Surgical Strikes

Ah, the dangers of blogging. You write something without thinking it through fully, then you realize thinking tends to help writing. To expand and correct my high school albums of choice:

1. The Beatles, The White Album
2. Pearl Jam, Ten
3. They Might Be Giants, Flood
4. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper
5. Digital Underground, Sex Packets
6. Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
7. Aerosmith, Permanent Vacation
8. Young MC, Stone Cold Rhymin’
9. Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues
10. B.B. King, Live at the Apollo

I’m sure someone will still write in with something else that will make me want to re-revise, but I can live with this list. Permanent Vacation was more junior high, but my love for it extended into high school. I clocked a lot of hours listening to Digital Underground’s all but forgotten Sons of the P album, and somehow I musically associate my sophomore year trip to Israel with the Dream Warriors’ …And Now the Legacy Begins. But of omissions from the original list, Ten is shameful. For years, Pearl Jam was the only thing America and I seemed to agree on at the same time. Well, Bill Clinton, but Eddie Vedder hasn’t done anything lately to make me reconsider how good Vs. really was.

The other revision is far more drastic and more embarrassing. Basically, I listened to Flood all the way through yesterday and halfway through “We Want a Rock,” I was ready to delete the whole damn thing. I’ll continue to stand by a handful of those songs, but most of it was just so cloying and precious and pointlessly random and yes, yes, yes, everything I liked in early high school, I know. But to steal my own analogy, it’s like thinking about my college girlfriend — I get why I found her schtick charming given what I was like back then, but I can’t stomach it now.

“No. 13 Baby” came up on the iPod right afterwards, and while I’ve never been much of a Pixies fan, the difference was clear. It’s nice to hear “Birdhouse in Your Soul” and “Dead” and a few others. But Flood will not be entering my heavy rotation now, or probably ever again. Surgical Strikes regrets the error,

If I had to pick my top five five albums from high school, they would probably be:

1. The Beatles, The White Album
2. They Might Be Giants, Flood
3. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper
4. Digital Underground, Sex Packets
5. Aerosmith, Permanent Vacation

That’s not to say there wasn’t a place for Phish Rift or ZZ Top Eliminator at various times (not to mention Abbey Road and Stone Cold Rhymin’) but I think these were probably the five albums that I listened to most in high school. I knew the 1967-68 Beatles were important to me then, and for several years I owned everything Digital Underground released — albums, EP’s, singles, remixes, and other songs way beyond “The Humpty Dance.”

The surprise rediscovery of the last few weeks has been They Might Be Giants. A few songs I had to play before I could remember them — “I Want a Rock” and “Hearing Aid” and other songs that I would contemplate fast-forwarding through to get to the money. You know, the gems like “Letterbox” and “Dead” and even the opening “Them from Flood.” It has to be the weirdest, and possibly worst opening to any album ever. And yet I can’t think about it right now without singing the whole thing to myself and smiling. I remember how excited I’d get when I heard it, knowing the rest of the album was on the way. So mabye I meant weirdest and possibly best.

In high school, and then in early college, knowing They Might Be Giants meant you were a misfit, but a really G rated one. It meant you were nice and a little silly and you probably weren’t voted prom king at your high school. Other fans were kindred spirits, but we all only knew Flood. Yes, there were other albums, but only one that mattered. I did get a kick out of a couple of the “Fingertips” songs, particularly the one that dramatically went, “What’s that blue thing doing there?” But it was a bridge too far.

I saw They Might Be Giants in concert twice freshman year of college, but I’ve since chalked them up as a youthful indiscretion. After all, they led me to Barenaked Ladies, which dominated my musical interests in college and now seems like the ex-girlfriend you can’t believe you ever were able to stand for 10 minutes. But TMBG has held up, or at least Flood did way more than Gordon. And whether or not it’s “good” music, I’m sure having fun listening to it again.

