No sense in burying the lede. The punchline is: “People say we sold out but I say the other bands sold out by giving the fans what they wanted.” How a musician can say this, I’m just dumbfounded…

Last night I was reminded why I never identify with heroes anymore. It’s because they can fall so far. If you accept someone as a person, an equal with differing talents instead of an idol, they are human and when they eventually fail you can see that in yourself. But when you put someone on a higher plane, you expect them to remain flawless.

When I was sixteen I wanted to be Lars Ulrich. I was a young metalhead drummer and I saw what I wanted to be when I grew up. I considered Dave Lombardo a better drummer but Lars portrayed the FTW image I felt inside. For three years, he became my idol. I copied his style, hell, I’m embarrassed to admit this but I even tried to adopt the damn name…

By the time I was nineteen he had fallen from favor. His band moved on in a new direction and I found so many better drummers to emulate. In three years I progressed from wanting to be as good as him to finding that he wasn’t enough for me. I was already working on being faster and better than him, especially since he gave up on thrash. No love lost, I still liked his past work, I just wasn’t following him into the world of safe corporate rock.

Years went by as Lars and Metallica played to the Frat-boy crowds. Good for them.  Like I said, no hard feelings, just different directions. Then in 2000, Lars came back into my life by threatening me. Me and every Napster user on the planet. He said he would track us down and drag us into court to get his few cents worth of royalties. Shaking down fans after giving us shitty music… That’s low dude.

After that, things got ugly. I started paying attention to him again and I didn’t like what I saw. Not only was I amazed at the blatant hypocrisy of making your bones on the tape trading circuit and then coming out against trading music once you struck it rich, but I also started to see a defensiveness about them. Snapping at their old-fans that felt sold-out and telling us they don’t need us anymore. “Sure we sold out. We sell out arenas every night!” You may fill arenas but so does Jon Bon Jovi… You traded a legion of die-hard loyal fans for fickle soccer-moms. We would have started an army for you but you discarded us for people that have since moved on to weak pap like Nickleback and Evanescence.

And this is where I started to burn against the band and Lars in particular. My distaste mutated into a baseless hatred. I just felt so let down. There are plenty of bands who went soft, I don’t feel the hate for them. I never hero-worshipped them. Metallica went soft and then tried to tell me it was MY fault. Lars made it big and turned his back on those that got him there. I’m all for getting rich and I understand how record deals work. Sometimes you don’t have much choice in going corporate, but you didn’t have to be such a dick about it…

-

So here we are years and years later. I’ve just about given up on my burning hatred of Metallica. I’m seeing it for what it is, the irritating reminders of a fallen hero. I’m 39 now and I’m finally getting over twenty years of failed rock star hero worship. Until…

Last night I saw another interview with Lars Ulrich. He pissed me off again. Three times in one segment!

The interview brought up the initial spread of thrash and how Metallica got its first record deal. Old news to long-time fans but it all stemmed from tape trading. Lars sat there and reminisced about how awesome it was to be able to trade tapes through the mail with complete strangers and be exposed to new music. He went on to say that it was sad that it didn’t happen anymore, he actually called it a “lost art”.

It doesn’t happen anymore because YOU stopped us asshole! Yes you, Lars Ulrich personally attempted to stop us from trading music and you’re going to sit there with your stupid sunglasses and bemoan the fact that it’s gone! FUCK YOU!!! We went from sending tapes through the mail to sending songs through our modems. The technology changed but the spirit remained the same. You can scream about quality duplication all you like but the truth is, those old copied tapes may have been shit-quality but I listened to some of them for years! It was about discovering new music, hearing new bands, sharing with like-minded strangers who became distant friends. You would not be here if it weren’t for the tape trades. But once you got your Mercedes, you saw music sharing as a leaky faucet and a way to capture more money.

