…and as is often the case, life has happened since then. I think it’s time, though.

I’m sure I made it sound like I knew him, had a Cramps show story or ten to tell, or a lot of the usual stuff you hear out of me when I write these things, but the fact is, unfortunately, I don’t. Sometimes, I write things and it just sounds like I’m familiar. Usually, I am, but not in this case. The Cramps were an act that I almost saw play probably a dozen times, but never actually got to see. I never got to meet or know Lux, and I don’t know anyone else from the band. What I can tell you all, though, is that The Cramps were a terrific, greatly underappreciated band (even by me) who spawned a legion of imitators, and that Lux’s passing makes me deeply regret not spending more time with them, in person or otherwise.

After I heard of his passing, I got out all my Cramps records and put them on. I do this sometimes, but not all the time, when we lose an artist I liked. What struck me, and probably shouldn’t have, about what I heard is just how terrific of a band they really were. I mean, I always knew, I’d been hearing their stuff for over two decades, owned bunches of it, and almost saw them a ton of times, but what I really recommend that you do, if you can, is sit down one day and listen to a lot of Cramps records in a sitting. What you’ll find, as I did, is that they wrote and played really good songs, and performed the hell out of the ones that they borrowed from other artists. Maybe it’s not always easy to see underneath the camp and the kitsch that was one of their trademarks (and for a lot of people, one of their big selling points, but admittedly it was a distraction for me sometimes because of how much sp00ky I’ve had shoved down my throat in my life; overexposure has some very unfortunate side effects), but they really were one of the best rock n’ roll bands out there, and I feel poorer for not totally getting that before it was too late to see them. Thankfully, we do still have their records, which I’ll be spending a lot more time with, as should you all, and we do still have Ivy and their other surviving members, who I hope will keep making music, and who I offer my deepest condolences to once again.

You can do everything that you need to do perfectly…dot your Is, cross your Ts, be completely and totally on your game, and if someone else makes a mistake, is generally incompetent or just plain doesn’t give a fuck, you still fail miserably, and in most cases, nothing happens to the people who agreed to help you, either as part of their job or just as a matter of keeping their word. Add the government to this equation, and the potential for mishaps, failure, and no accountability for the people in the wrong increases by a factor of a million.

As I just told someone who was talking about the movie “Brazil”, “My day was like Brazil.”

I don’t have them very often, but this afternoon was one of those afternoons that made me want a drink. I’m in no danger of acting on that impulse whatsoever (before you say anything: no, really, I’m not), but still, I know that stupid, stupid feeling when something’s kicked you in the gut so hard that you just want to numb it all too well, so as I drove home from Hell, I contemplated what could possibly make it go away. On the short list were the following: booze (Honestly, even if I were that weak, I’m too broke to afford it today), food (See above for the most part; I’m not spending my last $1.79 in cash on a McDonald’s shake any more than I am a bottle of Mad Dog), Xanax (Why fuck up the rest of my day by making myself THAT numb if I’m not actually experiencing anxiety? Also: habit forming), retail therapy (Again, no money, plus, where would I go? I’ve seen everything in all the book, toy, game and comic shops around here), friends (I’d just have to talk to them about my day, and for a few hours after I got home, even, I had no desire to talk about my day), sexual gratification (Give me a break; I’m hard to coax into sex in a good mood, I’ve got no partner nearby, and the thought of masturbating while screaming about my hatred of the government makes me think of, well, Warren Ellis), and so it went for a while, until I realized that the answer was music. I had music with me. I didn’t want to hear everything I had with me, so I skipped around a bit, and in time, I found songs that accompanied every single emotion I was feeling, and helped me get them out in some sort of responsible, healthy way. I found comfort, I found sadness, I found an outlet for rage, I found irony, and I even had a little time left over for laughter.

Unfortunately, to get back to soul-destroying, gross bureaucratic incompetence, when I got home, I wanted to put up a playlist widget of the songs I had on during my ride home today that didn’t involve me hosting anything locally, and it was like pulling teeth finding a working one that isn’t totally handcuffed. It really is like the bitter, pathetic, greedy pricks who run the bigger companies in the music business don’t want anyone to listen to music. I’m not even talking about people who don’t want you to listen to music without paying, I am clearly saying that these people don’t feel that the public has any right to listen to any music, period, no matter who the rightsholders are, or what license they give to the public to hear it. If they could make whistling a capital offense, they would, just to keep music locked up nice and tight in the vaults next to the Kruegerrands and the pictures of themselves with nude boys.

