loud. The only way to know for sure is to try one out. I'm on the fence about it though. I really like my Rivera and don't really want to get rid of it, but I'd have to in order to offset the cost of the AC30 and extension cab. Perhaps over time I'll figure out what to do, but for right now the Rivera is working and I couldn't be happier.

You're by my side, You're in my heart
Saturday, February 17, 2007, 11:58 AM
Last night I went out to HQ to set everything up for us to be able to get back to writing. Everything was going good until Aaron showed up and immediately began whining about the fact that I forgot to bring my installation discs for XP and Vegas with me. From that point on, all Aaron did for the rest of the night was complain about how he didn't like what I had done. See, I moved my amp into room 1 so I could isolate my guitar from the drums which were in room 2. I would have moved Aaron's stuff in there with me, but I was afraid he'd throw a fit. Apparently Aaron throwing a fit is unavoidable.

I guess everyone has there issues. It just really bothers me that Aaron is a guitar player in a band yet has no personal ambition to become better. Worse yet is that his ego is so fragile that if you even attempt to get him to practice something he'll self destruct. I think it's important that we all come to the table with ideas and work them out, but I'm really tired of just coming up with a riff and then obsessing over it until there really is no magic left in it. Aaron excels at this and then wonders why his riffs never stick. If only he would be a bit more liberal with his offerings he could start to understand how Sean and I work.

We come up with ideas all the time and probably only 10% of those ideas ever stick. He's even witnessed me working on a riff for 2 or 3 hours just to let it go at the end of the night. To me it seems like when he puts in that much work he does two things: One, he does what he always does when he does something on his own, he gloats about it and Two, he expects us to do something with it and if it's clear the riff isn't working out he goes into his own shell and won't come back with any new ideas for a month or two. I feel as though I have to coddle Aaron and the fact is that he's given me absolutely no reason to feel otherwise. Last night after I told him all he had been doing is complaining since he got there, he put down his guitar and left. He eventually came back, but didn't do anything for the rest of the night.

I hate going out to HQ to do something productive and end up feeling like I'm kicking myself in the nuts. I'm growing more and more tired of the constant routine. We always get together at 7PM. If we start working on stuff before 7PM it would be a fucking miracle. Usually everyone has shit they have to do the next day so they're gone no later than 1 in the morning. So 7PM to 1AM; that's six hours. Unfortunately of those six hours, 2 of them are spent in conversation, drinking, and getting everything together. Lately it's been giving our amps time to heat up and dry from the moisture condensation. Still, on a day like today will any of us go to HQ at say 1PM and start working on stuff? Hell no. Everyone has things they have to do that are more important that writing this new cd. I'm not even saying that sarcasticaly, it's the god's honest truth. No one seems to want to come out and say it, but it's the truth. The only person in the band who doesn't have something more important going on is me. Once that changes though, I'll have to deal with everyone doubting my commitment and suspecting me of trying to leave the band. The same old bullshit.

I guess after staying out there till 3AM last night, recording drums, bass and guitar for a new song and helping Ottwell work out some vocal arrangements on the part he wrote, I feel as though we all really need to start dedicating more time to the band until this thing is finished. I'm totally convinced that Sean and I could write the whole damn album ourselves if it was just us out at HQ together. The only problem with that is that it wouldn't be a FCF record. Last night, Aaron brought up that we were more interested in Ottwell's riff than his. This is true. Ottwell's riff was brand new material to focus on and it was easy, melodic and followed a certain chord structure that immediately popped in everyone's head who heard it. I could tell that Ed, Sean, Chris and myself were all hearing vocals over it while we were playing it. Those are the kind of riffs that work the best, the ones that just click in everyone.

