February 26th, 2004 09:25 hours CST currently listening to: "Dead Man Walking" by David Bowie

Lots of nifty stuff going on lately. Watched The Howling over at Seals' place with Dave. Not much compares to pizza, beer and werewolves. Stella didn't have to have her surgery on Tuesday. She's healing better than expected and we're going to wait a week to see how her wounds shape up. I put up a few new pictures of her. That last one cracks me up. She's the cutest cat ever!

Adam couldn't make it to practice last night but John and Cory and I started working on new material. We came up with this awesome song during our last half hour. It's stuck in my head, it's so good.

I've got so many Clairecords releases coming my way. I can't wait.

Dave and I have been ordering shit online like crazy these past couple weeks. There's something wonderfully comforting about getting things in the mail, hence my affection for Debbie. I've been buying lots of DVD's and CD's and he's been buying DVD's and games. Tuesday I got my copy of Stacy. It's......... really fucking cool. Cool in an extremely guilty pleasure sort of way. This is the review that pretty much convinced me to finally just buy it outright. Come over to my place and we'll get drunk and watch it. It's much better that way. Sometimes alcohol can't save a bad movie, like, say, the Star Wars Holiday Special that I refuse to let any of my friends watch. But this has zombie school girls, buttloads of gore and chicks in bunny costumes selling hand mounted chainsaws. Another movie I got yesterday was Versus, another zombie flick that has been recommended to me a 1,000 times over. I've only watched the first few scenes at my desk at work. I'll give the rest a go tonight.

The crowning jewel of yesterdays delivery came in the form of my most highly anticipated DVD release all year. Battle mutha fuckin Royale 2. Thanks to Hope, I discovered the first one and was so blown away by it that I went out and bought the translated novel, which is still sitting on my shelf at my desk only read half way through. Still, I was so addicted to this movie and I got so many of my friends (including Dave, DJ and Seals) into it. I'd downloaded a trailer for the 2nd film as soon as one was available and had been waiting in anticipation ever since. Well, I watched it last night and was once again blown away. To me, it's safe to say that if Battle Royale I was Alien, then Battle Royale 2 is Aliens. They even use the same tag line: "This time it's war!" Thanks to fantastic sites like this, you can soak up tons of back-story on the characters. Warning: if you haven't yet seen Battle Royale I, don't click on the "students" section for that film. There are massive spoilers in there. This movie has the same serious tone as the first, considering how ridiculous the underlying plot is, but you have so many moments that pull at your heart strings. One of the things I was disappointed in (as were several other reviewers) is that you don't get the same personal connection with the students this time. But honestly, that's done deliberately because the cast is at least twice as big as the last one and you still need to figure out who all the terrorists are. The cameos were all excellent and highly appreciated. It's nice to see a sequel pay such close attention to continuity.

I've got another guitar lesson with Rachel tonight. Not sure what else is going on this weekend besides having people over to drink and watch all my new kickass movies.

February 23rd, 2004 08:25 hours CST currently listening to: "Until The Lights Go Down" by Highspire

I'm in a right shit mood today. The fucking turnout for the show last night was pure crap, with the exception of Kerry, Hope and Erika, NONE of my fucking friends showed up. I felt totally let down. We played well, however. People said we sounded better last night than we did at the Bottom Lounge. Which is weird, because we couldn't hear jack shit on that stage last night. It was a solid wall of noise with some drums mixed in. I could only hear my vocals in the monitors. I ripped into Cory a bit right before we played because he was once again acting unprofessional. I'm tired of that crap. I don't care if his friends are in the audience. Adam pulled a whole bunch of muscles in his back and could hardly breathe. I hope he's ok today. I'll call him later.

The MP3 this week is from Hartfield. They're a Japanese band that has appeared on two different comps along with airiel. This song is fucking amazing. Go to Tonevendor and buy their album. I may write more later if I shake this headache.

February 19th, 2004 09:20 hours CST currently listening to: "Nowhere Near" by Beaumont

I just realized that I forgot to put up an mp3 this week. Woops. Well, I'm doing a lot better than I was yesterday. Stella is acting almost totally normal. It's uncanny. It's making me a little nervous though, so I'm wondering if it's simply because she can't feel the whole wound area because it's dead. The thought gives me a stomach ache. She even flopped down on her side and rolled onto her back so I could rub her belly this morning. It's so weird.

