Buy Buy Buy

Wow. People are actually buying my old, and rather useless, Dungeons & Dragons books off Amazon. Perhaps it helps that I have been pricing them significantly lower than anyone else. I am amused that I have deflated the price of many of these books: other sellers with the same material have been coming along and lowering their prices too. When that happens I just lower my prices even more. I'm the Wal-Mart of out-of-print gaming books.

No Accounting For This

Strewn about my office in various slidover piles are one-hundred-twenty-three Dungeons & Dragons books which, until today, had been sleeping in boxes in the closet. I threw away one box along with some of its contents because they were damp to the touch and smelled icky. The rest I have piled and sorted, catalogued, and eventually will sell or give away. Some I will keep. Most I will not. It's satisfying to throw away things I have held onto for so long. Who needs all these books, anyway? Nobody. I have no use for them. Few who play Dungeons & Dragons even have use for them. The books have nostalgic value, but little practical value and almost nil monetary value. (You almost can't give them away, like genre paperbacks.) I have itchy toes and hot ears. A strange phenomenon, Reynaud's. The capillaries in my fingers and toes (and ears and cheeks on occasion) constrict involuntarily in response to changes of temperature and mood. When the capillaries relax, however, the inrush of blood brightens the skin and it feels hot. But if you were to touch one of my burning ears, it would not feel hot to you. The human body is such a strange contraption. I am currently reading Richard J. Evans' The Third Reich at War, the final volume of a three-volume work detailing the rise and eventual downfall of the National Socialists in Germany. This historical work is amazingly easy to read; the research is meticulous; the sources, which include scholarly works, war- and holocaust-survivor's memoirs, soldier's diaries, archived memos and reports, intelligence service records, sermons, and many others, detail the German war machine through so many different lenses that the statistics and passive voice one generally finds in books on history become invisible. Reading Evans' work is not a struggle but an engaging and unabashed presentation without embellishment or opinion to cloud the view of a terrible moment in history. I'd better stop. I keep coughing up adjectives.

Addendum: List Time

I forgot to add to my list the James Taylor concert we saw courtesy of free tickets from my mother. A lady seated in the row behind us stood frequently to gyrate and at one point she announced that she "would drink his bathwater."

List Time

Old men retired from moshpits and whatnot, sitting around the fire and reminiscing about bygone days, have aroused a mild desire to list all the bands and live music I've been bothered to witness at the risk of my own health and safety over the years. The list shall form as names float up into mind.

Coal Chamber (twice)
Ozzy Osbourne (five times)
Black Sabbath (thrice)
Neurosis (once)
Marilyn Manson (once)
Rob Zombie (twice)
Tool (once)
Soulfly (twice)
Motorhead (once)
The Melvins (once)
In Flames (once)
Arch Enemy (once)
Nile (once)
Napalm Death (twice)
Hatebreed (twice)
Agnostic Front (once)
Diecast (once)
Gizmachi (once)
The Berzerker (once)
Pantera (twice)
Type O Negative (once)
Superjoint Ritual (twice)
Slayer (once)
Mudvayne (twice)
Black Label Society (twice)
Fear Factory (thrice)
Strapping Young Lad (twice)
Insane Clown Posse (once)
Slipknot (twice)
Static-X (thrice)
Suicide Silence (once)
Bury Your Dead (once)
Assassin of Youth (four or five times)
Slitheryn (once)
Union Underground (once)
13 Days (once)
Machine Head (once)
Downset (once)
Taproot (twice)
Vision of Disorder (once)
Limp Bizkit (once)
Sevendust (once)
System of a Down (twice)
Incubus (once)
Snot (once)
Ultraspank (once)
Deftones (once)
Primus (once)
Godsmack (once)
Hed PE (once)
Puya (once)
Methods of Mayhem (once)
Kittie (once)
Disturbed (once)
Slaves on Dope (once)
Pitchshifter (once)
Crazy Town (once)
Godhead (once)
Mushroomhead (once)
Avenged Sevenfold (once)
The Black Dahlia Murder (once)
Testament (once)
Full Blown Chaos (once)
Biohazard (once)
Dark Tranquility (once)
2 Live Crew (once)

Bands, Boobs, Bushy Beards

We went to a concert last night, the first we’ve been to in a long time. We saw Black Label Society, Static-X, Mudvayne, Suicide Silence, Bury Your Dead, and an accompanying freakshow called Hellzapoppin (a midget with hands for arms; an Australian crystal ball manipulator; an old fellow called the Torture King, who ran wire through his arms and other muscular tissue; and Betty Bloomers, a striptease sword swallower whose nipples were taped over).

I know that many people dislike heavy metal music. Dislike may be too mild a word for some. Regardless, one must love heavy metal in some capacity in order to tolerate it. There are those who simply enjoy pumping the devil horns in the air, slam-dancing, screaming obscene slogans, and jerking their head back and forth or in a violent circle. Then there are those who have grown past all that and just love the music. And of course, there are those who are insane enough to try to make a living as heavy metal musicians. The latter category loves heavy metal more than any of the others. To be a heavy metal musician is like being a poet: you will not make any money doing something you love to do. Yet they do it anyway.

I fall into the middle category. Moshpit days are well behind me. I don’t want to be slammed to a concrete floor by a dozen or more hairless three-hundred pound gorillas swimming in circles through the sweat haze. I just want to enjoy the music the way it’s meant to be enjoyed. The epileptic strobelights. The dull cigarette fog over everything. The air thick with the taste of beer. The bass pummeling through the core of your body. Such volume as one would find on a runway at O’Hare. The great buildup of energy that binds a group of four or five musicians to hundreds of drunk and sweaty young people for thirty minutes, goading one another on, feeding off the ruckus.

The concert was great. Zakk Wylde can play a guitar with all the effort involved in picking one’s teeth. The bass player of Suicide Silence resembled Clisbee in some of his more pained expressions, though I have a hard time picturing Clisbee bent-and-squat with an electric bass, swinging his hair and his entire head in great revolutions at 245 bpm. The singer of Mudvayne performed several songs whilst encased in a furry bear suit which I imagine was an entirely unpleasant experience. At least one member of each band had a beard of considerable bushiness.

I didn’t much like the Alltel Center though. Everything seemed choreographed to begin and to end at an early, reasonable, respectable Mankato hour (eleven p.m.).

So that’s part of how I spent my summer.