Dunlap Dabbles

I haven’t posted anything in a little while because I wasn’t feeling all that well and and I wanted this to go up first. My itunes library has been wiped off my hard drive and I never got a chance to upload even a small fraction of all my music to lala so I couldn’t make a list that way. I’ve decided to get the posting back on schedule though so I’m going to be doing a kind of inconvenient playlist placeholder while I figure out a better way to make it work out. This post was written in two tiny sit downs one right after the visit to the doctor and one right after I went to the pharmacy. I feel I should mention that in the mean time I have been informed that I do not have cancer and, other than a couple of days when my body seemed to think it was healing itself and I had to tell it that it was doing it wrong, I’m feeling very well.

“And all I could do while I listened to this dude tell me how punk rock saved his life was thing, Wow. Why did my friend waste all his time going to chemotherapy? I guess we should have just played him a bunch of shitty Black Flag records.” -Chuck Klosterman excerpted from Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs

**Original post**

Sometimes reality and our senses just don’t add up. Take today for instance, I want to call it a complete waste because I didn’t get anything done that I wanted to get done. In actuality today was pretty important. My health insurance expires today and I decided to go to the doctor and get something that I thought was kind of important taken care of. What would have otherwise cost me 160-360 dollars instead cost forty and the medication I was put on cost ten instead of another 150. I probably should have seen to this all yesterday because my insurance company is blocking the second half of my antibiotic cycle until they talk to the doctors, which will be tomorrow when I’m no longer under their policy. But hey, what can you do. After lots of discomforting tests and waiting I heard the diagnosis. It’s not that bad but it was still scarier than I expected and it started out with “You’re a young healthy guy so the chance you have cancer is like one percent but we feel that it would be irresponsible not to test for it…” At this point I was not really smiling anymore and began looking for things to do with my hands. By the time we actually started going into my medicine I thought the room felt a little hot. When I heard that it would last for a month and involved regular timing, I decided standing up would be a good choice. If there’s one thing I do not like it is remembering to do things on a regular basis. There was a little more information (about possible side effects like vomiting, blurred, vision, lethargy) and then I found out that while standing up seemed like a good idea, it was also physically impossible. My vision wasn’t in focus anymore (the medicine was apparently already working and I hadn’t even tried it yet) and I found myself clinging to consciousness for dear life pride. I would like to make it clear that I did not faint. I only practically fainted. I was aware of every long breath I took during that time, and was aware that they were taking my blood pressure; which, by the way, did not help to relax me. I heard them kidding the new girl about putting her to work her first day and wasn’t embarrassed at all. Eventually I moved over to the padded table/seat thing and I was rewarded for my weak constitution with some candy. Harry Potter parallels aside I did not feel much like a hero or even very privileged. The doctor informed me that the candy was normally reserved for children under ten, to which I replied that they should guard the trays better because I could reach the counter and had already taken two pieces before coming into the consultation room.

When I decided to walk to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled I spent quite a decent stretch musicless. It was warm but none of my warm weather music felt right for my mental state and I began to think, what if I did have cancer? What the hell would I play? I decided to spend the walk trying to make my “cancer playlist” and I decided that it was best not to have anything really introspective and nothing that left a lot of space for dwelling. Pop music would also be a bad choice because it would be mocking me with it’s shallow happiness. I have had a pretty stagnant iPod for the last few months and this is by no means and incredibly creative list. My room mate, Doc, pores over his playlists and listens for good transitions and cohesiveness; this is definitely not that. This is an approximation of my fleeting fancy and most of the time I listened to multiple songs by each artist, if not entire albums.

–> This sign means I couldn’t find the song anywhere and supplied the following track in its stead.

Here it is on Blip.fm apologies in advance for the shitty track quality on some of the tracks.

Arrested – Government Warning
We Live Despite Their Schemes – Ink & Dagger –> Newspaper Tragedies
Mass For The Dead – Torches To Rome –> Idle Heroes
Volcano – Turbo Fruits Every mix has that one song that just strikes you and doesn’t fit. This is it.
Building Burning (Re-edit) – Tyvek
Driving Through Natchez – Yaphet Kotto –> The Heavy Burden
Walking Disease – Trash Talk * Full Discography, with songs that are like 40 seconds long you could afford it
The Easy Way – Swamp Thing * All of Youth Is Sick
Dead Is Dead – Pulling Teeth
NYC – Portraits of Past
The Process of Suffocation – Pestilence
A Hole Into – Navio Forge –> Yellow and Fed
Assassins – Nachmystium
It’s Opposite Day, I Love You – Mustaphamond – couldn’t find a damn thing.
Born Dead, Buried Alive – Hypocrisy

Things that occurred to me later
Chancre – Grade
Tires, Tires, Globally – Get Fucked

Full disclosure: I’ve interviewed members of Tyvek before and that’s the piece that got me on TMT so they hold a special place in my heart and I consider Sam of Trash Talk a friend. I believe that 100% objective people will agree that both still kick ass. Not that anyone gains anything by being on a playlist I make but I nagged Sean Bonner about personal connections the other day and feel like I should play by my own rules.