Rush - Chemistry: A fairly blah-song from the Signals album (making its second appearance in three weeks, btw), but they get points for the geek value of the lyrics.

R.E.M. - Get Up: From the ever exciting Green album, this was always one of my favorite songs from a release that seemed to latch itself to my senior year of high school.

Flaming Lips - Jets pt. 1: A nice stamp of the band's 90's sound.

Mogwai - Oh! How the Days Stack Up: Short, piano interlude between songs on the Come On Die Young CD.

The Red Krayola - Blues 5: Wacky sounds from a brief Mayo Thompson track.

Boredoms - Turn Table Boredoms: Another wacky sounds track that rapidly evolves into a drum-pounding yell-fest.

Built to Spill - I Would Hurt a Fly: This band certainly has not aged well for me, but the Perfect From Now On release is still a fun CD to fall back on.

Poster Children - Outside In: So ends Super Sounds of the 90's day.

Swimming around the pier outside our hotel at Erie, PA early in the morning.

My pointless rock and twig sculpture at Lake Erie.

One of our better hotel views.

I know, it's not Thursday...

The Replacements - I.O.U.: The opening track from Pleased to Meet Me, probably the song that will have me playing Replacements music all day after the random eight concludes.

Robyn Hitchcock - Queen Elvis: A bit of an iconic song from Hitchcock, probably the first one that would come to mind if somebody asked me to name a Hitchcock tune.

Lucienne Boyer - Parlez-Moi D'amour: One of a couple Victrola-era remasters on the iPod.

Stereolab - Baby Lulu: An odd little track from Stereolab, starting off slow, getting loungy, then weird, then loungy again, all in a matter of about 5 minutes.

The Books - Vogt Dig for Kloppervok: Weird, another repeat from a prior week. I think Lost and Safe is starting to grow on me more than it has in past hearings.

Rachmaninov - Prelude in B flat major Op 23 no 2: Sometimes I just want to hear a good piano.

Einsturzende Neubauten - Beauty: Quiet, spoken word interlude from the creepy band.

Tom Waits - Heigh Ho: To paraphrase, this is a song about the Seven Dwarfs, but instead of singing a happy "heigh-ho" song that the tale would lead us to believe, they are grumbling after working all day and singing "heigh-ho" as if it were a curse on their long march home. It first appeared on a release by Disney called Stay Awake - Various Intrepretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films which, to bring closure to the Random Eight, also has a fun Replacements version of Cruella De Vil.

At least, the ears give it a bit of a canine look, I think.

At about 8:00 Saturday morning, I heard a dreadful "yowl" from the basement. It was Sasha's really, really mad yowl. Like, "I'm in the carrier and you are taking me to the vet and I'm just going to die and take you with me" yowl.

I go downstairs to see what is the matter, and nose-to-nose, with only a pane of window glass between them, is Sasha and a very agitated calico kitty.

Sasha was digging at the window glass with her paws, and calli was hissing away. In a way, it was good to know that a cat other than Coco dislikes Sasha as well. I was beginning to think Coco was just weird(er).

On Sunday, Calli was on the deck again. I had learned her name was Lilly, her home was actually a few doors down from ours and, for the most part, she stayed on the deck of her own house. But for some reason, she decided to start visiting us this weekend. I went outside to give her a head scratchy, and she was super-friendly and all over me, rolling and lushing up every second of attention.

Ozzy and Sasha were not amused.

When we try to put her in the carrier, she throws a fit...

If you were a teenage boy with a leaning towards hard rock music around the late 80's, you probably remember seeing the Metallica video for "One" which featured eerie clips of the Dalton Trumbo movie, "Johnny Got his Gun." And, if you worked in a video rental store during that period, you were probably sick of pimply-faced, mullet-wearing kids coming into your store, growling a request as to whether or not you had this movie in inventory. Perhaps it was a product of growing up in a small town that neither my friends nor I ever found the VHS; I only knew one person who had claimed to find and watch the movie, but since he could provide no particular details about the rental location or, for that matter, the plot of the movie, I like most people didn't believe him.

Actually, I wasn't terribly obsessed with finding the film. Interested, sure, but there were other Clive Barker horror films out there to sooth my need for the morbid. I soon forgot about the film, and life went on.

...until this week, actually, when I was skimming through the digital cable guide and, rather unwittingly, came across TCM's listing and saw the film was going to be aired Wednesday night. My morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I stayed up until midnight to watch the film.

I think the viewing was worth the wait. There's a musical lead-in of military marching drums that sets a bad tone that a self-indulgent war flick will follow, but a dark human element was immediately introduced. I suspect I'm not giving much away by stating the premise of the film is centered on the emotional trial of a soldier who was critically wounded in a war with no means to communicate to those providing him care. Consequently, the film is narrated by the soldier's thoughts both in the present predicament, flashbacks to his past, and fantasies and delusions as he tries to escape from his personal, bodily entrapment.

The film's strength is in what it doesn't show or provide the viewer. There is no gore visualized in the injuries sustained by the soldier, there is little indication into the passage of time (until the very end of the film), and there are barely any characters who are given more than a slight title to identify them against. The film captures the man's lack of understanding by providing a lack of understanding, drawing us into the torture he is experiencing.

As a 1971 adaptation of a 1939 book, there are a few timestamps that unfortunately date the film. Donald Sutherland has a short yet stereotypical role as a, "look at how much of a trippy hippy I am" character he seemed wont to play during the time period. The fantasies, creepy in themselves, all contain an element of leftover 60's psychedelic flavoring. But these tiny distractions are easy to overlook, and the entire package of this movie is worth the effort to see.