I can't stress enough on how writing songs is not a competition, yet I always feel like Aaron thinks he's on the losing end of it. He's full of shit because we're already working on ideas of his he just pulls this out whenever he wants to make us feel bad. Well I don't feel bad and I never will. This isn't the old FCF where just putting two or three chords together gets you a song. Still to this day I don't care for Pete's Adventure, Shut Your Mouth and a few of the other ideas they were working on toward the end of the Randy era. They sound exactly as they were, thrown together. Aaron's riffs range from really good to flat out frantic nonsense. He needs to learn to keep the good riffs and discard the nonsense. I do it all the time. If we kept 90% of the riffs I came up with we would be a metal band. I don’t want that, but I’ve been stuck in that mode for so long it’s hard for me to break away from it, but I’m trying. I’m trying to do something different. Why can’t Aaron?

The undeniable future
Wednesday, February 14, 2007, 09:41 PM
I'm facing a change in my life. I can't really talk about it because I don't know for sure who knows about this blog, but let's just say I know something that others don't and quite possibly it is soon to unfold. Sorry for being so cryptic, but I've been focused on it for a while now and I really don't have any solid answers to the questions I've been asking myself. The one thing I know for sure is that circumstances of my life are going to change and I need to be ready for it.

I've gone over it a hundred times in my head and each time I feel as though I have a handle on things. This isn't really the case though. I'm a mess inside and I need closure before I can move on. The anticipation is really getting the best of me. Do I crack under pressure? That's a question I've never really asked of myself so I really don't have an answer. I can't even recall a time when I've felt as much pressure as I do now. I guess you could say that not having any control over this situation really freaks me out.

I have to lay out my plans firmly and surely. I need to stick to those plans and commit myself wholly to them. I'm afraid if I leave myself any outs then I'll take one and forfeit the only opportunity I have to make things better. I'm unsure of myself and I have every right to be unsure as I really didn't plan for any of this even though the wheels have been in motion for some time now. Now I find myself caught. I still have a week to form a solid plan of attack and I suppose I should be thankful for that. However, due to the amount of time I have from now till then I can't really say I'm in a pinch.

Sure, I'm kinda freaking out inside, but I don't want to seem overly rash and end up jumping the gun. I have to remain silent and wait. I have to prepare for what is coming and decide the day in which I will take action. Am I getting stirred up for no reason? Possibly. In all truthfulness I hope that I'll have spent this time in vain. I don't feel as though I'm ready for change, but if not now then when? I can't rest on the idea that everything will stay the same. If I do I won't be ready for the moment and it will pass me by. So until then I will remained focused on this situation.

I'm walking down a long hallway with many doors to my left and right spanning the entire length of the hallway with only one door in front of me. The door is too far away to see clearly, but I know it's there. Each door to my side represents a known possibility. The thing is, each of the doors on my sides lead to the same exit. These exits, as attractive as they may be, lead me to a place I don't really want to be. The only door that remains a mystery is the one directly in front of me at the end of the hall. The problem is this; they mystery behind this door will be kept from me until I have already passed through it. The problem is that this door in fact may be just like all the other doors. There really is only one way of knowing for sure. Do I have what it takes to make it to the end; to discover the hidden possibility?

Snow Day!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007, 02:16 PM
I wish! Instead I had to stay home from work due to the horrible blizzard we got. It's still snowing at 2:05PM and I've cleaned off the walkway to my house at least 3 times already. I would have tried to make it in, but Sariah's car is horrible on snow - ANY SNOW! I can't count how many times that car has lost control even on the most moderate of snowfalls. Had I tried to go to work today I would have ended up in a ditch for sure and probably need to have the car towed out. So, to spare myself a huge tow bill, I figured I would just use a PTO day. It sucks, but I'd rather use PTO time than have to pay out and still miss work.

Sean, Aaron and I went out to HQ last night. It's becoming pretty typical that we three are the only ones out there. Bub shows up sometimes even when no one else does, but it's rare. Even more rare is Ottwell's presence and he lives there. Anyway, we were just jacking around a bit. I'd been there for a few hours before Aaron and Sean showed up. I didn't have any heat because the propane was completely gone, so when they showed up we went and got some. The rest of the time was spent talking about stuff or just working on ideas for riffs. Aaron felt it was pretty productive. I thought so too, however I was kind of in my own world and Aaron wasn't playing guitar. I was working on a melody that I was thinking about before I ever got out there and just coming up with a cool riff to compliment it.

