PowerTier II - The Mars Rovers

The countdown to the top 12 albums of 2012 is further protracted. First we have to get to the ones that almost made it. Honestly, had I compiled the order on a different day, they might have.

Howlin' Rain - The Russian Wilds

It was the year 2012 and I was convinced rock n' roll had departed for the Undying Lands, marking the end of the third age. I even scribbled down the lines "The fate of rock n' roll proves / That everything I love will eventually leave." But it may be still alive in this cathedral of neo-classic rock, complete with gritty vocals, driving backbeats, crunchy guitars, and an almost 1:1 song to organ solo ratio. Evoking all of the epic sounds I wish I had experienced in the 70's, The Russian Wilds is something like a tour-de-force, but not as overused of a phrase.


Jack White - Blunderbuss

I think I lost a lot of potential friends by going up to strangers on my way to class one day and singing, in my best overdriven falsetto, "I EAT SIX-TEEN SAL-TEEN CRACKERS THEN I LICK MY FINGERS!" But if they didn't get the reference, then maybe I don't want to be friends with them anyway. White comes out with a high energy, hard grooving album, which sounds like higher-fi version of his previous acts.


Lord Huron - Lonesome Dreams

We've had to put up with a lot of self-indulgent indie singer songwriters in the past few years, most of whom were two white to now what a real beat is and instead lost us in a fog of self-indulgent harmonization and flannel. Since they are, on paper, an indie folk band hailing from LA, Lord Huron could easily be a caricature of the aforementioned type of band. Sure, I did discover them via Shazam (on an Android NOT an iphone, people) in an overpriced knicknack shop of some kind (with wooden spoons for forty dollars, why I was there I have no idea) but I went home and listened to them one GrooveShark, not Spotify! While eating spaghetti, made with no organic ingredients! Then I probably watched football, drank a Coors Banquet Beer, and argued against performative gender roles! I guess if I'm going to be usefull they sound kind of like Local Natives but without the weak attempt to sound worldly.


The Sea and Cake - Runner

Last year, I described The Sea and Cake's sound as the molecular distillation of cool. I stand by that statement. When you're trekking through Bakersfield, this is good music to keep the zombies away. (I'm sure Bakersfield is a very nice city with much to offer but I have yet to see it.)


Dispatch - Circles Around the Sun

Maybe if I had got the chance to see these songs performed live I would have rated this a little higher, but I did not get to see this with the added magic of live Dispatch. They're all great tracks in their own way, but what makes you fall in love with a Dispatch song is the live rendition. That's the way it was with the new EP that came out last year, and I hope it will be that way when I see them again. Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic this exists. January 1st, 2011 the band announced they were touring again, and I got my tickets right away. Then I found out there was a new EP. This wasn't just a reunion tour. This was a full on resurrection. Then we got word of a new album. I know it's not quite the same as when they were a vague rumor on the breeze that you would then discover on Napster and experience full force when they rolled up to your college campus in two beat up vans, but still, they're a force the universe needs. Also, the title track may be the best song about space exploration since "A Space Oddity," which, coming from the Ozone Shack, is saying something.


The Sheepdogs - The Sheepdogs

"My heart is won by southern fantasy / could you understand how much that means to me." These lyrics encapsulate all you need to know about the Sheepdogs, who might be the Allman Brothers Band reincarnated as Canadians. Granted, they are from Saskatoon, which is kind of like the Deep South of Canada. Well, actually, maybe that's Calgary. Much like the Gaslight Anthem wants to be in the universe of a 50's motorcycle movie, I can tell The Sheepdogs want to be the hard rockin, hard drinking, heavy tokin guys raising hell in backwater Mississippi. I don't know, don't quote me on that. Just listen to this album.


The Bouncing Souls - Comet (Also Winner of Album Cover of the Year)

The Bouncing Souls prove that you can keep make high-energy, melodic punk without losing any of the attitude or the edge. These guys have been around for a while, at the forefront of New Jersey's pogo punk scene, making quality music for two decades now. (In fact, they started playing as a band before I was born, so when people tell me to tone it down, I can just point at these guys and say you're never too old to fist pump.) I first put on this album driving myself to the emergency room after I got a concussion.

Why was I driving myself to the emergency room? Well, on a Monday, I gave blood, and since I had probably drank too much Coors Banquet Beer and not enough water during the preceding weekend, and had only eaten a pack of fruit snacks and trail mix that morning, I was dehydrated my blood sugar was low. When I stood up upon finishing the machine sucking my blood out, my blood pressure fell over the fiscal cliff and I passed out, hitting my head on the tiled floor. When they revived me, my blood pressure was 80 over 20 - any lower and they would have had to defibrillate me. I went home with nausea, hating light and sound, but thought it was just my brain starved of blood and nutrients. Tuesday night I went to a wine and dessert thing and puked after two and a half glasses of wine, but I thought "ok, I just gave blood, maybe blood loss affects your blood alcohol content more than I thought." Wednesday I felt even shittier, and I assumed that it was some weird kind of hangover. Thursday I felt even worse and I realized something was wrong. Friday morning I called the blood bank and they told me that I should drive myself to the emergency room to be evaluated for a concussion. ANYWAY, I was worried about my ability to maintain focus, so I put on loud, energetic punk to keep me going. And I made it. I'm still here. Thanks guys.


