New Guitar Y'all

In Vinyl news, I've almost completed the basic pixies record collection, cause I picked up Come on Pilgrim the other day, wonderful. I'm not sure that Trompe le monde is distributed on vinyl, but I guess we'll see if I find it somewhere. Or I could look it up on the internet.

In Crazy News, I bought a guitar! It's an Ibanez JX70. An acoustic/electric that was manufactured around 2001-2002, I got it for 200 dollars on craigslist.

The only thing is that now I think that I hate it. I liked it when I first played it and it sounds fine, but it's got some buzzing issues and the action is way high. It's kind of heavy too. So the conclusion I came to was that I'm going to find a good shop to take it to and get it setup right. That is:

- Lower the saddle, which will lower the action (Strings closer to the fretboard) so it's a little more pleasant to play. The saddle is the white bar that sits on top of the bridge.
- Adjust the relief, this should fix most of the buzz issues. The relief is adjusted by tightening or loosening the truss rod which runs down the neck of the guitar. This will compensate for any bow in the neck.
- Fret maintainance, which I'm not sure it needs because the dude like never even looked at, let alone played this guitar.
- If my nut needs work, then screw it, i'm not going to put that much money into this guitar. That was a sexy sentence.

And the guy will like clean off the neck and whatever so the shit doesn't get moldy or whatever. Here is my dilemma: I think I am going to get the guitar setup and then just try to turn it around and sell it because it will play and sound much nicer when setup correctly. So that presents another issue which is that I'm not in love with this guitar, but if it plays and sounds good once setup, it only cost me 200 dollars so I won't know whether to sell or not.

Anyways, so now I have the JX70 and the Epiphone Custom SG, the SG won't be lonely anymore. Gear baby.

Living Alone

I currently pay $1410/mo for rent in the middle of Ballston, VA. I was trying to weigh the pros and cons of living alone to decide whether I should make the move back to having roommates.

Living Alone Pros:
1. ALL clothing is optional at ALL times (this is important)
2. I know that when I'm cleaning something up, I'm cleaning up after myself, and thus do not get spiteful at the possibility of me cleaning up after someone else. I hate cleaning up after other people, you stupid bastards.
3. Amenities are used by me and me only, so it's not like anyones going to get angry because Andy is using all of the toilet paper to wipe his fat butt.
4. I can play loud music in my living room whenever I want, or play loud music when I cook food. This may not be the case when roomies are present. They also might not want to listen to Jackson Browne or Jefferson Starship when I do.
5. Sometimes living alone gets lonely. But then again sometimes I like to be alone. Cancellation principality theory. I would have people to hang out with in my vicinity at all times, this is a pro.

Living Alone Cons:
1. Cost - Rent could be almost cut in half if I lived in a 3-4 BR house. Utilities would be split and resources would be shared (TV, Video Games, Boobs, etc) resulting in more things for me.
2. That's like it

So, I think I know what I need to do. Find a cheaper 1BR. We'll see if that's possible. In blog news, Dave is posting to his blog again! What a fagmaster. Nah actually it's much better than my stupid blog, he actually has real content.

I'm Just Saying

I just wanted to say that I hate it when I go to take a pee, and somehow my undies are on sideways and I have to surgically remove my schlong from my balls and leg.

Also, I get to play 2 more shows with Chalk Dino! If anyone is in Pittsburgh the day after Thanksgiving, Chalk Dinosaur will be playing a show on Friday, November 28th at Your Inner Vagabond, and also a show on Saturday, December 27th at Diesel with The Morning Light. The Morning Light will probably be the biggest band we've played with, and also it's at Diesel! Excellent.



Check out the awesome T-Shirts they just got printed, they are amazing to me. Awesome design.

Parry Gripp

I visited Philadelphia over Halloween weekend and stayed with BGBK. My brother John was in town for an Of Montreal show on Friday night so John, Will, Brian and I all got to hang out.



We drove to the city a lot and our car soundtrack for the weekend consisted almost purely of Parry Gripp's CD "For Those About to Shop, We Salute You". It's a CD that Parry Gripp, of Nerf Herder, recorded consisting of 51 ~30 second jingles. It's hilarious, definitely check it out.

He also is maintaining a website, posting some new songs every week. If you're into it, check it out here. Another interesting fact, Nerf Herder or at least Parry Gripp worked on an album for Hoops&Yoyo, the E-Card Green Bunny and Pink Cat. Unexpected. Anyways, enjoy Parry Grip, he's a funny guy.

Erection Day

- I got Pinkerton in the mail today. I brought the box inside and it looked a little haggard so I was getting a little worried that the record was damaged in transport. And guess what, it fucking was, it was like a vinyl taco. Anyways, they said they would replace it, those boner heads, it's still a shame that it's ruined. Don't buy from www.caiman.com off of Amazon.