It was nice to just work on riffs in the presence of everyone else and not really delve into a lot of discussion about things. I prefer to let the music do the talking when in situations like that. Still, I like to zone out and really focus on a song. Had we the capability to record last night, I would have laid down what I was working on to tape just to see how it would all play out. Unfortunately Ed took his power amps back to his house and pretty much all his mics. I think losing his mixer really messed with his head. Even though conditions out there are crappy, there are ways around it...like waiting until all the condensation on your equipment is dried up before powering it up. Still, I don't blame him. I wish it weren't like that, but there's not a whole lot we can do about that right now.

Sex Cauldron?
Sunday, February 11, 2007, 08:15 PM
Right now I'm using three amps and 3 412 cabinets as my guitar rig. It's quite cumbersome and takes a while to set up and tear down. One of the benefits is that I have 2 fully independent effects chains so I can simply switch from one sound to another with one push of a button. Before I would almost literally have to tap dance my way through a change. I like having simplicity, but in order to have it I must run an amp chain such as the one I'm running now.

This weekend I've been giving some thought to getting a different amp. I don't see myself getting one anytime soon since I don't really have any money, but I'm thinking that if the Rivera continues to disappoint I may end up selling it and getting something else. Now, what if I could get an amp that reduces my current rig back down to a half stack? One head that had multiple channels and multiple effects loops assignable to each channel independently? I think I might have found such a head in the Mesa Road King. It's a 4-channel head with 2 independent power stages, 2 rectifiers, 2 independent effects loops, built-in reverb and enough power and versatility to reduce my need for massive arrays of amps.

Right now I only have one delay pedal and it's in-line to my clean rig only. If I want distortion with delay, I'd need a second delay pedal. With this amp, I could have a clean channel with delay, a distortion channel with delay and another distortion channel without delay and still have another channel available for whatever else. To me that speaks volumes for the amp itself. The only downside to this amp is it's price, which I believe comes in around $3000. Still, I'm starting to feel like it's a price worth paying for a practical solution to my rig problems. It's either that or I lug around this behemoth of a rig I'm currently using now.

So why Mesa? A couple of days ago I mentioned an FCF practice where I finally got my Rivera back after waiting 2 months for a repair to be completed. After getting it back, I found that I wasn't really digging the sound anymore. What I had been digging for those previous months was the sound I was getting from the Mesa Dual Rectifier I had been using in it's place. I previously bashed this amp for being a big disappointment, but then I learned how to dial it in and was completely turned around on it. Still, I'm going to continue working with the Rivera to try and get it back to the sound I had before I sent it off to be fixed. I'm almost positive I've got it reset to the way it was, but I won't know for sure until we all practice again. I may be jumping the gun a bit with all this talk of getting a different amp, but it would be nice to have just a half-stack again.

Dale Jones is not funny
Sunday, February 11, 2007, 10:16 AM
Last night was nice. Chad came to Jacksonville to hang out and get something to eat. Via my suggestion we ended up going to Springfield to eat and see a comic. The meal was good, but the comic was horrible. We stayed until we finished our beer, payed our tab and then left. Neither of us laughed once. Oh well. You win some and you lose some.

After the show we went to Meijer's and Super Wal-Mart so Chad could look for movies and some stuff for his guns. All in all I had a fun night, despite being bored to death by a shitty comic. It was the first time in a long time in which I did something with one of my friends that didn't end up with me being horribly drunk by the end of the night/following morning.

