It is sometimes tempting to look at these lists as a form of faux divination (note: they are all faux), trying to tease meanings and insights into life and all that from the titles and bands. In this case, several of them could be applied to certain aspects of life at the moment. No, I'm not going to tell which ones.

Obviously, this has been an up-and-down year. The last couple of months have been extremely stressful, what with Rohanna's early retirement and Dragonet's (fortunately short-lived) furlough thanks to the Feral Children in Congress (®Charlie Pierce). We're looking for a more horizontally-organized house, and trying to get this one cleaned up enough to sell. Long-term changes in income mean far less travel and cons for the forseeable future. If we hadn't pre-regged for Contra last year, we wouldn't be going at all. Ro says she has a plan to get us to London, but I find it best to assume that I won't be there, or anywhere else any time soon.

And then, of course, there's my job, which has had the potential of disappearing at any given moment, but is even more precarious due to a change of ownership of the building we're located in. New management has offered us space, but isn't saying how much it will cost after the renovations are done. Given the boss's health issues and the issues involved in moving the equipment and materials, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he decided to just shut it down, which just adds another layer of stress.

There's a whole lot more shit going on in my reality structure, some of which has been very good and very weird at the same time, and other times incredibly frustrating. Getting tired of having to approach everything with the assumption it will go wrong, but it's what I got. So, see if you can figure out which songs might reflect some of my issues (no, #7 is not one of them).


1) This Hotel Room, Steve Goodman

2) Stinking To High Heaven, Laughing Clowns

3) Shake That 50 Cent (50 Cent vs. The Lovemakers), The Lovemakers

4) Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Rheostatics-Bourbon Tabernacle Choir

5) The White Cliffs of Dover, Van Morrison (2/15/73, The Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA (late show))

6) Duck Duck Goose (Excerpt), Frank Zappa

7) Santa's Too Fat For the Hula Hoop, The Pixies with Thurl Ravenscroft as Santa Claus*

8) La Luz (Chunky Funky Mix), 808 State

9) Why Can´t We Live Together, Timmy Thomas

10) Blackbird (Rehearsal-Session), The Beatles


but wait


11) Sing, Gongzilla

12) I Choose You, James Pants

13) Good Job With Prospects, The Actress


Will see some of you tonight at Contra, I hope. The weekend has those possibilities looming, to what end (nae) we shall see.

*Alas, not those Pixies

I typed this last Thursday with the header "Hello, I Must Be Going":

Missed the Random 10+ last week due to attending SoonerCon, which was a fine old time indeed. Hope to post more fully on the subject soon. And there won't be one this week, as the whole family is about to hop in the car and head to Eureka Springs for an actual vacation!

There's another reason, however, for the lack of tunes: the video card in my desktop machine went fan up, and so I do not currently have access to iTunes and its many wonders. A new card is already on the way, thanks to the eBay-fu of Rohanna, so by this time next week we should be back in business.

And I am so happy I have my iPad, which is how I am communicating to you today. Typing all this on my phone would have been difficult at best.

So happy Independence Day everyone. Try not to lose any body parts whilst blowing shit up.

But apparently it didn't take, since I'd never posted here from the pad before. In any event, we enjoyed the vacation, and when we got home, my new video card and 8G of RAM were waiting. So we're back, and here are the tunes.


1) Look Me Over Closely, The White Stripes

2) Becoming A Jackal, Villagers

3) Bathsheba Smiles, Richard Thompson

4) Canyons Of Your Mind, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

5) Moon, Björk (Biophilia Live at Manchester International Festival)

6) One, Aimee Mann

7) Dark Globe, Syd Barrett

8) Flight, Wooden Shjips

9) Victory March, The Vigours\

10) Unless It's Kicks, Okkervil River


and some more


11) Bad Sneakers, Steely Dan

12) The Hole Is Filling In, Marble Vanity

13) The Warmth Of The Sun, The Beach Boys


And so, off to work again, with nothing to do. The weekend will be full of laundry, cleaning, and work on the bid stuff as we get ready for LoneStarCon 3.

Still attempting to recover from ConQuesT 44. Despite a variety of issues due to the change of hotels (free parking is useless if there isn't any available, oddly enough), had a great time overall, especially hanging out with my new twitter wife sermelt until all hours. On the negative side, I managed to punch a hole in one of my car's tires, so I am currently driving on the doughnut until I can get that taken care of. And now, some music.


