maybe i’m just a green blogger. but i am getting hundreds of comments posted on here that are essentially just keyword-smattered spam. to the point where should i ever encounter a genuine comment from a genuine human being i might literally have a coronary infarction the shock would be so intense.

is nothing sacred? certainly not in cyberspace.

don’t mean to turn this thing into a rant. apologies. if you have any advice on this blog spam phenomenon, let me know.

i haven’t been watching the olympics that much, but i have been watching. the week and a half with no computer made me watch more than i probably would have if i had my trusty (not) mac by my side.

i watched enough to get this off-putting sense that the commentators really hadn’t a clue about a lot of what was going on. maybe it’s a tall order to be able to watch so many different kinds of athletic events and speak about them freely while they’re happening live. i can understand that. but there have been times when it has just seemed downright ridiculous. and then there’s only so much to talk about. two people on each side of a volleyball net making the same plays again and again–not that much fodder for commentary, really. at a certain point i’m just like, “yeah, they’re fucking amazing. i get it. can you shut up so i can watch them be amazing without your stupid chatter to distract me?”

in baseball, they have to go for hours. but those people know baseball. and they have all those important statistics to fill in the numbing boredom that generally is what it means to watch a baseball game. like, this is so-and-so’s seventeenth at bat since he hit a home run off so-and-so’s only curve ball in [fill in team name here]’s fourth away game versus [fill in opposing team name here]. but these olympic games, man. who are the announcers? i mean, maybe they have credentials. but they seem feeble to me, at best. has anyone noticed this?

i wish i had recorded or written down some examples. but i just don’t care that much. judge for yourselves.

so i’m not so much a lousy blogger this time; rather my computer crapped out on me again and had to go to the shop. i don’t know whether to feel comfortable or throw at tantrum at tekserve. most of the people who work there seem gentle and like they are from the same planet as i am (i.e., not your stereotypical computer dorks) but then again they seem to know almost as much as i do about whatever might be wrong with my machine.

anyway, i have been without my macbook pro since a week ago last wednesday, until today, that is. and here i am, blogging away.

the thing is, i really did miss my mac, and especially missed being able to deal with emails, and work on recordings. but at the same time i didn’t miss it. like, for real. i walked around the city more than i have in a long time. i worked on lyrics by hand, native-like, with lead and papyrus. ok, not really, but pen and paper, yes (which is how i work some of the time anyway). i realized, also, the few times i went to the internet cafe and swiped a credit card to get online so i could deal with email emergencies, that a lot of the stuff in my inbox is not all that useful and that only a handful of the hundreds of emails i get are actually truly honestly important. it almost wasn’t worth the weird embarrassment of being that dude who doesn’t have a laptop at the internet cafe where everyone else does. i imagined seeing me, if anyone noticed, as something like the way i feel when i see people using payphones. why are there still payphones?

and not recording: that was ok, too. because i have the demos i’ve been working on in my ipod anyway. and because i found myself sitting and playing and writing more, in a basic way. no midi controller and cables all over my bedroom, and going from guitar to bass to vocals to scribbling (typing) lyric changes and adding plugins, tweaking sounds, tweaking out. sure, i need and love this stuff. but i can live without it. and that is perhaps more comforting than spreading out in our beds of technology, where all of it, every program, every file, every kilobyte seems necessary.

anyway, i am back in action. my inbox overfloweth. i have a week and a half of catching up to do. i almost want to give the computer back. though i do not want it to break down again. this fix cost me a small fortune. at least for me right now.

the death of jason brody: we are enduring massive growing pains. the “we” may out of necessity have to change. i love what we have been and how far we have come. and now i think a new chapter is in the works. don’t worry. it is not the death of the death of (though that is amusing to me). it is just a new era, musically and otherwise. i am really excited about these new tunes. there are a lot of them. slowly they are getting done. next time you see me/us, it might be just me onstage, or three of us, or four, or six, seven. i don’t know. but i am starting to like the idea that TDoJB is not a static entity, but more of an amorphous one. the spirit is always there, but there are times to stretch out when it comes to personnel, and there will be times to reign it in. let’s hope we all (including me) like where we’re going. i think we will.