2012: A Peroverview.
2011 was not a good year. By the end of it I was fairly bummed the fuck out. I’d been offline for about two years by the winter of ’11, and about all I ever did was to drink copious amounts of Irish whiskey on pretty much a nightly basis after work and listen to Coast to Coast AM. I was in pretty bad shape, something my dear wife reminded me of frequently-and were it not for the bane of every married man, “naggitry”, I’d probably still be worthlessly drunk and enthralled with Sasquatch sighting stories on AM radio at four in the morning.
However, much to my wife’s relief, and I sort of think somewhat surprise, I manged to get my shit together. This sort of coincided with the happy occurrence of my inheriting my dear departed best friends desktop computer. Which was only a couple of months old and had been sitting in suspended animation in storage for a year since his untimely overdose on Fentanyl. I already had a desktop, my old circa 2003 Optiplex, but since I didn’t have hardwired internets it just sat in my back office collecting drunken .doc files when I’d feel like writing. There was, of course, a wireless sweet zone in the bedroom from a hotspot across the street…but I was normally to drunk to consider moving my desk and other assorted furniture particulars to access it. Of course, all that changed when I stopped drinking like a fish. Soon I had my basically brand new HP quad core (which would have been something to brag about a few years ago, as it originally cost my buddy like $1600) leeching cattubenet off a free wi fi hotspot and goddamit, I was all blogging again n’ shit.
Of course all through this I still had my job. And I blogged about my job and other stuff, pretty much daily. This went through the end of last winter and into the spring. Then I decided I was going to take some pictures. I took some pictures with my shitty camera. Then I decided to buy a better camera. I took more pictures. You know, as those with new cameras will. And I posted a bunch of them.
Going back a little ways, in Feb. I got my grubby little mitts on Corrosion of Conformity‘s self titled album when it first came out. This became my favorite album of the year. And there were some good fucking albums come out this year. But I’m telling you, the C.O.C. s/t lp is just fucking magnificent. It’s the same line up they had for 1985′s Animosity lp, and for a forty year olde punk rock type who still goes apeshit when a band knows how to blend hardcore punk and metal just so…well, it’s an outright auralgasm. Serious, Corrosion have now been making me all “FUCK YEAH!!” for like thirty fucking years. Given, I didn’t get into much of their stuff as much after Technocracy in ’87 but I still thought it was decent. However, this last lp, and their killer recent ep Megalodon have once again got me singing the praises of these hardcore heavyweights.
So then, sometime in the spring this dude comments on my blog. Or he “like” buttoned it or whatever. So I go to see his blog. And it’s fucking amazing. I mean, the quality of the writing is such that it can only be compared to the authors on my meatspace, real life, bookshelf. I shit you not. This becomes my favorite blog. And the guy behind it, Marius, becomes my pal. Nowadays we conspire via telephone during the small hours and send each other packages with amusing shit inside. If he had tits my wife absolutely would not stand for our friendship, as it is she refers to him as my “Facebook boyfriend” jokingly. Cause, yah, you know, Marius is my pal. We both have an appreciation for Gibby Haynes and generalized weirdness. But his blog is fucking great. It’s not even like shit you read on the internets, it’s actually good and stylistically well, well above fucking par in an age of Twtterites and SMS damaged language. for serious, don’t die wondering like a fucknut, go read it.
Speaking of cool people I met this year on the internoodle…at some point this spring or maybe early summer, I discovered a blog called Sticky Sounds. The woman who does it posted a well thought out and succinctly presented piece about punk that had some of the best quotes included on the subject that I’d read. I don’t really remember how it happened, but we became pen pals of a sort. She published her blog as a ‘zine and sent it to me even. All the fucking way from Manchester, England. Stoked isn’t quite the word. I think chuffed would be the correct term. Vicky sends me new issues of her ‘zine (and killer local Manchester music) as they come out and we trade emails frequently. Sticky Sounds is my most favorite ‘zine of 2012 (Ok, I read maybe three different ‘zines, but I’m just saying)and she’s about at the peak of the radnitude meter as far as anyone in the world east of NYC. Fuck yeah, go check out Sticky Sounds. Do it now, or the punx in Blinky ponchos will come get you.
Somewhere along the line this year, I guess it was this late summer through this winter, I published two books. Never mind about those though. It’s not like fucking any of you would go out and get them if I told you about them anyway. You’re reading a blog precisely because you don’t have the attention span to be reading a book right now anyway. Who’s kidding who. Chances are you’re another blogger and the people who read your blog are other bloggers, and all of us are too busy blogging and patting each other on the back for blogging to actually fucking read anything. Lets face it; Personal blogging: it’s a big circle jerk.
But, about mid summer I realized this and eased off on the blogging. I was starting to grow hair on my fingertips I guess. As a result, like I said I did two books. I also read some cool shit. Probably the coolest shit I read was Thugs Like Us by John Carnell. It’s what punk literature aspires to be, and it’s really the first piece of punk bookery that I would say qualifies as literature. John was a big encouragement for my decision to write my stupid books-he egged me on here on WP, eventhough he thinks blogging is for tossers (he’s so right, by the way) and he’s right up there with Sticky Vicky as my favorite Englishpeople. I mean, fuck, the dude wrote me an email talking about seeing the Damned back in like ’78. How fucking bitchen is that? It’s not every day you meet a bona fide first wave punk, rarer still is meeting one from across the Atlantic. So don’t be mongy, go and get his damn book. It’s really fucking good.
So anyhow, those are the highlights of my first year back on the internets. Other cool shit happened, my daughter started working at the joint where I work, I cooked a bunch of tasty vittles, my son’s eye surgery came out good, I got a week off the job this summer….all like personal personal stuff I don’t write about much in public but that still makes me feel good.
So, yeah, 2012 has been a good year. After fucking all, I started running Linux on my computer again this year and I have suspicion that my wife bought me a 1TB hard drive for Christmas. So, like she’s reasonably happy with me. Call me henpecked or pussywhipped, but stuff like that is of much import to me. I don’t suppose we would have been together sixteen years if it wasn’t. Sure beats drinking myself into a stupor every goddam night and listening to wingnuts on late night radio instead of being a good husband and father. And that’s more important than writing or any of the dumb shit on the internet.
Here is to ’13 treating you as well as ’12 did.
Thanks, hope your holidays are rad and that you have a great 2013 too. And I hope you don’t get too many of the hyper annoying customers at your shop this year.
Dude, it’s been a better year for me, in large part to meeting your crazy ass. It always feels good to reconnect with other lost members of our tribe. You are an interesting dude, dude. Always good for a laugh when I really need one. Gallows humor, I guess. Grinning at each other while a tank rolls over your trench. Thanks for having my six, bro. It has made this whole blogging business worth it. Happy Festivus, beeyaatch!
We choose no kin but adopted strangers
-Perry Farrel