Look at what I've done...
Saturday, February 10, 2007, 12:10 PM
We practiced a little last night. I say a little because we didn't really do much because I was too preoccupied with my amp. I was struggling to get it to sound right and every time I would make a change I would only make it worse. I was getting kind of scared because I began to think that I was happier with the sound I got from the Mesa than my Rivera. It wasn't until everyone else threw in the towel that I was able to get my sound back to where I had it before I sent it out to get fixed. That's when I started noticing the problem. I don't know exactly what's causing it, but I do know it's centralized somewhere in the power section. There's an occasional series of snaps accompanied by some low-level hiss. It was there before I sent it out to get fixed, but I don't remember it happening as frequently as it was last night.

On another note, I was able to try out my new pedal last night. It's an Electro Harmonics Holy Grail. I knew for a long time I needed reverb for my distorted channel, but kept putting it off until it got closer to the time when we would begin recording. It's a great pedal and does everything I need and more. The only problem is that the writing process isn't really kicking back into gear. Aaron came up with a couple of riffs last night, but they didn't go anywhere. While I liked Aaron's main riff, I'm disappointed in the fact that he only comes up with occasional riffs and never really ties them together. On top of that he tends to half-ass the whole thing by claiming he doesn't have the riff worked out. In my mind, if you don't even know how to complete the riff you're bringing to the table, then you probably shouldn't bring it to the table. People in this band need to start taking ownership of their roles and following through on what they set out to do.

Another impacting factor last night was alcohol. Everyone (besides Bub and I) were drinking and toward the end of the night it really showed. No one was in the spirits to do anything and by 9:30 we were finished. As far as a practice session ending, that's a record for us I believe. I'm glad I've quit drinking at practices because it's really allowing me to see how inefficient we are when we get together. Between the TV (which is a new obstacle), people paying a visit hoping to hear us practice and the massive time consumer which is alcohol, I'm surprised we've gotten anything done. In truth, we haven't gotten much done. We've got 8 ideas on tape and some of them are merely one riff while others are nearly an entire song.

Sean made a statement to the band when we booked our February 3rd show which is as true then as it is today. He said that he was afraid that if we take a break from writing, we were going to come back to the material we have and not like it as much as we did when we left it. Of the ideas we've been working on, I think only 2 of them are any good. A lot of the stuff we've been writing has been kind of slower paced and not really upbeat. Ottwell hasn't put anything down for vocals besides a chorus and while it's good, I can already foresee the problems we're going to have down the road. We could probably dump 5 of the 8 ideas and no one would care in the least. My goal is to make sure we turn out a demo we can all be happy with, but at the same time predominantly features catchy songs with hooks galore. I know the vocals have to shine on this one and I really wish there was a point where Ottwell and I could go out there and just work on that stuff, but it's hard. It's hard because we're both too flaky.

AWESOME!!
Friday, February 9, 2007, 02:10 PM
My Rivera is fixed. I'm going to Springfield in an hour to pick it up. It will be nice to finally have my amp back after all this time. I've missed it very much. I guess this means I'm going out to HQ tonight after all. I didn't know if I was going to go earlier today, but now I'll need to take my amp there to drop off at the very least.

I also got the Apogee Mini-Me today at work. It's a bit cold and I don't want to fire it up yet. I'll probably give it a thorough test next week.

Making The Band
Wednesday, February 7, 2007, 08:56 AM
Tomorrow I meet with the doctor to discuss my hemorrhoids and determine whether or not I need a colonoscopy or possible surgery. Before I meet with the doctor I have to meet with Sariah’s accountant so we can get our taxes done. We’re going to have to live on that money until Sariah can get a job. We’ve been so foolish with our money over the past 3 months and it really shows. I would have kicked my own ass 5 years ago for having blown through as much money as we did. I only hope that she finds a job soon.

This winter has sucked. It’s literally sucked the life out of everything we’ve been trying to do. We’re probably going to get together this week and set everything back up. At least I think we will. No one has contacted me yet this week and something tells me that they’re waiting till Thursday, even though they all should know that I have to go to the doctor on that day and most likely won’t be making a special trip to HQ from J-Ville. With Sean back in school again and everyone’s work schedules conflicting it’s going to be a little difficult trying to make this work. It would be nice if any one of us could just go out to HQ and screw around with recording, but HQ still isn’t finished and we don’t have a constant source of heat out there. That stuff costs money and that’s something we don’t have a lot of right now. Sure, we just got $600, but that really has to go toward a trailer.

