¡Shorn!

A couple days back I was giving myself one of my regular every 4-6 week DIY haircuts with my mulitpurpose trimmer. It was going well for the first few minutes, but then after cleaning the trimmer out to keep it from overheating and such, I neglected to reset the length guide. So, instead of shortening a strip of hair on the left side of my head, I postively annihilated it. There was now a sizable chunk of hair that had been cut just about down to the scalp. There would no rebounding from this error. Everything had to go. I had to start fresh. So, after a few more minutes of reluctantly shearing my head, I arrived at the finished, alien product. I've had a lot of bad haircuts in my life, but I've never had no hair whatsoever, so this is really uncharted territory for me. It being November in New England, the timing could have been significantly better for such an event to occur, but with the passage of time and the aid of my limited hat supply, I should be able to carry on my everyday life without catching a death o' cold. On the plus side, getting a close look down to the roots, it would seem that at least for the time being I can safely debunk the fear-mongering of some that I was destined to be superbald (that won't stop me from still knocking on wood, though).

I left some semblance of beard behind, so now (depending on who you ask) I sorta look like a cross between Common and Edward Norton's character in American History X. There are worse fates I suppose.

Do I have a relevant song/songs related to my predicament? Why yes, yes I do.

Camper Van Beethoven - Take the Skinheads Bowling (From Telephone Free Landslide Victory) [Thanks Keegan]

Piebald - Look, I Just Don't Like Your Hair (From We Are the Only Friends We Have) ["It doesn't look good to me"]

Buy 'em up:
Amazon.com (Independent Projects is rather defunct these days)
Side One Dummy

Fried-day

It's a dank one out there, and I'm .5/10-15 pages into this paper about how Reagan's economic policies screwed over the majority of Americans. Suffice it to say I'm gonna be bogged down working on this thing for a while. And then I've got three finals in 24 hours...At least I've got some sweet tuneage to help me push through...

Scattered thoughts from recent days:

• Jonathan Van Every does it ALL. His Dave McCarty impression was most admirable. If only I were a lefty, maybe I could also be a 30-year-old career minor league outfielder transformed into major league mop-up man with a 73 mph fastball and a fantastic Mississippi drawl...I don't think that's aiming too high for a dream job...
  
• Given the awful economic situation, I feel incredibly fortunate to have a job this summer. It pays to have a little bit of technical expertise and something vaguely resembling people skills, I guess.
  
• Cutting my own hair was a remarkably rewarding experience. On a par with beardsculpting, if not better. (Thanks for letting me use your buzzer/trimmer/haircuttin' thang Sean!)
  
• That last softball game was awesome. It was the best loss I've ever been a part of. Another example of why you shouldn't give up easily.
  
• The Andrew W.K. show kicked a serious amount of ass. Yes, I got on stage with the band. Yes, I got to touch him. No, I don't have a lock of his hair. Y'all are creepy for even thinking of it.
  
• So far in the medical-afflictions-which-are-a-giant-pain-in-my-ass category, tree pollen > "swine flu". I'm not buying the hype.
  
• How the hell is it May already?
  
• Shooting to scrobble 10,000 songs this summer. As long as neither my iPod nor MacBook die out of warranty, I think it's doable. Also, "doable" is a terrible-looking word whose pronunciation is utterly counter-intuitive. Yeah, I said it. [UPDATE: I ended up easily meeting this goal. Epic win.]
  
• I'm either going to learn how to cook this summer or order an awful lot of pizza. Hoping for the former, but wouldn't be entirely surprised if the latter occurs. I think a happy medium of the two would be optimal for maintaining my sanity. [UPDATE: I ate an awful lot of pizza and various other take-out for the first month or so of the summer, then wised up and started cooking low-maintenance food.]
  
• The whole time I was writing this I could have been working on that monstrosity of a paper. But wait, I'll rationalize this...simply honing my writing skills, gently massaging half my brain by churning out a few hundred words of sludge, warming up for the marathon of paper creation that will shortly ensue...
  Yeah, I feel marginally better now.
  Back to work.