Top Fiver

If you know me, you probably know my affinty for music. You know my sometimes...err, eternal elitist attitude towards what is considered credible artistry and inaudible shit. I've always tried to challenge myself to pinpoint a Top Five, and while that task is a veritable "whack-a-mole" (<--promised myself I'd find a place for that reference today), what with my ever-evolving and fluid taste in ALL kinds of music, I've narrowed it down to five songs that I dig pretty heavily and always have. It's no wonder that three songs come from my top three favourite songwriters...and while I will always claim that one particular song is amongst my favourite songs (mostly when drunk), it will usually have a brief stint in the ether only to be replaced by a completely different song (during a completely different booze session).

*However, these five songs would be the "gun to head" list I'd make if there were only five songs I could listen to for the rest of my life.

ANYWAYS...in no particular order...

*I couldn't go too obscure because the website didn't have a couple of songs I might've put on there. Maybe I'll make a "Cory's Top Five Greatest Obscure Songs" list next. Or maybe I'll punch your face.

Scorching Both Ends of the Candle in the Crescent City

I used to know my limits. I somehow forgot them on that long dirty highway. It gives you enough time to hallucinate as you dart through the swamps. Some AM station rattling off voodoo-cajun-french-creole-fair.

There are two types of drugs that you should never find yourself tackling in New Orleans. Watch Easy Rider and that'll tell you one of them. Ask me, and I can tell you the other.

Ah, we were killin' old lovers and stuffin' em in boxes. Boxes of booze and pain killers. Driving insanity across state lines. Creole spice and ethanol grade bloody marys. Old world hotels and beautiful dentists on leave from Paraguay. Dilapidated lofts and plant-adorned balconies. Young and hypnotic. Old and mysterious.

Professional sports team owners and young chaps from the South with their Alabama-slide haircuts...they all look the same. Arm and arm with their girlfriends...they all look the same. Drinking for free is always the way to do it, no matter the company you find yourself in. A clever story, a welcome smile, and a helpful accent are useful tools.

I turned down an interview that probably would've been a bad move anyways. My buddy dodges texts that he don't care to read from a girl that he don't care to read. The other scouts the landscape because he doesn't sleep as much. He eats in bed for the nuclear day. Buying art, chasing people, young South American dentists. Buying drinks. Rod Stewart sings and tells me my fortunes...gulps big purple drinks at Phat Tuesdays. Dirty canastas now have my cell phone number and call it when they wanna warm up to something visceral. We're in pictures of people we don't know. We're in pictures we'll hang on our own walls.

New Orleans is the last great city of Old America.

Doscientos (On Every Veiled Word)

Soooooo, there are certainly some elements that you (and your magic book) pointed out that are running a definite parallel with specific entities knocking around in my brain. In all honesty, it’s a little frightening how accessible those things might be just from a dream. The motion of the crowd is definitely career-oriented and probably falls in the arena of “next-step-in-life” projections. What am I doing? Why? To what end? Is it what I want, or is it what someone else wants for me? Of course. The crowd itself obviously would allude to people acting in a sheep-like manner…aimless wandering, thoughtless following, lives void of self-introspection or personal inquiry…certain traits that are all too common in the American social conscious…and to some degree, the idea of removing yourself from that to generate and appreciate your own uniqueness. I gave you the abbreviated version of my dream. An adjunct detail being that I was actually arguing with someone who was in proximate age to me within the crowd. I’m not sure of the reasons for the arguing, but it almost descended into a physical altercation and I just wanted to get away from the whole afflictive spectacle itself. That’s when I noticed you and the house in the hills…further evidence of my desire to exit the current situation. In fact, he followed me up to the house and you wouldn’t allow him access. Of course I can connect the dots to my current career and certain aspirations I have that I may be struggling with as far as standing on a ledge overlooking the possibilities. But the access offered was exclusive and it was for me.

I suppose with any change, a certain amount of apprehension always accompanies it. That’s probably where the dark clouds came from. The white clothes…saints, hero’s, people who have been anointed with a certain amount of freedom or aptitude that I seek? Possibly. I don’t remember it being your house, per se, but you were certainly the one who allowed me entrance and extended the invite. The greenery (trees, new and thriving life) is interesting because with change, a sense of eagerness and hopeful optimism also makes a fitting co-pilot. I think everyone expects (or at least longs for) a possibility of promise when major change is presented.

I think at this point I’m probably just regurgitating everything you brought to light. I think the drugs are probably inane and rather self-explanatory. Unless my subconscious was telling me that my reality was altered...totally nullifying the whole thing! I’m not sure the specific role they played. Do you think Freud enjoyed the occasional mind-bender? I’d be hard-pressed to assume that he didn’t! Wait, don’t you have a psychology degree???