Personally, it was revealing to me that such a story could be authored in 1939. History has a way of glorifying the World War II era, and I think the elements that posed another view of the violence have been buried and rotted over the years. Tales like Johnny Got His Gun and Barefoot Gen provide another view, dismal in their presentation, but thoughtful and sometimes commonplace in retrospect.

Yoshinori Sunahara - 崖～G-Surf (Great3, Yoshinori Sunahara Mix): I blindly bought Sunahara's Works, '95-'05 a few months ago, not knowing anything about the artist or artist he remixed for this release (yes, it just looked interesting). The songs vary wildly, and this track itself has a number of progressions that are very enjoyable.

Billie Holiday - Moonlight in Vermont: One of my better attempts at gaining culture outside my typical range of musical tastes.

Rush - Digital Man: As a kid, Signals always seemed to be a very strange Rush album to me, transitioning from the wildly popular Moving Pictures and moving towards a more experimental Grace Under Pressure that seemed to be taking advantage of new trends in music at the time. Of course, now I guess it is all just old fart music.

Billie Holiday - All of Mine: I guess the iPod liked the flattery.

The Books - Vogt Dig for Kloppervok: Standard Books, odd sounds, spoken samples, and compelling music.

Radio Thailand - Mak Mak Darkie: From the Radio Thailand: Transmissions from the Tropical Kingdom CD, this is (I think) literally radio recordings of songs, chatter, and sponsors from Thai radio. It is pretty interesting, and certainly all over the place in terms of variety and trying to follow what is happening in the audio.

Lou Barlow - Cranky: 80 second acoustic-driven lo-fi...yep, Lou Barlow.

The Afghan Whigs - Beware: It's been a while for the Whigs despite having almost every album ripped on the iPod. Actually, the Uptown Avondale EP that this song is from isn't one on my typical rotation, but it is good to hearthey maintain the same misery-driven soul-rock on tunes I don't hear often.

We were tossing out an old couch when I had the brainstorm that maybe I should hold onto some of the cushions. This makes perfect sense in the mind of a pack rat; one never knows when one might need old couch cushions.

Sasha's "Pillow Mountain" was born out of this. Flopped on top of the box that houses our artificial Christmas tree, this resting spot is about seven feet in the air that Sasha has learned to scale and use as a refuge from the other cats and people in the house.

It is very fitting for her. Neither of the other cats have dared ascend the mountain to take her throne.

A heron has found a home at a pond on our trails again. She's not very fond of people, but she'll hang around long enough for me to get a few shots off.

Tom Waits - The Fall of Troy: Quiet song from the Orphans release a few years back.

Marillion - Pseudo Silk Kimono: Opening track from the Misplaced Childhood album, a concept album that is a little dry in the early stages but gets twisted as it progresses.

Mission of Burma - Go Fun Burn Man: A more punkish song from MOB, a little sloppy sounding off the live Horrible Truth About Burma release.

The dB's - Amplifier: Possibly the band's signature song about a breakup where the girl stole everything but a guy's amplifier which, as the clever writing goes, is only wood and wire and basically worthless without anything to go with it. Makes me laugh.

X-Ray Spex - I Live Off You: Horns are so punk.

Peter Holsapple - Darby Hall: Holsapple day on the iPod, apparently.

The Paper Chase - You're One of Them, Aren't You?: A paranoid sounding title from a paranoid sounding band. I have to say that the latest release from The Paper Chase, Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1, is one of my favorite CDs that I've bought in a long time and is a constant play on the iPod these days.

Chainsaw Kittens - Bones in My Teeth: Upbeat track from Tyson Meade's band.

I call this poor girl the ugliest bird on the planet. I say it nicely so she always comes to the fence to visit me, but it just astounds me how goofy she looks.

Her feet and legs are massive and the bright blue body is the same. The hay-like hair moderately covers her body, and a weird turkey-like giblet hanging down from its chin. The monolith on its head provides some intimidation, that is, until she tries to run, and the gracelessness of the animal supersedes any potential threat she poses.

But she seems very friendly and is one of my favorite stops on the bird wing of the National Zoo.

bustard bustard...

Dengue Fever - Both Sides Now: From the City of Ghosts soundtrack, this was the first exposure I had to Dengue Fever and Cambodian music in general. Decent movie, but great soundtrack.

Sonic Youth - SYR 8: Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth: The experimental collection of noise from the band's own label; this 57 minute excursion is going to drag out the morning shuffle play for some time.

Subtle - A Tale of Apes 1: An interesting band, somewhat hiphoppy, but also somewhat experimental and often loud and brash. This track starts the entertaining For Hero: For Fool release, and the latest Exiting Arm CD is very fun as well.

Ministry - Thieves: A number of months ago, a hastily planned rally for McCain and Palin occurred a few hundred yards from the office where I work in a park that, conveniently, has no parking. People were filling the office parking spots as early as 7:00 when I arrived and were roaming on the roads without care for the fact that other folks might be trying to live their lives in the area. By pure coincidence, I swear, the song Thieves came on my car CD player. It wasn't by coincidence the volume was turned very, very loudly.

Death Cab for Cutie - President of What: Another reasonably fun, simple track from the band's 90's music.

Meg Lee Chin - Deeper: Piece and Love was a fine release from an artist who I became interested in with her work with Pigface. Deeper isn't really one of the better tracks from the CD, but still captures a hard sound with Chin's generally angry-sounding vocals.

Cabaret Voltaire - Do the Mussolini: Pretty much a band and release I never listen to minus the appearances on the Random Eight; this is a droning noisefest (fortunately about 55 minutes shorter than the one posed by Sonic Youth earlier).

The Locust - Wet Dream War Machine: As if the iPod knew it was running late, it closes out the Random Eight with a 50 second punk scream fest that would make Mike Watt proud.