Cassettes

I found this old Maxell XLII 90 minute cassette in the car the other day, it had gone to where all tapes go to die in cars - that is cars that still have tape decks - the nether region that used to house ashtrays.

We bought our Buick Regal off of a rental car fleet shortly before our second kid was born (he's turns 5 in May so do the math) and its probably one of the last production vehicles that had a tape deck and a CD player as a stock option.

Anyway, I vaguely remember getting all tanked up in those first few months rocking a high unlike no other after the birth of my first born son and making a few mix tapes that I would one day share with him.

I had dug out a handful of cassettes from a shoebox under the bed after we bought that car because it was one of the few places I could play one (except for my truck but by that point insertion was a dicey proposition and these were tapes deserving of archival classification and therefore required more care).

And that is where they have stayed for several years, gathering dust after the prerequisite bi-annual rotation, and being forgotten by things like mp3s and iPods.

This said tape would probably have stayed there for many more years yet it was rescue by the fact that we decided to put a boombox outside on the deck sorta permanently.

I dug the cassette out the other day and had this hankering to post some blog with YouTube clips of each song but as YouTube can be - I went off in some other direction and completely forgot my original plan.

Fortunately, I remembered. So here is a clip from the mix... but first you'll need to read the set list:

Side One

Three Mile Pilot - Pinhut
Shudder To Think - So Into You
Magnetic Fields - It's A Crime
Velvet Underground - I'll Be Your Mirror
The Chantells - Children Of Jah
X- Los Angeles
Thelonious Monster - My Boy
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Weeping Song
The Persuasions - You Are What You Is (Zappa cover)
Stubborn Allstars - I Can't Touch You
Otis Redding - That's What MY Heart Needs
Guided By Voices - Mincer Ray


Side Two

Butthole Surfers - X-ray Girl
Metal Flake Mother - Wingtip Lizard
Drunk Horse - Arroyo Grande
P.W. Long - The James
Nina Soul - Sleeping Trees
Funkadelic - You And Your Folks Me And My Folks
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Easily
Flaming Lips - Waitin' For Superman
Blackheart Procession - Blue Tears
Knoxville Girls - He Stopped Loving Her Today
Mountain Goats - Going To Catalina
Promise Ring - Happiness Is All The Rage

Gray Water Up My Ass

My wife, she warms my heart sometimes for the things that she does, like putting a bucket in the shower to use for flushing the toilet in an effort to minimize water waste.

In times of calamity, you make the necessary changes, and here in the southeast we have been in the midst of a serious drought, serious enough that they've contemplated shutting down nuclear reactors, outlawed garbage disposals in sinks in Raleigh, and made it against the law to fill your pool or hot tub.

I think having a bucket in the shower is a practice we'll probably stick with, although I said the same thing about sleeping with sneakers on after "experiencing" the Northridge earthquake and that didn't last very long.

So now the top of the tank remains to the side and showers - which we also do with the boys in an effort to eliminate baths which are such a gratuitous waste of water -and the saving of the cast off, gray water are now the rule not the exception.

But that might have to change soon as well.

Because the other night I heard the sound of my cat lapping up water from that tank, the same tank that is filled with man musk, dingle berries, and stray pubes from my man plume. Toss in soap, God-knows-what-comes-off-the-kids and my wife's salon product - all which sounds like a lethal concoction for felines.