-

Then the interview discussed the shift in the music scene. He goes on to build up how incredibly powerful, amazing and popular Metallica’s “Black” album was and how it is a great effort but then asked, “But why did I feel so betrayed?” I waited for this answer because many of us felt the same way. It’s a great CD but it was a let-down from what we expected. They discuss how “Enter Sandman” was a departure from Metallica’s style of music and how it brought in a new type of crowd. Both are valid reasons and I’m fine with that explanation. Then they cut to Lars:

“Betrayal is such a strong word. I can understand feeling… um… like you… um… didn’t get what you were promised but… um… I wouldn’t use the word betrayed.” What’s wrong Lars, having trouble coming up with a creative way to say the word betrayed without actually using the word? Dude, just admit it; You were the poster band for “Fuck it all thrash” and then you changed format on us. We felt betrayed because we put all of our love into your band and you weren’t there for us anymore. You have every right to change, we have every right to feel betrayed when you do. How about a “oops, sorry about that” instead of “move aside while I fuck your little sister”? I’ve had girlfriends who fucked my best friend treat my heart better than you did Lars. Betrayal is the appropriate word.

-

And I saved the best for last. Several stumbles after trying his best to avoid the word “betrayed”, Lars lets out this gem: “People call us sell-outs but I consider all the other bands sell-outs for giving the fans what they wanted.” Ahhh, the old second grade “I’m rubber, you’re glue” defense. I actually paused the video and replayed it to make sure I heard it right.  Like maybe the actual line was “…sell-outs for NOT giving the fans…”  Nope, no missing words.  If I’m feeling rather generous, I can try really hard, if I squint and tilt my head at just the right angle I can see what he’s driving at; the thrash scene was dying and they were trying to expand so they didn’t die with it. They didn’t want to give us the same old crap reheated over and over again. I can give him that much. But he stabs himself in the dick with the second half of the statement…

Give your fans what they fucking want or they won’t be your fans anymore! If I want to hear Metallica style music, I’ll buy an album with the name “Metallica” on it. If I want to hear something totally different, I’ll buy another band’s album. You are a fucking BRAND! Give me what I want or I’ll go elsewhere. If tried and true brands change their formula, people lose their minds. New music, new directions, growth in a band, I understand this. But have we learned nothing from New Coke motherfucker!? I’m happy to have Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke Zero, maybe even a Vanilla Coke. But when I push the button for good old plain Coca-Cola and I get a fucking Crystal Pepsi, someone’s gonna die! If I’d get this upset over a $0.75 investment in a soda-pop, how upset do you think I am with you and your band Lars?

And I was too generous. I gave him too much credit when I said he didn’t want to give the fans the same reheated crap. No, the problem is that you ran out of steam. There were no more angry songs left in you. We were crying out for more and you went limp on us. No problem, but don’t lay this out on us saying we’re too dumb to know what we want. If you really believe that giving the fans what they want is wrong, then explain to me why I can’t name three songs from the last five Metallica albums but I pray to baby Jesus every night for the successful recovery of Jeff Hanneman so Slayer can get on with recording their new album… (For those of you who know anything about my views on religion or the contents of Slayer’s music will find that last bit particularly funny…)

-

All this bile and angst from the childhood mistake of looking up to a rock star. Heroes let you down, that’s just part of life. But most often, they’re not dicks about it. Fuck you dude. Just… fuck you.

Did thrash run its course? Probably. Did it flicker and sputter while Metallica was gone from the scene? Sure. Are there plenty of bands that changed direction and I still listen to them? Absolutely! I think it’s hilarious that Dave Mustaine spent years and years trying to compete with the Metallica legend and it turns out Megadeth gave us a better metal catalog than the godfathers of thrash themselves.

The legacy of Metallica’s music is two of the best thrash albums ever (KeA, RtL), the greatest thrash/metal album ever (MoP), one great metal album (AJfA), a great metal/rock album (Bk), four weak attempts to play to the changing whims of the masses (L, rL, SM, StA) and one atrocious and failed attempt to recapture the past (DM).

Their music catalog is no better, no worse than you’d expect but the legacy of Metallica itself is one of betrayal and I have to say it, “No Remorse”.

My job title has the word “engineer” in it.  That’s no big fucking deal, just about everyone can use that word to make a menial task seem important.  The word has become diluted and meaningless to the common user.  I’m not an engineer, I’m a field tech.  I used to be an engineer, long ago and before the bubble burst I used to design systems and make decisions.