I know that a portion of my income tax money has to go toward me getting what I should have gotten when I got my Christmas bonus. I need a live-in case for my amps so I don’t have to keep hauling them around individually. It’s a pain in the ass to have to drag all that mess around and keep setting it up and tearing it down for each show. It will be so much easier to just wheel the amps in, hook up a couple of cables and go. The downside to that is the price, which is going to come in at around $500. That sucks, but if we’re going to be doing a lot of shows this year (and I’m hoping we will) then I’m going to need to be able to transport my amp without worry and with minimal set-up/tear-down time as possible. Is that worth $500 to me? It sure is.

Puppy Bowl III Rocked!!
Monday, February 5, 2007, 12:54 AM
Saturday was FCF's first show in a couple of months and a lot of people turned out for it. I'd have to say that it was a pretty good show despite the fact that we couldn't play any new material. I'm starting to think that maybe we did the show for no reason though. We obviously don't have enough money for a trailer and we're most likely going to have to do another show before we can afford one or even come close. We've got to get back to writing so we can get back to playing shows, I just don't know how that's going to work out for everyone. .

I feel kind of sick to my stomach, which has been going on for about 4 days now and I don't know why. I guess I can bring it up to the doctor when I meet with him on Thursday. Hopefully I won't miss a lot of work due to my current situation. . . . I forgot why I wanted to make a journal entry. I guess I got bored and wanted to type some stuff. Sariah freaked out on me tonight for no reason. That's about the only thing that happened today. Oh, I did drink a few beers last night, but didn't get drunk...actually I didn't even get a buzz going. I was actually able to control myself and not go overboard. I was pretty proud of myself considering the fact that everyone else was pretty drunk.

I'm going to spend this year trying to better myself. I've already severely cut back on my drinking, but that is just the first step. Next I'm going to start talking to a doctor about what options I have to lose about 70 pounds. I need to find out what foods my body is sensitive too and start making changes in what I eat. I also need to start and stick with a daily workout plan. I was thinking about joining a gym, but I'm still a little to insecure to take that step. Don't get me wrong, I'm confident enough in myself to do whatever I set my mind too and my weight doesn't really bug me all that much, but I can't really say that I'm happy with my appearance. I believe I can be better, I've just never really worked at it before.

A big reason I'm trying to make these changes to better myself is because of my health. I can't escape the fact that I've been sick a lot in the past year and that I just generally feel tired and in a weakened state most everyday. I don't like feeling that way and I'm afraid that if I don't do something about it that I'm going to have a heart attack or something. My daily routine is bullshit and I've known it for a long time now. Were it not for my job, I would most likely be at home 90 percent of the week. I need to feel energized again and take the necessary steps to take back my life. It really sucks fighting myself to get up in the morning, drag myself out of bed and then spend the day feeling like I'm one step away from falling asleep before rushing home to spend the rest of the evening sitting at home and watching television. It sucks and I'm really sick and tired of it.

So, I'm reducing my alcohol intake, taking steps to improve my health and preparing to enter myself into a lifestyle change that will result in both more energy and a more positive outward reflection of myself. The one thing I really don't think I'll give up is smoking. If I have a vice, then that's the one I don't think I'll be able to shake. I can stomach being around drinkers without drinking, but smoking....no way. Sure, it's eventually going to kill me or worse, but there is only so much a person can cut from there lives before they realize they're trying to be a completely different person. Not to make it sound like cigarettes are a part of my personality, but the will and desire to smoke is. Maybe that will change down the road. I stopped smoking for about 4 years so I'm pretty sure I could do it again if I chose to.

