So my grandmother is still alive. I’m sitting next to her right now. She hasn’t spoken since Monday & her eyes haven’t been open for more than a few seconds since late Wednesday night. I’m giving her morphine once an hour. Her skin’s starting to breakdown. A pretty freaking depressing scenario that makes it hard to do much of anything (examples being sleep & eat).
I did manage to make it out to fill some orders & check my mail & I got the new issue of Magnet. The most interesting thing is it was the first issue in three years & I hadn’t even noticed. I always like their intros & the end rant about the return of 1990s bands is pretty fun (at least worth reading in the book store if not worth buying it). It makes me feel like less of an old man since the people who do that magazine are probably all ten to twenty years older than me. But one of the really interesting things I noticed was that pretty much none of the ads in the magazine mentioned a label; they said the release, but not the label it was under. I’m not sure what that’s about. I have also noticed lately that is seems like every band who can sell 10,000 units starts their own label this year (Interpol, Beirut, Gillian Welch, Wilco, & I’m sure dozens more I’m forgetting all in 2011) which is interesting & I wonder how it will effect the industry if at all. On the one hand I feel it is kinda crappy because some bands really do get a good launch to their career from a label who is able to get them national exposure & help them get a decent tour put together & then they jump ship when they are on the verge of making money. On the other hand who knows what their deals are like. & I’m curious how big of a headache it becomes for record stores, distributors, & fans as far as getting the music. I imagine in ending up raising the prices of CDs in stores (because of the way distribution channels often work) & increasing the delay between an order & it getting in shop & who knows what happens with a band on tour 100 days trying to fill orders &/or get something re-pressed & such. I’m not sure if it’s a step towards artistic control or a stagger towards the death of physical media & the further alienation of music fans. Maybe both.
I got the tentative layout done for a Cerebus fan comic I did with Jason Young (Veggie Dog Saturn) pending approval by Jason & Dave Sim. I’ll let you know when I make it actually available to the masses.
Some dude on YouTube recently has put up some of the tracks from Silber comps up there with just the artwork as the video. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it. I mean, I guess it’s fine & it should help spread the word, but I think he should have asked first. I found out through Google Alerts & most of the videos have zero views, so I guess it’s just as well someone other than me waste their time doing it.
Recent Dreams:
I’m at a 1940s dime a dance club, but I don’t have any dimes. I’m looking at the record spin around on the player as everyone else dances. It says “Cry Angel” on the record.
I go back to work at my overnight job at the airport. Surprisingly one of my dead co-workers has also come back to work. He looks a little heavier than I remember & I’m happy to see him again.
My grandmother sits up in the bed as if she’s only been sleeping instead of being in a coma. I giver her a waffle & a popsicle & help her get in her wheelchair & take her for a walk around the neighborhood.
Machines have taken over the world. Most are dumb machines & part of a hive mind, but still smart enough to enslave humanity so all we exist to do is repair them. There is however a small sector where there are intelligent independent robots & their leader has a power to levitate pieces of metal & tear them apart. He hires me & a few other humans to take apart old machines to help him find an ancient integrated circuit that will help him to decipher the true origin of robots. My hands are cut & bleeding from trying to pull apart the old machines without tools.
I offer God to make a deal to trade ten years off my life in exchange for ten years for my grandmother & God tells me I already made that deal ten years ago.