I got into some “office politics” trouble once because they promoted a secretary to the engineering group to keep her off the lay-off list.  She was some guy’s wife and I really laid into management saying, “You can’t just put a new hat on this bitch and call her an engineer, you’ve got to know what you’re doing…”  After the lay-offs, I ended up working for a new manager.  It was his wife that I had laid into…

But I was a damn good engineer though, mostly because I was a field tech for years before that.  So I knew what “the real world” situation was.  Now I’m back to being just a “field tech”.  Even if you give it an official title that sounds important, I can only do what “they” tell me to do…

But dammit, I’m not only a great engineer, I am a GOLDEN GOD of techs!!!  I know what the fuck I’m doing!  And most of our engineers know this.  When Morgan says he has an idea, you shut the fuck up and listen!  I was not working with one of our regular engineers last night.

(Oversimplifying:)  Imagine a very cumbersome wire run into a series of 25 very hard to reach points.   So, the wire runs from A-B-C-D-E…to Z.  They call you and tell you that they want to incorporate a new point.  They originally skipped “W” and now they want you to install W.  This guy has me rewire A through V!  I told him it would be easier to just leave A-V and rewire XYZ.  His answer?  ”Well, that’s not what’s on the paper here.”

After a short period of disbelief, I close my eyes and remember that this “major” work I’m doing at 7:30pm was not on the schedule until 1pm this afternoon.  Someone just doesn’t have their shit together.  So I spend 30 minutes running in a new cable on top of the old cable I’m tearing out.  A two minute job ran 45 minutes because “that’s how some other guy wrote it up”.

You can tell when the engineers have never seen anything other than the spec-lab.  It should be a requirement to have worked in the field before you are allowed to decide how to run the field…

It just keeps pouring in, these last few weeks have been a trial.  If I could have my way, Christmas would be cancelled!

We’re just recovering from a rough episode and just when it looks like we’ve got it under control, like everything’s going to be alright, along comes a third/fourth party saying, “Hey, let me rock the shit out of that boat for ya!”  We were dancing all around a very delicate issue and we thought we had achieved containment when BOOM, the shitstorm blows right back in…  So we spend another couple of days trying to fix a problem that is “unfixable” in the short term so all we can do is try to calm everyone down again.  Spending 3am wondering how we’ll manage in the morning.

Then we get a surprise visitor that has a smile on his face but darkness in his heart…  In those late-night, early-twenties, 2am-at-a-Denny’s conversations with friends, I was always the one who argued against the idea that there is no such thing as an altruistic action.  Up until this surprise visitor showed up, I sincerely believed that a person could be nice just to be nice and for no other reason.  This person has extinguished that last spark of idealism in my soul.  People do good things so others will go, “aww, aren’t you just a swell guy!  You’re so great!”  or they do it in the hope that it goes on the celestial record books for when they die.  Nice people are nice for a reason, they want to balance the scales or hopefully tip them in their favor.  Karma, Heaven, whatever… I’m not so sure I believe in innocent actions anymore.  Thanks for that.

Everything is just about dealt with, there is still some minor ugliness to come but nothing we can’t handle right?  So we sit down to lunch and try to breathe.  Just breathe…  That’s when I see my phone has a message on it.  I call my voicemail and before it even asks me if I want to save or delete the message, I’ve got my shoes on and I’m reaching for my keys.  A friend of mine is going through his own crisis and called for help.  I’m out the door and on my way.  Half way there I call him and  I’m waved off.  The message came in an hour ago and there is nothing I can do now.  So I turn around and head home thinking about how insignificant most of my problems are.  Aside from the one major issue we’ve been dealing with all week, most of the other shit I complain about can be simply ignored…

It’s been a rough season though.  And the weather is not helping.  80 degrees at Christmas just fucking sucks!  I know I’m still stuck in Florida, I know I have no right to complain about the ocean being wet, the night being dark or Florida being warm but dammit, on top of everything else, the weather is NOT helping my “Christmas spirit”!

Seriously, if I didn’t think it would cause more problems than it solves, I would just call off this whole festive season you people seem to be all cheerful about.

However, one thing has made me smile this morning…

My parents are coming over with the rest of the family for Christmas dinner tomorrow.  My mom asked if there was room for one more, my uncle who I almost never see.  Of course there is always room at our table for anyone, but I’d be especially happy to see my uncle show up.  So I considered dropping by and asking him myself, just so he knows we’d love to have him over and that’s when it hit me; a nephew stopping by on Christmas eve to invite his reclusive uncle to dinner tomorrow…  Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  So even in the midst of all this bullshit, I had to stop and have a short laugh…

Go, try to have a good day.  Smile even if it hurts.  Love someone, be good to everyone.  Let’s all try to get through this crappy holiday and maybe rethink the entire event next year.  Merry Christmas.