Anyway, I did get in touch with the director of the Tree House and he seemed very concerned and was very apologetic. I was surprised when he offered to help out financially before I'd even mentioned it. It's probably in part to him not wanting to be sued over this. I gave him the name of the doctor at Higgins who sees Stella and he called her immediately. I talked to her afterwards and she said he was very nice about it and also talked to her about wanting to keep the costs down if they could, so that's a good sign that he's willing to help out with this whole thing. The guy runs another clinic as well and I'm sure his reputation is on the line here. Not that any of that matters in regards to what has happened to my poor cat. I keep trying to lift my spirits about it and I may start referring to her as SPG (Special Patrol Group), who was Vyvyan's hamster (or guinea pig?) on The Young Ones.

February 18th, 2004 09:45 hours CST currently listening to: "By Appointment" by Blueboy

I'm a fucking wreck. I hardly slept last night. I took Stella into the vet last night to investigate the abscesses on her hips and it's much worse than I'd ever imagined. These are the pictures of my cat, Stella. The last 4 are of her back as of last night. They are pretty gross, so consider yourself warned. Dr. Greer shaved around the areas and we kept seeing more sore spots and we kept shaving. Once it was all off she looked at me and said "this looks like a wound caused by a heating pad." Needless to say, I've already called the Tree House, who performed her spaying back on the 30th of January. I now have the names of the surgeon who performed the operation and also the director of the organization. The director is in today, so I'm going to wait another hour to call. The surgeon won't be in until Friday. I stood there in complete shock as more and more of this wound was uncovered. The skin would slough off in some areas like it had been poorly glued on in the first place. I asked Dr. Greer if there as anyway I could have prevented this and she said "no, the damage was already done and it was only a matter of time before it manifested." The other doctor who consulted her during this was just at a conference this weekend involving new techniques in skin repairs and he has something he wants to try on her. Basically, over the course of about 10 days, they stretch the skin up and over the wound to close it. Cats have lots of extra skin and it stretches. We still don't know yet how much of the skin is still alive or how much hair will grow back. Now that the wound is uncovered, we have to wait a few days to make the call on what we can do for her.

The woman I spoke to at the Tree House of course said the obvious "well, that's highly unusual and we've never had that happen before, blah blah blah." She mentioned that a heating pad is only used for surgery (DUH! That's what she was THERE FOR!) and there's a towel between the cat and the pad. The thing is though, if my cat was anesthetized, how the hell would she respond to a heating pad that was too hot???? She couldn't! Higgins (my vet) sent me home with a collar which I can't get on her because it's too small. I tried wrapping a shirt around her waist, but she kept getting her legs stuck in it and then couldn't walk. So, she's licking the thing all the time and I don't know if that's really good or not. I know cats are good at healing themselves, but this is huge. I can't put the zinc ointment on her if she's going to lick at it, so I have to find some way to cover the wound. I'm going to hit petsmart today and see if they have anything. I'll update this entry once I talk to the director at Tree House.

I called Rachel last night and she has already offered to hook me up with a lawyer in case I have to take this to court. She works in a court reporters office. I don't want to gouge the Tree House by any means, I just want them to compensate me for the medical costs. I've already spent close to $400 on this already and if we go along with this skin stretching thing, it's going to be another $500 to $700.

February 16th, 2004 14:40 hours CST currently listening to: "Anais no 4" by Mahogany

My stomach is pissing me off. Ever since Friday night, I've had this near constant feeling of having been punched in the gut. I prolly have some stupid bug or something. Anyway.

Friday night Mischa came over and we somehow managed to suck ass at Mariokart Double Dash. We went down to Lava Lounge and things got packed pretty fast. I bumped into lots of people that I hadn't seen in a long time and got to show off my new appendectomy scar. I met some new people too. There was this guy named Chris who was there with Linsey who said he'd met me before and I was racking my brain as to where. He seemed so familiar. Maybe he reminds me of an actor or something. I dunno. I didn't drink all that much because of my stomach. Mischa on the other hand drank a lot. The boy had already consumed half a bottle of wine before coming to get me and now he was drinking several pints of beer. Not a good idea. I decided to drive us in his car back to my place so he could crash. We decided to hit Golden Nugget on the way there. I went in to use the crapper and heard the door open and then this massive splash immediately followed by running water. When I got out, there was Mischa, toweling off everything around the sink with this huge grin on his face. That had to be the stealthiest vomit episode I'd ever "witnessed". He was actually ok enough after one more episode of that to drive home. I called him on the way there and he called me once her got it, though.