For many years I've followed the path of self-destruction with my friends at my side. The further down the path we go, the more I realize that I don't want to be on that path anymore. I've got to find a new way and hopefully the damage I've done can be undone or at least halted. I only hope my friends one day realize that their lives are too important to throw away on substance abuse. Anyone can change if they want to. I just wonder what clarity will be revealed to those who take those first steps down the new path. Perhaps a lot of our past and current decision making has been dictated by the path of destruction. If we make that change in our own lives will our mindset also change? Will the things that seemed important before seem trivial after? I don't know. I've gone through a lot of changes (mostly emotional) in the past and while I've always come back to destroying myself in the past, I truly feel that I'm ready to try something new no matter how uncomfortable it may be at first.

My ass is on fire!
Monday, January 29, 2007, 08:32 AM
Well it’s been a full week since I took my renewed oath to not drink anymore and I’ve been successful….of course I’ve also been out of commission too. It’s easy to not drink when you can’t really go anywhere or do anything. That was my situation all this past week as I was laid out with an insane inflammation of hemorrhoids. I’ve had them for about 3 to 4 years now, but this is the first time they’ve ever gotten like this. Usually I just have to deal with blood in my stool, but now I have full on rectal bleeding like never before.

Even now as the pain has subsided and I can finally come back to work, I’m still bleeding like a woman on her period. Unfortunately for me this isn’t the end of the story. I have to go to a special doctor on February 8th and get a colonoscopy performed and according to the doctor I saw last Friday, possibly surgery. I don’t know why I would need surgery, but the doctor I saw didn’t really seem too interested in figuring out what was wrong with me, rather he seemed more intent on getting me out of his office as quickly as possible.

So, here I am with a weeks worth of PTO time burned off in the first month of the year and I may still have to use more time. I don’t like the policy here at Cass regarding this sort of stuff. I mean I’ve already used a week of my personal time because I was incapacitated and now I may have to use 2 or 3 more days of it for the same damn thing. That really pisses me off because I know Laymon misses more days than I do and he doesn’t have to answer to anyone about it. He gets the treatment we should get considering we’re basically doing the same thing. He’s selling, but we’re making the commercials. It’s not a job that has us constantly working all the time and as long as we get our work done on time we should be afforded the same leniency that he is. Unfortunately that’s not the case and my yearly evaluation will reek of the familiar sound of missing too many days. Well what do you expect when I have to use PTO time when I’m out for a week?

Perhaps they might think I made a bigger case out if it than needed. Perhaps they feel I could have come in last week if I really wanted to. I guess if I didn’t mind standing all day long I could, but then again I would also have to figure out how I was going to get to work considering I couldn’t sit and you really have to sit in a car when you’re driving it. Maybe Laymon could have come to Jacksonville everyday to pick me up and I could have rode in the back end of his truck, standing up, going down the road at 60 mph with the 5 degree wind blowing in my face the whole way. Yeah. Maybe I just got hosed.

This is the End.....
Monday, January 22, 2007, 07:56 AM
How many second chances does a person get before they’ve exhausted all of their cosmic forgiveness? After this weekend, I’m seriously thinking that I’ve used up all of my get out of jail free passes. When I think about this past weekend I shudder inside. I know that had conditions been slightly different I most likely wouldn’t be typing this now. I know now that I need to stop drinking. I would say that I am going to just stop driving after I’ve been drinking, but I know that will never happen. I’ve said it before many times and many times since I have continued to throw caution to the wind and attempt to drive home. How I’ve avoided prosecution or a fatality is beyond me, but it’s not a mystery I care to resolve.

Can I stop drinking? Being in a band makes it hard if not impossible, but I did it for a while back when I first joined the group so I imagine I can do it again. It’s not going to be easy, but hopefully I’ll succeed. This past weekend could have been much, much worse. I’m happy that things turned out the way they did considering the circumstances, but at the same time, had I not put myself in that situation to begin with I wouldn't have to make this decision to stop drinking. Perhaps it’s for the best. Even though nothing happened this time, the more I keep tempting fate the closer I come to something truly horrible happening. Maybe this weekend happened for a reason, I don’t really know.

