"Brevity: soul of wit": here we go.
Trying to give a little taste of some recent musical acquisitions. Haven't even told you yet what I got in Portland, let alone given you a taste!
For Shame.



Okay, so Teddy Pendergrass again, a solo joint this time.
(Not HMBftTP)

Got this after Portland, in Philly, mais oui, at Molly's Outlet in South Philly- 1117. E. Passyunk Ave. You can still check out their special outlet sale this weekend. All records a buck, and a much sharper selection than a thrift store.



Haven't copied It's Time For Love yet to hard drive, because 1) très cray busy and 2) got a new laptop to replace my worn-out "CRAPtop" and haven't loaded the requisite software yet.
Busy for the normal reasons,....
plus...
I am plotting something big right now. I'm about to pull off a real coup, wait and see. A masterstroke, to cap all things good.

Literally Quite Shitty

My new place is shitty. Quite shitty. For instance, just seconds ago, the front door is open, as it sometimes is. There is of course snow on the ground right now, but sure, let’s get a little fresh air in here.


Dowload J Mascis, "If That's How It's Gotta Be" (ripped from vinyl, FYI)


The place is literally so shitty, that when we were unloading the moving truck,

There was feces in the toilet.

And there was no handle on the toilet.
There was, generously, a coat hanger attached to a string for flushing…
but the water was off.

That is sort of the low- highlight. But there’s more.
One day, someone let the air out of both my bike tires in the hallway.
The door is left open randomly, and is almost never locked until sometime after dark.
Actually, maybe it’s best that they let air out of my tires- since the door is wide open, flats would make my bike more difficult to walk away with!

There is a full size window in the shower. I have since painted over the window (to keep the children at the school across the street from learning too much); the previous solution, which was left for me to remove, was car window tinting.
I doth not jest! The car tinting had a wonderful dual nature: I could see out, and, right, we have to trust, still be unseen as I looked out on the neighborhood!
So the trashy local kids who drink and shout and cuss and spit and cough and yell and laugh (the demons) directly under this window, could perhaps be spied on while I take care of my hygienic needs.

Right after I moved in, someone left a couch (too big for the stairs) in the hallway.
For ten days.
Eventually, we all stopped being polite (like the Real World!) and shoeprints and bike tires began to leave their marks.

When I moved in, no cleaning or anything resembling cleaning had been done. Compounding this, I have a Chinese-style oven, which means two fans, high gas flames, and… covered with wok grease. The fans and hood had so much ‘ambient grease’ covering them, that there were little stalagtites of (somebody else’s!) fat hanging down. (still can’t remember difference between ‘tites and ‘mites)

On the food tip, it’s South Philly, so there are plenty of bugs. And the fridge, until I divined the Goldilocks temp, alternated between freezing my lettuce solid and melting my just-bought ice cream. It also runs all the time.
Ah yes, the fridge also is in front of one of two electric outlets in the entire house. None in bathroom (how am I to curl my hair?), one in bedroom, just one plug left in kitchen, so my sous-vide process must be done in the bedroom (not really).
But there are two cable outlets in the bedroom, so we have the essentials covered.

The cabinets were perhaps put in by a sadistic child with a learning disability, since one door opens into the side of another cabinet (i.e. opens 2 inches), and all of them have an inaccessible top shelf, unless you have a step ladder. They were not so kind as to supply a step ladder, although they did leave other furniture.

There also was no working smoke detector (took them a month to replace it), which became an even more pressing issue when my brand-new flouro bulbs kept burning out, just weeks after I put them in. I looked at the lighting (as if I’m some fucking electrician) and the copper wiring was so old, it was green.

There is a lot of great stuff about my neighborhood (not so much ‘a lot’ about my house though), and maybe I will share that with you all later. But right now, I feel like complaining, because I am like that wiring:
old and fussy and smoldering.

Which is why I played you J Mascis: he’s like that too.

Epictetian Preachin'

Here we go, here's a little uplift, to match our weather today:



Oooooh, if only "everyday" felt this good!
Going to go eat goose with friends tonight (my idea),
doing research on Stoic philosophy in combination with Foucault's use of their ethical care of the self,
sat in a park where they were mulching Xmas trees, which smelled better than you could possibly imagine.

Well, I won't bore you with all the rest of my "day, people"-- for it is not your duty to mark down and be concerned with my joys and ills, nor mine to fret and tut-tut over yours. As Epictetus tells us:

But the judge condemns you on the charge of impiety. And did not the judges similarly condemn Socrates? Surely it is no concern of yours...
Your father has a certain function, and if he does not perform it, he has destroyed the father in him, the man who loves his offspring, the man of gentleness within him. Do not seek to make him lose anything else on this account...
Again, it is your function to defend yourself firmly, respectfully, without passion. Otherwise, you have destroyed within you the son, the respectful man, the man of honour. What then? Is the judge secure? No; but he too runs just as great a risk. Why, then, are you afraid of what decision he is going to render? What have you to do with another man's evil? (Discourses, Book III, xviii)

So, if I be condemned, I will not let that affect the respect which I hold for myself, nor will it affect my judgment on what a nice fucking day it is.