duck-shaped pain

It's not a perfect find -- it's on tape, not CD. That makes it car listening, since that's the only place I ever listen to tapes these days. Still, quite the tape.

It comes right in time, too. One of the more dismaying aspects of retrieving the remainder of my things from the Great Northwest is finding out what things are missing. All of the things that are missing are things I really want, naturally, because if I didn't want them, I wouldn't notice that they were gone.

Some very important things are missing. Some, I know the stories behind. I know what happened to my vinyl copies of The Horrible Truth About Burma and f#a#00, unfortunately. {1] Both are serious stuff-related tragedies., even though I also own both records on CD. I just like the way both look on vinyl -- the former has my favorite record covers ever, and the latter is one of the most nicely packaged records I've ever seen.

Also gone, and which is the whole point of me telling you this, is my weary old cassette copy of I Am Kurious Oranj, which is my favorite Fall album. I should probably get another copy, assuming it hasn't gone out of print once again. [2] In the meantime, A Sides will do nicely, since it has my three favorite songs from that record on it -- "Big New Prinz", "Jerusalem", and, especially, "Wrong Place, Right Time" -- which, according to one of my friends, contains the most pointless synth solo in the entire history of music.

I could have seen this coming, I guess -- you always can. Little signs point to future events, if you will only pay attention to them. The miniature Fall marathon (two songs) the local college radio station [3] played this afternoon is probably one of them. "Mr Pharmacist" and something newer than I didn't immediately recognize.

[1] They got sold. Not by me.

[2] Which it seems to do every few weeks or so.