Get your rocks off
Friday, January 19, 2007, 09:30 AM
Here I am at work, kicking back and doing very little as both Laymon and Tim are out of the office. Still, I’m uneasy. My boys Monti and Xander are at the vet having their testicles hacked off and I really didn’t want it to happen, but everyone keeps saying that if we don’t do it now they might develop health problems later on down the road, so I begrudgingly agreed to the procedure. Now I have to wait for either an emergency phone call, or till 3 PM to go pick them up.

Sariah was supposed to come with me, but she didn’t want to wake up. I haven’t pressured her into doing much since she quit Green Mazda, but then she does things like this and I get upset. I told her the night before that I needed her to come with me so she could take the car to get checked out. It’s been wobbling a bit since I slid off the road last week and I’m thinking the tires need to be rebalanced. Unfortunately I put that task on Sariah thinking since it is her car after all, that she would embrace the responsibility of taking the car to a garage. No. She decides she doesn’t want to take it and would rather call and schedule an appointment. An appointment……to have tires rotated and balanced….????? The fact is that she was tired from being up all night watching TV and didn’t want to get up.

This has been the way it is for a couple of months now. Sariah will stay up all night and then fall asleep downstairs and won’t wake up till around 1 in the afternoon and even then won’t take a shower until I get home. Does any of this sound familiar? To anyone who’s read my journals over the past years this should be like déjà vu. Basically, she’s turned into me from 5 years ago. Knowing that, should I be angry with her? No. It is odd to see the way I was from the outside though. When I was jobless I always thought I would try to stay productive even though I wasn’t working and in my mind I believed I was accomplishing that feat. The truth is that I was just fooling myself.

Usually tonight I get together with the guys and we drink and play music, but tonight I won’t be doing that as tonight I will be at home with the dogs. Why? Because for the past couple of weekends I’ve gotten really drunk on a Friday and spent the rest of the weekend at home doing nothing because I felt like shit. That isn’t going to happen this time damn it. I’m doing something this weekend. I don’t really know what that something is going to be, but at least I’ll be doing something rather than nothing.

I can't think of a title right now...
Monday, January 15, 2007, 09:08 AM
Another week goes by and I'm really starting to realize just how tired of my life I've become. I have no motivation to do anything anymore so I sit at home and do nothing. I consider my daily life a perfect reflection of a man without a goal. Why I choose to do nothing is never known to me while I sit at work and it's at these times that I decide that I'm going to make changes and do something with my life and blah, blah, blah. Needless to say, after a full day of work has zapped whatever energy I started the day with I end up at home doing the same thing I do every single night.

The only breaks from monotony that I get are when I practice. I wouldn't even call that a break since my practices are monotonous as well. I start out fine, then drink myself into oblivion and call it a night. Even work has become a grind. I don't know why since each shoot is a different challenge. I think it's not the actual work I'm doing rather it's my perspective on said work. I approach each work day with the same bitterness and hopelessness that I end up bringing home every night. I guess what it all comes down to is that I feel trapped in an environment with no chance for advancement (since there's really nothing above what I do) and due to many mitigating factors I can't enjoy the job I have now.

A lot of people don't understand why I say my job sucks, but to me it's simple. I make decent money, but I feel like it's a trap. Everyday I feel like the bottom is going to fall out on this industry and I'll be out of a job. The out of a job part I can handle, but what I can't handle is the idea that I won't find another job that pays this well that has me doing something I even remotely enjoy. People who work for $8 an hour set their limits to what they make and they work around it. If they quit or get fired, it's no big deal because there are a lot of jobs out there that pay the same, if not a little more than their previous job that they can apply for and probably get. At the pay scale I'm at now, I would take a drastic pay decrease if I were ever to lose my job.

