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10/23/2003

ANIMAL HARM
After I emailed out the previous ezine, I realized I'd left out a ton
o' stuff. So here's more than you bargained for.
I still have a few people occasionally asking me "What's the latest
with the roosters?" Apparently I forgot to tell the tale, or you
missed it, so here goes.
Many months ago, I finally got a call from an officer who'd done
enough research to know what I should do. It seems you cannot keep
fowl without the proper enclosure, which includes a concrete floor,
and cannot keep them within 50' of a neighboring property line. The
neighbors' lot isn't 50' wide, not to mention the lack of proper
enclosures, so all I needed to do was call animal control and they'd
come take the damn birds away.
I went home to make that call. Coincidentally, animal control has an
office a block away and I was ready, with ordinance numbers in hand,
for their visit. I peeked around back to make sure the roosters were
still there (they were that morning) only to find them missing.
I expected them to reappear after the weekend's match, but they never
appeared again. I suspect they went down in the ring and the
neighbors decided it wasn't worth the hassle to replace them again.
Meanwhile, my squirrel problem has returned. I killed 5 or 6 of the
pests last year and had several months of blissful sleep, but a few
have found their way back into my attic. I've mentioned this before,
but I'll recap - there is nothing you can do to stop them from coming
back. They store food in your attic and will chew through a 2x4 to
get to it, so plugging up the holes they've already created will only
lead to more holes. No repellent of any sort works - mothballs,
insecticide, those silly electronic devices, nothing. Worse, it's
usually not just one or two, it's a whole clan that is visiting your
little squirrel cantina.
Only two things work - trapping them and taking them miles away, or
killing them, all of them.
So I purchased a BB gun and sat in the window like an assassin and
eventually picked one of them off. I know many of you think I'm a
heartless bastard and I probably enjoyed this, but it's not true. I
felt pretty sickened when I knocked the first one off the limb and
had to go out and finish the poor thing off.
But when I awoke the next morning at 5 AM to the continued racket in
the attic my feelings of sorrow were nowhere to be found. There is
nothing I like less than being woken up early in the morning -
nothing. Not Republicans, not racists, not noodly jazz - nothing.
Unless it's Republican racists playing noodly jazz in my apartment at
5 AM when I'm trying to sleep.
So I killed them one by one, slowly becomming numb to the whole
procedure, until I'd apparently wiped out the lot that knew about our
little hole in the wall hangout.
Now, months later, we have a party in the attic again so I'm back to
sniper duty. Unfortunately I'm a bit out of practice and this batch
flees the instant they hear me pumping up the rifle, so I have to be
sly and pump the rifle up in another room, then slip quietly up to
the window and take my shot. The last batch was too dumb to run even
when I started shooting, but this lot retreats to the tops of the
trees, out of sight, the moment the lead pellets start flying.
But today I was able to pick one of the little bastards off. One
down, Lord knows how many to go.


EAR PLUGS
We got this report from degenerate CLH and, n the spirit of a truly
free press, we're running it. (And by "free" we mean we don't charge
for this. Unlike other papers in town, we'll run almost anything you
write and pay you nothing, instead of running almost nothing you
write, and pay you almost nothing!)

Me and my gal went to Lenny's on Fri. the 17th for the Snowden show.
Before i get into that, though, I thought it was "Snowden's
Secret"......... eh? Suppose it's a little long for the promotional
material or something, but i thought it was imaginative as it was.
But a good obscure literary reference of any nature gets my respect.
Came in while first band already playing. From outside walking up I
was pretty sure they were playing Cure songs in between bands, but it
turned out to be Sleep Therapy. They were damn impressive. Singer
is a more potent version of Robert Smith, very strong voice, and the
guitar was driving and steady. Maybe a little too steady. They did
get a little repetitive towards the end, although there were some
standout songs that were complex enough to break the mold. Bass
player added a lot of differing rhythm under most songs, making some
of the repetitive driving guitar bearable, but on some he sounded
downright out of place. I knew they were going to be a hard act to
follow. I was in agreement with the drunk rednecks towards the back
who were screaming "somebody needs ta give deese boys a rekkerd
deal!" I usually don't trust bands with lots of expensive equipment
(they had their Mesa's and their Rickenbacker's) but I'd go see them
again easily.
2nd band, Mantissa, needs some practice. They had equipment issues
at the start, and they need to learn to tune their shit before they
get on stage. I think they have some potential, but it'll take a
while. They were mixed badly, which i suppose wasn't all their falt,
but they were off on a lot of stuff. They had some cool instrumental
type of stuff, though, some dueling Tele' action, and I liked the
singers rough voice. Give them another 6 months.
During their set the crowd started to fill in. Everybody was dressed
to impress, in their best grungy East ATL fashion. Very attractive
group of folks. I dig knee high striped socks and wallet chains
scrapin' the floor. Especially on girls. And you had your greaser
rockabilly type also. And a couple I would put the skinhead label
on. I always have a hard time keeping myself from walking up to
these (seemingly without exception) huge fuckers and asking if they
are racist skinheads or cool skinheads, and offering to shoot them in
the face with a shotgun after the show if they seem even the least
bit racist. But, luckily, I had enough good music to concentrate on.
Hadn't seen Snowden before, and I'm glad I chose to go seem them that
night instead of all the tons of other stuff going on for the IG Fest
a short drive away. They started off with a couple keyboard heavy
songs that were damn compelling. Really good layered keyboard
sounds, used sparingly and in just the right places. I liked the
epic, atmospheric sound they kept for most of the set. They were
tight on their 2 guitar interludes and were obviously well practiced.
And I hate to place superlatives on any one person, but their drummer
may be the most solid guy I've ever seen. It was increasingly hard
to tell whether they were tricking me with a drum machine or whether
he was just that exact. And not exact in a dry mechanical way
either. Only thing i'd change is the tons of effects on the singer's
voice. Think they'd be even more powerful with more direct and less
spacey (not Kevin) vocals, since the keyboards and guitar are
atmospheric enough to keep their sound. I understand I work with 3 of
the members of the band. And you do too. Sucks I didn't recognize
any of them. And I unfortunately didn't stay around to ride their
collective jock afterward. Computer geeks rarely make good
musicians, and people with good solid above-the-poverty-line jobs
usually don't either, but they proved my (probably unjustified)
stereotypes wrong and definitely have a lot in front of them.
Degenerate CLH

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