x-x-x-x-x. Politics of Sex, Noise and Depression

| | | — | | Renee and Scott have one of those “How do I feel today?” Cards on the refrigerator. Where there’s like, 30 cartoon faces with different emotions and a little magnetic frame you can move from one to the other. All of the faces on this thing look fuckin’ stupid, and most are undesirable emotions like frustrated, angry, indifferent, smug, worried. They had it on happy which looked very ummm…. boring. I thought, maybe you can use this thing do decide your attitude. Exstatic. Yea. That’s a cool word. Ex-stasis. Separated from the static existence of mundane life. In a state of exstacy.

Then I thought, maybe it should (“could”, to be less catholic about it) be used to figure out how I really feel. Happy? Um, maybe. Worried, guilty? We had a little pregnancy scare and that brought up the whole abortion thing. Talkin’ about adoption and all those heavy life issues. Hopefull? Why do you have that stupid-ass picture on there for hopefull? Like, I’m a little fuckin’ clue-less idiot who will never make anything happen for myself and I just hope “someone up there” bla bla bla bla.

Relieved. Is that an emotion? What’s the definition of emotion and how many are there in the english language? Then there’s emotions that only exist in other languages like, enuui. That’s that French word that’s like, part bored, part tired, part frustrated, a sprinkle of depression. There’s probably lots of drugs and …or no, lots of nicotein and coffe and some drugs in it. Hmmmm, emotion. WOnder if there’s a dictionary here? Wow. Stems from French; stir up, remove, displace. Then it says something about “disturbance” or “excitement”, but maybe that little o.b.s. means obsolete. Have to ask one of my writer friends. Robin? Leah? “The affective aspect of consousness. …Involving changes that prepare the body for immediate vigorous action.” A dubious feeling; doubtful. Excited, anxious, confident, lascivious (is that different from lustfull?), horny (is that an emotion?), enamored (but you have to be enamored with something/one, right?), blue (is that an emotion or a metaphore?), lazy… okay eough of this excersize shit. How ‘bout some stories?

We picked up these three dogs who were running around on the hi-way, gave ‘em some food and had a little adventure trying to figure out what to do with them. We ended up at the dog pound out on the edge of some tiny little town in Iowa, which was a cinder block hut with cages attached and a painting of a black and white “doggie” wagging it’s tail, in the wtaer treatment plant. There’s this hunter-looking dude with a baseball cap on and the minute the biggest dog sees him he starts to growl. Rivka gets out and is like, “Do you kill your animals?” “Yea, I’ll have to put ‘em to sleep.” Now the big dog starts barking and Rivka (of course) has to fuckin’ hang out petting this little cat. I’m like (yelling), “Let’s go, Rivka”.

So we go back to the local vet. and get him to come out, look at the folks. (Thinkin’ maybe spay ‘em and drop ‘em back off in the country.) He says they’re probably some farmers’ and we should just drop ‘em off on the nearest country road to where we found ‘em. So we drove back 30 miles, saw the kids off and got up to Ames in time to sound check, and do a TV interview before our show (where we had a DJ/turntablist sit in with us and some kids came out who love us and were dancing in a punk/disco/art-rock style like I ain’t never seen before. Don’t even think they were on drugs.

Played with a really cool band last night at Young Ave Deli here in Memphis who play “live disco” with two guitars, bass, electronic drums, synth, drum machine and some kind of guitar/vocorder thing. It’s really cool. They’re called VHS or BETA and it sounds like they have a really good booking agent who we’re hoping to hook up with. They had the whole room dancing.

Then we ended up at a party where this kid who did internet shit back in the day had his house built with a fuckin’ movie theatre in the basement. And he’s probably younger than me. They we’re DJ-ing from songs off the internet. A program called Kazaa which is one of the latest sound/porn file trading programs that’s all the rage.

There’s been a few long drives on this tour. Tryin’a keep ‘em to a minimum. After the Ames show we had a 10 hour drive to Norman, Oklahoma for an early all-ages show. It was cool. Stopped at the local college station in Ames and the DJ was playing our music as we drove out of town that night. Show the next evening was in a giant storage chamber where they sell super-market pizza for $1.00 a slice. Played for 50 kids. Fun. Nice to see girls with big tits wearing our tiny T-shirts. Nipples rock. Mad Happy rocks. Getting better and better and writing new songs and getting “zines” and writers and DJ’s all into us. Sneak up on all you non-believers.

Is that confidence, hopefulness or smugness? How ‘bout balancing it with a little doubt, pessimism and despair? Life sucks. Nobody likes us. Noone comes to our shows. Sure, the Bottleneck in Lawrence is a big club, but the place was fuckin’ empty. Was can barely keep our van running and the odometer’s just racing towards the fuckin’ two hundred thousand mile mark. We’ve borrowed money from everyone and their mother. There’s no market for the “weird”, nowhere man music we make. Our clothes smell like other peoples cigarettes and bla bla the bla fucking blow dee blew; blop slope screed snorcher omniboose moose catch thumbalina torture dance orgiastic lice-ridden, flea-bitten suck job.

Your mother wears combat mittens and takes too long to die.

No. Just kidding. Emotions. Attitude. Pretend you’re happy and it happens. Pretend you’re not homophobic. All you homophobes need to suck on a cock (or nipple-tit-pussy-hand-hold-massage-head-rub). So afraid to love one-another. My man in Nashville’s all talkin’ about the “ideal wife” he seeks. I’m like, damn man; you need to sleep with some fat chicks. Get over it. Who am I to talk? (Got Rivka? He asks with a cum goatee. She’s the doctor.) Homeboy in Birmingham took a drunk drive the other night before we got home, leaving his young wife passed out on the couch, and got car jacked in the industrial ghostland near where 1500 wannabe gangsters clog the streets with cock-mobiles and rooten tooten pistol shootin’ who the fuck are we and what is the point an’ what do we do with our Friday nights-tresess. He’s a working man and doesn’t wanna rack up another doc-in-a-box bill getting the inch and a half gash in the back of his skull sewn up. So we wash it out and pack it with salve and chalk it up as a new addition to his scar garden. ‘Tel you the storey ‘bout Zef getting car-jacked in Newark and neither of the assailants can drive stick? With a gun and everything, but all they can do is toss his keys and cell phone and walk away cursing. True story.

Rivka wants attention. Women.

Thanks a lot for reading this shit. Please go buy our fucking album. It really doesn’t suck. Of course you plan on it. What year were you waiting for? Ha ha. The band is called Mad Happy.

1/04/2001