Stay tuned for the top 12, coming tomorrow and Monday!

PowerTier III - The Ridiculously Photogenic Guys

The continuing countdown to the top 12 albums of 2012

Neil Young with Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill

Neil young makes a statement here. That statement is: "I am senile, and I don't care what you think." This album starts with a twenty seven minute jam, and has two other songs well over the fifteen minute mark. He also states that he's going to "get a hip-hop haircut," which is the best evidence agaisnt anybody that they're going senile. And because he's senile, Neil Young does whatevere the hell he wants. Therefore, Neil Young proves that rockers are like fine wine: they can age into the perfect state of coolness. This music is best listened to loud. Headphones are acceptable, as long as they drown out all ambient noise of the supermarket. I listened to this album while grocery shopping and I was lost in a haze of a bygone time, when this supermarket would be smaller and their might be woodchips on the floor. The lighting would be a halogen tone, rather than the weird soft warm brown light they fill that place with now. It was a time when they needed get high and turn their amps up just to breathe man. Neil is keeping it a live.

Silversun Pickups - Neck of the Woods

It's tough to be the Silversun Pickups. When you're a band with such a definitive sound - hell, when you invented your own sound - you have the curse of having to push boundaries and also sound just like you did. I know people who say that the original EP, Pikul, was the only "true" Silversun Pickups album. That is, it is the only thing made by the Silversun Pickups that sounds like the Silversun Pickups should sound. So this might have been a bit of an underwhelming release. But it did what I hoped it would do: retain the Silversun Pickups aesthetic while expanding into new kinds of sounds. And really, that's what every band should do. Unfortunately, that kind of artistic sensibility gets bashed by fans and critics alike. Anyone who does so is a martyr in the Ozone Orthodoxy.

Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls

This was the perfect soundtrack for riding on a Greyhound bus. I was on the bus because they wouldn't let me use a hamper as a suitcase on an Amtrak train. I apparently need to invest in a duffle bag or something. But this music is the kind of music where you can't buy a duffle bag. You can't even by whiskey to drown your sorrows at missing the train. And there is no nice man who will let you exchange your train ticket for a bus ticket. Also, the protagonist of the title track is 22, which is something I can relate to.

Calexico - Algiers

While I seem surprisingly willing to talk about music on the internet, I have a hard time talking to strangers about music in real life. I don't remember how it happened, but I told someone that I was excited to listen to the new Calexico album. He asked what they sounded like. The best I could come up with was "kinda like if Wilco had a lot of south of the border influences." Laid back, dark and brooding, sweeping horn swells, acoustic guitar montunos, upright bass, the perfect soundtrack for aimlessly wandering the southwest.


Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again

The son of Ugandan parents fleeing the Amin regime, London-based singer Michael Kiwanuka might be the heir to the legacy of Soul music. Home Again mixes old-school sounds in with the singer/songwriter aesthtic and a tinge of afrobeat horns. And he pulls off the duality of the great Motown singers who could project both swagger and insecure longing at the same time.


Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - The Heist

I think this is the first time I've recognized an iTunes number one selling album with more than a blurb. Maybe Dispatch's eponymous EP got to number two, I'm not sure. But that's not the point right now. The album was independently recorded and produced by the duo. No major label was involved. I'm not mentioning it because it's what makes this album remarkable. I'm mentioning it because I think this is what makes this album great. Mainstream rap is clogged with excess and extravagances, but this polished without being ornate. Bonus points for the humility as well; most mainstream rap gravitates to statements of grandiosity, and while I know that trash talking is a viable element of the art form, once you get an album contract you have to deviate from that subject matter. Macklemore will admit he has problems, owns up to his alcoholism, stands up to homophobia, and, allegedly, only has twenty dollars in his pocket.


The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have come a long way since leaving El Paso in a van with At the Drive-In at age seventeen. This album may represent the band coming full circle, in their own strange way. When it was in production, Rodriguez-Lopez described Noctourniquet as "just future punk!" He also was willing to relinquish some creative control, which he has had a notoriously tight grip on previously. This is stripped down, with mostly standard length songs, no ornate horn sections, no ambient buzzing, no five movement suites. Most of the weirdness, and in fact, most of the sounds in general, are electronically generated, and the intricate drum beats, I suppose, make this their dubstep phase.