Sometimes we make bad choices
Rash, hurried or ignorant, we choose… poorly
Too often, the result isn’t clear for a long, long time

Because we don’t see the repercussions,
We compound multiple bad decisions over the years
Until we end up in a mess, until it’s too late

Much too late…

They’ll always tell you it’s never too late, but they are wrong
You will reach a point where you’ve piled on enough good with the bad
That burning it all away would destroy you

This is not the life you imagined
This is no longer the life you want to live
You are miserable in your existence

Death is a goal that can’t come soon enough…

Seeing now, the errors that you’ve made
You want to go back and do it right this time
But doing it all over again is impossible

And going back is harder than going forward
Push onward, get through the rest of this life
Without making worse decisions

Than you already have…

If I started my own drinking game where

• I do a shot every time I see the same “inspirational” quotes posted by two friends on the same day
• I do a shot when I see different authors given credit for the same quote
• I do a double shot when both authors are wrong and neither friend correctly attributes the quote

I’d be very, very drunk by now…

On the long drive in to work I had some ideas.  I was feeling better and I had an optimistic idea that today would turn out to be just a little better than the days before.  The general idea would be that I was going to come in, write a chipper/happy blog post and kick-start myself back to normal…

But then that feeling slipped away.  Part of it was the motorcycle accident I saw, part of it was the overzealous rent-a-cop at the security gate, but most of it was my morning login and check out of Facebook.  Ugh, why do I still go there?  The world is full of…  …  Well… I see a lot of ignorance and glittering generalities on Facebook and I just want to scream!

I just don’t understand how burying your head in the sand and recirculating the same form letter is something to be proud of.  And I’ll never understand why this is something to be so loudly celebrated.  And they’ll never understand that I don’t need to hear it, I don’t want you involving me in it, stop posting it to my wall, stop telling every three minutes!

So I give up on today, I thought I might try to pull out of it but no, today’s not the day for that.  There are some certifications I need to renew and a couple of “last minute” circuits that are about to be dropped on me so I’ve got a full load here at work.  So, not today.  And tomorrow ain’t looking so good either.

Really, I don’t know what I’m so upset about…  I’ve known for a long, long time now that anything online will eventually do this to me.  Facebook has turned into copypasta /b/ without the porn.  What am I surprised about?

Was it Thumper or Flower that said, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin at all”? I can’t even be bothered to look it up right now but I’m pretty sure it was Thumper. If so, I’ll stay with the “rabbit hole” title but if it turns out to be Flower, I’ll have to think up something else…

Here is your update as requested (and THANK YOU for that, it’s always nice to know someone’s watching.  Seriously, it keeps me going!)

The last few weeks have taken a lot out of me for some reason. I’m just not in a “smile” place right now. I’m faking it pretty good, the mask is on and unless you get real close, you can’t tell what’s going on behind it. My thoughts have been infected and I can’t allow them to spread.  To avoid posting some outrageous filth, I’ve simply been quiet. I’m still here, I’m just feeling rather venomous.

To prove the point I would drop a sample of what I’ve been writing all week but no one needs to read such hatred, despair and a rather lengthy rant trying together the national budget, religion, political correctness, eugenics and the Care Bears. Spoiler: in the context of the rant, I come out in favor of state-sponsored death-squads. Not quite Nazi Germany, not quite Logan’s Run, but I do get very angry and mean-spirited…

I have had nothing constructive or even remotely “nice” to say in weeks.

Through all of this I have kept an eye on reality. I can still see the real world but I’m just not feeling up to going public with what’s in my head right now because I don’t want to hurt anyone. That’s how you know I haven’t gone “away” too far yet, I still care enough to keep my mouth shut.

I’ll be back to my fat, jolly self again soon enough.  Could be a day, a week or an hour…  I never know when the light switch is going to get turned back on…

I drove by a church bus this weekend. On the back there was a hand-painted sign that said,

“Caution! God’s children on board”

Well, what does that mean? What do I do with this information that you’ve just given me?

