Welcome to February! 14 days and counting to that holiday I most love to hate, and 45 days until I turn… gulp… 40. Horrors. You know, I’m not really that bothered about it, tho… yet. 30 didn’t really bother me. 35 didn’t bother me at all. Now, it’s legendary among my former co-workers what a difficult time I had with turning 25… that really, really bothered me for some reason, to an obsessive point. 30 in comparison… piece of cake. 40 - well, I don’t really know yet. Although one thing does bug me, this is one of those times I wish the boyfriend and I were the same age instead of me being two years older.

Just learned some shocking but pleasant indie music news early this morning… for the first time in seven years, Dig is playing a live show! They’ll be at the Viper Room in Hollywood on Thursday, February 16th. I don’t usually have a lot of L.A. envy, and when it comes down to it I prefer Northern to Southern California anyway, but dang, I wish I could go to this. Anyway, yeah, if you’re where you can go, by all means. Tickets are $12 (also available in advance at the Viper Room website) and Dig will go on about 11 p.m.

Wanna see something cool I’m getting? Lynnster was a good girl in 2005 (and 2004 and 2003) - see what you get when you’re good and behave and play nicely with other children? Yeah, I got plans for that spiffy new Dell Inspiron 9300, all right. Couldn’t be coming at a better time either ‘cos the DVD drive in my desktop has decided to cease cooperating.

Today was like the worst dragging day in the world… it’s terrible when you start out at 7 a.m. thinking “just let this day get over with” and spend the next ten and a half hours thinking just about nothing but that. That inadvertent nap last night was a bad mistake - I didn’t get that sleepy again until it was almost too late so, consequently, I only got about an hour and a half of in-bed sleep last night, so I’m sort of still clinging to the sides as far as awakeness and alertness. But tomorrow’s my day off so all is well.

And I have thus far managed to not take on any unabsolutelynecessary work this week. I think I really need to - that is, take the week off side work - this week, don’t you think? As long as I don’t get any calls Thursday or Friday, I’m home free and then I can get back to regularly scheduled snowing myself in come Monday. But even if I do get called for some work, at this point it’ll just be one job, not so much to deal with, so that’ll be okay.

I just know that I’ve spent the last two days spending most of the mornings typing with one eye open and if I closed them both even for a few seconds, I was in danger of slipping into a coma. Gotta get some rest and regroup.

And now for our next topic - coffee. Most people know, and especially those that know me personally, that I drink entirely too much coffee.

Once upon a time, this wasn’t always so. My coffee habit actually started in church when I was a kid - around nine or ten or so - I started having a cup of coffee after church with everyone else, which soon after led to coffee at home on Sundays with Dad and the Sunday Commercial Appeal and Tennesseean. Which eventually led to other days off/days home from school, which eventually led to pretty much every day in college and when working. I guess the reason I also put entirely too much creamer and sugar or Sweet ‘n Low in it is ‘cos I started drinking coffee at such a young age.

But for years and years and years, save for the occasional after-dinner coffee when out to eat, I was strictly a morning coffee drinker (morning being a relative term of course - since I frequently don’t get up until noon or later unless I have to, just consider those mornings “extended”). Anyway, on a normal day, regular work day, what have you - by noonish I would switch to Coke and that would be that, until morning came again.

My later round-the-clock coffee habit, I totally blame on (1) my dad and stepmother and (2) Millstone coffee. It only took one visit to my dad’s for that “hmm, coffee in the evenings…” thing to take root - they were, naturally, round-the-clock coffee drinkers. And at the same time Millstone had just come out with all these awesome flavored coffees. So it would be, like, regular coffee in the mornings or at least the first pot, and then flavored coffee the rest of the day. I have flirted back and forth with the flavors - especially all the divine stuff at Coffeeam.com, oh god - in recent years it’s been mainly regular coffee with the occasional flavored pot once in a while.

Which brings me to my next topic - coffee makers. My parents bought what was a really high-tech for the time and nice Mr. Coffee coffee maker around 1976 or 1977 or thereabouts. That was the coffee maker I ended up taking with me to college in 1984 and they probably wouldn’t have even gotten rid of it except Black & Decker had just come out with the Spacemaker line and they wanted to get one of those, so I took the old one. And continued to use it until somewhere around, I think, 1990 or 1991, when it finally bit the dust. That was OK tho - that was a good 14-15 years of use out of a coffee maker, I’m not gonna complain about that (especially now).

