It is 9:59 AM on a Saturday. My sister is playing on her phone and my mom is playing on her phone too and I am typing on my computer and I'm watching the Dahmer miniseries from 2022. I've never worked in television or any sort of casting, but currently I'm on the episode where Lionel is teaching Jeffrey how to skin a fish and he's supposed to be in high school but Evan Peters is like in his early 30s. I have the same complaint about the Gacy miniseries that came out this year (I finished it this week), I think the actor who plays JGC is sort of mousey but I think you sort of have to suspend your disbelief for these roles. It works in It's A Wonderful Life when (what I believe is) a 40 year old James Stewart plays his high school counter part in the Moon-Lasso scene. I really liked James Stewart in The Shop Around The Corner.
On Monday, I worked and I saw my buddy Sam. Sam is my buddy who is mentioned in this entry. Me and him went to Wasabi Fusion, which is a Chinese-Japanese-Thai Fusion restaurant that exists in Beckley and is very good. I had went to Books-A-Million and purchased Sam a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. Sam had mentioned he didn't really have the time to read much, so I got him that book because The Prophet is just a nice book of wisdom to have around the house. Sam got me some 3D Printed Christmas Ornaments that were really cool and I currently have in my ornament box. He also got me this cool chocolate orange. His big gift was this beautiful vinyl on the album I Don't Want to See You In Heaven by The Callous Daoboys - which is a mathcore adjacent album with some weird genre switches and catchy choruses that I honestly really like. I had never listened to this album prior Monday, but I'm really glad Sam got it for me. Sam said it was his favorite release from 2025 alongside Telepathic Judas which I thought was very sweet. I also outlined the concept for me and Dave's next album and how I wanted it to be a more fingerstyle based Leonard Cohen type thing. He advised me that I should keep doing the fast songs, which I agree. He said Fear and Loathing in Chili's is one of his favorite songs this year. Sam is a sweet fellow, and he's taught me a lot about being genuine. He's not big on irony and we talked about Etymology and Beckley bands and I really hope he does a new album for his band Judas Goat. I got the General Tso's Chicken with Lo Mein - I can't remember what Sam got but it had Lo Mein. I got a side order of Spicy Crab Roll for K, because I was going up to see her after me and Sam's dinner. Me and Sam went our separate ways and I went and visited K. It was very sweet, me and her watched Druski's Coulda Been Records for a little bit and I saw her rats (I bought them for her during our previous relationship, I refer to seeing them as supervised visitation). I made it home sometime around 8 or 9 PM.
On Tuesday, I stayed late and got a lot of work done. My boss let me stay clocked in which I was grateful for, this holiday has been a b-tch on my bank account - but hopefully now I will be able to save up a little more. My goal is to constantly have 10,000 dollars in my bank account at any given moment. This has been my goal since I got a bank account with direct deposit. Seth was having a Christmas party at Silverdale Studios. I got there a couple minutes past 6 PM. It was just me, Seth, Josiah from Willowcrush, and Luke (who I refer to Trevor because I think it's very funny). Luke has a song that I cannot remember, but that I really like - I will link it here when I figure out what it is. We had Potato Latkes (which I referred to as Falafel because I thought it was funny), I put a lot of sour cream on my Latkes and it was really good. At some point, we hid up these stairs because we thought it was funny and waited for someone to arrive - this took forever and eventually my friend DJ and his girlfriend Tyler showed up and they were slightly surprised. DJ plays bass in Haunted Bicycles, Tyler is mentioned a handful of times in my song Bea Aboo, her username is Plasma Pistol on Instagram and she wrote a very beautiful poem about a dead dog which is also mentioned in Bea Aboo. A few of us did Karaoke, I sung Same Old Lang Syne by Dan Folgerberg. It is my favorite Christimas song alongside Aurora Borealis by Lemon Demon. No one really wanted to do Karaoke - so we ended up just talking about whatever. At some point, someone decided it would be a fun idea if all ten or so of us plugged in all of our instruments and just jammed on four chord songs. This was a lot of fun and we did this for a long, long time. Dave showed up eventually and I was very grateful to see him - I had bugged him about seeing him all week to give him his gift. I bought him a Woody Allen autobiography (which should've been discounted due to recent events in the news) and he got me Antkind by Charlie Kaufman, which is honestly my favorite Christmas I received this year.
Wednesday was Christmas Eve - I only worked a half a day. I went to my dad's around 12PM and I planned on spending the night. My dad did not know I was going to spend the night - so this was a very pleasant surprise for him. I don't see him as much as I should. I spent the day working on installing my Peizo Pickup into my Yamaha FS800 guitar that I put nylon strings on. The pickup was a JourneyTek Classical Passive 4-piezo Pickup EP004K, which is typically used for Nylon Full-Scale Classical Guitars - however for my Yamaha FS800 (which was a steel string guitar before I put nylon strings on it) I probably should've just used the EP300K because the four pickups was a little tight under my bridge - but I got it to work with superglue and the pickup finally set and has stayed in place since. I recommend once you have the pickup superglued to the bridge, flipping the guitar over to dry. The real trouble was installing the actual input jack - the Journey pickup is one of those Piezo pickups that also functions as a guitar strap holder - however something with how the output jack is designed wouldn't allow it to pull all the way through the whole me and my dad drilled. I just so happened to have another hole drilled that could function as an output jack and I fixed something up, I'll link some images of my installation here. I ended up fixing the guitar up pretty good and the piezo was installed correctly and I ended up filling the strap button hole with toothpicks and super glue and hopefully it'll keep my guitar strap in place. I forgot to mention this - but upon arriving home from MCA, I bought a bunch of luthier stuff. I have never been good with woodworking and I didn't put much thought into measurements and that sort of thing - so this was mostly just a waste of time and money and I often just ended up frustrated. I thought I had become a little better with that sort of thing although I ended up figuring something out with the pickup - I wasn't winning any luthier awards. My sister checked the NORAD Santa Tracker which I thought was rather sweet.