When I saw the Mars Volta in 2011, they were a minimal five-piece, with one of the members only using a MacBook to make sounds of some variety. Cedric was running around stage, dancing with the mic stand, doing backflips, and at one point tried to rip his shirt off, but for the most part they were subdued. Omar was motionless, the top button on his shirt buttoned, concentrated on picking out the intricate polyrhythms on his left-handed guitar. At this year's Coachella reunion of At the Drive-In, reports indicate, there was no rocking, no thrashing, the energy they brought to the stage as teenagers wasn't there anymore. Being the Mars Volta seems to be taxing on everybody involved. It's been eleven years since De-Loused In the Comatorium, and with every year my hopes that we're going to get another one of those diminishes a little more. This year I think I was willing to put them down for good. But I'm glad for the output from this duo on the last two decades, including this fine piece of whacky craftsmanship.


And speaking of bands in their dubstep phase...

Muse - The 2nd Law

Yes, all you die-hard Muse fans are going to hate me for recognizing this one. It's like the bastard child that should be locked in the closet and fed fish heads and residue from the gruel pot. Say what you will, but this concept-ish album about entropy may be the band's finest effort. Sure, the title suite is a little, well, dubsteppy. They were always trying to be epic, they always had dense carpet of sound going on. Even the haters have to admit, there is some solid guitar work and impressive vocals on this album. Every band has that album when they are at or past the apex of their stardom and puts out their "mature" effort, and I think for Muse, this is that album. Not that it's a bad thing at all. It's much more carefully constructed than The Resistance, and the musicianship is better than even on Absolution. Just don't let the whole entropy thing bum you out.


Check back soon for PowerTier II

The 2012 Album Awards Show Pregame Festivities!

I think I listened to a lot of music this year. During the long, protracted, kick in the balls that was 2012, there was a soundtrack of passably good music with a couple of standouts playing in the background. This is where that music gets recognized.

I spent a lot of time anticipating making this, but once I got into the process, it was terrifying. What if I snubbed some albums, what if I overrated some? Will I lose friends over this? Will I get a severed horse's head on my pillow? The answer to all of those questions is probably yes.

So here's how this works. The top 12 are in their own PowerTier. (Since this is 2012 I suppose that could be #PowerTier, but it's not because hashtags are Ragtime and I'm a classically trained pianist in 1910's Atlanta.) Everything else is grouped into PowerTiers, which can range in size from one album to infinity albums. Outside of PowerTier I albums are not ranked with respect to other albums within their own PowerTier. Albums in the same PowerTier deserve roughly around the same level of recognition, in the eyes of the Ozone Shack.

Of course, there's the disclaimer that this is entirely my opinion. I am not ranking these albums on how they correspond to the Ideal Platonic Universe of Good Music. There is no such thing. The world is only what we make of it.

PowerTier VIII - The Benghazi Coverups
David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love this Giant
Good Old War - Come Back as Rain
State Radio - Rabbit Inn Rebellion
Chiddy Bang - Breakfast
Titus Andronicus - Local Business
The Vaccines - Come of Age
Bad Books - II

PowerTier VII - The Eastwood Debates

Tame Impala - Lonerism
Psychedelic trip-rock that might have been trying to sound a little too much like late-era Beatles, especially in Kevin Parker's vocals. I mean, even the color scheme of the cover is evocative of Abbey Road.


Gojira - L'enfant Sauvage
I guess the French can shred. This was the soundtrack while I did Christmas shopping at the Half Price Bookstore in Berkeley. I got some pretty angry gifts.


The Cult - Choice of Weapon
Post-punk meets classic rock with the epic sensibilities of a prog outfit.


The Maccabees - Given to the Wild
This spacey, well crafted rock made one of my monthly bike rides to K Mart for overpriced cleaning supplies and RC Cola much more bearable. Also, they used Andy Goldsworthy art for the cover, which is bonus points in my book.


The XX - Coexist
I heard about this one on NPR. NP-fucking-R! Where's my tote bag?


Godspeed You! Black Emperror - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
The band who already gave us too many exclamation marks gives us too more. This is good music to listen to while you are playing Civilization IV on Ambien. In my personal experience anyway. The Sumerian fighter planes kicked my ass though.


PowerTier VI - The Rookie Quarterbacks

Deftones - Koi No Yokan
One kind of sludge that even Captain Planet can get behind!


The Tallest Man on Earth - There's no Leaving Now
The sophomore effort of Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matssen offers a richer and more diversified sonic texture. This was a pretty good year for Norse outfits, as we'll find out later.


Circa Survive - Violent Waves
Where will this album fit into the Great Taxonomy of the World? I'm not sure. Like the Ozone Shack, it will probably end up in the miscellaneous pile.


The Shins - Port of Morrow
I purposely underrated this. Maybe because I was waiting for it for so long, or maybe because I know that Pitchfork overrated it (although I have no intention of giving them more traffic by finding out). This once groundbreaking group is settling into their comfortable middle period.


