They caught and drowned the frontman of the world's worst rock & roll band.
Monday, August 22, 2005

If only. If this were actually the case, maybe, then people would have music by the world's worst rock & roll band autoload as their online journal loads up.

The online journaling world ("'blogging" to some) has lots of people that do obnoxious things with their sites. Randomly search on the bigger journal sites (MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, even Blogger), and I'll bet it won't take long for you to run across a journal that makes you want to reach through your computer monitor and punch someone in the throat.

You know the signs, I know you do. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You click on a link to someone's journal and everything starts to sllllloooooooooowwwwwww dooooooooooooowwwwnnnnn. Their page soon pops (I accidentally typed "poop" there, and I realize that's probably the more accurate word) up, with tons of horrid neon colors clashing with each other. For the record: having a shimming green background and dark purple text is a bad, bad idea. Tons of Media Player applications start running simultaniously, with Fat Joe and some skinny white mugger-turned-metal icon merging their voices into some weird whale song that melts your speakers. Scrolling down the page is nigh impossible if you don't have a Cray supercomputer. The title-- in where ever it is you put titles --says something like "U NO ITS IN MY HART <3" or "::||THiiNKiiN||:: bout ma babii."

The last one was stolen from here. Flashing lights, huge oversized banners, grammar straight out of an Australian's nightmare. Check out her quiz at the top of the page: great range of answers! I wish, "Your page injected pure liquid insomnia into my veins" was an option. One of the comments at the bottom reads, "Your site is so cute. I love da layout." If by "cute" you mean "horrific," then yes, I love the layout too. And what's up with that flashing light? I don't get it? I mean, the dark red-on-black color scheme destroys your vision to begin with...it's not like a strobe light of pure evil is going to help things any (and it's an off-center strobe light of evil, too!)

But the worst of all, people, is when bloggers post music that plays as soon as you enter their site. I don't care if it's something good or if it's something bad: doing this makes it bad, period. Really, if I hear another Dashboard Confessional track when I enter someone's site, they will pay. It's especially bad when it REPEATS EVERY TIME YOU ENTER A NEW PART OF THE SITE. Oh, I want to read the comments on a post? There goes the song again! Go back to the main page? The song starts up again.

Here's what I'm going to do. Under the cover of night, I'll find these people. One by one. I'll locate them by context clues, hiring out a private eye when I need the fine details. I will sneak into their yard. I will put war paint on my face. I'll look like a crazed barbarian, hefting my axe over my shoulder. When they least expect it, I will swing with all of my might, letting forth a mighty shout of pure barbarian rage, slicing a hole through their bedroom/livingroom wall. The blogger will look shocked, and with good reason. I will shimmy through the hole, making grunting sounds, and slice their Dell in half with my double-sided axe. Roar! Huzzah! I will then grab the computer's guts and smash them with the butt of the axe handle, then draping the parts over my shoulder, wearing them like a bandolier. Then I'll stomp over to their CD collection (if they have one, probably all on the computer anyway) and eat them-- plain destruction is too good for this stuff. I will find the song the teen had on their page and not destroy that CD. In fact, I'll tie the teen up and play the song, putting it on repeat. Then I will laugh a hearty barbarian laugh and flee into the night.

That's how I'll do it.

And yes, the Australian's nightmare thing was a Spinal Tap reference.

posted, with grace and poise, by Jason @ 8/22/2005 10:50:00 PM, ,


Listen up--
Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Robert/Erica/Melissa/Stephanie, tell me what sort of genres or time periods in which you'd like our story to be set. Rattle off a few. Feel free to say something like "late-1600s spy romance novel," or "futuristic (post-apocalyptic) chick lit" or "southern gothic hip-hop alternate history." Wait, don't say those. But you get the drift.

posted, with grace and poise, by Jason @ 8/16/2005 12:52:00 AM, ,


No Archers of Loaf lyrics this time
Saturday, August 13, 2005

I have an idea. It may be good, it may be bad. I'm thinking of compiling a collection novel, or at least a collective novella or short story. I'd like to post it here as it's written. I'm nominating a few people to help write it.