Saturday I met up with Rachel at Pick Me Up. The plan was to hit Flashy Trash's closing sale and then a guitar store for guitar lesson supplies. My stomach was killing me so we stopped our trip short before getting to a guitar store. I got home and took a nap for a while. I went over to Aric's place and met him, Mischa and Hannah for some Halo action. Hannah is really good and I got rather frustrated with how juvenile she was acting. It's not that I have any problem being schooled at a video game, but I felt like I was back in that house in '98 with Tony Etienne trying his hardest to throw playground insults at me while playing Quake II. On the bright side of that evening, Aric has a view from the 21st floor to the south and the east. It's unbelievable.

Sunday was pretty lazy. I don't think I even went out until band practice. Because of my car battery incident, my stereo now won't work without entering the security code. A code that I never set myself, but I've seen written down in pencil on this white, credit card looking thing with the Volvo logo on it. I can picture it clear as day, but I can't find the god damn thing. So, I got out batteries for my Rio and bought new headphones. So now I'm driving around with fucking headphones on which is a total no-no, but I would go insane if I were to be stuck on the highway on my way to band practice with no music. I guess I'm gonna have to buy a new stereo for my car now. This is prolly a good thing, as I had an annoying contact problem with the volume knob. I've sprayed gallons of contact cleaner in there, but the pot is all screwed up and the entire right side of the car crackles when you turn it, sometimes killing the connection to those speakers. Fookin hell.

Practice rocked Sunday night. We're working on some sweet transitions for some of our songs. We're playing most of our fast paced songs this Sunday at the Beat Kitchen. Should be a rockin time.

February 12th, 2004 09:38 hours CST currently listening to: "Miss UK" by Blue Boy

The last few days have been insane. I took Stella to our normal vet on Monday night. They took out her sutures and checked her over. They sent me home with some oral antibiotics that (luckily) she doesn't mind drinking. She was already seeming better when I got her home. She finally ate and was actually walking around. I was finishing my book in the living room and she came in to cuddle. It was a relief. She even slept on my bed again after I made her a little ramp out of various boxes. The next day I got home to find her on the foot of my bed and she had this really weird stuff on her left hip. It honestly looked like someone had dripped maple syrup on her. It smelled pretty putrid, so I was assuming that it was a wound of some sort but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how she'd hurt herself. It didn't really seem like a cut but she was really sensitive about it when I cleaned off the stuff. It didn't really seem like blood exactly, but it smelled of infection. I called my vet and described it to her. She was as confused as I was and I was beginning to wonder if she had been outside of her carrier at all besides to have her surgery while at the Tree House a week ago.

I went over to Rachel's to give her her first guitar lesson. She did really well. I made chord diagrams for all the major chords except for B, which I couldn't remember how to do without having it be a bar chord. I taught her how to tune and now she's all excited about playing. She and I convinced Carolyn, her roommate, to come out to Neo with us. We got there around 11 and there were maybe 15-20 people there. Dave was playing some great stuff; Slowdive, Bethany Curve, Catherine Wheel, but none of it was particularly danceable until he cut off David Bowie and played Tremolo Song by the Charlatans UK. He then continued with a string of songs that kept us dancing for almost a solid hour. New Order, The Farm, Aztec Camera, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Curve. It was great. I had given him airiel CD's the week before and he told he loved them. I asked about the possibility of us playing a live show there and he said it would be a great idea. We may actually be playing at Neo, people. How weird.

We got back to the girls' apartment around 3 AM. I had to go back up stairs anyway to get my guitar, so I put on my blinkers and parked in a bus stop, since there was nothing else nearby. I hung out there for nearly an hour and completely forgot that my blinkers were on. Well, at 4 AM I went outside and my car battery didn't have enough power to turn the engine over. Fuck. So I crashed at their place and got up at 6 AM to try again. Nothing. Shit. I called 411 an asked for a 24 hour tow service and the first 6 times I had to call back because they kept connecting me with places that were CLOSED. That's not 24 hours is it? I finally got one that was open and he said it would be $50 and he'd be there in 15 minutes. I only had 20 bucks left, so I went to a nearby convenience store and used their ATM. I waited in my car for 45 minutes and decided that he'd gotten lost and wasn't coming. After 7 more tries, 411 connected me with another service. This guy said it would be $75 to tow my car and he'd be there in 45 minutes. Jesus fucking christ. I went back to the ATM and got more money. Rachel and Carolyn sleep like the dead, so as much as I tried calling them and ringing their buzzer, I couldn't wake them up. So I sat in my car for another hour and could no longer move my small toes when the guy showed up. He tried to jump it with a portable battery and it wouldn't work. He then hooked my battery up to his own truck and it turned over right away. Score! He knocked the price down to $60 and I then drove around to recharge the batterer a bit before parking at my apartment. I called Dave again to tell him I would be late for sure as it was now 8:30. I sat in the shower for 30 minutes to get my core temp back up and regain the feeling in my feet. Man, that experience sure sucked. I should have called in sick because I was dead to the world.