Ian Anderson - Thick as a Brick 2
The follow up chronicling the last thirty years of one of rock n' roll's favorite conceptees, Gerald Bostock. Jethro Tull has aged relatively well. Maybe a little depressing, but so is the fate of rock n' roll.


Anathema - Weather Systems
Symphonic prog metal with guitar textures that sort of remind me of Joey Eppard's style with the edge taken off. Good for implacable nostalgia and a vague sense of emotional dissatisfaction


Tier V - The Joseph Gordon-Levitts

Neon Trees - Picture Show
Well I'll be damned if this isn't my second guiltiest pleasure of the year. Also, their drummer is hot.


Matisyahu - Spark Seeker
Christian Rock is a multibillion dollar industry and generates mostly bland garbage. Jewish reggae is confined to a handful of artists and has a consistently better output. What can I say, God's chosen people.


The Big Pink - Future This
Ok, this looks like it's shaping up to be the Guilty Pleasure PowerTier. But I like music for the way it sounds, not what it sounds like. Yeah, this album is a little electronic hipstery. Actaully, I don't know if it does, that's just what somebody said once. I think his favorite band is Pennywise, so his judgment is questionable.


Isis - Temporal
A fantastic mix of thrash and prog metal textures. This collection of unreleased demos from the band's career  highlight's what made them such a dynamic act.


The Lumineers - The Lumineers
The latest toast of the neo-folk movement serves up forty two minutes of catchy melodies and heavy pickin'.


Rush - Clockwork Angels
Geddy Lee, Neil Pert, Eric Lifesen. One of the power trio of power trios (the other two being Cream and the Jimmy Hendrix Experience), Rush should have burned out a long time ago. But after their synthesizer era and being reduced to a gag in I Love You, Man, Rush is still up and kicking with Clockwork Angels.


Plants and Animals - The End of That
I can't decide if this is alternative rock or just rock. Or are they just the same thing now? Like Rush, they're also Canadian. This is good music for staring at storm drain runoff cutting through a sandbank on the beach and thinking about the disparity between human time and geological time.


Minus the Bear - Infinity Overhead
This one is good for watching pelicans on their fall migration. They look like organic WWII bombers (pelicans, not Minus the Bear).


Power Tier IV - The Higgs Bosons

Passion Pit - Gossamer
A surprisingly sophisticated album for a band whose name is a euphemism for vagina. (I was going to use "Take a Walk" for the sample, but let's face it, you've already heard it.)


Grizzly Bear - Shields
Before I gave this a listen, I was thinking "pff, ok, Grizzly Bear, this'll be interesting." But by some divine miracle, obnoxious stubble didn't appear on my face, and an American Spirit didn't appear in my hand. Sometimes the thick textures in the slower songs still bother me, but I'm willing to look the other way.


Chromatics - Kill for Love
It's not hard to get lost in the haunting beauty of this electric tapestry. Extra ballerness points for opening with a Neil Young cover.


Hot Chip - In Our Heads
Britain's weirdest semi-mainstream band reloads with another fantastic release, possibly their best yet. Eight years ago, they were claiming to be a sighted Stevie Wonder, and now they claim the world is no longer round. Yep, not much has changed, except for maybe higher production values.


Nightmare River Band - Last Goodbye
Underground Punk/Bluegrass/Country band drops their horn section for what is, regrettably, a sophomore slump after their fantastically bizarre Call the Cops!! Am I disappointed? Maybe. But not too much. We're lucky to have them.

Special Honorable Mentions
Before we go on to PowerTier III, I want to take time to mention two albums

Album that I'm Mentioning to Make It Seem Like I Get It: Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
But really, I don't.

You with me?

Check back soon for PoerTiers III, II, and the top 12 Albums of 2012!

Yelp Review of an Undisclosed Chinese Restaurant

I grew up down the street and my family would go here on a semi-weekly basis when I was growing up. Now it's always the first place I go when I'm home. It might just be the MSG or maybe it's all the countless cherished memories I have here with family and friends, but there is no eatery that can provide me with as strong a feeling of satisfaction.

Every time the decor seems to get classier by a few quanta, to the point where they now have piped-in soothing piano music, white tablecloths, and even some artwork on the walls. The place is usually pretty empty since most of their clientele does takeout, but eating in is a great experience. (Fun fact: there used to be a sign out front that advertised free valet parking, but since their parking lot consists of about ten parking spaces in two separate lots and they are at the intersection of two narrow streets, this was always a lie.) You can't really go wrong with any of the entrees, except the walnut shrimp look like are covered with a mixture of phlegm and whale semen. But don't let that dissuade you, the walnut shrimp are delicious once you get past the appearance.

