I got a 100 dollar Visa gift card from my folks for Xmas, and I’d been torn about what to do with it.

Today, I decided that what I really needed was a pair of good solid knockaround shoes — my old Timberlands are nearly falling apart and I have good dress shoes already for work, so off to the stores and malls I went.

After MUCH running around, I ended up at Newbury Comics (local CD/comics/all things trite and wonderful store) and bought a pair of Docs — first I’ve owned in years. Nice low cut 5 eyelet black pair. They feel great.

Because they were on sale, I was even able to splurge and buy a DVD of a recent Samuel L. Jackson movie about aviation and herpetology. (Hee hee.)

I also got some pirate/skull and crossbone stickers to ironically decorate the headstock of my electric guitar (because it’s plain black and I got tired of seeing no logo up there) and a considerate bumper sticker that explains what to do if you’re on a plane and there are snakes on it. Good to be prepared. (It’s going on Blondie’s case — Blondie being the big dreadnought.)

What? I don’t believe in being entirely practical with gift money…and God knows I proved it today.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a muthafuckin’ movie to watch.

because I feel better and don’t want to jinx it.

I’m ripping a bunch of CDs onto the laptop and it’s fun to think of the mixes that will happen when Sleater-Kinney, AC/DC, Breakestra, My Chemical Romance, and three discs of traditional and modern flamenco music are introduced into the shuffle pool.

Also adding some Sonic Youth, some Ornette Coleman, and some 70s soul to the mix…a little “Across 110th Street,” anyone?

Maybe some Roots, some Public Enemy, some Gang of Four, some fado, some Nick Cave?

The shuffle technology is cool shit — although I have to confess I still prefer a good freeform radio station like WFMU, which keeps the old anarchic spirit of the 60s-70s underground radio alive. I think good radio will always be my preferred medium for music. Surprise me, baby.

It’s not the one I originally planned to post — that one’s got an American Idol metaphor in it, and I’m gonna wait till next month for that one. This one had a more immediate inspiration.

The Zero Point Zero Regular Column!

Very much more than Nothing!

Please go, visit, comment. First one in a while and I need to get going again.

I was in Barnes and Noble tonight spending Xmas gift cards. I wandered into the music section and found myself in an amusing dilemma: I was standing in front of a rack of featured recordings and saw Ani DiFranco’s most recent album sitting next to the most recent album from My Chemical Romance.

My instinct was to pick up the Ani, as I’m pretty much current on my collection and like to stay that way; but something made me decide to switch up and grab the MCR album instead.

I couldn’t have told you who My Chemical Romance was if you’d held a gun to my head. I knew I’d heard the name, was all. Since I had free money I decided to just do something on a whim.

So let me just say that the decision to go for this album was a pretty damn good one. Completely different from my usual fare, and I like it a lot — will need to listen to this a couple of times before I decide what it is I like about it. It reminds me a little (not musically so much as emotionally) of when I first heard The Mars Volta — that same sense of being taken by something unexpected.

Shows the value of doing whimsical stuff sometimes.