Well, you’ve heard the phrase about how “they” don’t make things like “they” used to? There’s nothing more true when it comes to coffee makers. I am going to throw out a ballpark figure here and my guess will probably still be too low, but I would estimate I have been through no less than THIRTY coffee makers since 1991. Maybe even forty. And remember, for a significant period of that time I was NOT drinking coffee day and night - but still, I was killing coffee makers left and right. This has, of course, been exacerbated tremendously since I did start drinking coffee night as well as day.

But yeah. Oh, listen, it doesn’t matter what it is. Every brand imaginable, every price range imaginable from dirt cheap to rather pricey - I’ve killed it. This was especially painful with the Go Vols orange Salton I got for Christmas one year - I HATED throwing that one away - but yeah, just like the rest, it died. There have been occasions when the whole thing just appeared to have given up the ghost, but especially in the advent of my all day and all of the night coffee imbibing, naturally what happens most of the time is I wear out the heating element.

So last year after having killed two more in record time (two in less than two months, they were cheapies tho), my mother and I started trying to figure out ways to solve this ongoing dilemma or at least make it better. Besides me stopping drinking coffee, that is, which ain’t gonna happen anyway.

For a little bit I was considering maybe investing in an institutional one, like some of the various heavy duty Bunns there have been at various places I’ve worked over the years. On a trip up home, shortly after I’d killed another one, Mom and I are walking around the Paris Wal-Mart trying to decide what to do - at that point I had just killed another Black & Decker and had an emergency 4-cup coffee maker run out and grabbed at Walgreen’s in the middle of the night on that occasion stashed at home - I ended up coming back with another Black & Decker that time, and that one, granted, lasted me ’til about the six-month mark, it just died a couple of weeks ago and I now have replaced it with another full size off-the-shelf bought at Walgreen’s. Hey, in the middle of the night and when you don’t live anywhere near a Wal-Mart or Target or K-Mart, you gotta do what you gotta do when you know that, while you might could do without the rest of the evening, you can’t possibly function in the coming morning without coffee.

Of course, that’s funny in itself - I am of the opinion that after all these years of coffee, and drinking cokes since I was very very young, caffeine really has no effect on me. It certainly never keeps me awake, seeing as how I’m about half narcoleptic anyway. But I really don’t care to chance finding out what happens when you take the caffeine totally AWAY, and don’t think you want to witness that either.

So anyway, at the time we were shopping and trying to decide what to do last year, we looked at the Home Cafe - the superfast one-cup coffee maker - thinking, well, since I burn out the heating elements on a regular basis, maybe that’s a solution to the problem. Then we walked a few aisles over and looked at the price of the coffee pods for the Home Cafe. And we discussed at the time how someone should come out with a pod thing of some sort that you can, like, fill up with your own coffee (in my case that would be the Kroger in the dark blue although I have recently switched to the red). In any case we decided at the time that, financially speaking, that wasn’t really a great solution either.

Fast forward to me being home for my grandmother’s funeral and hey, my mom had bought herself a Home Cafe, though I didn’t really pay attention to it at the time other than to notice it was there and I guess commented on it.

Fast forward again to Christmas Day when I open, first, a Home Cafe of my own - and then, the Presto MyPod… which you can fill up with your own coffee. So, cool.

Now, another thing I should add about the Home Cafe is that I thought those were a really dumb idea when they came out. I first saw it when, shortly after its release on the market, it was featured as part of a reward challenge on Survivor. I mean, I thought, yeah, nice idea for those who like really fresh coffee (I could generally care less, I’ll stick day old coffee in the microwave, no problem) or don’t drink that much coffee, but for me? No.

Well, since getting the Home Cafe for Christmas, I have had sort of a love-hate relationship with it. I tried to use it exclusively for a week or so until finally deciding it was just too much trouble and going back to using the regular coffee maker generally and the Home Cafe on occasion.

Plus there was something about the cups made with the Home Cafe. They just weren’t tasting quite exactly right. It was kind of like when you’re outside and drink water straight out of the garden hose, or something? Yeah.

So fast forward again, this time to last week. Now, admittedly, I drink so much coffee I just don’t really have much of a discernable palate at all for it other than I can tell the difference between a really bad cup of coffee (like the stuff you get out of vending machines) or one that’s satisfactory, and that’s generally about it, really.