What most people don't realize about this place is how incredibly well stocked the bar is. It's probably the most under-utilized stash of liquor this side of prohibition. However, be warned: although they have all the necessary ingredients to make sake bombs, it's a trap. When my friends and I asked for some, the bartender seemed confused. A Chinese man sitting at the bar tried to tell him what we wanted, and all of a sudden they were yelling at each other in impassioned Cantonese. The two waiters and the maitre d' got involved in the discussion, and then even the manager got involved, causing it to escalate into a six person hustle and a bustle. We had created a mini Chinese soap opera. To quell the situation, we just asked for three Saporros and three cups of sake. We thought this was the end of the saga, but as it turns out, their glasses are not conducive to sake-bombing. They taper about halfway down to the point where the sake cup gets stuck, blocking some of the beer at the bottom until you tilt your glass all the way back, at which point you have to brace yourself to keep  the dregs from spilling all over you.

When the bombs drop and there is nothing but fallout and burned cities and black soot blocks out the sun, I will fight my way through hordes of mutants in a beat up diesel pickup truck, on the off chance that this is the one place from the world I once knew that has survived.

Strangers with Wi-fi

My demographic was raised to be terrified of the internet. We were first exposed to it at the same time as our parents. It was just as new to them as it was to us. Back then our parents didn't see it as being useful for very much, except my dad was very excited about this whole "e-mail" thing. What they did realize was that it was a way for their kids to talk to strangers without ever leaving the house. Which meant, of course, that pedophiles from the Tron universe were going to scan us into the computer and cybermolest us.

You would hear vague rumors that almost coalesced into anecdotes about a kid who went missing because of someone they met in an AOL chat room, how this stranger with cybercandy figured out where they lived and where they went to school and one day the kid just up and got abducted. Of course, you would have to voluntarily divulge this information, but try telling that to a panicked parent. So they forwarded bad jokes to each other via their hotmail accounts and poured themselves stiff drinks. Or at least my parents did. And you know, I really don't blame them.

Then the Bush Era rolled around and it wasn't the pedophiles that were out to get us on the internet, it was the g-men. The FBI was reading every email you sent. The internet was a series of tubes, and each of them passed through a shadowy basement room in the J. Edgar Hoover building where dissidents were held without warrants and branded with cigarettes by scotch-sipping men in black. You were one email saying that all the guests at the party would be "blown away by your cake" from going to Guantanamo. These were true facts.

And now we're all in a panic about Mark Zuckerberg having rights to the information that we publicly broadcast using a medium he created. Unless you're Amish or my mom or some Yupik tribesman wandering the frozen tundra chewing on seal blubber, you've seen the statuses where people are making a disclaimer about their profile being their intellectual property. I actually don't know what the content of this chain status is. I haven't read it. Because I know that it's meaningless. You already agreed to everything they asked when you created your profile.

I don't even care if they use any of it. What's up there for facebook corporate to appropriate anyway. Pictures where I'm awkwardly tagged in the background? My futile attempts to be witty with statuses like "Fabric softener? I hardly know her!" The movies/bands/books I say I like in order to project some kind image of myself? Go ahead, take all of it.

In fact, it probably should be their intellectual property rights. The you on facebook isn't you, it's a version of you that was created by the constraints of the medium, and by the culture of sharing bits of pieces of your life that wouldn't exist without social media. If they have the patience to dig through all the garbage on my profile, then they deserve whatever turds they end up polishing.

Also, the first person to make this post their status gets a free Ozone Shack prototype coffee mug. Go!

Paralysis Epidemic Adventure Live Blog

So today is a monumental event. Somehow, I got tricked into playing Dungeons and Dragons. I will be live-blogging the entire process. This is apparently the third part to a campaign that has already been underway, so it behooves me to provide some backstory.

Backstory: A plague that causes paralysis has spread across the land. Initially, one of the hardest struck towns contacted a band of adventurers to find the source of this plague. They were accompanied by the town doctor, whose name was Hellarug. They ventured into the mountains, believing it was caused by an evil magician, but the magician was not found. Instead, they stumbled upon a group of perished travelers who had conceived a map of the mountains, which lead to cave. Within this cave, they were forced to fight a giant squid, and through a series of intricate waterways, the group was split up. Many were never found. The remaining adventurers found a small gathering of minotaurs, who had found that the source of the sickness was in the water, and were applying a remedy. The minotaurs led them to a crazed mad scientist named Barnby, who needed more of a special yellow flower in order to create more antidote. At this point, one of the Tiefling adventurers had been entirely struck down by the plague and could not move. The final two of the adventurers ventured into the forest and were attacked by bears. Once again, they were separated.

It took a long time, but several of the adventurers were finally reunited, after their failure, and added more to their group. They returned to the alchemist's house to conjure more antidote and began their journey back to the caves, where they believed the water source was running from. They were never seen again. dun dun dun...

3:14 I have been informed that Carmen Jello the Better will not be joining us on this quest.

3:51 Dungeonmaster: "Ok, here's how the modifiers work, it's really confusing." This is going to be a long evening. Still drafting characters...

3:56 Game manual: "Hafling males have no beards, but often have long, flowing sideburns."

