I, Muehlenhaus. U, Riedermaus.

I was listening to the Smashing Pumpkins last weekend, Siamese Dream, and I realized... they were really weird. I mean, I really enjoyed their music back in the day. I remember my friend Tara mailed me an illegally dubbed cassette while I was doing my first tour of duty in Hungary in the fall of 1993. It rocked! Totally blew the gray off the sides of the communist panel housing and covered the countryside in a sort of tie-died euphoria. The cassette cut one of the best songs off right in the middle of a killer guitar solo, unfortunately, but other than that, the album was purely brilliant!

Then, on my second tour, this crazy Danish dude named Tomas, who could open beer bottles with his teeth and listened to NOTHING BUT the Smashing Pumpkins, introduced me to the rest of their music. I was less than impressed, other than that song about being a rat in a cage, which I could kind of relate to in the middle of a long, cold Hungarian winter. Tomas would haul a case of beer and his bass guitar around with him, climbing in through the Szanto Kovace Dormitory window and passing out on Pisti's and my third, spare bed. The guy would trash our, already trashed, dorm room while blasting some obscure, weird Smashing Pumpkins shit. By his 14th beer he would normally pull out his bass guitar and start strumming along to the song while hopping on our bed and screaming about how the Vikings were going to make a comeback. It was bizarre. I had my fix of Billy Corgan's whining and was somewhat relieved when I heard, several years later that the band was breaking up.

But this weekend I couldn't resist. I pulled out the CD, dusted it off, and popped it in. I was reminded of the time I saw them play at Harriet Island and Billy Corgan went on some rant about the police being pigs and, well, whatever young rock stars rant about to get the fans to buy their albums. Siamese Dream is still pretty damn good. I think my musical tastes have changed, though, because I can no longer understand how or why I worshiped it the way I did. It just doesn't do it for me like it used to. I find the same thing with Nirvana's "Nevermind" and the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Honey's Dead." At any rate, I'm still glad the Smashing Pumpkins broke up, but it was good to get some use out of a CD I probably paid $15 to have BMG ship to me back in 1995. In reality, I never listened to the CD half as much as I did the tape, because it just didn't sound right. Too crisp. Too clear. And I really did learn to think of that song ending drastically mid-guitar solo. The CD could never live up to that. On the CD the song goes on and on... and it just doesn't sound right.

But I digress... I am almost done with the semester, and holy cow! I've survived! Just two more papers to write, a presentation tomorrow, which is done, an interactive map to finish up, and one more preliminary exam on spatial cognition. Yippeeee!!!

So back to writing them I go. Happy holidays, and I'll have more to say once I've recuperated from all of the holiday parties that are interrupting my train of thought. What?

Peace and joy, la, la, la, la... starting to sound like a Billy Corgan holiday album here. What pure drivel!