Despite how utterly exhausted I was, I was still determined to go see American Cosmonaut at the Double Door. Adam is airiel's other guitar player. Cory was going to be there with flyers for the Beat Kitchen show next week and I was also going to meet one of the booking guys for the Double Door as well. I took a nap as soon as I got home from work. Stella got on the bed and I was petting her on her right side, as to avoid the weird spot on her left hip. Suddenly she yelped and I noticed my hand was wet. She has ANOTHER spot now on her right hip! This is too weird. It's the same smell and is oozing the same junk. I called the clinic I had taken her to on Sunday to se if they had done a sub q fluid injection anywhere else besides between her shoulders and they said no. I then inquired as to why these wounds were symmetrical and they said it's probably the result of the anesthetic injections she received for her spaying a week prior and that they had gotten infected and these were abscesses. Poor cat! Luckily she's already on antibiotics for several more days so all I need to do is keep these clean and she should be fine. I took a nap and she buried her head into my side. She rocks.

I had a lovely dinner at Papagin and read some local newspapers. I found Adam and he introduced me to Phil, the guy who books for the Double Door and who really likes our stuff. Cory and John showed up and we all just sort of endured the horror that is Bicycle Tricycle and whatever the name of the 2nd band was. AC put on a great set. Adam is a good singer and has great stage presence. Plus he was totally coked up. You could tell by the way he constantly shifted his jaw around. Rock on. I was nearly asleep when they played their last song but I stayed until the end. I was asleep the moment I hit the pillow. Tonight I have no plans. I'm going to make some crappy pizza rolls or something comforting, watch a movie for as long as I can stay awake and go the fuck to bed early.

February 9th, 2004 16:55 hours CST currently listening to: "Mother Universe" by The Soup Dragons

This is why I love DJ:

"Having not read 6,000 pages of the Extended Universe does not make me an ass.

I love you, Jeremy, but you are a dweeb.

Noah's Dictionary:

dweeb (noun): person or persons who take geekdom to a level of dysfunction, forsaking interest in politics and/or economics in favor of the correct spelling of toshi station. See also Wrenn, Jeremy."

February 9th, 2004 14:15 hours CST currently listening to: "Only You" by The Caesars

I have a sick kitty at home right now. I'm kicking myself for taking her to that horrible Tree House. Anti-cruelty aside, that place gave me the creeps. Stella now has a viral respiratory infection thanks to one of the 300 uncagged cats they have wandering (shitting, pissing, puking) all over that place. Why did I take her there????? She was sneezing a few days ago and then on Saturday while I was cleaning, she was pretty much lying on my bed all day and didn't really move. When I got back from seeing Dorian Gray that night, she didn't greet me at the door. She was lying on the mat in my bathroom and she seemed pretty out of it. I got worried when I woke up in the middle of the night and she wasn't at the foot of my bed, where she normally sleeps. She was still in the bathroom and she cried whenever I would pet her. I called the vet I usually go to and they were closed, but they left the number for this emergency vet clinic that's really close to my apartment. I called them and they told me to bring her in immediately. She's running a fever and her infection is viral, which usually means you just have to ride it out. I have an appointment with my normal vet tonight, so hopefully they'll be able to giver something to make her feel better. She doesn't even want to be touched right now so I don't know how I'm gonna get her into her carrier. The whole thing is stressing me out.

In other news, I went to dinner with Ben on Friday night. We went to this Italian place in Wriggleyvillle. We split a bottle of wine and I opened another one when I got back home. I watched my FLCL DVD's and I'm in love with that series. It's so fucking random. And by random, I mean awesome. Saturday I cleaned all day. I even mopped. It's easier to clean when it's light outside and you can see all the dust. Sunday was pretty much me looking after Stella. I went to practice and we worked on the songs that need work. Cory showed us a new song and I don't like it. It's really dark and by default, I have a tough time writing to that. He has also played in bands with Adam and John before, so I felt like I was playing a different bands song altogether. I dunno. I don't want to have some big ego issue over this but the song doesn't sound very "airiel" at this point. I'm having a difficult time writing apart for it. Luckily he's singing, so I'll be able to solo a bit. There's talk of a tour. I'll keep you posted.

I have a guitar lesson with Rachel tonight after I get back from the vet. I'm excited. Oh, I also watched Lost In Translation finally. It's a wonderful movie. I want Sofia Coppela.

