mindpod – You Got Sars!

Tom and Zack

By Sars | November 7, 2017 - |November 8, 2017 mindpod, Music is Love, not for the easily offended

(a really good) holiday challenge

By Sars | October 15, 2013 - |December 3, 2013 cunt, friendship, mindpod, Music is Love, stuff

Is it just me or do the holidays start earlier and earlier every year? It seems to me that if Samhain has not yet passed, then stores should not be allowed to put up decorations for magic baby day. If I haven’t even given thanks for the pilgrims giving smallpox to the indigenous peoples yet, then that shit ain’t right. Maybe if it were Fear’s Fuck Christmas, I wouldn’t be so offended. But i’m not likely to hear that while picking up diabetes in a bag for the neighborhood ghouls. Why don’t stations play a better selection of holiday shit? Why must they always go with ye olde golden christmas oldies a la bing? Why can’t we get some hard rock or punk or ska or Queen???

So faithful friends I present a challenge. Most specifically to my favorite diverse type music loving friends; DJ joshpsmsc; The Social Assasian, Mr Atomic, Miss “Jen” e sais quoi, Mr (I use that loosely) Jody Neil Ruth, Miss (morethana) ShoeWhore, TravisISivart and the original mini (t)hug Liz aka FloRich… Don’t be offended if you weren’t named by name. I love you none the less and will happily listen to your ~~crap~~ selections as well.

Make a list, or better yet, a youtube playlist of your favorite holiday tuneage. It can be traditional if that’s your bag but the angrier, the louder the harder…. the better!! I expect a shitload of variety. A minimum of 5 songs would be appreciated but knock yourselves out… Go big. Give me a playlist that will make me ~~the shame~~ most awesome ever of my office when I “accidentally” play it at the company holiday party.

In fact let’s make a contest out of it. I shall challenge myself as well and have mine up within a week. I know my friends don’t like to pass up a chance for free shit so here goes.

My favorite list/playlist will get a shiney gift wrapped goodie from me. Sent directly to your door. Go forth, play music and be merry bitches!!!

posted from my tablet thingy

do not invoke the pop…

By Sars | April 20, 2013 - |April 20, 2013 mindpod, Music is Love, stuff

5 Comments

I do not like pop music. This may seem like a little thing, but it isn’t. For me pop encompasses a wide range of shit (really, SHIT) and none of it appeals to me. You can have all that candy coated teenage bull shit and I will take a hard driving baseline. I will have some Tool with a side of Iron Maiden and enjoy some Rage Against the fucking Machine for dessert. I’ll take some soul, some rock steady, old skool awesome shit to make me shake my groove thang. Some Ray Charles, some Etta James, some Al Green, some Otis with a side of the Specials, the Skatalites, Mighty Mighty Bosstones and some Gaylads (no pun intended) and Johnny Nash for a finisher. I will admit I have become a huge fan of Mumford & Sons, Florence and the Machine, The departed, and XX. But, you can keep your Bieber and Taylor Swift your Beyonce your bull shit boy bands and wanna be’s fakin’ the vibrato (I’l keep Justin Timberlake though. He’s fucking hot and well, do I need another reason?? okay, he’s talented too). I have tried to give this shit an honest go but I can’t do it. Give me Master of Puppets and some Zeppelin IV. I’ll take some Holy Diver, In the Absence of Truth, Mondo Bizaro and some Danzig. And anytime you can give me Tool, hit me hard.

Tool… Parabola
“…Twirling round with this familiar parable.
Spinning, weaving round each new experience.
Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing.

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.
Embrace this moment. Remember. We are eternal.
All this pain is an illusion.”

Had too.

How about some Otis too, because um, it fucking rules.

posted from my tablet thingy

bluffing…

By Sars | December 14, 2011 - |December 14, 2011 mindpod, sometimes its just like that

8 Comments

You are overwhelmed, tired, feeling like the walls are closing in and all you want to do is go… go for a drive and have time to think… Listen to music, angry, soft, loud, emotive, piercing, any music to calm the mindPod… but no. Your keys are in your hand. Your tank is full (well, sorta, you never can tell since you tend to run out when the gauge reads in the neighborhood of half tank), you have a little cash for snacks and a plan, or rather non-plan, but that is the plan, but no. None of it matters, you are fucking stuck. You can’t just go. Can’t go to your favorite breakfast place to read a book and people watch. Can’t just drive and sing loudly to the same song over and over because it is what you feel right that moment. Can’t spend the day hiking along the bluffs or go kidnap your best friend to get lunch somewhere he’s never been.You no longer have that option.