- Brother John recorded a new song the other day that I've been waiting for him to record for a long while. It's called Crash Landing and it's on the Chalk Dino myspace so check it out. It's really dark and has a lot of melodic guitar riffage, it's really nice, give it a good listen.

- Joe Sanderson's band Unreal City is coming out with a record, Ephemeral Subsistence, on November 25th on Double or Nothing Records. I thought it was being released on vinyl and as a digital download, but I'm seeing CD's when I Google it so who knows. I'll have to ask Joe. The artwork they got done is off the hinges, it was done by the guy who did artwork for Integrity. I can't wait to see it printed on a gatefold LP. They are going on a tour down the east coast and back up starting in November. Check out some streaming audio on the myspace linked above and from the Double or Nothing website here.

Clarendon Bars

I think I was getting sick two weekends ago, and my friend Danlee had a terrible night that Friday so neither of us really felt like partying too much that Saturday. We hung for a while and drank a couple whirlwinds, but that got old pretty quick so we decided to walk over to Clarendon and check out some bars that everyone in the entire world doesn't go to. There were a couple bars/venues that I wanted to check out.

The first bar that was stopped at was called IOTA Club and Cafe. This place was neat, they had food but I didn't eat any, maybe will update if I do. It is basically divided into thirds. The right two thirds are the stage and standing room. On the left hand third there are tables and sitting room at the bar. The cool part is that the bar connects the two rooms, so if you don't feel like having your ears blasted off, you can sit at a table or at the bar and still listen to the music, and if you want to be in the crowd and drink, then no problems. Draft beer selection, not great. Yuengling though. The inside is really dark, with not much sitting room at the bar, but a reasonable amount of tables for the taking.

Second and last actually, GALAXY HUT. This place rules, not somewhere I would go all the time, but they have a great bottled and draft beer selection. I got a damn Gordon bro! They basically have just a bunch of good beers, and not much else, Pabst and like miller for 3 bucks I guess. First place I've been that has Oskar Blues stuff though. It's a decent atmosphere too, pretty different, they have a patio and they have live music every Sunday and Monday night. It's enough that they have good beer and a patio, I like this place a lot.

These places are nice, I still need a place that has darts and a good jukebox though, although I went to a bar in Dupont Circle (Buffalo Billiards) that had nice REAL darts and lots of pool tables. Not quite my kind of place though, it was really huge and not cheap at all. Anyways, this isn't really relevant unless you live here I guess, which i'm sure no one who reads this does. If you are in Arlington though and want a Gordon you know where we'll be going.

This Weekend

I had an excellent weekend. BGBK, Joe S., and John bro were here because my friend Eric had a Muay Thai fight on Saturday night. Lots of good hang time, and we discussed some very important topics.

1. The Apocalypse: When this happens, and it will, we will be be starting from scratch. First things first, the group needs to have a good sexual cadence. I'm not sure if cadence works there, but I like it there, and the point is that we can't have any more dudes than women or the other way around. Consensus was that things would get weird if we didn't have a creamy sexual balance. If there weren't enough women someone would get jealous, or women would have too much vagina power over the men. Ultimately, someone would die.

We're going to grow pot, because seriously bro, it's not going to matter. It's the apocalypse. It's not like I need a job, or to make sense when I speak words all the time. The only problem comes if we start eating too much, which I don't think will happen as we should have an abundance of corn, and I love corn. I agree with Joe when he says, "It's my favorite cobbed vegetable."

Joe is making the decisions, he's good at war and presumably post apocalyptic survival strategy. He knows and cares. Our main worries will be other roaming groups of survivors and bears/dolphins coming onto land. Although if we come upon a grizzly cub we will tame and ride it.

There is more , but you get it, and you're not invited.

2. Manatees: Discussing the marketing and production of manatee milk and meat, you know, cows of the sea. Also whether or not, if you were to eat one, it has red or white meat. Either way, fried manatee nipple fritters would be delectable.

3. Would you have had sex with Paul Newman in his strapping younger days, not that he didn't always look good. Consensus: It depends.

4. We went to Eric's muay thai fight this weekend outside of Baltimore, and it was nutso. Eric won decisively, and we got to watch an MMA fight and a padless muay thai fight at the end (gloves and nothing else). Much more exciting than I thought it would be, some guy got kicked right in the head and was out cold. THAT REALLY HAPPENS!!! That was fun.

Anyways, it was a wonderful weekend, it's always great to see some friends and family, especially Brian, Joe, and John.

God there were like 50000 grammatical errors in this post.