i just typed and posted firecracker.  i wrote it at about 1:45 this morning.  i had been lying there trying to go to sleep when the story was going through my head.  i remembered i do this all the time (writing stories in my head right before i go to sleep) thinking i’ll remember it in the morning and write it down then.  of course, i never ever remember it, and then i’m angry.  so i got up and wrote it down in the faint light of my computer screen.

i believe it might be the first appearance of a pickaxe in a story of mine.  maybe not…i can’t remember all the stories i’ve written.  i will say that my weapon of choice in all my stories so far is a trumpet.

as for the music i’m listening to…

incidentally, the record i was listening to yesterday and the record i am listening to today both have band names beginning with Black, and they have a very sexy history.  on my last trip to Waterloo Records i was going to get The Black-Eyed Snakes‘ new cd.  (i got the first one a year ago or so at 33 Degrees (is it scary that i know where and when i got all of my cds?), because on the front it said “With Alan Sparhawk from Low.”  being a big fan of Low i bought the cd.  Low is slow, methodical music.  The Black-Eyed Snakes are hard blues; the music you’d get beaten up to during a drunken brawl in a seedy bar.  i was very, very surprised.) 

so i was combing the used cd section at Waterloo for The Black-Eyed Snakes’ newest cd when i found Black Twig Pickers‘ North Fork Flyer album.  it looked somewhat interesting, and i liked their name, so i listened to it.  they sound like they belong in the 20s or 30s playing and stomping old country blues on a porch as the sun goes down.  incidentally, i read that a lot of the songs were actually recorded outside on a porch.  i loved it, and i knew i would never remember their name, so i bought it.

and that is the long, sexy story of how i was looking for The Black-Eyed Snakes, and instead found Black Twig Pickers.