4:29 Dungeonmaster: "Let it be known that the Dungeonmaster has decided that Tieflings are the black people of the Dungeons and Dragons universe."

4:36 Beers have been broken out. We are attractive people and are not in a basement. We are defying all stereotypes of Dungeons and Dragondom.

4:45 I have drafted my character.I AM HIMBRICK THE AMBIGUOUS OF DIRECTRIX ADVENTURE DYNAMICS INCORPORATED (OF WHICH I AM THE PRESIDENT, CEO, CFO, AND SOLE EMPLOYEE). I AM A TIEFLING (WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT IS) WHO SPEAKS THE COMMON LANGUAGE AND ELVEN. I WAS RAISED BY ELEPHANTS AFTER MY PARENTS WERE KILLED FOR BEING EVIL, AND LED THE ELEPHANTS TO VICTORY IN THEIR WAR AGAINST THE WOOLLY MAMMOTHS. NOW I ROAM THE WORLD SEARCHING FOR TRUTH AND PEOPLE WHO LOOK AS FUNNY AS I DO. I AM 6' 2", 210 POUNDS, 37 YEARS OLD, HAVE BLACK RAMS HORNS AND DARK BLUE HAIR. I AM A ROGUE, WHICH MEANS I HIDE IN THE SHADOWS AND USE STEALTH TO VANQUISH MY OPPONENTS. I LIKE LONG WALKS ON THE BEACH AND SPOONING VIGOROUSLY. CURRENTLY, I HAVE LEATHER ARMOR, DUAL WIELD HAND CROSSBOWS, AND CAN ALSO DUAL-WIELD DAGGERS AND USE SHURIKEN. YOU DON'T KNOW IF I'M GOOD OR EVIL. I CONSTANTLY WRESTLE WITH MY DUAL NATURE, SINCE MY ANCESTORS SOLD THEIR SOULS TO DEMONS IN EXCHANGE FOR POWER, BUT MY ELEPHANT ADOPTIVE PARENTS TAUGHT ME THE GENTLE WAYS OF NATURE.

5:18 Here is my party:
Aukam, the goliath monk. He worships Kord, the purity of battle. Is riding a horse that is half his size.
Driker the Striker! A halfling ranger, at 12 years old, is a prodigy in the arts of Ranging, whatever the hell that is.
Bonaparte, the dragon-born warlord. Likes martinis. Gets bitches all day long. Bitches love dem scales.
Andaris, half-elf half-paladin. Got over his daddy issues to become a battle-loving badass.
Diomedes, human wizard. Was a member of a town and became unhappy with his life after being faced with a large problem. At the time he was known as Hellarug the doctor. He noticed he had magical abilities, and devoted himself to the dark arts in order to gain personal fortune.

5:40 Finally, after creating our characters and figuring out what spells we know, it's time to flip this bitch!

5:41 Forex, an eldrin wizard, has just joined our party. He the half-brother of one of the former adventurers,  who is missing and presumed dead.

5:46 Our in-game Wills might be powerful, but our "IRL" wills are not. Time for a beer run.

6:20 Our team has been contacted by the chieften of the Minotaurs. I'm doing this for 75 gold pieces. I don't know if that's good or not in this economy, but I don't know what else there is for work in this universe.

6:23 We're debating the difference between presignation and cantrips. I'm so lost...

6:29 I tried to hit on a minotaur woman in an alehouse and she shut me down. I thought she would find my horns attractive. I guess not.

6:57 I've been hit with two arrows after stepping into a booby trap, one in the right shoulder and one through the left thigh. I lost 20 hit points. Fuck this game.

7:04 The Dungeonmaster will not let me retroactively change my stats to better reflect my backstory. I don't know if I can keep roll playing if this is the case. So confused...

7:09 Another fucking booby trap! Fuck this dungeon. Fuck this game!!!

7:10 Andaris set off another booby trap but dodged it. This is so not fair!

7:19 Dungeonmaster: Two figures enter from the other side of the dungeon. In a language you don't understand, they say "halt."
Me: Then how do we know they said halt?
DM: Because they inflected it the same way you would say halt.
Me: But what if it's a tonal language?
DM: Uhhhh... It's not a tonal language.

7:21 Bonaparte: Can we diplomacy the shit out of them?

7:25 We're discussing the finer aspects of the player/character duality. I never knew we would get so philosophical.

7:37 Two of our party are currently fighting monsters called "oozes." The minotaurs have informed us that they have an affinity towards water. Also I think I'm getting a little drunk at this point. Also, we are once again debating the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge.

8:34 We've been fighting the oozes for a long time. These fuckers be strong.

9:09 Driker the Striker! has just died. That's why you don't bring 12 year olds into battle.