Sometimes its just like that…. you sit. With your head in your hands. You sit with your head in your hands because no matter how many reasons you can find to blame someone else, the choice that brought you to this place was yours. You put yourself on this stoop with your keys in your hand next to a vehicle that is completely unsafe to take more than 15 miles without AAA and telling everyone you care for where you’re going and which route you’re taking. You made a poor choice and it was not the first time, its just visible to more people than the rest have been.

Sometimes its just like that… the ripples in your pond- the decisions you’ve made, those choices you have found ways to put band-aids on and share blame with others; or pawn off on them completely, or better yet, decisions you’ve chosen to ignore all together…. those are making the ripples in your pond. They have started to clash into each other and make bigger ripples and even waves at this point. So much so that you can’t ignore the ripples and you can see those fucking waves from your stoop. The truth is reflecting back in a way that is certainly not as pretty as it was from the glassy pond…. but reality, you threw those fucking rocks, help or no, they left your hands before hitting the water. River rocks, giant stones, small pebbles, chunks of concrete, tar from the road… they all came from you and you have to feel the effect. You are responsible for the fact that all water sports have been suspended until further notice.

It’s time to to calm the water and bring it back to a glassy pond. Time to find the bluff that lets you look down at your reflection and forgive yourself because try as hard as you like… you can’t jump in and pull out what you threw in. You can’t undo the past. You can only forgive yourself and realize it will take work to calm the waters, to trust yourself to hold a skipping stone. It will take time to find the calm and face your reflection once more.

Sometimes… its like that… you must climb to the top of the bluff to find forgiveness. It is difficult and steep. It’s taken a long time to even get here… you’ve stopped a few times (even threw another pebble or two). But you are here now. The top of the bluff is within your reach. When you get there and see your reflection clear from the peace forgiveness brings, bring back the water sports… jump off the bluff on a sunny day, into the glassy water and make a new kind of ripple.

singing man

By Sars | November 2, 2011 - |November 2, 2011 mindpod, wow

4 Comments

This week, well the last two, have been about as much as I can take on this ride. But its fortunate I have a vast collection of music to shuffle through my mindPod (and actual shite too if you must know… between the collections is about two solid months of non stop tuneage) and I happened to land on Austin Lucas. Ahhh Austin Lucas. Not a well known musician, though he should be. And today, he is my hero. His style may not be for all but he was exactly what I needed. Most specifically his song Singing Man.

The past few weeks have been that of feeling weak and inadequate. Regardless of what anyone said or did I wasn’t going to get it. That is the nature of the little car that whirrs me round. But when its quiet and I can’t hear anything I tap my dbase of songs and here it is… Austin Lucas. So today was my dad’s birthday (dude! 69 – he’s gonna throw that around all year because he’s dirty… GROSS!). I hate family events for more reasons than I can tell you today but the short version is because my sister somehow – with her super powers (do you get those during child birth? if so I may have to rethink shit) – flip-floped me in the line of birth order and is now the oldest instead of youngest and has a complete vulcan mind-meld hold over my mother. I think its because she is married and has a child and I myself have neither, in fact I do not want child and I am divorced, thus I am broken. so there’s that… So I couldn’t go. I just couldn’t. I know I disappointed my bro, and I hate that. But to be fair I was unwell on Sunday but, it was made all the worse by my anxiety. I felt well…. weak and small and like I mattered little. My solution was to say hey, I’ll come over on his actual birthday! So the last three days I kept hearing the words…

‘I had followed her on
Until breathlessly she said
Here’s my hand, won’t you take it, won’t you?
Oh
You are not weak
And not small
In my eyes you are mighty’

I realized its only in my own eyes that I am weak and small. I may not be the singin man but I cause my own shit storm sometimes. I need to realize she is the youngest, I am the oldest, I am not weak and not small but rather a person who is mighty…

this is just him which to me is more pure, because if you are struggling within – you don’t hear harmony. I sing and I don’t hear harmony. Though the link above has the harmony’s with the female voice (who I’m ashamed to say I don’t know).

[youtube]http://youtu.be/F41Ddw1Czuw[/youtube]

Thanks Austin, needed you this week and thanks for the tweet…

WoW: Exercise 22 – Select a piece of music that reflects the mood of writing you’d like to aim for. Press play. Start free writing. Write the first words that come into your head. When the music’s over, so is the writing. I’d recommend finding out how long the song is before you start the exercise. You may feel cheated in your writing time if you pick a song by The Ramones. Of course, if you feel like writing a short, punky piece by all means, go for it!

musical tourettes

By Sars | September 8, 2011 - |September 26, 2011 mindpod, Music is Love, rose colored world

