If not, click the links. I’ll be here when you get back.

Caught up? Good.

One of the benefits of moving in with my mother-in-law our landlady is that we get to share her DirecTV setup. We had no cable, satellite or any kind of subscription TV service prior to the move. The transition to digital over-the-air TV had given us even fewer live viewing choices – we were left with the option of watching either Fox or PBS. The 600 channels or so of satellite TV were like an amazing new world.

The evening after our move, my buddy John stayed with us for a while, taking in the wondrous sights coming from the picture tube. We didn’t have a remote for the DirecTV receiver yet, but it was enough to stand in front of the box, pushing buttons repeatedly, surveying the vast wasteland of wonders.

It was then we saw the words glowing like a beacon of hope from the program guide. “All is not lost,” this two-word phrase whispered in our ears.

Those words? “Knife Show.”

Knowing that O’Dell’s show is called Cutlery Corner, we weren’t expecting to see our hero, and indeed, we did not. Instead, we experienced something far more unsettling. A rotund, genial-looking middle-aged man spoke while gently placing Swiss Army-style knives and “tactical folders” on a glass turntable, usually framed on both sides by tacky touristy crap – plastic Native American stereotypes, figurines depicting livestock, etc. Every few minutes, an awful country song would play as the host stepped away to let the slowly rotating knives speak for themselves. In retrospect, an entire show of this would have been preferable to what came next.

When he came back, he began peppering his sales pitches with references to God. His spiel also betrayed a growing distrust of the government. More than once he mentioned “our freedom being taken away.” What had started as a harmless bit of crap TV was transforming, before our eyes, into some kind of Branch Davidian-style militia recruitment show. Had he more time, I have no doubt our host would have been trotting out “Rockefeller was a Satanist!”-style conspiracy theories.

Next, our host held up what looked like a cylindrical hairbrush. He then proceeded to illustrate the proper way to subdue an assailant with this not-a-hairbrush. Whether the assailant was a terrorist, ACLU lawyer, or ATF agent, he did not specify.

A few weeks later, we finally caught O’Dell in his natural habitat, 1:00 AM, somewhere in the nether regions of the DirecTV schedule. All was right with the world once more. Say what you will about his hyped-up salesmanship, O’Dell has never (to my knowledge) attempted to incite violent overthrow of the government.

• Carla and I decided, for reasons emotional and financial, to put our house on the market.
• Our cat, Gladice, went on to the great mouse hunt in the sky after 17 years.
• We moved in with my mother-in-law a nice older lady who kindly offered to rent half her house to us.
• I started posting more and more little updates to Twitter and Facebook, and as a result have seemingly had less to say on the blog proper. (If you’re reading this from Facebook, it might alleviate your confusion to know that Facebook is auto-importing posts from my blog as notes.)
• I started becoming more interested in making things. Not even necessarily writing songs – just creating. Pencil sketches, guest posts on others’ blogs, ugly PSD mockups of fake band websites…when the time is right, I may share this stuff (or at least the stuff that’s not currently public), but for now the process of making it is good enough.
• I lost some momentum on the songwriting front, which usually happens when life gets in the way. But the study is now arranged and my music equipment set up, so that should change soon.
• And oh, the social engagements. Concerts, ballgames, once-in-a-lifetime Geek singularity events, random get-togethers with friends…considering the circumstances, it’s been a good summer.

And now that I’ve caught you all up (and by “you all,” of course, I mean “me”), I may just resume blogging about everything and nothing.

I may just.

Our Christmas and New Year’s celebrations were nothing special, just low-key family time. As for my own feelings on the New Year, I’ll let Jim’s Big Ego do the talking for me.

Here’s to a year that sucks less!

What happened? Well, suffice it to say someone (or some script) had their/its fun, and I have sufficiently learned the lesson of keeping all my scripts up-to-date.

During the down-time, I kept the blogging up at my WordPress.com site, and have just imported all those posts into the site here. For those of you who weren’t privy to the “new” site, here’s what you missed.

I became a baseball (or at least Red Sox) fan.

I became obsessed with the impending sale of WCLZ and its sister station’s temporary new format.

I got a job closer to home.

That about brings us up to date. So, what have you all been up to?

So for all of you who read my whining about my current job (back at the old blog) – thank you. Your prayers, happy thoughts, and especially your Positive Rastaman Vibrations seem to have worked.

The Phantom of Krankor salutes you.

(Oh, and yes, I’ve changed the site template again.)

In a bizarre turn of events, my wife and I have become avid Red Sox followers, since around game 3 or 4 of the ALCS. We spent our Wednesday “date night” last night watching game 1 of the World Series.

Who are we, and what have we done with us?

Irony of the night: We had been hanging out at The Old Goat, Richmond’s local Irish-esque pub, and crowds were beginning to file in to watch game 1 of the series. They weren’t able to tune in the beginning of the game with their DirecTV set up. Instead, a white screen took the place of FOX, announcing “We’re aware that this station is temporarily unavailable. We’ll get it working soon – no need to call!” I don’t know if they ever got it working – the pub owner had decided to listen to the game on the radio before we left.

After finishing our drinks, we went home and tuned it in without a problem via our amplified rabbit ears, chuckling whenever they showed a replay via the “DirecTV Diamond Cam.” Good times.

Work sucks. Blink-182 knows. I won’t get into too much detail, because, really, it’s boring as hell. I’ve been at the same place for almost 9 years now, doing slight variations on the same task, with added responsibility, and no real sense of a “career” in the adult way of thinking. Inertia seems to be trying to push me into one, but I’ve never really wanted a “career.” Just something I could do as a job that would allow me enough time and energy left over to spend time with friends and family and indulge my creative side.

I worked it out the other day, and before taxes, about a third of the money I make here goes to just getting me to work and back. It’s been said that money is “life energy,” so it would make sense that I’m so drained after coming home. But ultimately, this isn’t about money – it’s about sanity. Even Carla has mentioned that I seem miserable lately after work.

Thankfully, I have some prospects semi-locally. Last week I had two interviews, one of which seems more promising than the other. I won’t jinx them by mentioning anything specific right now, but I will say that if you’re the praying or “sending good thoughts” type, your prayers/good thoughts/positive rastaman vibrations would be welcome over the coming weeks.

Now Playing: “Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud?” by Elliott Smith

• If you couldn’t tell by my last post, things are getting really horrendous at work, to the point that I’ve lifted my months-long moratorium on job searching. I’ll be writing more about this soon. When I have time after recovering from work…
• Ikthuscast a Christian indie music podcast, played my song “Still.” This was actually about a month ago, but it’s been so crazy that this is the first I’ve gotten around to giving them a link.
• Our music is on Last.FM – and you can download the entire Prodigal Songs CD for free! Listen, download, tag us, add to our shoutbox…help us get the word out, and you will be richly rewarded by the universe, or something.