Good Day

I haven’t cleaned out the phone’s picture gallery lately and I took a good one today, so we’re in catch up with the boring retarded camera phone bullshit crap-o-la.

First is another picture of the Meditech Hawk.  One day a couple of weeks ago I turned around and the bugger was back on the ledge.  I tried to move in closer to get a better crappy picture this time but just as I was clicking the picture button the hawk flew off.  I was left with one really blurry picture that looks more like a smudge than a honkin’ big bird.  If you look at the shadow though you can almost make out what it might be.

There is very little special about the next picture.  It comes from Route 128 North less than half a mile before the Route 3 exit.  It’s just a car on a flat bed with a State patrol car looking on.  I just felt the need to take the picture because this innocent little scene turned 128 into a virtual parking for a couple of miles.  Needless to say I was severely pissed.

Picture number three comes from the Mass Pike exit 13 toll booth.  I’ll file this under my cool-cars-that-you-don’t-see-everyday file.  Somewhere in this blog’s past there is a crappy camera phone picture of a Lotus.  Now there’s a crappy camera phone picture of an Alfa Romeo too.

Now for the last.  This came from Route 495 South less than a mile before the exit for Route 90, the Mass Pike.  I’ve seen some serious blow outs on the highway before.  I’ve seen car fires.  I’ve seen crashes that required helicopter medivac flights…  But I’d never seen a delivery truck have an entire wheel just fall off.  It’s hard to see here, but the picture shows two guys standing by the passenger side front wheel… which is curiously missing.  the whole fucking thing was gone.  It wasn’t a blow out.  The wheel was missing in action.  Fortunately it happened right in front of me and I was exiting, so I didn’t get stuck in any traffic jams.

To sign off I’ll leave you with a musical recommendation.  Go to your favorite record store (iTunes included) and pick up a copy of Ex Hex by Mary Timony.  Is it as good as Helium?  Is it better?  It’s hard to say.  It’s different.  I think her voice sounds better on this record than anything I’ve heard her do in the past, and she’s playing the guitar like an animal.  Go buy it.  It’s worth it.

Last week the friggin’ International Astronomers Union (or whatever the hell the assholes call themselves) proposed the first definition of “Planet.” It was going to be completely awesome. We were going to have three new planets. How cool is that?

The nearest new planet would be Ceres which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This guy was discovered just after 1800 (1801 I think) and was originally included in the list of planets before it was demoted to an asteroid about 50 years later.

Next would be Charon, Pluto’s largest moon. This was going to be super cool. Part of the proposed definition said that a satellite could be considered a planet if the center of gravity (there is a technical term for this that I forget) between the two bodies was located in the space between them. Such is the case with Pluto and Charon. We were going to have a Binary Planetary System. That is Awesome!

Third new planet has yet to receive an official name, but it is cataloged under the name 2003 UB313. This is the largest known Kuiper Belt object. The Kuiper Belt is another asteroid belt located outside of the orbit of Neptune. Pluto and Charon are also Kuiper Belt objects.

For my whole life I’ve been living in a solar system that was shackled to the nine planet limit. Now finally we were going to break free. We were going to tear down that wall, Mr Gorbachev! The Thrill of it. I wanted to be the first red head to set foot on the planet Ceres. I wanted to aim the Hubble at the Kuiper Belt and take the first pictures of Planet 2003 UB313. I wanted to go into my back yard at night and start searching the sky, not for comets or asteroids or boring shit like that, but for new planets. A new age of discovery had begun!

But then… one week later…

The unthinkable! The rug was pulled right out from under us!

Charon? Screw her; she’s just an overweight moon.

2003 UB313? Just a far away snowball.

Ceres? Insulted again! It’s a planet, then it’s not a planet, then it’s a planet again, then it’s not a planet again.

And if that doesn’t suck badly enough…

Pluto? Sorry Charlie, you don’t rate anymore. You’ve been a planet for 76 years, but not anymore.

