curating my brand.

apparently i need work on my "social media image". people seem to think i've never heard of "bloodshot records" or "insurgent country" when in fact i was listening to "outlaw country" in the womb. granted, waylon jennings was somewhat mainstream thirty years ago, but i do believe most of the "alt" or "insurgent" or "cosmic" or whatever "i gotta distance myself from nasheville country label you wanna put on it" artists would list him as a major influence. emmylou harris' "cimmaron" record put me to sleep my entire childhood. "another lonesome morning" still makes me shiver. i'm down with billy joe shaver. as to the bloodshot records label, um, ryan adams? not exactly "insurgent". maybe "drank like a river" was "insurgent" back in '97, but "stars go blue"? come on. tim "i'm with her" mcgraw covered it, and somehow made it sound less whiny. AND IT STILL "UDDERLY" SUCKED! in this day and age, listening to mainstream country radio just may be the only refuge for the "outlaw". watch this: I'M DOWN WITH MIRANDA LAMBERT. does that make you shudder? i hear her like three times a day on KMPS if i wanna. maybe more. WHAT?! CAN'T TELL ME NUT'EN!
anyway. on to more important things.
after like five inches of snow, crystal is posting up a "planning to maybe think about opening" day of wednesday, 11 november. don't know why they even bother. i mean, loveland opened on 7 OCTOBER FOR GOODNESS' SAKE. can you say "way behind the curve?" if crystal REALLY wanneda make waves, they'd build a "climate box" over the upper silver creek drainage and drop the temps starting in august for a 15 SEPTEMBER opening. then they'd really be "git'n'r done". the upside of all this wet slop falling from te sky is that i get a $2.50 raise when we open. somehow my "customer tunes" are more valuable than my "rental tunes". same "steeze", diff'rent "deez", i'd say. in fact, i should be worth more while tuning rentals, COS ALL DEM BITCHEZ BETTAH RECKANISE! y'know. "jus' sayin'".
oh, last thing--the green river ain't flooded yet, despite the best efforts of all the local mainstream media. funny how the stranger, which doesn't stand to make any money on the coverage of a flood, hasn't joined in the fray.
okay, this is really the last thing, and it ties together a couple themes: i ran out of gas on the way home from the hill thursday. about four miles from town. i'd anticipated this, and anywhere i could, i used my--wait for it--"georgia overdrive". y'know, "six days on the road"? gram "cosmic american music" parsons covered it? okay. maybe that's a stretch. but it reminded me of the first (not the only, dammit.) time i ran out of gas. i had a righteous '81 toyota tercel that i bought with my own money ($1700!!) back junior year of high school. i was in running start at green river my senior year cos there wasn't anything left at the high school cep jazz band and jazz choir and symphonic band and marching band and pep band (sense a theme here?), all of which i took for no credit cep jazz band cos it was zero hour. i also "worked"--read: got paid to do my homework--at the 76 station across from les schwab along with the 2nd trombone kid in jazz band. he was "dropping" some running start as well and we carpooled a lot cos, let's face it, i'm awesome and e'erbody wanna be seen wid me. (he also din't have a car or license, but that's secondary.) anyway, we were heading up 212th outa the green valley on the way to work, in uniform, and the toyota starts the "i'm melting, gimme gas" jig and we hadda pull over. ask for gas from neighbours, all the while carrying big "76" patches and stripes on the front of our matching blue jackets. righteous, indeed.

welcome to the future.

i've been listening to a lot of country radio over the past, i don't know, 36-83 weeks. maybe more. i never used to do this. honestly. scout's honour. there've been some good singles passing through, and some terrible ones and a lot of "meh". i've noticed that if a song's good, it better be REALLY good, cos they only "drop" like five songs in rotation. if you like a song, you better wanna hear it four or nine times a day. and there's a few dudes tryna "out-hick" each other. one guy has the line "climb on up/ but honey, watch the cup/ where i been spit'n muh dip tonight". din't realise "dip" was "literary". guess i was wrong.
in other news, my "hikng buddy" is in tennessee. she sent me a text saying she just got her butt kicked at "Racko". i have no idea what that is. my thought was "why are you up so late? it's almost 11 over there and my parents are already nodding off here at eight!" then i thought about my thought, and i thought, "maybe there's an answer to your thought within that thought." then i just stopped thinking. that's usually best.
in other other news, dinner tonight was some kinda potato coloured ham dish with potatoes. can't vouch for the potatoes, but there was one box shaped chunk that had more "torsional stiffness" than the rest of the goo, so i think it was potatoes. my mom works "in the kitchen" at a retirement home and she brings home leftovers and she and my dad think "FREE FOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!!!" and i think. . .well. . .i've already covered that. and considering my reasoning for crashing here while waiting for snow is "FREE FOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!!!" i've no place to be saying anything. so i ate it.
in other other other news, i started tuning skis today, finally, which was kinda cool. the most important part of my job is to stare out the window and keep tabs on all the toddler ski patrollers "in training". (which is probly exactly what you'd expect toddlers "in training" to be.) i can tell who they are among the rest of the mountain folk cos they all have identical green patagonia puffies and really clean "mountain khakis" brand fake carhartts and they follow each other around discussing how "world travel" is "real enrichening". if you say you don't have the money to travel, they look at you as though you're speaking a foreign language. the one they din't bother to learn in whatever impoverished country they visited cos "it's what poor people speak".
anyway. just practicing my superpower.

Non-conforming water fowl?

What happens when amongst 3 dozen or so Canadian geese, there isn't one single bird willing to be the Leader of the V?

I watched a long long long string of honking geese flying sorta north-west (and even THAT isn't according to the directions) today, all of them refusing to "fall in", "belly up", and "fly right!"

Global warming? Standard Pacific time? Genetic disposition to be non-conforming?

Perhaps they were rehearsing for some air show later in the month, and really just got beyond the cover of the trees and then rearranged themselves. One would hope.