The Soft Machine

A Day In the Life...

The Good

• The only girl alive. Enough said.
• A hot and fresh Filet-O-Fish from McDonald's. McDeath is evil, but their fish sandwich is a guilty pleasure, especially when they don't fuck it up.
• Fast food breakfasts in small towns. Its always little old ladies working in the morning, and they really care about what they do. Always so nice, too.
• Barbed Wire Love. Goddamn, Stiff Little Fingers can write a good punk song. Okay, they wrote a lot of good punk songs.
• New Grenada and Thunderbirds Are Now! at Small's in Hamtronik tonight.
• The Undertones (!) at the Magic Stick in beautiful midtown Detroit tonight.
• rocknrollscientist at the Painted Lady in Hamtronik tonight. No, that doesn't mean I'll be putting my liver on display, it means I'll be DJing.
• Peel Sessions. I guarantee you that every single recorded Peel session you can find is good or at the very least interesting and revealing in some way. In the UK, you can only broadcast a small amount of pre-recorded music on the radio, so they have bands play live in the studio often, and John Peel (who passed away last year) was legendary for his broad and good taste in new music. All Peel sessions are available somehow, whether they're actually released or bootlegged, or shared on a peer-to-peer site somewhere.
• The White Stripes cover of the MC5's "Looking At You." Available only on a Peel session recording (I think). Its out of key and I think he fucks up some of the words, but its my favorite MC5 song, and its good to hear a good local band paying some respect.

The Bad

• Crimson, the new Alkaline Trio album. Okay, it's not bad, its actually good, but I don't like that they included some older songs for their big 'breakthrough' album. I don't know if its laziness, and they needed filler, or if these songs were specifically chosen because they're particularly good, or what, but I don't like this practice. The Sights did it on their first (and new) major label album, but its only two songs, and one of them was previously only available on a 45, so it's not as bad.
• Work. I fucking hate work. Work distracts us from life. I don't want to be distracted from life.
• Splenda. Sugar substitute. I've never knowingly had it until today when I purchased an Arizona Diet Green Tea with Ginseng. I got the diet because the normal version is just too damned sweet sometimes. I wanted to believe that Splenda wouldn't be as bad as Nutrasweet, but it still has that cloying aftertaste. I grew up in a house where there was never any regular pop, only diet. I grew to prefer it because it wasn't as sweet, but there's still that taste in my mouth...
• Quizno's. Expensive and tasty. Pure chewing satisfaction. Completely evil.

The Ugly

• Starbuck's Double Shot. These 6.5 oz cans of Jesus juice sell for as much as $3 at finer gas stations and party stores. I could just drink a couple cups of coffee for free at work, but noooo, I have to go and buy these little cans of liquid analgesic/speed. I'd be better off drinking a cup of coffee and downing an extra-strength Excedrin. I think that Starbuck's is a front for the worldwide Illuminatus conspiracy that controls the world's power and wealth. I'm sure they were more than a little worried when Starbuck's was portrayed as the front for Dr. Evil's organization in the second Austin Powers movie.
• Tom DeLay. What a piece of shit. Ethics in politics? What's that? True, most politicians at the federal level (hell, at every level) are a bunch of assholes, but this one didn't get away with it. What a fucking idiot.
• The City of Detroit, and the innumerable fuckups on the part of the mayor, city council, and the general municipal administration. What a bunch of fucking idiots.