4 Comments

I’m not sure about you, but anytime I sit down to write, or read, or cook, or clean, or pick my eeer um movie… anything for that matter, in my head there is a song… I call it (for those of you new to my world) my mindpod. And when the little jack thingy isn’t pushed in all the way, and random lyrics suddenly escape through my piehole as the chick drops off my pay stub -think Johnny Kemp ‘just got pay-ed, Friday ni-eet. Party’s jumpin.. Feelin riiite..’ yeah, totally went there. no. I really went there a couple weeks ago. And the best part is only one person in my office was old enought to have heard that song so I had to send a link to the youtube video to several of them (the ones I like enough anyway) So it then becomes musical tourettes without the odd twitching. Its a family thing the musical tourettes, my brother’s version has lots of obscure punk and my moms has a lot of Eagles, Mama’s & Papa’s, and Little River Band and my sister’s has a lot of well shit, yeah, not gonna lie, it has shit. Then I take a amalgamation of all of them, including the shit, and just spew lyrics at random all over you when you least expect it.

So the last few weeks, the mindpod has been on overtime. But in an I’m-gonna-shufle-you-into-the-recesses-of-shit-you-forgot way. Hence the Johnny Kemp. Today and as I made my way to the barstool, er writing desk, I found myself in a Tom Petty time warp. Nope, not Mary Jane, though maybe that would calm the shit in my head yo, and not American Girl, though I could use some lotion right now. Nooo, I had Refugee… nothing to do with anything at all!! I haven’t even heard that song in for-fucking-ever. Well, the mindpod doesn’t lie so maybe my bipolar sensibilities are trying to tell me something? Or maybe it’s ADD. Because just as I decided I needed to figure out why I was trying to live like a refugee, I no longer felt the need. What the fuck yo??? I need refuge! Shelter! Something, I certainly need calm, Xanax maybe? Is my prescription current? I was at the drugstore. hhmmm. then as soon as it came to my mind, the car was on (it actually started which was a feat in and of itself) and the pod did a mad shuffle and threw me into a totally different place entirely …

“Take a drive baby up the coast, yea highway 101
I’ll pass Ventura and Santa Barbara too, just as fast as my motor runs
Gotta pocket full of memories, some happy and some are sad
Gotta girl standin’ by my side through the good times and the bad
Follow the palm trees under the California sun
I believe in love now, I believe in love again”

Now that’s better. I need a break! Work, life, work. I need to get away and take a drive! Take refuge!!! Holy shit, I’m not crazy and my mindpod did not blow a fuse. Excellent!

See you had this fear I injured my funny bone in a freak pizza tossing accident or my sarcasm font had been disabled, Fear Not! I merely took a break from my usual ranting and shit to contemplate the direction my roller coaster has been veering. Its not always easy adjusting to the sudden gee force changes that come with the bi-polar express ticket. I’m going for a ride this weekend.

yay.

WoW: Write the Music

By Sars | July 14, 2011 - |September 26, 2011 mindpod, wow

7 Comments

So I stumbled across Write on Wednesdays. I’m gonna make an attempt to sharpen my skills and get some writing done. We’ll see how it goes…

Write On Wednesdays Exercise 5: Write the Music – A bit of choice this week: Pick your favorite song and write down the first line of lyrics OR turn on the radio and write down the first line of lyrics you hear. Then set your timer for 5 minutes and write the first words that come into your head after your writing prompt. Stop when the buzzer rings! Do this exercise over and over if you wish.

“Mark out anything that takes no time….”

I was reading one of those psycho-babble, analyze yourself and then you can fix your own bullshit books. I sort of think of those like chose your own adventure, but I’m not sure that they ever really help myself. Today, however, I think that one of the things I read may have merit. (please do not fall off your chair, I will deny all liability) The passage had to do with whether we seek instant gratification, delay gratification or have a healthy self-discipline when it comes to what satiates our own needs. All this is illustrated by how we eat cake – frosting first, frosting last or with the cake simultaneously. When I first read it I decided I was a self denier but enabler of others (I don’t usually eat the frosting at all, but give it to the person who likes it. This usually corresponds with a person of girth, thus the “enabling”.) This may be partially true, but really, I think I have been living with my speed lever switched to 45rpm, even though I should be running on 33rpm. Its like this intense desire pushes me to make sure everything is done as quickly as possible so that everyone is taken care of. (Did you hear the ah-ha and see the light-bulb?) I do not delay or deny, I bypass completely!! There are things that take time that I’ve not completed for myself. I’m too busy. Until I sat and really thought about it, I didn’t give weight to the idea that the reason may very well have nothing to do with my own gratification at all… but more that I don’t like cake! Okay maybe I need to finish the book and get a better picture or listen to the rest of the song…

Denali: Relief