February 4th, 2004 14:15 hours CST currently listening to: "40 Miles" by Hot Zex

I got back from my follow up appointment for my appendectomy. I got a hard copy of my cat scans as well as a CD-Rom of them. The hard copies are huge. DJ and Lisa walked by as I was looking at them in the light of the window and suddenly we all noticed that you can see my dick, clear as day. D'oh! We laughed. The CD-Rom is pretty sweet. You can do a frame by frame scan of my torso, down to my thighs.

I got so much cool music yesterday. The new Hot Zex, Harfield and Skywave CD's as well as the Pacific Union compilation CD that airiel is on with Hartfield. Grrrrreat stuff. Wow, food coma is hitting me hard. I bought two packs of Oreo's from the vending machine here cuz one pack of 6 is just not enough when is comes to Oreo's. Oreo's are meant to be eaten in the big bags, A ROW PER SERVING. You know what I'm sayin? I was so hungry that I wolfed down my salad and now I'm paying for it. ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I went to Sininski's place last night for a Halo party. He had two Xbox's set up with two TV's. There were I think seven people there at the most. I'd never played it before but I did really well. I just need to get used to the control scheme and then I'll start kicking more ass. Really though, I did very well for my first time. Sean made these marinated mushrooms that I was devouring and I don't even like mushrooms. He also made these potato sticks that had to be the saltiest things I'd ever eaten n my life, and I once ate a heaping bowl of salt. Just kidding, Bender.

I have band practice tonight, but I'm supposed to stay late and replace one of the firewalls in the server room. Hopefully I'll be out of her by 5:30. Any later than that and I can't get dinner before practice and we're already gonna be late because we have to set everything back up. Eh. It wouldn't kill me if we held off until Sunday if we had to.

February 2nd, 2004 12:15 hours CST currently listening to: "Every Day" by Sing-sing

I need a freakin girlfriend simply so I can stop treating my CAT like one. I slept on the couch on Friday night so that I could watch Stella and make sure she was ok. I took her to get neutered that day and she was pretty messed up from it all. I made a ramp out of pillows and stuff later so she could get onto the couch. I took her to the Tree House. Now, while I guess I appreciate what these people are trying to do, this place fucking grossed me the hell out. They have around 300 uncaged cats in this place and well, it shows. There was bloody vomit, non-bloody vomit, piss, shit and all sorts of fun stuff all over this place. I arrived right at feeding time, so I was treated to the sites and smells of countless cans of cat food freshly opened. I honestly felt bad leaving Stella in this place all day. I could only sit down on one of the visitors chairs because the others all had piss on them. Fucking hell. Stella even smelled like this place when I got her home! Poor thing. She was back to her normal smelling self by Saturday afternoon.

I did little to nothing over the weekend. I stopped by the studio to get the 24-bit mastering disc for the latest airiel EP and then I ran some errands. My uncle Phil called while I was in Target and told me he was in town for one night until he flies to Cazomel the next morning. I went up and picked him up and he took me to Hooters, which I'd actually never been to before. It rocked. Sunday was spent on the couch playing Simpson's Hit and Run. That also rocks.

Oh, the show on Thursday! Jesus, I forgot to write about this. John crashed at my place on Wednesday night. He lives in the burbs and works downtown, so we loaded all of our gear into my place, since our load time at the venue was 6 PM. When we got to our cars, John discovered that the front right window to his van had been busted and the stereo had been pulled out. Luckily nothing else was touched, including his drum hardware. I pulled down a shower curtain in my apartment and we shut that inside the door, to at least seal the thing temporarily. We drove to the Bottom Lounge and loaded our gear in. They didn't have a single flyer of ours up, which pissed me off. Cory showed up with a bottle of vodka and a bottle of cranberry juice so we went to work on that. John went to a police station to file a report for his insurance. Our set kicked lots of ass. We really rocked out. We needed to. I was worried that my appendix wound was still going to be messing with me, but thanks to the adrenaline and the whiskey shots, I couldn't have cared if I was bleeding out the eyes. We had a really good turnout despite the fact that the weather was fucking terrible. It was below zero with a bitter wind. I met lots of great people after our set and felt really stupid for not putting out an email list form at the merch desk. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Whimsical did very well and played 3 new songs. Flutter had a terrible time. Their bass player was out, their drummer had a broken leg and the CD of their tracks was skipping, forcing them to stop playing a few songs. OUCH. Cory fell on the ice after the show and totally busted his ass. I drank a lot.