Thursday was Christmas. I slept in my sister's room at my dad, it was quite comfortable. My dad did a really good with it - The room is Kansas City Chief's themed and she has a bright sign with her name in LED lights. I couldn't figure out how to turn the sign off so I just slept with the light on. Christmas was good, I opened my presents from my dad - he got me an EZ Pass. Which will certainly come in handy. My sister and my step-siblings got a bunch of toys and also a trip to the beach in a couple weeks. Around 9 AM, I decided I needed to leave - which I did. I ended up going to Silverdale and making sure the piezo pickup worked and restringing my guitar. I got done around 10:15 AM and I picked up K. We went to her house and she got ready. Around 12PM we got to Maw Maw Tootie's house, it was very sweet and my family welcomed K back with open arms. We ate and talked and it was really sweet. K looked very pretty. I introduced her to my cousin as my girlfriend - me and her aren't dating but I do think me and her are good for each other - especially now. I think me and her are still going to take our time. Me and K went to my grandpa's (dad's side) Christmas. My Aunt Cyndi got me two books - one was The Recognitions by William Gaddis and the other was The Phoenix Program by Douglas Valentine. She also preordered The Dirties Blu-Ray box set which is coming out in March. The Dirties (Directed by Matt Johnson) is my favorite movie of all time. I watched it at a very important time in my life (14). From here, I took K home and I spent a little time at her house and then I went home and played Minecraft.
Yesterday was Friday. It was my first day back to work - I spent the day typing emails and what not, I went to Qdoba at lunch time and then I proceeded to go to Walmart to pick up some washers and toothpicks for the DIY Guitar Strap Holder I made. I listened to Deathconsciousness by Have A Nice Life and I wonder what kind of depressive that made me. I'm very interested in Have A Nice Life and I want to read the booklet they wrote for Deathconsciousness - I want to do the same sort of thing for my albums. At about 2PM, I physically could not work any longer and went home. I played Minecraft and drank and then proceeded to drink water to sober up and then I read that book about Slenderman. I have 100 pages left.
I had a dream about my big ex - the one that Insect Politics is about and song for ur dog is about. It was a silly dream, me and her were on talking terms and that was about it. I had some weird abstract dreams relating to Sandie Crisp - I haven't had those dreams in a while but I think I was having them because I'm in this song writing group and we had to write about dreams. I won't elaborate on the Sandie Crisp dreams because they are somewhat traumatic and I should probably see a therapist to understand the symbolism of her in my life and my dreams and the role she plays in my psyche. It's currently 12:43 PM as I'm writing this - I've gotten Subway and dropped off mail and all that other stuff - I'm on episode 4 of the Dahmer miniseries. I bring this up because I remember this episode when it first came out. I worked the evening shift in 2022 and me and her lived together, and my big ex was at cosmetology school during the mornings when I was awake. This sort of time period was around the time when I joined Blue Shell. I remember practicing all of the Blue Shell songs on my big ex's Ibanez bass (I miss that bass a lot) and barely attention to the Dahmer show. I'm still that kid in MCA, writing about his ex's in a journal - the difference is I know longer use a composition notebook. Somethings never really change.
Yesterday I bought a lot of books. I bought two sound hole covers for my guitars I intend on putting Piezo pickups in to prevent that god awful feedback. I used my Amazon gift cards to purchase several books - I bought Killer Clown by Terry Sullivan, Programmed to Kill by David McGowan, and Eye of the Chickenhawk by Simon Dovey. I also purchased two books from Thriftbooks.com, one was the Franklin Scandal by Nick Bryant and Wasted by Marya Hornbacher (I learnt about this book from the Whitehouse song 'Cut Hands Has The Solution'). I've had the song "Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes" by Sun Kil Moon on repeat this week. It's one of my favorite songs of all time. The song is about reflection and growing up with a specific emphasis on True Crime and the sort of sad anecdotes that I seem to be a collector of. Mark Kozelek talks in this song about how all this information collides into a horrifically depressing overabundance of disturbing information. When I look back at my childhood - I think of the stories I remember, The BP Oil Spill, The Anthony Weiner Scandal, John McCain, Aurora Colorado, The Boston Marathon, Those Two Girls in Wisconsin, Brett Kavanaugh, etc. I want to write songs about things that are important. My mom talks about growing up in the height of the Satanic Panic and how it affected her - My mom does not know about The Finders or The Franklin Credit Union or The West Memphis Three - but those cases are what influenced a big chunk of her childhood and by extension a lot of fears that she brought into raising me. I remember my dad being mad at my mom for letting me buy the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore because he thought it was Slenderman. I'm very much aware that I am rambling, I've become somewhat addicted to this form of block writing. But what I'm trying to say is I'd like to apply a biopsychosocial model towards my songwriting with a semiconspiratorial leaning towards my storytelling and I think RRDTNC by Sun Kil Moon is a perfect example of this type of writing.
I am going to read a little today and I might work on some music. Me and my stepdad are going to burn some boxes.
Det er ganske sandt, hvad Philosophien siger, at Livet maa forstaaes baglaends. Men derover glemmer man den anden Saetning, at det maa leves forlaends. Hvilken Saetning, jo meer den gjennemtaenkes, netop ender med, at Livet i Timeligheden aldrig ret bliver forstaaeligt, netop fordi jeg intet Øieblik kan faae fuldelig Ro til at indtage Stillingen: baglaends.
---Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard, Journalen JJ:167 (1843), Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, Søren Kierkegaard Research Center, Copenhagen, 1997--, volume 18, page 306.