Fantasy Rock and Roll?

Of late, many of the science fiction ideas, characters, worlds, groups, whole stories, etc, that I've been making up have been characterized and defined, at least in part, by rock and roll. T. Volker and the Rough and Ready Corps, of Eve and Shenectady notoriety, for instance, are children of AC/DC, specifically "TNT" for Volker and "Dirty Deeds" for the Corps.

Right now I'm foraying into fantasy though. And I don't know what kind of music to listen to. Rock and roll speaks to my soul, somehow, and I believe there's rock and roll in my fantasies. I can't think at the moment, however, of any groups, songs, or eras that seem fitting to characters like Twig and situations like Finger searching for luck.

As I write this an ironic thought occurs to me. For a long time recently all of the rock and roll I've been listening to has been old, classic. Some of it has been dated, and all of it has been era defining or defined by its era, and all the eras have been markedly ancient, in a sense.

Right now I'm listening to "Girl's Not Grey" by AFI. It came out in 2003. And although it isn't really perfectly vibrating with ideas I have of fantastical ilk, it's closer to the right mood, better idea.

We think of science fiction, and at first blush we imagine the new, the shiny, the chrome, the cutting edge. First blush fantasy tends to evoke feelings of age and agelessness and the ancient. I'm finding it interesting, fascinating, and pretty peculiar that I'm identifying newness with fantasy and oldness with science fiction.

Another thought has just occurred to me, and that's the revolutionary qualities of a lot of the music that I listen to. The Beatles were almost the first people to do what they did; The Ramones invented an attitude; Hendrix revolutionized guitar; Thin Lizzy inspired practically everything; the Stones just went kablooie all over the place. The old rock and rollers were the inventors, the cutting edge musicians. They were the explorers, reaching for newness, not sure where they were headed and forced to create shiny exploration at every turn. But what have we got now? New kids inventing NOTHING. You read articles about the brand new shooting stars on the rock and roll scene and the article is just a list of names that these new kids remind us of--oh, yeah, Endeverafter is like Led Zeppelin with Thin Lizzy sprinkled all over the top. The revolution is over, and we are living in a time when rock and roll is old. Still magical, but not being discovered anymore: it's come, and it's old, and it has stuck and will not leave. This is where we live, in rock and roll world. The magicians of old have brought us to this point when young heroes are discovering dragons to battle and corporate mogul warlords to overthrow...

M*A*S*H much?

"This place is bringing low to a new high,"--Klinger

My family is watching M*A*S*H, and I'm so impressed with the writing that I'm not watching it. A little while ago my mom started procuring the DVDs for the M*A*S*H series and my family has been watching them and I've been awestruck by the sheer humor, poignancy, seriousness, lightness, and massy cleverness of the writing. Each episode is great by itself, and there's an evolutionary arc that's great as well. Everything about it strikes me more or less into humility and awe.

But I don't watch it. I sit a room away and guess at the plot, or write something else, or nap, or do school. Most anything else. Out of the seven some odd seasons my family has watched of it so far I've seen maybe ten or twelve episodes. Probably eleven. I'm not drawn to immersing myself in the vocabulary and world of it, for some reason. X-files, Firefly, Buffy, the Alien movies, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Carribean, kung fu movies...all the other random stuff I've been impressed with I'll devote hours together of attention to, become nauseated through the absorption, and then walk around like an over-rested and bored zombie for hours.

My buddy saw Coraline! He said it was good...

That wasn't meant to be related.

I haven't been able to discern the emotional motivation behind my not being attracted to actually watching M*A*S*H. It's an incredibly educational show, from a story telling view. For days now I've been curious why I'm so happy with being two or three rooms away from the television and just listening to snippets of it, and not curious to go see the depth and prosperity of the show. I still don't know they I'm sitting over here typing this instead of sitting over there watching that apparently palsaic wounded soldier with possible brain damage make fascinating piano music while the camp annoying, pretentious bastard looks on in awe... I'm confused.

FOUR--count 'em--degrees between me and The Whedon

Yesterday, the degrees of seperation between Joss Whedon and myself dropped to four...or three...maybe four.

My buddy met David Boreanaz at a party once. So that's me->buddy->Boreanaz->Whedon.

Boo-yah!

I like being excited about entirely pointless things.

Spider webs and depth perception

The other day reality bent, and I blame it on spiders. I was sitting in my dining room, and in the window three strands of spider silk hung, reflecting the sun. They were all three of them parallel to each other, in a straight line and like stripes. And the sun reflected off of them.

Because of the angle of the sun, because of the angle of me and the distance of my eyes between the strands of web.... Because of that, in my left eye, I could see only the middle of the three webs, and in my right eye I could see both the others, one above and one below.

My mind saw this, and tried to consolidate. My mind tried to merge what my left eye saw with what my right eye saw, tried to make only one strand of web...or only two...or only one...and all the time, the surrounding world wouldn't fit into the picture! All that was bent. None that straightened straightened right. I failed to understand or comprehend and my mind dissolved into osmosis, and my brain dribbled out my nose...

The end.

The most impressive and thought provokingest blog ever!

Uh.... I totally lost my train of thought...