9:22 The DM just suggested I use a saw booby trap to saw off the arrow that has lodged itself in my bicep. #suggestionsfromthedungeonmasteryoushouldn'ttake

9:30 Kip the Minotaur has been hit. He is bleeding... AND OOZING!!! Kip has turned into an ooze. This dungeon is worse than 'Nam!

9:46 I just dodged a boulder with my cat-like reflexes!

9:54 A wave of water just washed us out of this dungeon into the next section of the map. That was convenient...

10:05 People seem to be losing attention. I need to come up with inane things to say...

10:11 d4, d8, d10, d20, and now they're calling a regular die a d6. I'm in another world.

10:29 Andaris: I demand an explanation.
Barnby: Fair enough.
#bondvillain

10:33 "He thinks it will be awesome, but really, it will kill everybody."

10:34 Andaris: I'm sorry Barnby, you sn-ooze, you lo-oooooze!!!

10:59 My character has just apparently lost control of all his actions, because of the way I rolled a 20-sided die. Just like real life...

11:01 Wow, I just fucked my teammate up. If only I could have been that effective fighting the oozes.

10:09 Diomedes has been betrayed by our minotaur allies and is now dead. He would have died honorably, except he spent more time sexting than he did playing the actual fucking game. Now the turns will go faster, I suppose...

11:11 DM: Roll for will.
Me: Wait, who's will?
DM: No, willpower, dumbass.

11:23 I have switched my deity alliance from Ionas to Glob. omGlob...

11:26 We have stopped the plague. The minotaurs turned on us, but we killed them all, so the minotaur chieftan doesn't know about it. We get our 75 gold reward.

11:27 The minotaur chief gives us each an additional 25 gold for our fallen comrades. First DnD quest is a success. Now time to mourn our dead.

The Salt Woman, Part I

Thought I would post the first part of this story before I head out for this holiday of gluttony and tryptophan saturation. Part II will be readable in a week or so.

             Growing up, I remember the caravans would come through the town four times a year, twice in each direction. They came once in the middle of summer and once at the end, and they carried salt and nothing else. They would come in the pinelands out of the east with their bags empty and return loaded up with the stuff, stopping in the high country towns before returning to the pinelands. They say that without salt the body leaks out through the skin until it deflates and shrivels up. This is why, my father explained to me, we depended on the salt caravan.

                They got their salt from a woman who lived in the badlands, who extracted it all by herself from the earth, and on one occasion when I was fifteen, burned half the town to the ground in what can only be described as a supernatural occurrence.

                A trip to the salt flats took her three days down the course of the river, a journey she would make with her mule as many times as she could during the summer when the salt flats were dry, and in the fall when there were still patches of salt that weren’t underwater. She knew where to find the purest veins; since she had only one mule to load it was only worth her time to bring back the stuff that was free of impurities. As she dug her hands would crack, and her face would crack, weathered by the salt blowing in her face. And after a day of digging she would fall asleep on the salty ground lying on her back, spread eagle and looking at the stars, sometimes recalling that she had once heard that there are as many stars in the sky as there are grains of salt, her mule tied to stake she had planted in the ground. She stayed until she had filled her mule’s packs, as well as two woven wicker baskets she would load up with as much as her frame could carry, and then make her way back.

                Upon returning to her dugout she would leave the salt in huge piles in an enclosure she had made, the roof sealed with pine tar from the mountains and the floor covered with lizard hides to keep the salt from being ruined by rainfall. And then she would bathe in the river, its icy force breaking over her naked wiry frame, although it was the river who thought it could break her. She would pinch clumps of hair between her thumb and forefinger, then pull outward away from her scalp, squeezing the salt out from between her follicles until every last bit of it was gone, then sit naked on a rock watching the river flow until she had shivered herself warm.

                She lived on the provisions the caravaners would trade for the salt, along with whatever she got from the traps she kept in the foothills and the berries and wild roots she gathered. The river, it seemed, was too alkaline for any fish. That was fine, the salt it bore was what fed her, ultimately.

                They say she would grind the salt herself by crushing the rocks in her hands, that she could simply hold it up, squeeze, and the whole thing would turn into fine grains to be packet into the caravaners’ bags. When they showed up she could feel them coming, feel the vibrations of the ground as their pack animals approached, and would have the bags of salt lying in the open, ready to be loaded. They regarded her with respect and uneasiness, always paying her up front in tools, sacks of rice and potatoes, sometimes a can of anchovies all the way from the sea. As they loaded up the salt she would watch them idly, picking at her teeth with a shard of bone. They would wave to her as they departed but she never waved back. She only stared at them until their thin line of mules vanished over the pass, when she would go inside and carry on whatever it was she did with her life. Probably cracking her own neck, repeatedly, with a grimace of mixed pleasure and pain.

                Except on this occasion she approached the leader of the caravan and told him she was coming with them.

                “I’ll take my own mule,” she had said to him, “I’ll even have him carry salt, he does it already anyways.” She stood almost a head shorter than him, and for the first time he noticed there was nothing in her frame that suggested such a strength as she was reputed to have. “I think it’s been five years since I been in town,” she continued, not to justify herself, just to explain, “so I’m going with you.”

