Minimally Exceptional

so i bought myself a new geetar this weekend. an epiphone chet atkins solid body acoustic. natural finish. the high quality make from several years ago, not one of the new junky ones that are made in china.

i was looking at stuff on ebay, and it just struck me. – i wanted this guitar. so i waited for the bid to end thursday night, and wound up in a bidding war with some other guy. we wound up driving the price up to about $450, after shipping. shit, he can keep it for that much.

so then i started calling around, and I was about to cave in and buy one from music123.com, where the salesman there told me he could get me a new one for $325. then i started looking around on ebay, and found it.

it was 225 dollars. no one had bid on it yet, and the auction was going to end. so i emailed the guy and told him that i was interested in buying it, and wanted to know if he would meet me halfway and make the trade in person instead of doing it on ebay and shipping it (he lives about 30 minutes from here.)

he was cool with it, so we met up and traded guitar for check. $300 got me the chet and a hardshell molded case (which is probably worth $75 alone.)

here’s some pictures that I took from the ebay auction. i haven’t actually taken any of my own pictures yet. note that these will open a new window.

natural chet 1

natural chet 2

maybe i’ll take some pictures sometime soon. i think i’m about due for a color change too, but i don’t want to seem too ambitious.

actually, it may be good for me to play with the site more often, just to keep me from getting TOO rusty with my computer skills. can’t say i use my progamming or web design too much anymore now that i’m out of school and working in an accounting office.

and hell, maybe i’ll even finish the incomplete parts of the website. maybe not, but we’ll see, i guess.

so this ‘full time job’ thing is really working out well for me. i’ve been able to cut my credit card debt in half and move what’s left to a low rate fixed apr card, and pretty soon i’ll actually be able to start saving money to make a downpayment on, that’s right, my own place. neat shit indeed – i don’t feel like my parents are necessarily pushing me to leave anytime soon, but i feel like it’s about time for me to get my shit together and start playing by my own rules.

as a side note, james, at this point it does not look like i’ll be able to swing the gorge this year. i’d really like to, and if the situation changes then i’ll most certainly try to pick up tickets and get out there, but right now it looks to be more than we can handle. bummer, huh? st louis and deer creek, which are in driving distance, are a go (assuming that i actually get tickets from the warehouse.)

a sad tangent – i recently put 8 new fish in my 20 gallon tank at home. 2 yellow lyretails, 2 reg wag mollies, 2 swordtails, and 2 guppies. they’ve been in there since wednesday night, and so far one of each fish has died on me. i don’t know what the deal is – maybe i overloaded the tank with too heave a bioload, maybe my water conditions are screwed, maybe the stress of moving just killed the little bastards. beats me.

also, i dont know which ones, but something in my fishtank had fish babies this weekend. real little things, about the size of a really small bug with fish eyed. i saw two or three for sure, but they’ve either been eaten or they’re hiding. hopefully they’re just hiding, but i fear the worst.

one last fishy related note, and then i’m done. i recently put a five gallon fish tank on my office desk at work. it’s neat. i put a orange and red betta in there, and he swims around and eats shit. he’s survived about a week, so if water conditions are good in a couple of days, i’ll add more stuff. maybe a little catfish to eat the scum on the bottom, maybe a frog, who knows. we shall see. maybe i’ll try to see if i can take a few good pictures.

then again, maybe i’ll wait on the pictures and spend some time fixing all the shit on my website that doesnt work.

why, you ask?

the australia tour starts next week. that’s cool, hopefully we’ll get some new material and decent recordings there.

north america tour dates are out, and i’m about to put in ticket requests for st. louis and deer creek (sorry, no gorge this year – too expensive – and unfortunately, i think i have a schedule conflict with sandstone this year).

‘in the studio’ video clips are available at the new album website

the album is out in may, and the few people priviliged enough to hear it have all spoken very highly of it. i’m expecting great things.

live trax vol. 3 is out in a week or two.

all in all? it’s a good time to be a fan. it’s times like these that remind me why i love this band.

also, the release of the 3.14.99 dvd is also here, as i will start taking b&p requests for it tonight. this dvd is great, especially if you’re a bigger fan of dave and tim than of the dmb. there’s some iffy camera work at points, and the video looks about like you’d expect 6 year old vhs tapes to look, but the audio is smokin and the video looks, overall, great.

next on the dvd menu? kyle riabco/graham colton/matt nathanson 09.28.04, which all in all will probably be 4 discs, assuming i can score a copy of decent audio and laura can fix some of the video glare issues. 1 kyle disc, 1 graham disc, 2 matt discs. was a good show, hopefully it turns out okay.

oh, and the audience video of dmb 04.26.02 is supposed to be going public pretty soon. that’s be nice – there’s not nearly enough video out there of shows that i attended.

want a b&p or trade of the 3.14.99 show? check back tonight or tomorrow for instructions.

so back to my weird identity-related week.

saturday night, about nine thirty, the phone rings. it’s my phone line, the one that is never used for anything official. laura answers it and hands it to me, saying that it’s a courtesy call.

i pick up, and ‘ms. lebowski’ on the other end starts talking to me about a car loan.

l: yes, this is ms. lebowski from the car dealership, i’m calling because our records show that you owe over two thousand dollars on a car you bought from us.

b: excuse me? who are you with?

l: this is ms. lebowski from the car dealership. you owe us for a car you bought.

b: i don’t owe you any money, i didn’t buy a car from you.

l: is this brian jenkins at (address)?

b: yes, but i didn’t buy a car from you.