Well, WordPress is not infallible. Usually I’m pretty good about updating, but this time I missed a few installments, including the blog post that read “Upgrade your web apps before you get hacked.” Well, I’ve upgraded, but not before getting hacked, which bombed my page so severely that the page was shut down. And of course the hacking was such that I now can’t even delete the offending page. So I’m working on that, with this silly end-around for now. I’m hoping to resolve it this week. But if you’re running WordPress and you haven’t upgraded recently, please, I beg of you. Right now.

Today is the first nice day of 2008, a balmy 55 with a gentle breeze. The air is crisp, the sun is shining, and everyone looks beautiful, like a gigantic weight was lifted from their shoulders. On my way to the T, I caught a ride with a friend, a former Hillary campaigner who confided in me she thought Obama was now a lock for the nomination. I went to get coffee, and it was free. And to top it all off, tonight we have Red Sox tickets, first-base side. Today, it is a good day.

Also a bad day. This mornings Boston Globe had a feature on bad fashion for men. Sadly, the article and its accompanying sidebar on What Not To Wear list read like a rundown of my wardrobe. Visible T-shirt beneath a nice shirt? Check. Short sleeve shirt over long-sleeve shirt? Check. Fleece vest? Check. Even what they describe as the 2002 nightlife outfit is part of my semi-regular rotation. There was nothing about overgrown Luke Perry sideburns, but that’s because everyone but Joe Mauer and I got that memo a decade ago. (Next week when the reveal that combing your hair forward and up at the top is a little too 2001, I’ll be jumping off a bridge.) Dan 6.0 seems as well planned as the Iraq war.

This is not like finding out everyone thought my winter coat was hideous (1998) or that my my silver hoop earring has been long out of style (2000). There is no quick fix.

Sure, I can retire the shirt-on-shirt look easily (if begrudgingly) but the visible T-shirt? The article mostly takes aim at the colored T-shirt, giving the white T a de facto C- grade — passing, but barely. The visibile white T-shirt for me dates back to the early ’90s. In high school, it included a crystal on a silk rope (oof) and in early college a pottery bead on a leather string (owf). But really, the major difference between how I dressed in 1996 versus today has mostly revolved around the quality of the merchandise. Instead of Gap jeans and LL Bean plaids, now it’s Seven jeans and Calvin Klein striped shirts. Instead of Doc Martens, I’ve got two pairs of Campers. I should have seen it coming… but I chose not to look. And I can’t even write off the Globe Style section as irrelevant — turn the page and my wife has another article.

This is world-shaking stuff, and I don’t know that I can easily accommodate the changes. I’ll have to coast by on the premise that all bets are off in the summer (I don’t care if cargo shorts, flip flops, and David Ortiz T-shirts are out of style — that’s my July uniform). So the big changes will have to wait for fall… and the newly commissioned Dan 7.0

Sometimes when Watson chooses the bed as his designated snoozing locale, he doesn’t like to be dislodged and will growl at me when I try to do so. (Never at Meaghan, only at me.) Last night, after he crapped on the floor twice and drank out of the toilet, when it came time to remove him from the bed, I decided all bets were off. Fetching his leash, I jingled it, he came running out for his “walk,” and I hopped into bed. I don’t like tricking the dog, but I also don’t like scooping dog crap off the kitchen floor, so I think we’re even.

This morning, I don’t know why, but when Lowell Fulsom’s “Tramp” came up on my iPod, I just got so happy to know I own so much music that sounds exactly like the music I want to hear all the time. For those who don’t know the song, you’d recognize the opening bassline and drums as the backbone to Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill a Man.” And just flesh out this poor excuse for a post, here’s some more of my current heavy rotation:

“1% of One,” Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
“Funky Thing,” Larry Ellis & the Black Hammer
“Blue Diamonds” and “Shapes” and “Stupid” and really just that whole Long Winters album
“Fug,” Cymande
“How High the Moon (Live in Berlin),” Ella Fitzgerald
“Jam It Up,” Albert Collins
“Mr. High and Mighty,” Gov’t Mule
“Anti-Nigger Machine,” Public Enemy
“It’s a New Day,” Skull Snaps

Let the choruses of “Wow, I don’t know any of those songs” begin.