As far as your role, well…that’s more interesting…I suppose. It’s the first time you’ve showed in one of my dreams, and the dream wasn’t fuzzy or scattered. It was definitely linear and very, very specific. I think I spilled enough of my own drunken guts to bypass offering up any explanation that would further put you inside my head or make me blush on several accounts, so I think I’ll leave that in the reserve tank! I mean, obviously, our friendship has been more on the social/breezy/unassuming side, so that probably lends itself to you taking certain footholds in my brain that may or may not be rightfully accurate. But the fact that you were there is most definitely intriguing. As you are pretty goddamn intriguing.

Dreaming Alternate Realities (Sighs of Relief)

There's a few things to consider when you've denied all convention and that singular choice has you standing on the edge of mortality. One being the unfortunate regret that you've allowed most of your life to be ruled by your own cock. It's all very elementary and this tragic end befalls too many of one half of the world's population. Too many tragedies. But that's probably not altogether accurate either...

A tragedy is the contradiction of principles. I have no principles.

When my nose exploded and turned into a warm, runny faucet, I understood why they told me not to stumble and fall between legs that didn't belong to me. Just on the outskirts of Camp Pendleton, the cholos who run drugs for the psychos who haven't yet packed their rifles are easy hires. Soldier's wives are nearly as treacherous as the training their husbands receive. Assassins in their own right. It's no wonder military kids are so fucked up. So as I sat tasting my own metallic liquid insides, tracing blind spots in my vision, with my head swelling up like a balloon, I realized the other thing...

I should never have left Texas for a girl.




johnathan rice we re all stuck out in the desert

A Slender Flame, A Burning Name

So the world is showing evidence of ending in 2012 I'm being told. At least it can surely be confused as preparing itself for this fate. So I run in the mornings to enjoy the finite sunrises we still have in our account and today I took a withdraw and ran early...long before sunrise.

2008 has reached it's end and drew it's last breath (a heavy one, at that) tonight.

While running Town Lake I noticed several things. Mostly visceral observations that were inescapable. My tendons popping in my knee, leaving me lame for the remainder of the day and reminding me of my ascension in age. 37 degree weather probably doesn't help. Two homeless men sleeping hunched over bobbing their heads up and down from sleep deprivation on the benches of the pedestrian bridge remind me how important constant movement and metabolic rate are to warmth. They seem to be losing their battle with the cold and their breath is tangible and in rhythm with their shivering.

In the great opening of Auditorium Shores stands a 30 foot wooden clock. Lighted from all sides in the blackness of night it stands like a spooky pagan idol just under the skyline of downtown. It's being tended to by a handful of workers who almost seem hypnotized and at the behest of it's ordering and directive, almost life-like nature. It's gears turn and grind behind it's oval face, and it's weapon-like hands move frantically over Roman Numerals. There are artful spires and gothic towers surrounding it throughout the neighboring grounds and they tower above me as well. There are little campfires to either side that are surrounded by it's keepers and ultimately it's guardians. You can hear their inaudible conversations in the quiet, still cold. In time, it will be burned down.

I stand alone and while looking through my own breath, I'm a little spooked by it's presence. It's dark, really dark. There are four or five people tending to this clock and it stands there, like a real-world incarnation of the Clock of the Time-Dragon from the novel I'm reading right now. It's alive. Like it jumped out of the pages of the book I'm reading and landed in Austin.

On the news today, people filed into the park to write down their resolutions and fix them to the clock. Everyone is encouraged to do so. 2008 has left scars on the American psyche and I think we are determined to find a suitable send-off for this year. Write your wishes, your fears, your resolutions, your hopes, and dreams. Your lusts, your sleepy boredoms, your lies, your truths, your demons, your saints, write yourself on this clock, because time is ticking down. The TV news told me today that when it does reach it's finality, the whole thing is going up in a ball of flames. This morning, witnessing it's birth in the pre-dawn hours, I have a feeling it won't go easily, and I won't be there to see it.

In the dark morning light it shines brighter than the moon. Like it's trying to outshine the great lunar orb. Almost as if to exact an ancient revenge from some distant and long forgotten time.

It stands there in abject denial of it's existence as a temporary figure amongst the skyline. I don't think it was gently accepting it's fate, and why would it...set ablaze amidst selfish cheers for wishes and desires going up in its smoke and laying lifeless in it's ashes. It bore little resemblance to the phoenix, but I think if hope was animated, it would rise from the night and pour solid magic on those who ooh'd and aah'd.

A few things remain that I would like to throw on that fire before all time finally stands still.

yawny at the apocalypse - andrew bird