"I'm OK how are you thanks for asking, thanks for asking." - radiohead

Work hours have slackened this week, finally, and as I had suspected they would. I actually just went to the gym, beleive it or not, and cooked a meal in my own kitchen. I feel so fortunate, and sort of guilty, cause Lopez is at trial and basically working around the clock. I go up on weekends to help out and visit. It will be pretty much like this until December. Thanks must be extended to Herr Upright for providing me with the live Pink Floyd disc I had been seeking, as well as a pretty nifty trance mix of Wish You Were Here. The latter is decent, though in some tunes it doesn't sound like the canned beats match up with the rhythm of the songs. I will have to give the thing headphones treatment when I am working at the trial site this weekend. Today we recognize the birthdays of Mr. Upright, Mr. Kizzumahhhh and Il Consulliere. It is Fall 2003, which means that I have been writing music for about ten years now. I've been listening to a lot of the old stuff recently and am sort of torn about how you work hard on writing the stuff, particularly the words, and then they never get heard again. So occasionally from now on I am going to tell you about a song I wrote and transcribe the lyrics. It will give me something to do. A song I have been thinking about a bit lately is called "Into the Russian Winter." The Small Hours played it for a while in 2000. I wrote the words about my friend Mr. Obb, as he had just previously revealed he had written a song about me and my life at the time I first took up my current occupation -- I think returning to the occupation and a subsequent conversation with Obb called this song back into my mind. Obb is big on wordplay, hopefully you will recognize some of that here. It is probably worth noting that the song references a rough patch in the life of the protagonist, when he worked the night shift at a nuclear power plant. So here is "Into the Russian Winter," a title Obb came up with the first time the Small Hours played Plymouth State College.

"I know I.M. Pei and you ain't no I.M. Pei
You're much too stupid to be thought of in that way
You pushed too far into the snow
Into the Russian Winter
Like that was the only way to go about doing this
You pushed too far, breathing hard
It's a monument to what you aren't doing now
That I know
Now you're turning red, Now you're turning gold
Now you're turning brown, and around and around and around

Broken by the dozens so you must
Replace the mirrors you've been in again, I feared
Industrial energy, till you burned it clean
Did you say what you mean?
Or did you mean what you said?
Is it too late to go back to Baltimore?
You pushed too far, breathing hard
It's a monument to what you aren't doing now
That I know
Now you're turning red, no longer burning coal
Turbine spinning around, and around and around and around."


One last note: despite my best efforts, I somehow managed to win H-Dog's office football pool this week. Rest assured that the winning will buy me some rock and roll records. That is all.