Yesterday I was accused of playing an April Fool’s Joke when I sent around a photo of what I claimed was a turkey in the back yard of my urban condo.

But now I’m posting it on April 2 and o foolin’ — there was a real live turkey walking around my back yard. I have no working theories at present.

I’m reading Martin Amis’s Money and I really like it. The only problem is 100+ pages in, the text has suddenly turned upside-down, and for the next 70-odd pages, I have to turn the book over to read it. I don’t know if it’s a printing error or a tricksy literary choice (the main character has already met a writer named Martin Amis and took an instant dislike) but the bottom line is that I’ll be riding the train home tonight holding my book upside-down and anyone who notices is going to think I’m only pretending I know how to read.

In other news, it’s been such a hectic day at work that I scarcely found the time to construct an M&M version of myself:

Like looking in an M&Mirror.

Per the advice of City Sports, I carry two pairs of gloves. This strategy was designed to protect me against cold and wind without resorting to bulky ski gloves. Basically I like my black fleece gloves, but they aren’t warm enough, so underneath I wear thin wool gloves, $2 at Rite Aid. It’s a great system. Or it was until this morning when I finally lost my gloves. It took me a couple years, and I was starting to think maybe I wasn’t up to the task. But this morning, finally, I managed to lose my gloves. Usually I only lose one, but today I lost two. Which would leave me with a pair… except that I’m Dan Tobin, and that means I didn’t lose a pair of gloves so much as I lost one glove twice. Two right gloves gone, leaving me with two left gloves and twice the usual amount of self-loathing described in the previous post. Except not so much since it’s tempered by that sad pride I feel when I find I’m wearing the same sunglasses I was wearing a month ago — hey, maybe I’m finally getting better at this! Not good, but better.

This brief “return-to-surgical-striking-of-old” experiment has been, how you Americans say, not so bomb-diggety? So it goes.

But Friday afternoons are terrible in a different kind of way. They’re the Admiral Stockdale of the work week. Who am I? Why am I here? It’s 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and I haven’t done a lick of work in hours. Why am I here?

My barber is moving to Jamaica. Turns out he owns a bar and restaurant there and is tired of cutting my (and other people’s) hair. This is not the first time I’ve driven a hair-cutter to sunnier climes. I had all other things to say about previous haircuts, but I’ve been blogging so long that I’ve already apparently said them all already. Am I officially out of stories? I guess I’d better start making some up.

Once, when I was seven, the next door neighbors’ sheep dog Oliver shaved my head in the middle of the night.

Guess who just scored an invite to his workplaces’s Accounts Payable open forum? Hell’s yeah.

Lust - A quick viewing of a few Freaks and Geeks episodes last week confirms that my crush on Lindsay Weir continues unabated.

Gluttony - Every Wednesday afternoon, the best Indian buffet in town. If I worked in Central Square, I would weigh 400 lbs, most of them ghee.

Greed - Rather than donate it to Goodwill, I am attempting to sell my Atari 2600 on ebay. (I’ll donate the second system, though.)

Sloth - Infrequent updates of this poor, beleaguered weblog. Also, the occasional slow adventure out for drinks.

Wrath - How much more damage can be done before Jan. 20? I’m guessing a lot.

Envy - The 2005 Surgical Strikes that used to have readership, commenters, links… and yes, frequent updates. Too little, too late, blogging is dead… is it too late to change the entry for wrath? No, I still hate Bush more than myself.

Pride - I had real difficulty winnowing my music library of 15,000 down to the 7500 or so that fit on my iPod. Thus proving my inherent awesomeness.

HER: Did you know the lieutenant governor of New York is blind and black?
HIM: Does he play guitar?
HER: What?!
HIM: I know a lot of blind, black guys, but they all sing about their baby leaving them and selling their souls to the devil.
HER: —

Later, Blind Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine No. 2″ happens to come up in the shuffle:

HIM: Hey, is this the governor of New York?
HER: Did Spitzer resign?