Am I supposed to drive real careful because these kids are special? They’re somehow “God’s kids”? Why does He think these kids are so special? What did they do, win a Bible trivia contest or something? And if they are so special, wouldn’t they require less caution if God had designated them as “His”? Wouldn’t the need for a sign imply that God isn’t protecting them from some kind of accident any more than anyone else’s kids?

I’m just a mortal and I’ll protect any kid that needs it. But MY kid gets the most protection. That’s just how the system works. Parents should always look out for the neighbor’s kids but their own children get special attention. Of course, there is a lengthy book chronicling what happened to God’s last known kid… Not exactly “Parent of the year” material there Jehovah. So maybe the sign should read, “Help us! God’s children on board and you remember what happened to the last one…”

Or are they some kind of mutants that God imbued with super-powers that I have to be careful around? A bus filled with the brood of Angel-raped-virgin offspring and they are secretly perfecting their powers to take over the world. Jesus got the immortality/resurrection cheat code just like Wolverine. I’m guessing there’s a Rogue, Storm, Juggernaut and a Magneto on board? That means there’s also a kid with laser sight on that bus and you need to be “cautious” because he might accidentally cut your car in half. Okay, probably NOT what the sign meant…

But in the eyes of the believers, isn’t EVERYONE God’s children? And if so, why would these ten or twenty warrant special caution? What about me, according to what I learned in Sunday School, wouldn’t I be included in the group of “God’s children”? So who’s being cautious around me? And if everyone is God’s Children, wouldn’t being cautious around anyone be a 24/7 thing? So you wouldn’t really need a sign then would you?

The sign was useless.

It served about as much purpose as those old yellow “Baby on board” signs. Hey yuppie prick, fuck you and your infant! I’ll obey the traffic laws and try to avoid hitting you, but if it comes down to a head on collision or sideswiping your Volvo; you, your little precious cargo and your fucking ridiculous yellow sign are going into the wall. (And I secretly hope it explodes afterward.) Reality doesn’t change just because you posted a stupid sign.

Fucking people and their need to feel special. Special comes from who you are and what you do with it. Special is not bestowed upon you by simply making a claim, you have to go out there and earn it.

I’ve been working midnight windows all week long. I haven’t been getting any sleep and I’m tired. I’ve been hounded all week long, nothing I say or do comes out right. All of this magnifies all the other little problems and suddenly, I am really fucking tired of all this bullshit…

So I go off on another late night run to Hilliard, the fog has been real thick all week and I’m driving while pissed off. The whole way there I’m thinking of how great it would be if I just unbuckled the seatbelt, ran off the road and hit a tree. I grit my teeth and make it in to work but my mentality is no better for the long drive.

When I finish the job, I gather all the equipment I’ll need for tomorrow night’s work. I hit the door and the rain is coming down hard. Rain? Really? I’m carrying my laptop, a test set and two large cardboard boxes with parts and cards in them. I sigh and walk toward the parking lot.

Just before I get to the overhang the rain lets up. My first lucky break! I make a dash for it and part way to the truck the skies unleash a torrent of rain like nothing I’ve seen in a long time. Big fat raindrops coming down like mortar shells. I took the bait I guess…

One of the boxes slips and as I try to catch it the rest of the load falls loose and I stumble to the ground. I catch myself without doing any damage but I ended up flat on my back in a pitch black parking lot at 3am staring up into the falling rain.

What can you do? I laid there and laughed my ass off. Fuck the laptop, to hell with the test gear and the cards. I sat there in the rain for a whole minute just giggling like a madman. Eventually I gathered the equipment and loaded into the truck. I sat there and stared out the windshield for ten minutes…

It seems so easy to fix what you perceive as “wrong” in your life. They say all you’ve got to do is chuck it all and start over. Well there are parts of my life that I like. In fact, the longer I sat there the more I counted all the good things. So why are the little things so difficult to get over? (I mean, aside from the clinical depression)  We make such a big deal over the tiny brushstrokes when the overall picture is actually pretty damned cool.

Nice thought, but that won’t make me feel any better the next time I catch shit. So, now it looks like I’ve got a decision to make…

I drove home real careful in the rain. I hung my clothes up to dry and then I crawled into bed.

I put my arm around Teresa and smiled in the darkness…