I'm not dead.

No, I'm just extremely hot and trying to escape the cloud of muggy mundaneity that has crept into my apartment and suffocates me at night. But at least it's barbeque weather.



Work continues, tedious as always but at least air-contitioned. Some days I dread going to work, but then when I return to my hot third-floor den I almost want to go back to my semi-constructive hotel duties. At least it keeps my mind and body occupied.



Escaping to a small chair on my roof becomes more and more frequent, but the pulsating silent sun as of late has made relaxing deadly in the daytime. Recording music is challenging when creativity is strangled by cynicism, but at least I was able to have a cold drink with Fade 13, another Corvallis musician who gave me three CDs of great music.



Beer has become a daily beverage, with or without others, but that can be blamed on the season.



And last night, while lying on the roof, Octavio and I saw a UFO fly by. So we spoke of the X-Files.


.

absinthesizer.



Why, I've been so distracted that I haven't been able to direct you to my shiny new song, downloadable here.

As I'm sure most of you know, absinthe was the chosen drink to get crunk on in late 19th-century/early 20th-century Paris. Supposedly a whole slew of artists, writers, and general bohemian eccentrics were frequent drinkers of "the green fairy," not just for the purpose of getting smashed, but as a source of high-proof liquid inspiration. Van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway, Toulouse Lautrec, and Oscar Wilde all gave props to the wormwood-infused drink. Then eventually the conservatives got uptight, and suddenly there was a widespread campaign against absinthe saying that it was a dangerous hallucinogenic drink that turned good Christian folk into murderous Dionysian heathens, and absinthe ended up being outlawed in America and several parts of Europe.



Absinthesizer, then, is apparently about a psychedelic drink that provides instant electronic inspiration to musicians. It is a bit of a throwback to Synestheseus and all its psychedelic tomfoolery, but as with my other Manticore material, there is a sinister edge just beneath the whimsy.

There's ornaments on elephants and katydids on kids,
and plasma-sucking flowers that will grow from your eyelids.

.