Anyway, for whatever reason I made a cup with the Home Cafe last week and… it tasted like the best cup of coffee I ever had ever in the world. And then, having duly noted I’d made that with the Kroger Red, I shortly thereafter made another with the Kroger Blue just to see. And it was yummy too.

So now I’m sold on the Home Cafe, totally. I guess maybe it just needed to get used and “seasoned” or something, sorta like one does with cast iron skillets. Still using the regular coffee maker too, of course, but using the Home Cafe more often than I was. Now let’s see if I can get thru 2006 without having to buy yet another one, of either.

I racked up on other coffee at Christmas too, got a bag of Starbuck’s beans as well as some yummy stuff from the beloved Coffeeam.com, including Banana Hazelnut - definitely a dessert coffee, it’s almost too sweet and coming from me who dumps tons of sweetener in my coffee, that’s saying something - and the rather amusing 5 lb. bag of Rainforest Crunch. Do you know how BIG a 5 lb. bag of coffee is? Yeah, my mother didn’t really realize it either until they (she ordered herself one too) arrived.

In other coffee news, Daisy has become such the coffee creamer addict, stalking me whenever I’m doctoring up a new cup to see if I’ll spill any. The other puppies will too but it’s mostly her, she’s the one with a bad jones for coffee creamer.

Hey, I mentioned Survivor up there and, what do you know - the new season premieres tomorrow night, yay. Although I guess I still have a rep as a reality TV junkie and trash TV-aholic (long live Melrose Place!), my interest in both has kind of waned, plus I just don’t watch that much TV period anymore. But I still get excited about the Big Three - Survivor, Amazing Race, Big Brother. Yeah, reality TV addict always… just on a bit smaller scale these days.

Well, I have returned from the wilds of northern Alabama. What a trip. I discovered on my way home that on the drive to Alabama I actually missed a turn, just outside of Memphis in Collierville, which would have shaved about 45 minutes or more off my trip to Decatur and saved me a lot of going thru small towns with 30 and 40 mph speed limits and five hundred billion stop lights, bad roads in northern Mississippi, and other such stuff and would have had me there nearly an hour earlier which might have saved me from my grandmother and everyone else asking me what took me so long.

On the way back, just watching the signs to Memphis as I got west of Corinth, Mississippi, I was rather surprised (and ticked off about yesterday) to find myself suddenly in Collierville and having missed all that ruraliana (tho that was a good thing, tho it would have been nice to know about that yesterday!). And while I’m at it about the drive, let me mention that there is nothing between Corinth and Tuscumbia, and nothing between Tuscumbia and Decatur. If you’re on Highway 72 and need to be stopping for a potty break, you’d better be going west, because what few convenience stores and gas stations and such there are all on the westbound side of the road.

And also, RE the lovely Memphis suburbs of Germantown and Collierville, what in the world is the point of having four, five and six lane streets - especially when part of that is non-commercial highway road - if you’re going to have 40 mph speed limits? I swear, I have about decided that it would almost be easier, should I ever have a reason to travel to northern Alabama again, to just drive to Tupelo and then go northeast, because one thing I can say about Mississippi - Highway 78 from Memphis to Tupelo is an awesome road and darn near as good as the interstates.

Well, enough about the drive… I had a pretty swell time in Decatur. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many McCutcheons in one place ever before and that was pretty cool. I saw cousins I’ve never seen before and cousins I haven’t seen in ten and twenty years. I think my great-uncle said there were fifty-something people there, I think the majority were the Smith clan of Decatur tho we McCutcheons from Paris were probably the next majority in number. Pretty cool, I enjoyed seeing everyone, and I got to spend Father’s Day with my Dad, so that was an extra bonus. Some of us gathered in the lounge of the Decatur Holiday Inn to watch and listen to a Tina Turner impersonator last night and I drank about four vodka lemonades which had me feeling none too good this morning, but other than that, great time.