The next person who tries to give me the “But Scott, don’t you think that creators *deserve* to be paid?” spiel is going to be spitting out my left sneaker. No, as a creator, I don’t think I *deserve* to be paid for every bit of whimsy I fart out of my ass like it’s some goddamned birthright, nor do I think anyone else does, especially not the folks who throw in with the corporate accountants who are whining about their gravy train evaporating because the world at large built a better mouse trap (one that should legally be covered under the Audio Home Recording Act and similar laws, like I’ve been saying for the past 10 years). I create things when I create them because I can’t help but do it, not because of some illusion that I should gain fame and fortune for doing it. I’m not a teenager anymore, so “Let’s start a band, get a lot of chicks and make money!” no longer applies. Sometimes I create for the joy that it brings me, and sometimes I create because it’s the only way I know to put sadness in perspective. If people get something out of what I create, that’s fantastic, and if they choose to show their appreciation monetarily, that’s even more fantastic, but this idea that creative people are somehow *entitled* to be paid for everything we do whether the general public asks for it or not, and in a lot of cases, repaid over and over again by the same people for the same things, well, it’s a concept invented by spoiled, ridiculous, greedy people, and not one they should be paid for no matter how much money it’s made people over the years. With the amount of entertainment and educational choices competing for peoples’ attention these days, each of us who creates is fortunate every time anyone acknowledges what we’ve made in a positive way, never mind paying us, as there are literally billions of other ways people could occupy themselves. Unless those people have specifically commissioned us to create something for them (and hey, a lot of times, those folks don’t pay us either, and usually have much better lawyers than consumers do!), I don’t think we’re *entitled* to jack shit. Again, I’m not going to say that I don’t like getting paid. It’s awesome. I will say that I am realistic, smart and humble enough not to expect or demand payment for what I create for creation’s sake, though, and the sooner the artists of the world (and the real lampreys among the people who make a living by selling our ideas to the public at a markup; let me make it clear, I don’t think everyone on the business side of the entertainment industry is inherently awful) get the hint on that front, the better off the world will be.

And so, it is in the honor of the incompetent people in the entertainment industry who fucked up the possibility of me putting a nice little, download-free music player at the bottom of this article, as well as the incompetent people in government who fucked up my day so hardcore that I present to you “Ride Home From Hell”, a 5 song suite of other peoples’ work that really fits together well and perfectly captures my mood this afternoon. Hopefully none of the artists whose work is represented here get pissed off, as I’m at least vaguely acquainted with a couple of them. If y’all are, send a takedown notice and it’s gone, fine, you win, no one gets to hear the nice pretty music without slipping you a twenty. A nice little 5 song player that’d let you skip back and forth on tracks, see song titles and so forth would have been great, but after reading this, you know how that went. If you’re not willing to listen to 5 songs without prejudice, you probably don’t want to download this, but if you want a window into what it’s like to be in a car with me when I’m alone and in a really bad mood, this is for you.

<vein> heh

At the request of my therapist, I brought in (well, emailed) a bunch of pictures of myself as a kid. She’s kinda hung up on the whole “early childhood shapes everything” trip, but I figured I’d indulge her.

Anyway, we noticed a few things about the pictures I chose:

1. I smiled a lot more as a kid, this huge, totally not self-conscious grin that, to an observer familiar with my story, says “That poor little bastard ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em.”

2. My family were almost completely absent from the pictures that I chose (my sister was in one of them, out of about 12 or so; neither parent, nor any other relatives made it in), and there were no pictures of myself with friends.

3. What I was surrounded by in the pictures were comic books, toys, and people dressed up like super-heroes.

I’m not quite sure what this says about anything, but I figured that this was worth documenting.

…but remember what he did to the air traffic controllers back in the 80′s?

That’s probably fairly similar to what Obama should do to the people in the financial sector who are whining about losing their retention bonuses. Reagan was a little ridiculous, as the people who keep the planes from falling out of the sky are slightly more essential than the people who’ve lost us a fuckload of money by pretty much looting the financial market. In this case, though, I think the shoe fits.

