It is 5:16 PM, I am at my dad’s house and I’m writing this on my phone while a video about The Boys’ (comic) plays in the corner of my phone and Veronica Mars plays in the corner of my eye on the TV. I’m at my dad’s house to watch over Trip, which is my dad’s dog. Trip is an old frail dog and he is not long for this world. If that sounds callous, I’m sorry but it’s the truth - Trip is mostly blind and he was pre-diabetic prior to his massive weight loss. As mentioned, he’s very weak and at the moment of writing he is resting. He’s a good dog and I hope he’s had a good life - I know he (trip) is tired.

On Monday, nothing of note happened. I mostly just worked and then once I finished my schoolwork I played Minecraft until my world froze. I would end up replacing the region files and restoring my world on Friday.

On Tuesday, I started becoming interested in Etymology and Usage and that sort of thing. I started watching this Etymology course by Brett Robbins, which is linked here. It is very good and the lightning sound effects made me laugh. I learned a couple things from the course but I did not really retain much.

On Wednesday, I watched The Boys’ (show) Season 5 premiere - it was very good and I won’t spoiling too much. I really enjoyed the premiere, I’d been watching for two years and I’m so invested. I was introduced to The Boys’ (show) two years ago when some ex-friends came over to my house whilst my mom was at the beach and they reccomended the show. After said ex-friends left, I ended up binging The Boys’ over the entire week being caught up right to the Season 4 finale. Anyway, it’s one of my favorite shows and I think it may be the closest my generation may have to something akin to The Sopranos or Breaking Bad, but I could be completely wrong.

I had Deaththreads practice on Wednesday, which was a lot of fun. I brought a whole arsenal of instruments like my Jazzmaster build and one of my doorspring guitars and my keyboard and regular bass. I also brought a Behringer VD-400, which is an echo pedal that took me forever to get to working (Dave’s Shane was the one who actually got it to work) but we had a very nice band practice and we all (me, Dave, and Caleb) feel pretty confident for this Friday - which is a show that will be recorded and I am excited for.

On Thursday, I worked until I didn’t and then I went to Silverdale for an Open Mic. I picked up K, which I was excited about because I hadn’t seen her all week. Me and her ended up going to Silverdale and it was cool. I tried to help this band of younger musicians with the PA system and the vocal feedback, however I ended up just asking Erik to do it. Erik had shaved and he looked real professional looking.

The actual open mic went well, New Jade and The Verbal Mind were both very good and I enjoyed listening to them - alongside listening to Hannah’s music - she has a project called Hannah and Her Empty Orchestra which I’m excited for. I’ve linked her project here. This one boy did like a ring of connection bit which was interesting - but he said “Now I’m going to open up the floor to the audience,” which I thought was an extremely funny statement (the ROC act had a semi comedic tone to it), or I found the idea of turning your turn to the audience at an open mic as an extremely meta and ironic and postpostpostmodern and slightly 4th wall shattering.

Anyway, I played second to last, and I played three songs - one was Funeral Song and the other was Your Dad. Both are very explicitly about people who have died and Death itself. It was very quiet during those two songs. While introducing my third song, I told the story of how I met Seth and everyone else from the Beckley Art Scene and how it all stemmed from an extremely nerve wracking open mic in 2022, and I want to emphasize primarily to the kids, people who performed and felt like they messed up or were nervous (of which I didn’t notice any flubs (minor and/or major) from any of the performers other than my own (of my own flubs, I do not really care since that’s on brand), but I do know that overanalytical feeling towards your own performance is quite bothersome, especially after overcoming a nerve wracking experience such as that of performing in front of strangers.). My third song was “The Last Time I’ll Ever Play This Song,” which is another song about death and it’s a song about loving my friends and not knowing the next time you will see someone and that sort of anxiety, but the song is primarily about the weird sort of mindful quality that songs old with special emphasis on the brief intervals of live music experiences - what I’m trying to say in that song is that we could live our lives in rough mosaics of the times we play specific songs - some songs would have longer life-spans than others and some songs’ life cycles would have several odd intervals in which it would seem that different people were playing the song. I’m unsure if I’m articulating that correctly, but I got the idea for the song from this video of Johnny Cash’s last performance. I’ve linked that video here.

On Friday, I worked until I didn’t and then I went home and played Minecraft.

On Saturday, I prepared for a show and I was very excited. The show was a secret show at Dave’s house for a Huntington artist named Cricketman. Cricketman released an album called Skappalachia, which is very good. I have linked the album here. I went to K’s house at around 2 PM and I built a shelf while K got ready. At around 6:30 PM, me and K went and picked up Caleb, deaththreads’ drummer. I was glad Caleb got to go - I know he’s fairly engrained with all my art friends, but I think if I were 16 and I got invited to a show like that - I would be really pumped, so I was really glad he could make it.

All of us got to Dave’s around 7PM and we saw Cricketman and Chris Oxley and Dave. We all played Bocci Ball until about 8 PM when more people arrived. I ate some pizza and at about 8:10 PM, Dave sound checked my nylon-string guitar and a vocal mic. I plugged my guitar with this weird little quarter inch splitter thing which was pretty neat and made me look a lot more technologically advanced and/or savvy than I actually am. I played at 8:20 PM. It was a very very good set and I’m so grateful Dave asked me to play. People were clapping and singing along to Deaththreads songs and I was so happy. I had to switch my guitar because something was going out but I’m unsure if it was my guitar or something else. I finished my set and all was very good.

I think a lot of people were unprepared for how great of a performer that Cricketman truly is. It was such a good show and everyone had so much fun. K had a blast and she ended up making friends and talking to all my buds - which I was glad about. I know those sorts of shows can be socially nerve wracking, so I’m glad K got to see how sweet all my friends are when it comes to being accommodating in relation to those social anxieties. Me and K and Caleb left around 10:11 PM and I spent the night at K’s house.

I woke up this morning at about 7:48 AM and checked my phone, I purchased some books on syntax and saw they had been delivered to my mom’s house. I woke K up and we spent some time together and then I left. I got home around 8:45 PM. I got my books and then I showered and went to church. From there I went to my dad’s and took a nap. While at my dad’s I’ve picked up a lot of my doorspring instruments and other projects because I want to start putting those together. I also found an old anniversary binder from an old relationship, which I will put in the fire pit when I get back home to my mom’s. I have no interest in keeping such things, in biblical terms, putting away childish things. I’ve written a handful of albums about relationship troubles and that sort of anecdotal writing doesn’t interest me anymore. I’d like to start writing more songs about more important or philosophical songs (the adjective Dave used to describe one of the newer songs was “heavy”.). Anyway, I am going to post this and read one of the syntax books I got which is called “The Deluxe Transitive Vampire” by Karen Elizabeth Gordon until my dad gets home. Goodbye.