l: what kind of car do you drive?

b: why do you need to know that?

l: because our books show that you bought a car from us and owe us money.

b: what car dealership are you with again?

l: i’m with auto tire car dealership.

b: look, i’ve only bought one car my entire life and it wasn’t from you. the car isn’t even in my name.

l: how do you know that?

b: what do you mean, ‘how do i know that?’ what kind of stupid question is that? i know that because i’ve only purchased one car my entire life and the car is not in my name.

l: yes, but our books show that…

b: look, i don’t give a rats ass what your books show, i didn’t buy a car from you and i don’t owe you any money. you could have looked up my name in the phonebook for all i know. you’ve got the wrong guy.

l: yes, but…

b: NO. i don’t even know who you are and you’re–

l: i see you’re not in the best mood right now, i’ll try to call again tomorrow.

weird, huh? two creepy identity things in one week.

needless to say, later that night i went and pulled free copies of my credit report from annualcreditreport.com, which is now offering free copies of your credit report once a year.

there’s all KINDS of stuff on the credit report, it blows my mind. old credit cards and loans and shit that i’d all but forgotten about. i even found a dillards card with a $400 limit that I never knew was open… i’ll have to look into closing that.

in other news, u2 tour dates were announced recently, and there’s another st. louis show, so i’m going to have to find out when tickets go on sale. i’ve got to go to that somehow, u2 in 2001 was one of the greatest concerts i’ve ever seen. although im sure this year they’re going to be expensive as hell.

right? right? right.

it’s been a weird week – i’ve had two seperate ‘mistaken identities’ this week, and they’re both random as hell.

the first one happened on tuesday, when i received a letter from sallie mae (the student loan consolidators.) this letter said that i owed them over three thousand dollars and that i hadn’t made a payment since feburary 2004. the letter also said that if i didnt pay up, they’d be turning me over to a collections agency and damaging my credit report.

the part of this that’s messed up is that i don’t have a loan through them, have never dealt with them, and as far as i could tell, there was no reason for my name and address to be in their database. then i noticed that the letter was addressed to ‘brian c. jenkins,’ which needless to say, is NOT my name. so i called them and they asked a bunch of question to try and identify me (do you live at this address, were you enrolled in college, do you have student loans, etc.) i answered yes to all of the questions and started to have a sinking feeling that it was going to be a serious pain in the ass clearing this up, until they asked if i’d ever been enrolled at lindenwood college, which i had NOT.

so finally they realize that i’m not who they’re looking for, and explain to me that they obtained my name through skip tracing trying to find brian c. jenkins that used to live at a similar address. he skipped town on his student loans, the fucking bum.

the other reason that i knew this was bullshit was the phonenumber. they had my personal line listed as my phonenumber – it’s the number that’s in the phonebook for me – but i dont have that number listed on any of my credit cards, loans, schools, employers, ANYWHERE – just in the phonebook. so when i saw that number, i knew it was crap.

so finally they agreed to send me a letter with my name and social on it showing that i’m not who they are looking for, i don’t owe them any money, and i’m not in their database as an existing customer.

the letter has yet to arrive.

i’ll have to continue with saturday’s mistaken id later on, lunch is about up.

that’s kind of been my whole frame of mind with the website lately. i always mean well – i often say ‘i’m going to post something – anything – tonight.’ and i rarely do.

so i’m going to give this a different spin for a while. we’ll see how often i update when i post from work on my break.

i’d rather do it from home, but i can’t just seem to be motivated about it…. so i’ll do it from work. any port in a storm, i suppose.

i’ve actually got lots to talk about – new dmb news, album stuff, work stuff, video games, so i’ll try to hit it in order as much as possible over the next few days.

starting with christmas.

christmas was good, i guess. i don’t especially remember anything too out of the ordinary, and it was a pretty good time. we spent christmas eve with laura’s family (WAAAAY out where the buses don’t run.) we weren’t there very long, maybe a couple of hours, but we ate and bullshat for a while. tried to catch up as much as possible with laura’s cousins that are our age. turns out one of them moved in town, only a couple of miles away, which is cool. laura and her always talk about hanging out but never do. anyway.

christmas day was pretty standard. we opened presents in the morning and went to church with mom’s side of the family. since we were having christmas dinner that night with the same people and needed to prepare, we skipped lunch with mom’s family and went to my dad’s parents for a while. my other two siblings were there, which is always cool since i don’t see them much, and steve’s stories of drunken debochery are usually pretty entertaining.

christmas night was pretty cool. we hung around with my family for a while, went to laura’s house for dinner and presents with her family, and came back to my house, where everyone was doing drunken karaoke revolution 3 on my PS2.
THAT was scary. melissa doing britney spears, my mom and aunt doing whatever the hell it was they were trying to do, and craig being a total rockstar and singing some tunes like a real champ.

that’s about it. after that some people left and some others sat and had drunken arguments till all hours of the morning. good entertainment to be had by all.

my christmas gifts included a handful of video games, some dvds and cds, a new cordless phone, an acoustic guitar encyclopedia, some clothes, a shot glass chess set, money and gift cards, and some other stuff I can’t recall off the top of my head.

not a bad christmas, by any means. they seem to be getting progressively better since 2001, especially now that my cousin’s baby is growing up a little bit and hitting the ‘cute and adorable’ stage.

more catch up later, i promise. if anyone still reads this.

oh, and i’ve got to give a ‘whats up’ to my fellow procrastinator sweet baby james. i read your message you left but never got around to leaving you one.