You I'll not follow

So I'm driving home today and I finally heard it. The new Alice in Chains song.

Wow. Just...wow.

I understand the desire the surviving members must have to make more music and even the desire to work together again but this shit is just wrong. The new singer, no idea who it is and I'm not going to waste time trying to find out, is trying his hardest to sound like Layne Staley. You might remember that Layne Staley was the original singer and, in my not at all humble opinion the most talented member of the group prior to his untimely and much lamented death. His voice was like a soul being tormented in the worst part of hell expelling lyrics that made you feel exactly what that felt like (I speak primarily about those songs whose lyrics Staley wrote himself or wrote the lion's share of. Just listen to an AiC CD and you'll figure out which is which.)

Now you have some random guy doing a second rate Staley impersonation. It's fucking sick. I have lost all respect for the other members of that band. How anyone could ever think this was a good idea is beyond me. Form a new band with a new singer and then find the sound of that band. Don't spit on Staley's memory by hiring some no talent wannabe and then trying really hard, and failing, to sound like Alice in Chains. Henceforth I will only refer to this abomination as Jerry Cantrell's Band.

Cantrell, you're a piece of shit. Truly.

Then against my better judgement I tried to actually listen to the song. Imagine if your ears had balls and then got got kicked in the balls in your ears. It's like that. A wildly overproduced, poorly written piece of offal. That guy can try, and Cantrell and company can work the boards to help him try to sound like Layne but you'll never fool a real fan. Layne would never sing a song with lyrics that are Nickelback level insipid and include the word California in them, what, 9000 times. Did you bring in Anthony Kiedis to give a rewrite to your Nickelback songs?

The three surviving members of AiC who are currently in Jerry Cantrell's Band clearly have no respect for Layne, no respect for AiC fans and no respect for themselves. I've never wanted an album to bomb so badly in my life.

The entire thing makes me feel sick. If you'll excuse me I have to go listen to Dirt about a million fucking times to wash the foulness out of my ears and hopefully off my brain.

And a fridge just for my beer

So yeah, an update. Obviously the move is long done by now and I now have quite a lot more space to spread out in. A LOT more. It's nice. What does it say about me that my books have a bigger bedroom than I do? Something good I bet. In my defense I keep some of my shit in their room. I even have a grill and cook out sometimes. I still don't talk to the neighbors though. Some shit is just carved in stone.

College football has begun. OSU 1-0. Go Bucks. Fuck Michigan.

Pro football starts this Sunday. Praise the divine Ray and may he deliver us to the promised land. Fuck the Steelers and all who follow them.

I'm still not sleeping much and in fact it's been getting much worse in recent weeks. It's normal now for me to wake up 5 or 6 times a night for no reason. Just wake up, check the clock, sigh and wait for a while to drift back off for a few minutes. It's pretty bad. Can you have one of those drug induced comas as an elective procedure? A week of that would be great.

Hey guess what? Taco is coming to visit this month and is staying the night! I'm pretty excited. There's going to be shared awesomeness, crabs, books, movies, some Wii action, probably no small amount of leg humping and possibly one of us being tied up in the basement to prevent him from leaving. I'm just saying.

Her name has the word BIG in it too.

Anyone else find enjoyment in the fact that there have been, what, 15 or 20 movies about the war in Iraq but it took a woman to finally make one with balls? Anyone?

Yeah me too.

Note: It also has a brain. Weird, huh?

Can she spell Polidori?

Eventually I knew I would have to write something about Stephenie Meyer. I don't want to. I have to. You see, this level of aggressive, willfully ignorant bullshit draws me to it. I want so much to ignore it but I can't. I want to be able to shake my head sadly and walk away.

Not gonna happen, folks.

For those of you who are lucky and don't know Stephenie Meyer she is the, for want of a better word, writer of the Twilight series. For those who are exceptionally lucky and don't know what that is, it's a series of YA vampire books. If vampires were toothless puppies and dipped in glitter.

"But Uncle E," I hear you saying, "Why do you choose to focus on this person when there are so many bad writers out there to choose from?" I'm glad you asked. Let me explain:

The vampire legend itself is ancient with roots tracing back several millennia. As far as things that go bump in the night go, they're old school. They come in many varieties ranging from mindless things barely more than Romero zombies to your more modern nobility in formal wear. In some cultures they drink blood, in some they leech the very life force out of you. There are many, many different kinds of vampire is what I'm saying and that's just the legend. The ones that people used to live in real fear of day to day from culture to culture, century after century literally all over the world.

