Globex Corporation Newsletter

I'm really not getting to this as much as I should. I feel like some sort of deadbeat net-dad. I could throw out tons and tons of excuses, but where is that going to get us? Nowhere, that's where. No, I just have to buckle down and try to do the right thing, or the write thing as it were. What exactly is the right thing in my case. Inane comments about the world around me I guess. I try to do it in some logical fashion, using grammar and syntax, I gerneraly try to use words that we're all familiar with, primarily in English aber Ich kann auf Deutsch auch schreiben. OK, I promise never to do that again.

I spent all day yesterday with eighth graders, gasp, eighth graders and really needed to let my mind loose for a little bit. Open mic is always a good way to do that. I tend to censor myself quite a bit, but different environments call for different levels of self-censorship. Musically, we'll pick different songs to play in a bar than we would in a coffee shop. That's pretty obvious, but I tend to tone down my somewhat regular salty language in most social situation. This blog is a good example. My language is generally not as clean as it is here, though you'll still see to occasionally (and most certainly gratuitus) hell, damn or fuck. In everyday life my speech is littered with those terms, it's just the way I talk. I turn that off in social situations, but I have to really watch myself with middle school students. High school students aren't a problem with me, other than the swearing, I can talk like I usually do. When I teach middle school I really clean it up. My mom would be quite proud!

But sometimes I just need to let the explatives fly. When Andy and I were working up our set list for the Heritage Festival we tried very hard to make it a family friendly show. We dropped a number of songs that we didn't think were appropriate for an all ages show. Two Condoms was the big one to go, but we tried to keep it clean besides that, too. We still managed to offend with Are You Drinkin' With Me Jesus, but that had more to do with an up tight individual. Yes ma'am, Jesus had a drop of alcohol from time to time, his blood is actually wine! In all seriousness, he realized the importance of alcohol in social situations, he turned water into wine at a wedding he went to.

After the Heritage Festival, all I wanted to do were dirty songs. I did Two Condoms and Vibrator Dependent everytime I got the chance. Freeing, but in the end it was it's own trap. We caught ourselves doing the same songs over and over again just because we could.

So last night I realized that we hadn't played Plastic Jesus in a long time. I'm really not sure why, we just hadn't. I suggested it to TSA when he showed last night and he was all for it. I forgot the words to one of the verses, you know, the one Andy usually sings, but other than that it went pretty well. We followed that up with The Brian Wilson (note: from this point forward BNL's Brian Wilson will be known as The Brian Wilson when Andy and I perform it - update your logbooks accordingly) which we also hadn't played in a long time. Again, I don't know why, it's something that just kind of happened. We haven't even done it enough recently to throw in any of the alternate intros. Those are fun, but you have to play the song a lot of times for that to work. We finished up with Wyle E. Coyote Blues which always goes over better than I think it should. I pretty much wrote it in a car at a time when I really didn't know what I was doing musically, I mean even less than now. It's a cute song but awfully simple. I suppose that's my songwriting mantra.

It's ninth grade science today and tomorrow. Nobody has gotten on my nerves yet today, but I'm sure that will happen at some point. Those of you lucky enough not to have to spend time with more than one ninth grade boy at a time should count your blessings. One is fine, even two can be OK. Three or more is taking your sanity into your own hands.

BOJ