hell’s handmaiden

My rat, mentioned occasionally on these pages most (recently in That “Eight Things” Thing), died in the middle of the night. This is my farewell, I suppose. This is my tribute to a good friend. I will miss him dearly.

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… but this was more fun.

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It started a couple of years ago, as I walked though a PetSmart– probably looking for cat food or cat litter. As I walked past the small animal bins, as I make a habit of doing, I spotted them. There they were, two little balls of furry love– ummm… except for their tails. I couldn’t leave without them, so ten dollars apiece and off we went. I also picked up a brand new cage and a water bottle. That brought the total up to about sixty dollars.

Or, the Alice the Underappreciated.

I am going to step outside of the usual family of topics which I put up on this blog, and talk about a man whose music occupied my mind during its malleable formative years, and whose best work has been all but forgotten. The project is fueled, in part, by my having recently re-acquired several Cooper albums, and it is partly motivated by a fan’s desire to save Alice from himself, or at least, to save his memory. See, Alice sadly hasn’t done himself justice since sometime in the mid-80s. I don’t deny that he’s had some success since then, and I know that he’s released several albums to rave reviews, but this later work represents only a shadow of his former glory. He’s kept the hard-rock– even getting harder and moving towards metal– and the shock, but he’s lost the wit. True, this is humble opinion, and I don’t intend to justify it, but there you have it.