So anyway… Greggie was nagging me saying I was slacking on my purported job of reporting every little thing I do, so here’s that deal, as some know we get in this mood wanting to do all-something gigs sometimes - in recent years, all-Gurus and all-KISS - so recently down at Dave’s in Oxford we went for (almost) all-Ramones, now that was fun… we managed to get almost everyone down there, borrowed a bass player, and all was well. Selections included (deep breath, this will take a while): “Rockaway Beach”, “Teenage Lobotomy”, “I Wanna Be Well”, “I Wanna Be Sedated”, “Needles and Pins”, “I Just Wanna Have Something To Do”, “Pinhead”, “We Want the Airwaves”, “Commando”, “I Can’t Give You Anything”, “Do You Wanna Dance?”, “Carbona Not Glue”, “Ramona”, and “Blitzkrieg Bop”. That sounds like a lot of tuneage, but since most Ramones songs are like two minutes long… well, you know. Then, for a change of pace, and because we ran out of Ramones tunes that everyone knows, some Velvet Underground - “White Light/White Heat”, “I Can’t Stand It”, “Lisa Says”, “Beginning to See the Light” and “What Goes On” - then, as a nod to a pal by request, a little Dig, letting Duncan D. play so there’d be three guitars, and did “Whose Side You On?”, “I’ll Stay High”, “Unlucky Friend”, “We Don’t Care”, “Conversation”, “Possibilities” and “Live in Sound” (minus the techy stuff, of course) off the new album, “Song for Liars” and, yeah, “Believe”, and do you know - well, I’ll get to that in a minute. Then JJ and Greg switched for Greg to play lead guitar, and finished up with some, natch, Clash - “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”, “Clampdown”, “London’s Burning” and, of course, “Train in Vain”. Yeah, kind of a punk rock evening, heh. So anyhow, what I was going to say about “Believe”, which some may remember from the MTV Buzz Bin a few years ago, it was decided among the majority on the way home that that song has one of the best intros ever - the cool drums-n-bass intro in the beginning followed by the slamming multi-guitar intro coming in - very cool, we luv it, thumbs up from us to the genius mastermind of music there.

Well, that’s about enough babbling from me, plus I’m pretty worn out, so toodles for now…

Just got back in town a little bit ago and felt like scribbling a little end of month Graffiti while waiting for my hair to dry… and, speaking of my hair, it’s time for a hair update, I’ll have everybody know, I just noticed this by accident really since I don’t usually see that side of me - my hair has now grown so long it’s to the middle of my back! I have been grumbling for twenty years about it never growing much longer than past my shoulders and now it’s like, wow… for me this is a big accomplishment. I’m still trying to figure out just what on earth I’ve been doing differently the last few years that my hair and nails (which I never had before either) have been growing like mad.

I saw Greg and Beck for a little while last week and Greg proclaimed me The Blonde Tanned Goddess of Summer… for someone who hates summer as much as I do, I guess I really shouldn’t hate it so since it’s kinda when I’m really in my element, or something.

So, anyway, I took a short trip over the weekend and had a pretty good time, my brother-in-law and I picked on each other (always a favorite pastime), I had catfish for the first time in ages, and I must say it’s pretty doggone lucky when you get pulled over while driving on Memorial Day weekend and the cop that pulls you over is one of your best friend’s little brothers that you used to babysit when he was like, ten years old, whew. I really wasn’t speeding excessively thru my old stomping grounds, but it was still somewhat a relief to find out exactly who had pulled me over and I took my lecture happily with a smile and got a hug to boot.

Next on the agenda… I read an awesome book this week! It’s really not all that often I will give the ultimate recommendation to a book, or even to music, but anyone around my age needs to read Douglas (Generation X) Coupland’s most recent outing, Girlfriend in a Coma - it’s simply great, one of a rare few books that got me surprisingly all weepy several times, kinda tatters out at the end a bit but up until then I absolutely could not put it down, read it thru straight from top to finish in one night. Seems too I’m not the only writer in the world that’s having some kinda wild sci-fi’ish weirdness to the muse, tho Coupland’s doesn’t involve James Spader at all… anyway, yes, rush out to your local Bookstar or whatever (or better yet, go to my front page and click on the Amazon.com link and make me a little $$) and get it and dig it and then spend the rest of your life wondering just what the **** went wrong with our generation…

Next… I have kinda been overdosing on the new Dig CD Life Like (but still not sick of it after thousands of listens, which is an amazing feat) and have been listening to 1993’s Dig when not that, so I swapped it for some other Dig for my drive and listened to the Runt and Defenders of the Universe CDs for the first time in a long time and you know what, “We Don’t Care” on the first and “Song for Liars” and “Opus” on the other, as well as a couple of others, are as awesome as anything on Dig and Life Like. I really should listen to all my CDs more often but when you have this many it’s a little difficult sometimes. Anyway, yay, more cool stuff rediscovered to listen to… I remember the first time I heard “Opus” and I looked at it and thought it said “Oops”, which I think would have been a more excellent name for that song (and promptly said so, of course).