Those cock sucking astronomers took my freakin’ planet away from me!

Pluto has been demoted! The approved definition of “Planet” states that to be called a planet an object must have cleared out it’s orbital path. Pluto doesn’t have a circular orbit like the other classical planets do. At certain points it is actually closer to the sun than Neptune. So because of that Pluto fails to meet the definition of “Planet.”

BASTARDS!

From now on I will refer to Astronomers as “ASStronomers” because they totally suck ass.

I WANT MY FUCKING PLANET BACK!

Then they tried to make it all better by coming up with a new classification.  Something that’s higher on the planetary food chain than asteroid that they can use to make those of us who are pissed off feel better.

Dwarf Planet.

Now I can’t be the first red head to set foot on Planet Ceres, I have to settle for being the first red head to set foot on Dwarf Planet Ceres.

Planet Pluto?  No sir, not anymore.  How’s Dwarf Planet Pluto suit you?  It doesn’t suit me, it pisses me off!  Why not just call it “the little dwarf that could?”  Dwarfs are people too you god damn heartless ASStronomers, and Dwarf Planets are Planets too!  Way to kick Pluto when she’s down?  Why not just punch Pluto’s mother in the tits while you’re at it?

You can’t take it away from us. It’ll always be there, pissing on your astronomical parades.

Pluto Lovers of the World Unite and Stand Against the ASStronomical Oppression!

GIVE US OUR PLANET BACK!

I was there with my trusty Les Paul.  Bob the drummer was there… it’s his house after all, and Dave the bass player was there too.

Oh my god did we suck.

It’s been 17 months since the band last rehearsed, and did it ever sound like it.  We sounded horrible!  The simplest little three chord songs were bludgeoned to death in seconds.  All three of us have forgotten more than we remember.

Bob described it best when he said, “I thought this would be like riding a bike…”

Nope.

We played for an hour and my finger tips are still burning and my throat hurts.  Oh yeah, did I mention that as the only person who can sing and play at the same time in the room I became the lead vocalist by default?  I made sure to appologize to everyone who could hear us.

We’re going to try it again some time next week, and hopefully Jeff the voice and Steve and Tim the guitar players will be able to make it.

We need all the help we can get!!

For no other reason than I am still on Cloud 9, musically speaking.

So I’ll add to my collection of mental drool extractions.

Last week I saw two interesting traffic situations and managed to snap camera phone pictures of both of them.

Here’s the first one:

This one was taken on route 495 south.  Now let me show the second one and then we’ll discuss what’s so fascinating about them.

This one comes from the Mass Pike (route 90) east.

The first picture did a good job of capturing the situation.  It shows an SUV in the left side median, well off the road.  Note there is no apparent damage to the vehicle; it just seems to have gone off the road.

The second image does not capture the whole scene.  You can see that the front of the car is smashed up some.  What you can’t see is the car just out of frame to the left that was also nice and smashed up.  The two cars were off the road, again to the left.

Have you noticed the similarity between the two incidents?

If the cars in both pictures are off the road to the left…

Then the cars in both pictures are facing the wrong way.  The first picture shows an SUV that is on a south bound highway, facing north.  The second picture shows a smashed up car facing west on an east bound highway.  The other car in the accident was also facing east.

How?

The SUV actually looked like the driver pulled off the road and onto the grass and then tried to turn around.  I guess some one needed to take a piss out the passenger side window and didn’t want the morning rush hour traffic to see.  Huh?

The car crash cars seem to have hit each other and then both done 180 degree spin outs.  Either that or the police/rescue people who responded to the accident turned the cars around when moving them off the road.  Either of these cases seem plausible to me.  The first one seems pretty improbable, but not impossible.  The second scenario would be accurate if the tow trucks needed to pick up the cars from behind.  I don’t know if that makes sense, but to my exhausted brain it at least seems reasonable.

I just found it very bizarre that one morning I see a car facing the wrong direction on 495 and then the next morning I see cars facing the wrong direction on the Pike.  Maybe I’m just losing my mind.  Maybe I just need a vacation.  Who knows?