The argument the companies are giving is that ditching those bonuses or forcing them to non-tender existing bonuses in some way would inhibit their ability to hire and retain “the best and brightest” in the business.

Given what “the best and brightest” have done for us in recent years, I say “fuck ‘em”. Let them earn a living, as well as our trust. Put a tight, loophole-free (as much as that’s possible, anyway) five year freeze on bonuses like that within the financial sector, and then we’ll go back to the drawing board and see if anyone in the business should be rewarded for the job they’ve done. Five years of frivolous extra income for folks who already make a ton of money is nothing compared to the entire lifetimes of money their industry has lost of other peoples’ money. I think they’ll live. If financial companies really wanna totally piss away the money they’d spend on retention bonuses like they’ve been addicted to doing, have them give it to teachers who love their jobs, are great at what they do, but can’t really make ends meet on a teacher’s salary. Oh, and have them spend some of it on a plan to reform tenure, so that lousy teachers who, like these folks who fucked up the financial system, shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing can be rooted out of the system, too.

Now, I’m far from an expert, so if you have a differing opinion that makes sense and isn’t just regurgitated partisan rhetoric of some sort or another (my argument here isn’t based upon talking points from either side of the fence; it just seems to make good sense to me), I am all ears. Throw me a comment and we’ll talk.

February: sucked, like it always does. Nothing catastrophic, just the usual February bullshit. Can we find a way to remove this month from the calendar and replace it with 28 more days of Spring or Summer?

Sleep: fucked as usual.

Drugs: haven’t been working, because it’s February. I’ll talk to the man who writes the prescriptions about all that on Thursday, but I think it’s just the time of year that got me.

Therapy: pretty good, all in all, even with me being a total drag for most of the past month.

Running: been on hold since I hurt my knee. I’m healed, but the inertia of February has kept me out of my game. It’s March now. I’m gonna try Monday.

Money stuff: if all goes well, the first phase of The Scott Crawford Government Bailout Package should be kicking in within the next few weeks, finally. Yes, I’m about to join the ranks of the people who the more right-leaning folks I know bitch about paying for! C’mon, y’all know I’m worth it. I promise not to get knocked up with 8 babies by taking a bunch of fertility drugs and gettin’ myself all inseminicated. In all seriousness, if I were in any kind of fucking shape to be out there, doing things “the right way”, so to speak, I’d do it, mostly out of frustration that I can’t right now. But yeah, first part of benefits should start by no later than the end of this month. SSI/SSD cases are still in the queue, but everything’s been filed and my lawyer’s on it. Even if I win all of my cases, I’ll probably end up with less than 10 grand in the bank after all’s paid for, and I’ll be making less in a month than I would if I worked at McDonald’s, so I don’t really see this as any kind of a long-term solution to my issues. It should help slow down the bleeding, though. In the meantime, if anyone feels like contributing to the cause, as it were, here’s a bunch of ways that you can do it.

Music: poking at it a little. Thinking of doing a concept album that’s nothing but filthy, profane songs about grandmas that an 8 year old would write if he watched a lot of cable unsupervised and had a truck driver for a father (I’m a near-35 year old who is still, at times, that 8 year old). Why should King Diamond get to have all the fun?

Writing: I’m writing right now. I’ve been doing some other writing lately, too. We’ll see if that goes anywhere.

Second Life: Heck still exists. Second Life has been in a rut for a good, solid 9 months or so, though, so you’re not missing much. Stop by if you’re so inclined, the address is in my contact info, the music’s almost always on and there’s still plenty of free (virtual world) cocaine on the bars.

Higher education: I’m considering it after the court case is done. Again, though, I need to be sure I’m in a position where I can do it. Even correspondence courses have deadlines.

Help me out here, people. What else do I bitch about, and what else are you curious about in my life, if anything? What was I doing the last time I went on one of these updates/rants about my life that I haven’t mentioned here? I feel like I’m failing you, because I’m not obnoxiously verbose this morning, but I backtracked about a year in my writing and this is what I’ve been discussing consistently, so while progress is being made, it’s not exactly making me as compelling a read as MC Hammer’s Twitter feed, from what I can see in this piece. So, tell me. In the immortal words of Richard N. Hughes, “What’s your opinion? We’d like to know.”