1) Can I Touch You, My Bloody Valentine

2) That's All Right, Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield

3) Every Day is Like Sunday, The Decemberists

4) Here On Earth, Love & Rockets

5) Flashlights, Women

6) White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes

7) Keep Talking, Pink Floyd

8) When The Circus Comes, Los Lobos

9) Wonderboy, The Kinks

10) I Just Sing, The Troggs


then...


11) Stand Up, The Clumsy Lovers

12) Poor Boy (The Greenwood), Electric Light Orchestra

13) Thank You For Sending Me An Angel, Talking Heads


And now, back to work. Jon will be back Tuesday, and roughly normal hours will resume. This weekend's goals: get laundry done, get replacement tire on car, sleep.

Work has slowed to normal speed; I may not even have to go in on Monday. On the one hand, less money, on the other, a day off to recover from Demicon and start cleaning the house for upcoming guest appearances.

Major breakthrough last night: I made a batch of biscuit balls for the KC in 2016 party Saturday night, and Rohanna asked if I was using Scorned Woman hot sauce in them. It's her favorite, but one of the numerous side effects of her cancer treatment was to make her much more susceptible to heat in food, much to her dismay. So I made a batch with spicy sausage, Scorned Woman and Worcestershire sauce for liquid, plus cheese and spices. They turned out very well, with an intense bite to them. I handed Ro one, and she bit off part and chewed, then said "Oh, I've missed that taste so much." Further experiments will follow. And now, the musical interlude:


1) I Just Called To Say I Love You (Stevie Wonder cover), Fleet Foxes Sing*

2) The Madness of Love, Graham Parker

3) Elvis Is Dead, Living Colour

4) Waiting For You, Indigenous

5) I've Heard You're Still Alive, King Black Acid

6) Repeat to Fade, The Shortwave Set

7) Scarification, Maggie Estep

8) Race For The Prize, The Flaming Lips

9) Wait For The Summer, Yeasayer (Live At Ancienne Belgique)

10) Illya Kuryakin Looked At Me, The Jennifers


plus


11) Rednecks, Randy Newman

12) Umbrella (Ft. Jay Z), Rihanna

13) Hey Conductor, Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer


And now it's off to work, then home to finish throwing things in the van and off to Des Moines for Demicon! Fun fun fun!

In a few short hours, Rohanna and I will be off to Collinsville, IL for Archon 35. As I still don't have a portable computer, I won't have access to the 29,977 items in my iTunes to provide you, my dozens of readers, the weekly randomness you need. So you get it today, because that's just the giver-goddess kind of guy I am.


1) Lady Jane, Belle & Sebastian

2) The Inside Out, Henry Badowski

3) Loves Me Like A Rock, Paul Simon

4) His & Hers, Rifle Men

5) Cold Morning Light, Todd Rundgren

6) All My Friends (LCD Soundsystem vs. John Cale), DJ Million Dollar Snake Babies

7) This Hotel Room, Steve Goodman

8) Salad Days (Are Here Again), Procol Harum

9) Dizzy, Siouxsie & The Banshees

10) Fuck You, Tristan Clopet


and a few for the road


11) Silence, Takka Takka

12) Revolution 1 (S1 Onto Take 20, Monitor-Mix), The Beatles

13) One Vision, Laibach


And after a brief break to transfer the remains of the homebrewed beer and root beer remaining from Reno so we can serve it at Archon, we're getting ready to pack the car. And off we go!

No tunes this week. Off to OKC, for Soonercon. See y'all there, or Monday.

to SMOFcon 28, Burning Building Bridges, in lovely San José, CA. Perhaps this time I shall get to see some of the area. Most likely I will not be posting again until Monday, when I return, ideally with some of the fine products of the Stone Brewing Co. to help me through the holidays.

Play nice, everybody.

I actually did a list last week, but had to rush into work early again and never got around to posting it. Things are back to semi-normal now (i.e., working 4/7 again), so let's see what we get this time.


