Ok, this bothered me the other day. December 7th was Pearl Harbor day. I never heard anything about it. That doesn't mean there weren't ceremonies or that nobody talked about it. I didn't hear anything myself. This year on 9/11 it was almost as quiet for me. I believe I saw the beginning of a baseball game that did something extra before the game started. That was it.

December 8, 1980 John Lennon of the Beatles was "assassinated". I could NOT get away from that news this ENTIRE WEEK. Really? Some hippie with a guitar preaching peace and playing for the most overrated band in the existence of man gets more attention from the media and the general public that the THOUSANDS of people that died between the two national tragedies that I previously mentioned? Hell, if you type in "December 8" into Google, the first auto-complete option is "December 8 1980" because CLEARLY you must want to grieve Lennon like the millions of other people in the world still stapled to that bandwagon.

I don't mean to be disrespectful. The loss of human life is tragic. But he was a dude from England carrying a guitar. It wasn't Mother Theresa. Meanwhile we'll piss on the graves of every dead at Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center because we drank too much hipster wine in salute to Lennon whose grave happens to be one plot over.

And this isn't because I fancy myself some good old, red-blooded patriot. I just don't get the Beatles, or really anything superficial that conjures that much emotion from hordes of strangers. Get over it, people.

After the summer hiatus, my band's been getting things somewhat back together. Hopefully you read between the lines on that one. Yes, I know it's December. Things were looking shaky for a couple months there. It was hoped that the band would not lapse into a coma over the summer, but it was pretty well expected that it would. However, we ran into some interesting and unforeseen challenges at the end of summer and all through the fall. Now we seem to be putting together something resembling a routine with regards to practice and planning. Some interesting developments have... well, developed.

1) We may be changing our band name. No real ideas yet. The forerunner appears to be "Necro Curious" Only for the funny value, not because we're some kind of death-metal, death-emo or any other death-hyphen style of music.

2) Several songs will be renamed. This is mainly because many of our songs have placeholder names. The funny thing is that one of the placeholder names has been used for over 2 years now, even during live performances and on our demo.

3) We are evolving into a new and consistent sound. This excites me and the rest of the band a great deal.

4) I'm playing a lot more guitar. I have yet to decided if that's good or bad. For now I'll just say, fun.

5) Not that this is any different than how we normally seem to operate, many songs are going through minor to serious lyrical overhauls.

The plan is to be up, functional and performing again by end of January to beginning of February. I'm not 100% convinced, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I at least now know that moves are being made and we are moving. Whether we get to our destination on time or not, is another question.

A while back I tried to break my trachea playing hockey. Long story short, I went head first into a wall at full speed, helmet got knocked down over my face and the chin strap choked me out. Several weeks later and there is still some swelling. There are three possibilities that I can see in this situation:

1) My throat is still healing and it'll all be normal eventually.
2) Considering the time of year, it's all or mostly healed, but now I've picked up some kind of bug causing more swelling.
3) I have one of those damn larynx nodules.

This is disconcerting because it's affecting my singing. My range has lowered ever so slightly now, but what's worse is that I can't reach the high end of my range with the same volume or consistency. Sometimes, if I'm lucky I can't belt one high note and then I'm done for the day. My voice is cracking like a 13-year-old boy and it's not great for the confidence when I'm at band practice.

Now I know I really should be asking a doctor about this rather than just writing about it on a website that nobody reads other than those random 1200 people on November 27th, but I don't like doctors and have been putting that off.

Busted my nut. Neck is completely warped. So there's no way I can straighten it out now. Now the A and D strings buzz or completely mute if I play on 1st or 2nd fret with them. No E-, Em-, A-chords, etc... At least not up there. So I guess I'm now hoping for two things for my birthday, a new electric and a stand-up mixer (for baking, not sound).

I would really like to get my butt moving at get a new acoustic too. Leaning toward nylon. I like the sound better and I have more fun playing them. I'm not planning out using the acoustic for anything specific, so that's enough reason for me to lean nylon.

Now... If all the band could just be in the same place at the same time, we might be able to get moving again, books some shows, get the new cuts for the demo, finish the new songs, etc, etc, etc...

I'm listening to the latest mixes of two songs that we were working on in the studio today. We have some final touches to take care of still and then we have several more songs to finish up.

There's some blatantly narcissistic about spending 3 and a half hours listening to your own voice. It's been a very humbling experience for me most of the time, but today I just felt like some guy that puts his own drawings on his own fridge at home and admires them. But, I am not lacking in vanity, narcissism nor shallowness, so I guess I'm in the right business here.

It wasn't terribly exciting other than the fact that I actually have, in my possession, two tracks that actually sound like music for once. It was just me and Doug, our engineer because Jon our bassist didn't get up in time to catch a ride with me. I'm still feeling out a lot of things in this band so I'm hoping that I did the band a solid today with the work I did with Doug.

Now I just have to rip them on my computer and burn a couple CDs for the band mates and hopefully we'll be moving pretty good. I also hope we get another show lined up soon because we're all getting antsy. Which reminds me, I have a couple people a need to talk to about working that out in hopefully a few newer venues.