Sweet Water Pools

What's more annoying than Scott Heisel's classic-rock love letters and Tim Karan's fantasy-whatever blogging? Apparently, it's me. Yes, I've been told by a few people that nothing would make them happier than to see me trapped underwater for an non-specific period of time.

I'm cranky. My taste in music doesn't fall completely in line with either current punk scenesters or indie snobs. On a personal level, it's impossible for me to keep a clean office (there goes the Rolling Stone gig), or be politically correct when some rhombus-headed skidmark makes a holier-than-thou pronouncement. I mispronounce the word "wolf" as "woof," yet despite my Western Pennsylvanian upbringing, I steadfastly refuse to use the term "yinz." (As in, "Yinz guys goin' dahn-tahn tanite?")

But you know what I do that really sets people off? Whether I'm at home, traveling by car or hammering away in my office, the one thing that makes people crazy is my insistence on playing one song over and over and over and over and over again. My lovely wife will violently turn off a car stereo, yank an iPod from its external speaker dock or drag a tonearm across a slab of vinyl if it ever repeats the same song in 24 hours. It's those times when she wants to see me thrashing in a lake, with the weight of my entire music collection strapped around me. I've heard people in the AP Skyscraper say "Jesus, doesn't he have any OTHER music?" after enduring repeated playings of everything from '80s one-hit wondress Jane Child, psychotic hyper-jazz leviathan 16-17 or 15-minute slabs of synthesizer abuse of my own creation.

Now I understand that my eccentric/eclectic tastes are enough to make any "normal" person want to stand on my chest while I lay motionless at the bottom of some pond. There's something about repetition that's exciting (think of consecutive trips on a rollercoaster), self-affirming (the song you play when you desperately must convince yourself everything's gonna be okay. You know, like heshers who publicly testify how Metallica's "Fade To Black" stopped them from killing themselves. Personally. I'd kill myself to make that shit stop. ANYWAY....), or (ewww, I don't want to type this) relaxing. A sexist acquaintance of mine (no, not this guy) has given me the analogy that it's impossible to achieve the exact same rush you get from having sex with someone for the first time. I wholeheartedly disagree: I can be at a club and if there's garbage coming over the PA system, I'll feel like I'm chewing sand. If said crap track is followed up with something great that I've heard a bajillion times, I'm back to enjoying myself. What the hell is wrong with me?

Awww, whatever. I'll start to panic when my wife signs up for "Intro To Waterboarding" classes at the local community college.

TOP FIVE MOST PLAYED TRACKS ON MY ITUNES LIBRARY AT THE TIME OF THIS ENTRY (with number of plays in parentheses):

THE PLOT TO BLOW UP THE EIFFEL TOWER : "Keys To Your Skull" (104)

SECRET MACHINES: "Pharaoh's Daughter" (70)

IKARA COLT: "I'm With Stupid" (66)

WE ARE THE PHYSICS: "Less Than Threes" (62)

THE EIGHTIES MATCHBOX B-LINE DISASTER: "Flag Party" (54)