Also, I found out that song on my mix tape where the lead singer sounded too eerily like Paul Westerberg is actually the band Nada Surf and the song is called “Stalemate” (Thanks Bill!). Very good tune. That’s the great thing about music, even if something’s old, if you’ve never heard it, it’s still new, so there’s always something new to be discovered.

Well, that’s about it for me now as my hair’s dry and I’m tired and going to bed indefinitely, and happily, as I just found my other Quadrophenia button (I have two, and it’s a long story)…

So goodnight, good holiday, and remember, the three most dangerous words in the world are “I will” and “You will” (yeah I know it looks like four words but count ‘em, there’s just three)… more philosophies regarding that later sometime. Happy holiday Monday and peace wherever and however you are…

The only non-yuck thing to report today is that my eBay feedback rating is about to hit 200, woohoo! For all the horror stories I’ve heard from other eBay sellers and buyers (and have had a couple of deadbeat bidders myself - beware the Rock & Roll Memorabilia category, sigh), I have to say the folks who are into Barbie stuff are the most terrific buyers and sellers on eBay!

Now, I have some bad news for the Zone (and for bored people with laptops) for the rest of the week as everything here will be on temporary hold yet again, thru sometime probably after the weekend. My mom broke her wrist while on a business trip to Miami (where she still is at press time) and is going to have minor surgery back home tomorrow morning - unfortunately (and talk about Murphy’s Law in action!!) this was one of the few times she flew out of Nashville instead of Memphis, so your favorite blonde will be leaving to drive to Nashville after work tonight, driving back to Paris, and not only dealing with the surgery stuff but also trying to figure out how to get Mom’s car out of Nashville and back to Paris, and possibly making a Paris to Memphis back to Paris and back to Memphis trip in the interim, sooo… yup, it’s a week alright. (sigh)

And I have folks arriving in town here in Memphis Friday, tho I won’t be here ’til later, but after getting back to Memphis that’ll probably tie me up thru the early part of next week, so, in any case, consider yourself forewarned that there will be no updating around here until late in the weekend at the very earliest. Sorry laptop dude!

In any case I can maybe finally get some reading done (not only have I only listened to the new Westerberg album once, believe it or not after all my dying for it to hurry up and come out, I still haven’t read Anne Rice’s Armand yet and she’s even got a new vampire book out now!), plus I’m gonna take my dirty dishes to Paris and do ‘em up there so I can procrastinate the plumbing repair a little longer, hehehe.

ANYWAY - gotta go ‘cos it’s going to be a loooong day, and I’ll only have half as much time to get ready to split town tonight. I did update the Lyrics Zone with some stuff I forgot I’d already done and hadn’t put up yet, even tho nobody ever reads any of it anyway, the Scott Hackwith Hall of Fame now resides in the Lyrics Zone… some definite clues as to why I dig (pun much intended!) this band so much. Buy the album, buy the album!!! (giggle) (Feeling pressured? Call… OK, never mind, enough of the puns for now.) (snicker) OK, with that, I am officially offline until, maybe earlier, but probably Tuesday or so - sayonara…

Too tired to do anything but scribble here on the Wall, it’s been a long, tiring, and insane weekend and for the second day in a row I’m seeing the sun come up and hearing the birds a-chirping. In case you missed it, you can click here (sorry, link is gone) to see what I did on one day of my vacation in February. American Dream Safari is pretty cool and you can tell Tad that Lynn from Memphis sent ya, if you dare to be adventurous and take the ride yourself.

Anyway… this is liable to be mostly bits and pieces to finish off what has been a weird week… I met up with a buddy of mine and played some guitar, quite a bit of stuff that I learned to play back when I first started playing that I’d forgotten I knew, some old Neil Young, Guadalcanal Diary, most of R.E.M.’s Life’s Rich Pageant album, much other stuff, a very good time had by all involved. I never cease to be amazed, as well as just feeling darn lucky, to have been able to have the opportunity to be surrounded by so many supremely musically talented folks, many of whom I’m even luckier to call good friends - it is a blessing above most blessings to be able to listen to and watch some of these wonderful musicians play, I wish I had even an ounce of the talent some of my favorite folks do.

