Ah, it’s a new month! Time for a new Smyles & Fish Derby.
For those who haven’t entered the Derby, I highly recommend it. I had fallen out of the habit, but I intend to start again. If you don’t want to enter, have fun voting!

This is my first submission for the month.

This is supposed to be a photo of me after having grown a mustache. I suspect foul play.

I am a consumptive music listener. When I find something I like I will listen it into the ground. I will repeat the track again and again, reveling in my favorite parts. Of course, this leads eventually to burnout and I’ll lay the tired and panting mp3 or cd to bed, or rather it simply isn’t selected as I am spinning my iWheel. There’s no closure there. Closure is for the weak, but I’ll deal with that later.

That inevitable and looming burnout point forces me to track down new music frequently. Unfortunately, I find myself demoralized by the lack of fresh sounds out there. This isn’t news: Independent rock music (my genre du époque) is frequently monosonorous. That’s a made up word. Don’t bother suing me — I’ll take care of it.

I’ll download and give these impotent audio attempts one, maybe two listens. And I’ll imagine those poor kids up there playing for their bread and water, but they just don’t have that spark. An album is an album is an album. Don’t ask me to do better, I’m an innocent bystander.

What’s the point of this post, anyway? I’m not proposing there is a solution to this, I’m not suggesting there is even a problem to solve. All I’d like to suggest is that musicians listen to their tracks on repeat for a day straight. Gentle minstrel: if you get bored, consider the board.

The party included a jam session upstairs, with people cycling through all of the instruments, jumping on and off the mic. I played the tambourine, and I met a woman there, a jazzy, hip musical burnout with a swagger and fantastic lips. She and I shared a night of awkward flirting, mostly because I was outclassed. I don’t know her name. And I was into that, and I’ll never see her again, and I’m just as into that.

She’s going to be with me for a while. A week, a month maybe. I’ll replay the tape a bunch of times. And I’ll put it on my blog. And I’ll refuse to give her a name, and mostly I’ll remember that swagger, that melting step. That deliberate swing. And I’ll attribute it to the booze, but secretly hope she has it on the train in the morning.

And that’s the cool part. Because I’m touched by experience, and because I didn’t stand in the corner all evening, and because it was awkward, and because it’s all a dream in the end, why would I ever suspect I couldn’t do whatever I wished? And if I can and I don’t, what stays my hand? And don’t you all share the same power? And why shouldn’t that be wonderfully terrifying?

I’m happy with both Jargon and Meme. After all, jargon is linguistic meme, and it makes my life easier. I could explain in prose to someone how I’m feeling, or I could simply show them a picture of a cat jumping into a polar bear’s mouth.

I do enjoy blogging/writing though, as a longer form. Language is important to me, and it’s one of the most expressive mediums I am comfortable with. Perhaps Jargon and Meme are the language abstractions I need to help me feel as optimized as possible, even in communication.

Jargon I use:
GROK [from the novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”, by Robert Heinlein,
where it is a Martian word meaning roughly “to be one with”] v. To
understand, usually in a global sense.

KLUGE (kloodj) alt. KLUDGE [from the German “kluge”, clever] n. 1. A
Rube Goldberg device in hardware or software. 2. A clever
programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an
efficient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often
verges on being a crock. 3. Something that works for the wrong
reason. 4. v. To insert a kluge into a program. “I’ve kluged this
routine to get around that weird bug, but there’s probably a better
way.” Also KLUGE UP. 5. KLUGE AROUND: To avoid by inserting a
kluge. 6. (WPI) A feature which is implemented in a RUDE manner.

- from the original Jargon.txt

Memes I love:
i can has cheezburger

I’m not so out of the ordinary for a human, but I think you’ll find me quirkier than some. For example, I once hunted and shot an inflatable moose. His head adorns the wall of my cubicle.

I spent a good six months at Sea World tracking a 7 foot inflatable quadrapus. When I finally caught the bastard he promptly deflated but managed to hang on to his goofball expression — I assume because I trapped him using a whoopie cushion tied to a rubber chicken.