Our recent computer dance, coupled with the extra space required for Leopard, has resulted in me now syncing my iPod to the desktop. Which makes sense and dall, but it also means deleting the doubled up sound files off my laptop. Rather unsettling to highlight all your music and say, “Yes, delete that shit.” Granted, it’s all doubled up in the other room, and on my iPod, and on my work machine. But given how many times we’ve lost the whole kit and caboodle, it’s still a bit of an ulp moment, and now I’m pricing external hard drives.

Once you find out athletes cheated, you have to go back and reassess your positive memories. Should I feel stupid for ever cheering for Mark McGwire? Are those Patriots victories less special if we find out they were taping the defense? Even when the transgressions happen afterward, the tarnish is still there — doesn’t Red Sox Roger seem less compelling even though he started juicing after he left Boston?

That’s how I’m feeling about Bill Clinton lately. Six months ago, to paraphrase Ice-T, I was on his dick. But the way Bill’s behaved in this campaign, with the Jesse Jackson comment and with selling out his beliefs (”I’m the man from Hope… but Obama’s a silly hope-monger!”), suddenly all the shortcomings of the Clinton years aren’t so easily brushed off. Likewise, Geraldine Ferraro had her wikipedia legacy pretty much set, but now she’s gone and went and mucked it all up by playing the race card with Obama. I hadn’t shut the book on her until I read her response tonight, which was to dig herself deeper in embarrassing rhetoric. I feel like she just bit Evander Holyfield’s ear. And just when we thought there was nothing left to eviscerate from the Mondale campaign.

Sometimes I bring my lunch to work. Not as much as I should, but enough to amass a neat pile of tupperware containers. Well, not specifically Tupperware brand, or even the Rubbermaids we’ve replaced many times, but hearty plastic containers obtained in takeout orders, reused instead of recycled. They’ve been collecting under my desk for months and I finally decided to bring them home. Some of the smells were bad, including one that had molded up quite nicely. But the one I was most terrified of was from a day we got sent home from work early because of snow. I was in the middle of eating a Trader Joe’s prepackaged Indian meal when I got the word. I immediately stopped eating, re-sealed the container, stuffed it in my desk, and just four short months later… yeah, it was the snowstorm that canceled Meaghan’s work Christmas party. A full third of a year ago.

So last night I brought the container home and braced for the worst smell of my life. I expected to better understand how cops feel finding a decaying corpse. So I opened it, and then something bad happened..

It smelled fine.

Four months in a sealed container in my desk. No refrigeration. No decay. Sure, I probably shouldn’t have eaten it, but I think I have to extend that back to ever. That’s not natural. That’s chemicals doing their worst. Ever since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma we’ve been trying to eat more local and organic and, well, this was as good a sign as any that we’re making a good choice.

I zoned out during a conversation about changing the name of our department, then suddenly returned to earth to hear this: “It’s a 60-pound tomato. They want to call it a watermelon, but it’s a 60-pound tomato.”

Nota bene: I do not work on a farm.

Highlights of the weekend included installing another Elfa shelfa in our one remaining closet. It was the third set of shelves I’ve now installed, which means I had those suckers up in no time. But it was sad because now there’s nothing else left to Elfa. I guess I could do the basement storage unit, but I’m not sure we need shelves for some deck furniture, an extra medicine chest, and the case of CD’s we keep around in case the Mac-bound music collection crashes (again).

Speaking of Apples, another highlight was installing the new Mac OS on my beloved laptop yesterday. In all honesty, I can’t tell if Leopard is much of an improvement over the last predatory cat. But I still love it and made lost of ooh and ahh noises as I tried to figure out exactly whether Spaces would change my life the way Expose once did. (I’m inclined to say no, but I need to play with it more. Lots more.)

As for the zukes, I’m going to leave it a (dull) mystery.