Perhaps if Sariah had a job I wouldn't worry so much about it, but at the same time I like my job to the extent that there is no other job in the Midwest I'm better suited to do. Could I take a drastic pay decrease? Well, that's the thing. I could, but Sariah couldn't. I don't feel the need to have a nice car, house, nice furniture or what not because it's a waste of money at this point. Outside of Sariah's sister Jill, we have no visitors or friends come over. To me, it's just debt. Four years ago I would have been singing a different tune. Both Sariah and I were sick and tired of our apartment and felt it was time to finally get a house. I agreed, but after four years of Sariah constantly telling me how much she hates the house and wishes we never bought it, you can see why I don't really care about it anymore.

Oddly enough, Sariah wanted to get a house so she and I could have a child. That was her plan, but since we've gotten the house she's really done everything in her power to make me feel as though we made a mistake. She wonders why we haven't had a child yet. Someone so filled with doubt and insecurity is a negative force on everything around her. She doesn't see it and if I told her this she would just sink further into her self pity. I've given a lot of thought to having a child, but every time I think I'm ready, Sariah reminds me of why I've put it off this long.

Okay, enough of that.

I'm a little disappointed that Chris didn't call me Saturday. Maybe he forgot, I don't know. He was really pissed at me Friday night partially because I told him I thought he was never really part of the group. By group, I don't mean FCF. I don't know why he got so upset about that. It's not like the group is still the group. I guess he never really understood what I was meaning. When I think of the group the way it used to be, I think of us getting together and hanging out nearly every single day. It seemed like we were all brothers living in the same house for a while. Naturally we started seeing less of each other as we began to explore our own lives, but back when we hung out together all the time, it truly was the defining years of the group in my mind. We shared a great deal of ourselves with each other and I truly believe I know those guys as though we were brothers. I can’t really say the same for Chris though. He’s always kind of kept me at bay when it comes to talking about his personal life. Maybe he doesn’t trust me. I don’t know. I guess it goes to show just how little I know about Chris when he blows up on me about something no one really cares about anymore and I’m left scratching my head wondering what the hell happened.

The more I think about it, that happens a lot with Chris and everyone. He goes into tirades that no one understands and then gets frustrated when no one understands. We dismiss it as Chris just being Chris, but I see it as the price Chris has to pay for keeping so many of us on the outside. I don’t know what makes Chris tick and I don’t know what makes him explode into fits of rage either, but he thinks I should. He thinks I should know more about him when he’s given very little of himself away. I wonder if he’s still pissed off about it and that’s why he didn’t call. Hmmmm….

New addition to the family......maybe.
Monday, January 8, 2007, 08:03 AM
Yesterday, Sariah came home from a baby shower she attended for one of her cousins. She didn't come home alone however. With her was a year and a half old miniature pincher by the name of Xander (yes, it's Vin Diesel's name in xXx). We spent the rest of the night watching how Xander and Monti would react around one another and they seem to be okay together outside of the fact that they are both looking for sexual companionship and they're both male dogs. It was kind of funny watching each one try to hump the other, but after a few hours it got old really quick. I told Sariah that the true test would come overnight and the next morning.

Well it was a good test considering that when Sariah came up to go to bed at five in the morning the dogs followed her and continued to try and hump one another on our bed. After about ten minutes of that, I got tired of it and sent them downstairs and shut the door so they couldn't come back up. I could hear them playing around for the next half an hour before I finally got back to sleep. When I got up for work, I went downstairs and there they were, looking at me like I was going to beat them or something. Monti did his typical roll on his back and wait for me to pet him and Xander kept backing away from me. I guess this was foreshadowing the coming question of who caused the massive poop clean-up I'd have to perform in our kitchen.

After only 16 hours of having the dogs together, I think there's still a pretty good chance we'll end up keeping Xander, but they'll need to calm down quite a bit over the next week before I'm completely sold on the idea. Hopefully when I get home from work they'll have calmed down a bit and I won't have to watch the doggy wrestling match/gay doggy porno from last night. Here's a picture of Xander.