Then you get into vamps in literature and later films and still later TV. Most of it, and by that I mean the overwhelming majority, isn't good. Most of it is bad and a lot of it is downright awful. But when it's good, man is it good.

Le Fanu's Carmilla, King's Salem's Lot, Matheson's I Am Legend, Wilson's Midnight Mass and so on plus, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula. I mean, everyone's read that one right? Right?

I told you all that to tell you this: By reading those last three short and off the top of my head paragraphs you just did more research than Stephenie Meyers did before beginning work on the Twilight series. I am not making this up as a jokey way of saying her books are bad. The books are bad because she's a terrible fucking writer. I say that because out of her own mouth she does not read horror books. Does not read vampire books (so no, she's never read Dracula). Does not watch horror movies. Hell, does not watch R rated movies AT ALL. In interviews she said she saw a little piece of Interview With A Vampire on TV and her thoughts on it were summed up with, "Yuck" and then she thinks, thinks she saw a bit of The Lost Boys (which I love) and her opinion of it was, "but I was like, creepy!"

I'm not making this shit up.

As a lover of literature and a person with deep respect for the process this kind of bullshit offends me. It makes me feel ill. The insipid tripe she pushes on people has vampires that wander around in the day and they sparkle. Get that? They sparkle. And there's a strong message of celibacy in her books. Are you fucking kidding me? Vampires, particularly modern vampires ARE sex! Everything they do is centered around sex either figuratively or literally. You have to be some kind of fucking moron to not see it. Or maybe a mormon like Meyers is. Probably both actually with at least a little fairly serious head trauma thrown in for good measure. It's like writing about werewolves that willingly wear leashes and are housebroken and beg for bacon flavored doggie treats. Actually it's more like trying to make a porn movie when you've never had sex or even seen human genitals before.

Fucking ignorant bitch.

The level of disrespect this dumps on the long history of vampire fiction is something I can't recall ever seeing before. I can't think of another example as bad as this horrid, puerile gunch. Hey I heard of these things called vampires! They're like, these things! And they have, like, teeth! I think! And uh...they do stuff! I'm gonna write a book about them except make them nice and sparkly!

Nex time you get the urge to write Stephenie, do us all a favor and take your head out of your ass, run as fast as you can to the nearest convenient set of train tracks and stand on them. Then shoot yourself in the fucking head a split second before the train splatters your worthless ass all over creation you brainless, contemptible, utterly fucking ignorant imbecile.

I'm thinking most of you probably won;t really understand my intense hatred for this woman and that's a shame. Actually it's probably better for you if you don't.

I had more venom to spit but I'm just too tired for it.

Not a gimp...yet.

So I figure I must be a complete masochist because I'm moving again. You tell yourself things will go smoothly. This is, of course, not true. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong and while your back is turned they bring more wrong shit with them that you didn't even know could go wrong.

Fun.

So the next time I mention a move coming up in the near future I really need one of you to step up and shoot me in the head with a bazooka. It'll be for my own good so I forgive you in advance.

How Dare the Robins Sing

I found out Sunday that my favorite Uncle had died. He was the only uncle I claimed and the only one I thought anything good about. He alone of all my father's family took any interest in us after my father died. He alone cared about our well being. He alone commanded and received my respect.

Born and raised in a city he somehow had country life in his heart and moved out to the middle of no where after his first marriage ended. He'd still find time to come visit and have us up whenever time and money allowed. He never forgot us and I will never forget him for that.

This was the only man I ever allowed to call me "boy" after I considered myself a man. The image I will always carry of him is the day he came to visit and drew down, old west style, on a group of west Baltimore ghetto rats. They were friends of mine and we were all hanging around outside my house when he drove up for a visit. One of the young lions (not me, I had MUCH better sense) said or did or looked a way the old lion didn't approve of and quick as you please he had a magnum in his hand and under the nose of the offender. After a hasty apology he gave the guy a few dollars and sent him to, "Get me some coddies from the store up yonder. Be quick and mind my change, boy."

Old school.

I could go on and on but I don't imagine him as one to want anyone going on and on about it.

Anderson Collins

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Uncle and Friend

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Rest In Peace

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I'm huge in Slovakia

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