Day 36 - Records, Musings, Side B, Open Window Beckonings.

I collect vinyl. Age-old, archaic and kind of clunky. I have a budding record collection not for the sake of pretentiousness, or for the sake of getting old records to hear their original recordings, or for the sake of getting new recordings that were digital-turned-analog.

Before I go on, I'd like to point out that records are more expensive, come with less booklet-art and lyrics (especially the older ones), are usually used, and that one record takes up twelve inches as opposed to my iPod's 3 and a half. I'd like to point out that they are by-gone and kind of silly to have.

But the reason that I have them is because, in this age of convenience and music-at-your-fingertips, having a record is absurdly space-consuming. But that's the whole point to me: saying to the artist, "I could have you crammed into the list on my iPod and enjoy you that way, but, instead, I've also placed you on a shelf in my room where I could have put other stuff." It's the idea that I like these bands enough to let them take up an insane amount of room in these days of over-consumption. Twelve-inch singles are like saying, "I like this song enough to have it take up a whole foot of space in my room." I like Ok Computer enough to drop 30 dollars on it even though the CD is less. The CD is smaller, the CD is easier. There's not four sides to it. Just the one. And so the records are my way of saying, "I appreciate you," and showing it.

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What more can I say? I am sitting here without a shirt out, sensing (but not quite scenting) my b.o. that everyone has but no one likes to admit. Funny how we as people are inherently stinky, yet we attempt to cover it up with deoderants and antiperspirants and lies and showers. We are stinky people in both physiology and ideology. Everyone has lies and judgments yet we don't try and cover up their stench. We let it fly and whew! I'm pretty sure that's the methane that's being released to cause global warming. Maybe if we were less full of shit, then this world wouldn't be as hot.

I realized that I truly love very few things: baseball, women, music, God. The idea of love and women fascinates me. I know a beautiful girl who would cause my year to end and the world to stop if she admitted to being in love with me (but she never will be for her own reasons, so the year trudges on like a Casanovan solitude). I know that I watch too much baseball when I can point out rooftops of the bleachers in commercials. Music at full volume in a car makes me feel invincible. Lightning Bolt turned up to 11 driving down the freeway is intoxicating, driving, confusing, cacophonous. It will get you killed. Icky Thump, too, will kill you. Meg White pounding the knife in as your car slams into a tree, pinning the wife of a priest to a tree who begins to ramble on about how Merrill should swing away.

God is. What more can I say?

Am I happy? No, but I'm okay with everything.