Here's the deal: I'm going to act as editor supreme. We'll decide what the genre, style, and so on will be. We'll choose how much we want to write at a time. We'll see if there'll be some sort of order of who-posts-when. We can maybe write it by leaving blurbs in the comment box (which might get unwieldy), or people can e-mail their parts to me and I'll post them here.

What say you? I nominate, as of now, Ms. Erica Good, Mr. Robert Hamilton, Ms. Stephanie Zelazny and Mrs. Cymrugirlidontknowyourrealname. If I wake up more and think of more people, I'll add them.

posted, with grace and poise, by Jason @ 8/13/2005 03:02:00 AM, ,


Fashion bleeds.
Monday, August 08, 2005

I'm trying not to get blood on the keyboard. It's all over the tuning pegs of my guitar, so the damage has been done. I just don't want to damage to spread, bloom, increase, explode. Exploding blood; not a good thought. Leaking blood, though-- that's on my home keys. Leaking on them.

On what can I concentrate? Thoughts are using my head as a revolving door, going round and round and out and in and out again and round and back in and out. I can't stop them, just watch them go by and grimace.

Thought number one-- I feel stupid sometimes. No, often. No, all of the time. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm not. But over the past few days I can't seem to get the gray cells twitching. I'm reading G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy." I'm not not getting it, but I'm having a hard time reading more than two pages at a time. It's not his writing (which is fantastic), nor the material (which I grasp.) Maybe it's because my brain is revolting? But sometimes I'll sit and read the same paragraph over and over and over and then fall asleep on the couch for an hour and wake up with my arm dangling because it fell asleep and I can't move it and I fall onto the floor and realize I need to read that paragraph again. Another source of mefeelstupidfrustration comes from not knowing how or what to say to people I don't agree with. I ended that sentence with a preposition, so stuff it. Sometimes I'll be in a forum (written or vocal) where I have the opportunity to respond-- the urge to do so burns within me (oh, it BURNS!) but I stay mum. Why? Am I yeller, a COWARD? Or because apathy freezes my bones? Or maybe both? I think the easiest solution would be to just cut whoever is doing the talking in the face, and everything evens out with a bloody street fight.

Thought number two-- I need to stop being my own worst critic. I'm recording some songs with Adam Thomas tomorrow, and I'm stuck between being nervous and mad at myself. Maybe I should just cut myself in the face! But no-- I always slack off in the songwriting department, and I keep going into the studio with the "Uh, whatever! I'll adlib!" mindset. This sort of mindset works for guys like Steve Cropper and Yo Yo Ma (and maybe Rockapella.) But this doesn't necessarily work for Jason Panella. I'm expecting to just waltz into the studio, plug in my guitar and with a loving flick of my wrist, play the great song ever written. Right now the songs are structured like this IN MY HEAD:

a chord, then another chord, maybe this chord, maybe a bass part right here?

So I'm hoping to write the songs as I play them. I'm an idiot.

Thought number three-- I have a top secret job that I'll have, but I don't know when. And since it's top secret, I can't go into further details. But let's say this...I don't know much about the details, and I'm wondering why I don't know much. It makes me worried, and the sort of worry that rumbles in your stomach earlier and earlier in the morning with each passing day, building to a climax that makes me cry blood. Please, future employers, give me details.

And speaking of blood-- thought number four-- Why am I losing so much of it? Turn my head to my left: it's all over my bedsheets. It's on my semi-hollowbody Rickenbacher knock-off's tuning pegs, and on the bridge, and on the fretboard. And on the new Dean Markley jazz strings I purchased (Signature Series: More Power, Tone, Sustain & Longer Life! (and more blood!).) At least they're still shiny; the blood adds a little bit of...look here, can you see it? Luster? Something? It accents the silver in a fine, fine way, indeed. It was all over my hands a while ago, coming from a slight fissure between my left-hand pointer finger's nail and flesh. I'm not sure how it happened, but that doesn't phase me as much as why I didn't notice it sooner, before I made my bed look like a murder scene.

So I want to get smart. So I want things to go freakishly well in the studio tomorrow. So I want <TOP SECRET>. So I want the blood to stop Jackon Pollacking my keyboard. Now.

posted, with grace and poise, by Jason @ 8/08/2005 11:13:00 PM, ,