1) The Connoisseur, The New Amsterdams

2) Stairway To Heaven, Rock Lobsters

3) She Can Be So Cold, Pacewon and Mr. Green ft. The White Stripes

4) Afternoons And Coffeespoons, Crash Test Dummies

5) Wasted (Feat. Plies) (Dirty), Gucci Mane

6) Orion, Rodrigo Y Gabriela

7) Roddy McCorley, Shane MacGowan & The Popes

8) Only, A Beautiful Machine

9) Castles, Doveman

10) Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians, The Sword


And, because too much is not enough:


11) Another Wise Guy, Mojack

12) It Came Out Of The Sky, Creedence Clearwater Revival

13) The Ballad Of Wendell Scott, Mojo Nixon


And of course, since this is the third weekend of the month, everything is happening, and then some. Rohanna is working on and off at Naka-Con today and tomorrow. Saturday brings the annual KanPoly Dim Sum Orgy at Bo Ling's (on the Plaza, 11a!), then the ConQuesT and KaCSFFS meetings. The club meeting is a chocolate special (not a euphemism), to which we plan on bringing a lovely Schadenfreude pie. Nom nom. And off to work I go, alas not so high (nor a ho, so there).

Having swapped days off this week, I have begun a four-day weekend to coincide with our local adult relaxacon, ConTraception. Later than usual this year, but never needed more. And now, on wiith the tunes!


1) He Fiddled While I Burned, Charline Arthur

2) The Future, Leonard Cohen

3) Cold, The Cure, Palais Theatre, Melbourne, Australia

4) Converging In The Quiet, Crystal Stilts

5) zmudowski, dp

6) Mr Soul, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, 10/22/86 Fox Theater, St. Louis Soundboard

7) Wednesday's Child, Emiliana Torrini

8) Message To Harry Manback, Tool

9) James Connolly, Black 47

10) Working Class Hero, Marianne Faithfull


Angelina-approved bonus tracks (she's sitting on my lap as I type, so she must like them):


11) Join Me In L.A., Warren Zevon

12) Sea Change, Jeff Parker

13) Ode To The Prostitute, The Bastard Fairies


Final packing left to do, then off to ConTraception. It will be good to see people again. This lack of con activity is getting to be a real pain.


*Quote from song 13, really.

So now it's been 31 years since Dragonet and I stood in front of a rural preacher and promised to love and cherish (but not obey) at her parents' home outside Wellsville, Kansas. And here we are.

For dinner we checked out the new Genghis Grill in the Power and Light District downtown. Good variety of meats, seasonings, veggies and sauces. The twist is that when you give your bowl o' goodness to the cook (with the sauce(s) in a separate bowl), they ask which of the available starch options you want. And they have Boulevard Wheat on tap for $3. Afterward, we wandered over to the renovated Hotel President (now a Hilton property), and marveled at how nice it looks, as opposed to how run down it was in 1980 when ConQuesT 1980 was held there.

How rundown was it? Well, the a/c didn't work, we got the elevator operator to stick around by getting him drunk, and the place closed down right after the con for 25 years (not counting its brief use in the movie Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,). On the other hand, I do remember sitting on the fire escape with Dave Wilson making pointed comments to the guys scuttling in and out of the "Magic Touch Massage Parlor" ("Does your mother know you're going in there?" "Stay away from Lurlene, she just got back from the clinic!").

{Edit: Oh, wait, I almost forgot! The Sunday banquet was prepared by the hotel staff, who then walked out, so the concom had to serve the plates. When Pati Taylor went back three weeks later to settle the bill, the plates were still sitting on the tables in the function room, auditioning for Ms. Havisham's wedding}.

Ah, but my favorite memory of that last year there was Saturday morning, when I joined a group at Kate Graf's dealer's table who were talking about "The Empire Strikes Back," which had opened the night before. Someone mentioned the big surprise ending, and without thinking (mainly because I was still enjoying the previous night's imbibing), I said "What, that Darth Vader is Luke's father?"* Everyone looked at me aghast, and someone asked "Did you see it too?" I replied "No, I know bad serial plotting when I hear it. And in the next movie, Leia will be revealed as Luke's mother!" Had I taken a moment to reflect on the apparent ages, I would have gotten that one right, too.



*The first person who says "spoiler!" gets a smack in the head the next time I see them, followed by the comment "Too soon?"

Anyway, happy anniversary, honey. Next year in Australia!