I was just hanging out doing some busywork here at the homestead one night this week and popped in a CD by someone I know into the ol’ Discman to keep me occupied, and it struck me why I have never developed any kind of substance-abuse problem over all these years - I totally get buzzed on music, and no drug or drink could ever give me better.

Speaking of music, drop by Tommy Womack’s home page if you haven’t in a while and read his latest what’s-up-in-my-world entry… both hilarious and heartbreaking, but moreover a real keep-the-faith inspiration for struggling musicians everywhere. And, speaking of Tommy, just when I was griping a few days ago about the unlikelihood of getting to catch one of his shows when I’m in Nashville in June… something must be wrong in the air for my usual crummy luck to suddenly change for awesome for a change, but it appears that Tommy himself is opening for NRBQ in Nashville on June 10th! Great news for moi since I was going to be there anyway thanks to Johnny! I have to be the luckiest little short blonde in the Southeast right now and I don’t know what’s wrong with the universe to have caused that bit of unbelievableness, but I’m not about to ponder the thought!

Now I just have to decide just who I’m going to allow on this righteous little road trip with me, since the one who’d be screaming and jumping up and down to go can’t ‘cos he’s not even on American soil right now, nyah nyah nyah… (snicker)

Speaking of more music, if you have ever trusted my tastes in music (John Cosper, you are excused) and haven’t already, do go pick up a copy of Dig’s Life Like CD. Still got the rest of the year to go, but I doubt anything’s going to knock it out of place with me as the best album of the decade.

Anyway, next… I am currently enamored of this hazelnut-flavored coffee creamer I found… I don’t know what I’m going to do about this coffee thing, I said it last summer and I keep thinking it again as summer approaches again now that I really don’t need to be drinking coffee all day long in the summertime, but all these yummy flavored coffees are just too yummy and now this whole coffee creamer issue, yi… in a life full of issues, I am mostly concerned about coffee creamer, what does that tell you. (giggle)

I have seen some truly inspirational stuff on the Web this week, I am impressed and in awe of some very good writers out there, wow, and I wish I was that brave… some, I’m sure, and some I know, think I take an awful lot of personal license with displaying my life on my website, the fact is, tho, I’m more like overly censored (by choice) and actually quite tactful and even somewhat closed-mouthed regarding many many things, believe it or not. (Really!! I am!!) I could really lay waste to a lot of various personal issues if I really wanted to, but I don’t, for whatever reasons, tact I guess as well as maybe some other semi-moral issues. (shrug) The fun stuff, odd ridiculous thought that pops into my head on a fairly regular basis, and whatever mildly interesting news there is appears here… (I save the rest for e-mail, snicker)… I get to scribble about maybe 5% of The Wonderful World of Lynnster on here from time to time and the rest I either keep to myself or share privately and one-on-one with whoever.

Having been somewhat inspired this week, as well as running dangerously low on web space, I was thinking, hmm, maybe I should look into some more, less censorable web space where I could really get into the heavy duty philosophical babbling-type stuff, and even, like, curse if I wanted to (those who know me well know how truly censored I am by AOL rules, heh…). But then again, you know what? It probably wouldn’t be any different (other than the cursing, snicker…)

Guess some of you will have to just wait ’til the once in a blue moon I get around to e-mailing back, or late night phone calls, or be satisfied with searching for stuff that is not there on the ol’ Wall. Plus there’s the fact that too many people I know are finding my website which, while I don’t really have a problem with it really, it’s just a little unnerving and starting to become a little more censored than usual as I don’t really want so-and-so’s Aunt Martha who just bought a computer last week telling so-and-so’s Aunt Mary over appetizers at bridge club all about (insert my name here)’s web page and encouraging the myth that everybody who leaves a small town for the big city turns really weird. (snicker) If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked why I want to live in Memphis, and another fifty cents for every time I’ve been asked why on earth I live in Midtown, I’d be pretty rich by now and wouldn’t be having to make a second income selling vintage Barbie swag on eBay. But still I like to scribble, even if I have to censor myself and behave - that’s what e-mail is for, to be uncensored and not behave! - so I reckon I will continue, AOL rules and all. One thing I’ve definitely learned in the last couple of weeks is that the key to peace and stability is being able to talk things out with whatever parties best fit whatever situation, and just basically communicate, and god knows I’ve never had much aversion to that!!!

