Dang, I know I put my usb camera around here somewhere. Today we're going to explore the wonders of Kris' bass. You see, he left it here after laying down bass tracks, since he was in a big hurry to catch the 2:15 am bus. One of Kris' jobs in the band is keeping track of all the musical gear, making sure it is in working order, and getting it repaired or replaced if it isn't. Let's take a look at his primary piece of musical equipment:

Sure, it looks pretty nice, all blue and propped upright courtesy of my guest instrument stand. But a closer look reveals the awful truth: HORRIBLE ABUSE!

Yes, there are deep scars in the once-beauteous surface of this poor carvin not-even-nameable-it's-so-retrofitted bass. In the words of one Jeff Repp: "Oh my god." It should be known that Jeff once toured as a tech with Queensrhyche, and has probably seen a few well-used instruments. But not like this! Oh the humanity! It's like he tried to fend off starving pit bulls with it, then tenderized a few porterhouse steaks with this as the cutting board.

Even the solid ebony fretboard could not escape the wrath of Kris. Ebony is an extremely dense wood with a tensile strength rivaling that of steel, but here we see that huge chunks of fretboard have been messily removed by some unholy act of its brutal owner. A man who feels no compunction associated with wholesale violation of a musical instrument's well being. A man.. who does not exist.A man who eats tissue paper when he's not really thinking about it. A man who chews the ends of his writing utensils so severely that he has earned the epithet "penmangler". A man who goes into your studio and farts garlic farts all day.

Just by way of comparison and bragging, here's my J-bass, such care of which has been taken that it's bluish-purple finish has no evidence of ever being abraded by anything scratchier than a diaper. The jack guard is mirror-like chrome, and the strings appear to be made of glowing purple or green energy. Um, that's from keeping them really clean. No, it's magic! Yeah, that's it.It's magically well taken care of. Sometimes I take it out to see movies and have dinner, or give it little gifts and things. Uh, time to talk about something else.

I've got my desk fully converted to a place of music. Except for the router and the lamp, and the lamp sort of helps make music because it's hard to read the graduations on the mixer dials in the dark. I guess the router helps make music too, because it makes it possible for the music computer to download musical software, such as VAZ and Orion. Ok, I can totally justify calling it the "Music Desk", then! Fully task-oriented, this desk makes no compromises when it comes to making, uh, music, as I've said a couple times already.

Let's see, first one I found was Brandon Oshiro. I remember him playing saxophone and stuff. I didn't know him that well, of course. He seemed kind of abrasive, yet humorous. No, now I'm making him sound like Ren from Ren and Stimpy. You'd have to know some grouchy Japanese guys to know what I'm talking about. I remember he sometimes sat next to Cheryl, who was so talented and beautiful that I was almost afraid to even look at her. Then, Brandon's site led me to Bryan Tokuda, a kind of math-oriented guy with problem skin which he had little pieces of oil-absorbent paper on hand to care for. Apparently Bryan went through the UH computer science program and made some sort of DirectX game which doesn't work on my machine. Ha ha! I did the same thing for free on my own! Uh, then I found Scott Suyat's page. Apparently Scott is really into this web page thing and has a bigger, more elaborate site than those last two. He's one of the two people from High School I saw when I last visited Hawaii, though that's really all I did. I walked by him as I wandered around Ala Moana shopping center. Scott gets bonus points for being a drummer who could actually keep time. Scott gets big minus points for being the last surviving human on earth who actually kicked me in the nuts. Geez, man, talk about low class. Oh well, Jesus has forgiven him for kicking me. Thanks a lot, Jesus.

Then I found Ellen's page. She was a good friend of mine during high school, especially during the otherwise-useless time spent in AP Political Science class. Ellen has pictures of the guys above in addition to many other old classmates of mine. Reading about what happened to Ken upset me. You see, I used to talk to Ken a lot, we were in a group in Physics, Japanese II, and talked outside of school on local BBSes. Then that brain surgery thing happened and the next time I saw him he had a shaved head and scars on it and he didn't say a word to me. It is frightening to think that could happen. He was very bright, and at least as knowledgeable about computers as I. At the time I saw him, I thought maybe he was just being unusually shy or tired or something. Now I think he might not have been able to talk. I had better stop thinking about it, it really is getting me bent out of shape. He deserved to graduate with perfect scores.

Hmm. It sort of seemed, at the time, that those guys had some sort of Japanese-guy club into which I could never really fit, but it was probably more that I was going through some "post-adolescent confusion", if you know what I mean. I regret not keeping in touch with my classmates. I didn't go to their graduation parties, though it wasn't because I didn't want to. I don't write to them... uh, for no good reason. It'll look weird if I go write to them now. Hi! Remember me? No? Yeah, why would you. Never mind.

heh heh. Eun Joo Yee: you wrote me a postcard but didn't include your return address. Duhhh hope you're still setting fires in restaurants. See you afterwards.

-A