Lyrical blueprint for 2008 RPM Challenge

I've stepped up to the 2008 RPM Challenge.

To help me visualize the project as it develops from scraps and rags, I've written all my lyrics on a page, overlapping and blending according to their arrangement on the album. Most of this is stream of consciousness based on loose titles I assigned according to the sound of a riff or chord progression. I wrote most of these over the weekend on a plane to Boston, a train to New York City, and a plane back to LA.

This is step one. The album will be called "t3h pwn".

Justified By Academia Re: "Under The Bus"

Having academia independently confirm one's own findings is so validating:

... 19 words or phrases ... appear in Lake Superior State University's annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness. The school in Michigan's Upper Peninsula released its 33rd list Monday, selecting from about 2,000 nominations.

The list ... included "waterboarding," "perfect storm," "under the bus" and "organic." Also: "It is what it is," which Jeffrey Skrenes of St. Paul, Minn., said "accomplishes the dual feat of adding nothing to the conversation while also being phonetically and thematically redundant." (Link.)

"Perfect storm" is another I've had on my personal blacklist as well. People love to say that one, even if it's regarding a momentary traffic jam in a mall parking lot. Watching the shelf-life of words is a beautiful thing. It's now five hours into 2008, and it's nice to see these selections officially deemed defunct.

iLike me, if you will.

For our listeners far and wide who span the depth and breadths of social networking, iLike me here:

Yes, "iLike" me, as in the verb, "add me to your iLike list". Like "MySpace" me, "Facebook" me, "friend" me or "comment" me. All websites are verbs now! So Google yourselves, YouTube your friends, and I'll Flickr you my pics so you can Twitter us about anything and everything. So totally, I'll MillionDollarHomepage you later and we can eBay the wreckage when the big ship goes down. Let's get it on!

Save your 'Hi'

This morning I stepped up to the bus stop, as I do about five days a week, and checked the schedule for the next bus. Headed my way was a quasi-homeless looking black dude I'd seen around the block a few times. I know he's not homeless, because he goes in and out of a pretty nice house across from the bus stop. But he's got the powderkeg look that says "try me," the pimp limp and the dischevelled style that many homeless affect to great effect.

So he's coming up to me this morning and I think, "Alright, neighborhood dude has a question for me." Though I think the actual Onion tag would've been closer to "Area Nut Offers Threat, Wisdom."

Eyeballing me at a few paces, he says, "Huh?" Sort of as if I hadn't responded to a previous querie. Since I hadn't heard anything prior, I looked back and greeted him with a, "Hey." His response to this, perhaps appropriately? was "Fuck you."

Beat that logic. I'm not positive my "Hey" came off as an insult, but I know enough to cede fair ground to the wandering not-homeless guy, so I just walked to the part of the curb where I sit to wait for the bus. One must pick one's battles, indeed, and I wasn't headed into battle with some neighborhood character on a Sunday morning.

He lumbered off down the block on one of his aimless patrols and I sat down to read "Wired" magazine. The thought dawned on me today that you can cover just about everything you need to with subscriptions to "Wired" and "New Yorker" magazine. Coast to coast, new school to old, technology to technique. Dig both. And dig that as I aimed to engage myself in an interview with Jon Stewart, the thought came that my reading material illustrated the gap between me and not-homeless pretty well. Well enough to rationalize our exchange, anyway, whether that gap spans white to black, privileged to disenfranchised, or sane to unstable.

It's a moot point whether or not the thought holds any validity; probably just the psyche in overdrive spinning tales to explain. I doubt not-homeless has any such sociological premeditations on the moment. Halfway down the block, the dude turned and said, "Save your 'Hi.'"

I suppose I will.