Which reminds me, I’m having difficulty choosing what should be my next Quote of the D/W/M/W… it’ll be another Dig line, but I can’t decide if it should be from “Conversation” (”She likes to talk a lot…”) or “Unlucky Friend” (”This is who I am, the unlucky friend…”), except I like the current one so much (”I’ve come to terms that you live in sound”) I don’t think I’ll change it for a while. Decisions, decisions. (Hey there’s another one - “No more decisions, time, or conditions…”) And I am definitely over my head right now (another pun! Jeez, this is fun…)

Anyway… Herr New Laptop has already called me to tell me what city he’s in today, which signals being way past my bedtime, so I suppose it’s time for bed. (Robin & KC, you’ll appreciate this… the other night I pick up the phone at some ungodly hour to hear this screaming - “I’m in Akron!” - and then, click, dialtone… I hope he’s disturbing wife and kid’s sleep like he is mine every night too, I’d hate to think I’m the only one on the receiving end of this apparently earthshattering nightly news…)

Gotta go, must sleep, yawn, catch up later maybe if I ever get plumbing chores done this weekend…

Hello, I know things have been a bit quiet again lately… I’ve been working late a lot and falling asleep a lot, basically, so, sorry. Well, Happy April Fool’s Day I guess, I don’t really celebrate April Fool’s Day since April 1st is also KC’s birthday, who is about the biggest April Fool I know, so, happy (insert incredibly huge number of years here)th birthday, you slug. It’s also the birthday of somebody I like as opposed to birthdays of slimeballs, so, happy birthday to Toni too!

Anyway… I managed to get the worst of the wreckage of my e-mail box out of the way last week, hopefully I will get to the rest of it before the week is out and before things get revved up next week getting ready for the convergence of many many folks on Memphis and my house for the Stones concert next week at The Pyramid. In any case, I am slowly, but surely, actually making some progress for a change as far as the pitiful state of my mailbox.

Notes from the My Life Just Gets Weirder and Weirder, But In A Nice Way department… by way of my mostly-lifelong Hoodoo Gurus fetish and a very strange P.J. Proby occurrence as yet unidentified, I’d like to welcome my new and witty good pal and regular visitor to the Zone, Mr. Johnny Spampinato of NRBQ, to the ol’ Zone. A brilliant conversationalist, all around good and funny guy, and my new partner in crime, we are feeling all Scotland Yard-like lately. (giggle)

Well, I wish I had more news but I don’t, so (commercial break for our sponsors, heh) go out and buy a copy of Dig’s new CD Life Like, some NRBQ CDs, and go buy multiple copies of Tommy Womack’s Positively Na Na CD and Cheese Chronicles book to help pay his recent large auto repair bill so he will be able to tour some more, or else I’ll come beat all of you up. (snicker) Oh, like any of you have anything better to do with your money… ’til later…

Hullo, just thought I’d check in for a minute, sorry for the delay, going out of town this weekend kind of had me tied up for most of the last week, among other things.

First off, I saw snow yesterday! I don’t suppose it snowed in Memphis (don’t know) but I saw snow where I was, so that was cool. It’s doggone freezing in Memphis tho, at the moment I am kinda a LynnsterSicle so I’m not going to type much tonight, too cold, plus too late.

There’s not much news anyway, at least nothing much I’m allowed to spout publicly… it would seem every three or four years or so I get slapped with a gag order again (giggle). We are all so proud of one of our tribe tho… enough folks stop by here that have known me & KC & the rest of the usual cast of clowns enough years that they know of whom I speak. I spent part of the weekend doing music with some other fellas, and you know, there’s something to be said for my thus far having had no real career in music… at least you won’t find me going ballistic and whining on the phone about some music reviewer saying I had “exaggerated vocal mannerisms” like some people I know. (giggle) Well, anyway, that’s that and we’re all just so proud we could spit. (giggle)

Anyhow, speaking of music and stuff, did I mention that my tremendously talented musician friend Tommy Womack apparently ran into some auto probs while doing some recent gigs and cranked up what sounds like a whopping repair bill, so, I demand that all of my musically-inclined friends, acquaintances, foes and whatnot go right out and buy copi