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Now for the musical stuff.

First… a couple of posts ago I mentioned that my old band, Break Even, might be getting back together for a night.  It didn’t happen… at least not yet.

We’re planning on a get together for this Thursday, but Steve the other guitar player won’t be able to make it so I’m going to suggest we push it off another week.  The more people who show, the more fun it will be.

Here’s the gross part.  Jeff the singer has bigger fish to fry these days (www.justinfund.com do your daily good turn and make a donation.  Trust me, it’s worth it) which means a certain fat assed red headed guitar player is going to be bumped up to the lead vocalist chair.  Not good.  I’ve done it before, of course, but it’s not something that I really enjoy.  I do however tend to get territorial about it.  I don’t want to be the lead singer and the front man, but I’m sure as hell not going to let some one else do it unless they sing better than I do.  This is why I keep sticking to the job.  I don’t mean to imply that I’m any good, I just don’t suck all that badly and I’d rather do it than pass it on to some one who does suck badly.

Now allow me to further complicate the Break Even matter.  I threw out the idea of getting us together expecting it to be a one night thing where we pile into Bob the drummer’s basement and entertain the neighbors for a few hours and then go home and that’s it.  Fin.

Now however I’m sort of getting a vibe from two of the participants that they are seeing this as a Blues Brothers style “We’re getting the band back together” kind of thing.

I ask myself, “Do you want this band to get back together and start working again?” and I honestly can’t answer the question.  I don’t know if I do or not.

So I ask myself a different question, “If the majority of the other guys want to get back together and start working again would you go along with it?”  Again, a question that I don’t think I can really answer.  However I will admit to thinking that I’m leaning toward answering that question with a Yes.  I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s where my pea-brain is heading.

Who knows?

Why am I leaning toward saying yes?  Because of this week’s other musical happening.

I saw Victory at Sea at the Middle East tonight.  Technically it was last night… let’s just say Saturday and leave it at that, blah.  Fan-Fucking-Tastic set.  I’m seriously caught up in this band these days.  The show was excellent despite the fact that one of the amps ate itself (who hasn’t been onstage and had an amp crap out?  No one, it happens to all of us) and, even more impressive, the drummer did the whole set with a broken elbow.  Def Leppard style!  Every new note I hear impresses me more than the last.  Go buy yourself a copy of All Your Things Are Gone and play it until the disc begs for mercy.  Then buy yourself a copy of Memories Fade and repeat the process until you’ve worked your way back through the band’s whole catalog.  If I recall correctly, the band is about to hit the road.  Go to their myspace page and check out the upcoming shows list to see if they’re coming near you and then get out and see them.  Their page is in my top eight.  Go.  Now.  Do it.

It’s now two in the morning and I think I can get some sleep.  Turn out the lights and lock the doors when you leave.  Thanks.

This is the view from my supervisor’s desk…

That ain’t no pigeon oh my brothers, that sucker is a Hawk.

The Canton building has pet Swans…
The Framingham building has the renegade wild Hawk!

I played guitar and did a little singing.

We wrote a few song, played a few gigs, had a little fun and then split up.

When we ended it, in February of ’05, we agreed that we’d get together once in a while just for laughs.  It happened once, in October of ’05 I think, but only three of the five of us could make it.

Will the next get together be this week?  It looks like a possibility.  Even Jeff the singer might make it.  Jeff is the father one a very sick little six year old.  Go to the Justin Fund website to read about it and maybe be kind enough to make a donation if you feel like it and have the means.

From what I hear, the plan is to try for Thursday… which means I have one day to relearn the guitar, and all of our songs.

No problem!

For the record… I was never a big fan of that banner.

I’ve now seen them three times since they reunited and I’ve had the same thought each time:

There is no way they could have been this good the first time around.

The show tonight was fucking awesome.  Those two words together make up the only phrase that can accurately describe how good they were.

Fucking Awesome.