I don’t buy music any more. The InterWebs have ruined me for that, with all the free streaming content. Yep, it’s my fault that innocent major record labels are being forced to fight off bankruptcy by suing all of their remaining customers.

Today I bought two CDs. I haven’t yet listened to Kid Rock’s ‘Rock N Roll Jesus’. I read an article in the latest Rolling Stone and then later some other reviews, and it seems that it’s unoriginal, clichéd Southern Rock done with great sincerity and a high level of funk and skill. I loooove Southern Rock, and am looking forward to it.

You might want to visit Kid Rock’s web site, as it seems that much, if not all, of the album is available as a free stream there. In a weird resonation with Brad’s recent post, the song ‘All Summer Long’ melts Bob Seger together with Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’, like a hot cheese sandwich. If you’re gonna rip off somebody, you could do a helluva lot worse than Warren Zevon.

But that’s not what triggered this post.

I’m about halfway through John Fogerty’s new ‘Revival’. It’s all over the Net right now, but here’s the vid that triggered my purchase.

It gloriously evokes a pastoral golden time that never existed, but which I miss with a deep ache.

I’ve listened to half a dozen cuts as I write this post, and this fucker’s a classic. Every song on it is a classic. Give John your money, so the RIAA won’t have to send any more 12-year old girls to Guantanamo.

Incidentally, John’s got a political streak, as you may remember, and you might enjoy this live performance on Letterman.

…. Unless you’re 28-percenter, that is. (If they were to be in attendance when Bush and his cronies sodomize, kill, barbecue, and eat a troop of Boy Scouts on the White House Lawn, then announce that it was an unpleasant necessity in the War on Terra, a 28-percenter would nod and ask for a rib to gnaw on.)

As of this album, John Fogerty is not a nostalgia act. He’s a living, rampaging dinosaur rock god. I like his music and I like his politics.

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So, this week has been really wacky and has left me no time for pondering asinine current events or fart jokes.

This morning after breakfast with a subset of The Usual Gang of Suspects, I went to Hill Country Weavers to buy yarn. Friends of ours are pregggers and I’m making them a baby blanket. (When did being pregnant turn into a plural event? I’m pretty certain only one of them will be getting an episiotomy.)

Anyway, I walk up the stairs to HCW on a mission. I’m buying specific yarn, dammit, I will not be distracted. Then I walk inside.

Aieeeeeeee!

It’s Aladdin’s motherfucking Cave in there. A riot of magenta, azure, crimson, baby-chick yellow, and white balls of yarn are piled up in bins. Samples of patterns and yarns are knitted up and are draped here and there to be admired and touched. Soft fingering weight, chunky chenille, and wispy eyelash yarns run riot.

I am so hosed.

I steel myself and march through. I will not be lured by the cashmere yarn in a tweedy brown. No! Satan behind me! I will not touch that rayon blend that looks soft as a baby’s bottom. No! No! A thousand times, no, I will not run my fingers over that novelty yarn vest that’s cute as a button.

Five steps and I’m at the desk. There are two girls with their backs to me looking at something on the computer. The woman my age who runs the place, comes out from the back and asks if she can help me.

I pull my baby blanket book out of my bag and open it to the pattern page and point.

“Over here, dear,” she says.

“Mongo want yarn,” I say. I think I said that. It might have been, “Ngyanh, nghyanh” or something equally intelligible.

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