                The leader of the caravan had no reason to object, although he had heard stories about her. He heard that before she came out to work the salt flats she would wear a necklace made from molars she had knocked out in bar fights, that making eye contact with her for too long would give her power to paralyze you, that she turned into a dog at night and could summon the dead spirits of her people, whoever they were, to do her bidding. That she kept a jar with a human heart underneath her hammock. All apocryphal at best, but all who knew about the Salt Woman also knew some sort of story about her. None agreed. Some said it was a necklace of shrunken skulls, that it was an ibex that she turned into, that she in fact was possessed by dead spirits against her will. But they all agreed that there was a jar. In some stories she slept clutching it.

                “You can come with us,” he said, “but you’ll have to camp separate. Some of the men wouldn’t find it” he paused “proper.”

                “They’ve heard the stories, haven’t they?” she said.

                His eyes momentarily widened and he said nothing, but then a smile crossed her face.
                “I’ve heard a lot of them too, and I can assure you there’s not much to them.”

                “Not much?”

                “Well there has to be something, else I wouldn’t be out here, right?” She picked at something between two molars with her shard of bone. “We’ve done good business for years. You trust me, don’t you?”

                “Of course,” he said. “Load up your mule and let’s get moving.”

                They stood for a moment regarding each other, his beard encrusted with salt and her hair bleached by it, a thin layer that she could never get out, even in the river. She cracked a smile and he could have sworn her cheeks were going to split as she moved them.

                “I think I’ll enjoy this trip,” she said, “I think I’ll take a lot of enjoyment in it.”

To be continued...

Pilgrimage With the Technicolor Gypsy

There's a tree downtown from which, legend has it, the first humans were born. They were squeezed out, from a crevasse between two massive exposed roots, head first like most babies, but could crawl upon touching the earth. The tree nourished them and sheltered them; extending its branches downward with fruits rich in electrolytes and amino acids, and blocking the elements with thick foliage and its own subtle infrared energies. These people had no one to observe, no one to speak to them, so they created their own customs as the need arose, and called each thing what they felt it should be called. After growing to where they could walk tall under their own strength they ventured out from under the branches and called many things what they were. After all, they were those things. No one had ever said otherwise.

This morning I made a pilgrimage to the tree with a Technicolor Gypsy. She pulled over in her pickup truck as I was biking and through hand signals and sketches in the dirt we determined we were going to the same place. Somewhere off in the distance I could hear airplanes taking off. I threw my proverbial horse in the back of her truck and hopped in the passenger seat. She had neon turquoise hair and wore a bright pink bandanna. We each spoke of our homelands in our respective tongues. I told her of the forests with bark the color of fire hidden in valleys flowing with rivers of fog and the radical diviners who tore apart matter itself in their mountain hideout. Although I couldn't understand her language exactly I gathered she was from a place where a great desert met an even greater ocean.

Of these first people, some accounts say there were twelve, some say there were seven, some say it was a prime number between fifty and one hundred. There certainly were more than two. They set out, in a group, for the end of the universe, which they could see from the highest branches of the Mother Tree. But as they walked towards the horizon, naming things as they went, it receded into the distance with increasing speed, until they could no longer be sure it had an end. They wandered in this fashion until one of the women became pregnant and they decided that if more people were to be made, it was best to be stationary like the tree that birthed them.

Today there is no mention of what makes this tree special. It's the largest in the park, by far, but there is not even so much as a plaque to commemorate what happened here. Kids hide behind it to smoke pot and drink cheap beer. The Technicolor Gypsy and I sat cross-legged on the grass, staring at it, passing back and forth a thermos of tea. Tea that was black like delta soil.

This first child to be born did not grow up to name things. Some things he could not name, because his parents' generation had already called the things what they were. But there were new things, which no one had said were anything, left for the child to name, but he did not. They journeyed back to the Mother Tree to ask why. But they received no answer. That was, until they decided to climb the tree once again. After waiting for several days she provided them with fruit and soft canopies to rest on. By the time they reached the top they could see that the world still had an end. So they kept moving to push the universe outwards in all directions, so their children would come to know the joy in giving names.

Fog drifted in from the ocean and hit the mountains, coalescing into thick clouds which broke apart on the southern slopes. The Technicolor Gypsy said it was time for her to go. I grabbed my bike out of her truck and she drove off to chase the currents. I ate tacos from a taco truck with my ass leaning against my bike frame, standing under a street sign. I smiled at motorists who didn't smile back. The man running the taco truck gave me an extra cup of salsa. I tucked it into the side pouch of my backpack and started the ride back home, along dusty roads with semis spewing dust and diesel fumes. It's a long way to the edge of the universe but I may never need to go that far. Home is far enough from the Mother Tree.