I’ve all but abandoned this blog, but I’m still going to come back when there is something I really need to talk about. It’s not what is going on in my life that I want to talk about, it’s what is going on 14,000+ kilometers away in a place I once spent part of my honeymoon, a (not so) little place called Phuket. So there I was one evening last week scrolling through Reddit (yeah, I know) and I come across a video of a sixteen-year-old Thai girl supposedly performing Metallica’s Master of Puppets on guitar and vocals. I approached with some skepticism. Sure, Eddie Munson was my favorite character in Stranger Things and the moment he starts playing Master of Puppets is among my favorite moments of the entire series, but it didn’t seem unfeasible that a guy his age could conquer a song like that; after all, back in the ’80s, we weren’t all distracted by social media and smart phones. People back then actually developed their talents.
 
If you told me a sixteen-year-old Thai girl would melt my fucking face with the same song though, I would have thought you mad. Enter Nene Royal. Please follow the link to her Master of Puppets performance, as playback on other Websites has been disabled for this one. That video served as my introduction to her talent, but, highlight though it is, it was but the tip of the iceberg. Then I saw Nene Royal, her Ozone band, and guest vocalist Ployfun perform the greatest Guns N’ Roses cover I’ve ever heard in the form of Sweet Child o’ Mine:
 

 
That, in turn, served as my introduction to Ployfun, a twelve-year-old prodigy who isn’t quite up to Nene Royal’s level on guitar just yet but who might already surpass her on vocals. As if I hadn’t already been impressed enough by the keyboardist or the drummer and as if I weren’t already blown away by Nene Royal’s insane guitar solo, this girl comes along and steals the show with her vocal performance. In both cases, these Thai kids are outplaying the bands they are covering. Guns and who? Metalli-who? Metallica lost its spark decades ago and watching them perform now is like watching some mediocre cover band. I just heard about her last week, but I would choose to watch Nene Royal perform a Metallica concert over watching Metallica perform a Metallica concert any time. As it turns out, I’d probably rather watch Ployfun perform a Metallica concert over watching Metallica as well when I took a look at her slaying Enter Sandman on the streets of Phuket:
 

 
Those audiences haven’t the faintest clue what they are actually witnessing. It doesn’t even make sense to me that this shit is coming out of Thailand, a country traditionally dripping with shitty pop music, but here we are. Is Phuket about to become the new Mecca of rock music? Will some incomprehensibly talented kids in Thailand be the ones to bring rock back from the grave?
 
It’s not the first time I’ve been impressed with some talented youngsters. Let us not forget Tina S from France about a decade back, whom I remember best for her cover of Megadeth’s Tornado of Souls:
 

 
Tina S was not alone. There was also Juliette Jade Valduriez, also out of France:
 

 
Tina S was good, but she was never so effortless as Nene Royal and she was never able to make the jump to composing anything of her own worth its weight in piss. Juliette Jade, though lesser known, actually released some competent tracks that I still have in my music library. I remember Killer and Hélicoptère being standout tracks. Unlike Tina S, she sang, too, but her vocals were on the monotone side. Both of them kind of vanished from the face of the Earth after a time. They were good and they are missed, but they were not the full package.
 
So what do Nene Royal and Ployfun need to become the full package? They need to make the jump to composing their own music, of course. I do not believe Ployfun has made that jump, but she’s twelve years old, so let’s give her some fucking space. Nene Royal, in the meantime, is currently in the process of making that jump and, from the one unique composition of hers I have heard, it is sounding promising thus far:
 

 
These kids are giving me hope for the future. I just pray that they won’t betray their roots and start appealing to the masses with a bunch of pop songs. They have a chance here to do something truly special and breathe new life into a genre that has been circling the drain for too long. I can hardly wait to see what they do next.

We’ve been back in Morrison since Wednesday. I used the same moving company that moved me into my mother’s basement a couple years back. It’s good to be back in my own home, but what I hadn’t anticipated was my mother’s elation at having us gone. The move didn’t happen all at once. The moving company was hired strictly to transport furniture and large appliances. I had been moving boxes out of my mother’s house and into the Morrison house for a week and a half by the time the movers came and every time I began to clear a space in one of the rooms in my mother’s house, she was already moving her belongings into it before I had even finished. Since the move began, she has been on the biggest shopping spree of her life and I cannot honestly remember seeing her so excited about anything. She made no attempt to hide it and I doubt it even occurred to her how it might make me feel. If it did, she simply didn’t care.
 
At one point, I think my mother was actually concerned about how much of a mess she was going to leave me when she kicks the bucket. You wouldn’t guess it now. She seems to be making a deliberate effort to collect as much shit as possible. She just bought even more storage for her cavernous garage, which was already lined almost completely with storage cabinets of which every single one is filled to the brim. By the time we left, Trang and I had completely given up on cooking because my mother had evicted us from the refrigerator and freezer. My mother is a hoarder and so is Trang. Trang, rather than lifting a finger to help me move an endless stream of Banker Boxes from one house to the other, decided to “help” with our move by going shopping. My mother at least has actually helped, though only with the transparent intention of purging more of our belongings, including those which she bought for my son. So many of the things she has hauled over in her Toyota Camry are boxes of useless shit I never asked her to buy for my son, much of which I will be forced to discard altogether. When I move, I like to feel like I’ve been granted a blank slate, but the two of them have seen to it that my blank slate is caked in excrement.
 
I never did get new carpet for the house. I got cold feet at the last second. I also didn’t wind up getting a new refrigerator, as I found my old refrigerator in working condition, including its supposedly broken ice maker. I spent about $40 buying replacement parts to repair the broken crisper drawer slide rail and a bulb with a broken filament. Hopefully, that $40 will keep it running for years to come. I wouldn’t say I’ve had my own shopping spree, but it hasn’t been cheap for me either. I’ve bought new curtain rods; curtains; Ethernet cables; laundry baskets; measuring cups and spoons; overkill padlock for my shed; shower heads; splatter guards (because Trang cooks with too much fucking oil); toilet brushes; and window air conditioner among many, many other things. I will admit I treated myself to a new subwoofer for the home theater in the form of the RSL Speedwoofer 10S MKII, but the real gut punch financially was the Japanese-style joinery platform bed, matching headboard, and matching bedside tables I ordered, setting me back about $2K. What can I say? When I buy things, I like to buy things that I think are going to last. Whether I get bored of them before they outlive their usefulness is another story.

For reasons, I had to set me previous post to private. I hope to unlock it again in the near future. Suffice it to say my potential new job is on hold until at least the end of the month. Until then, I have plenty with which to keep myself occupied. The move back to Morrison is imminent. The previous tenants have vacated the premises. They actually hired professional cleaners before they left and I am told the property is in excellent condition. All the same, some minor maintenance items are being completed before the property manager turns it over to me. At that point, it still won’t be move-in ready, as I plan on having all the locks changed and then replacing all the carpet in the house, but I will at least be able to get started on various projects.
 
Since the central air conditioning isn’t great and the place probably needs new or improved attic insulation, it gets quite hot upstairs in the summer. As such, I picked up a Midea window air-conditioner from Costco the other day at $180 off the MSRP. It should be a big upgrade compared to the terrible portable units I had used upstairs in the past. I also picked up a beautiful Seville kitchen cart with acacia shelves that is likely going to serve as a sideboard in my dining room. It will require some assembly.
 
For the garage, I got some goo to seal up some of the cracks along the sides that mice and snakes use to enter. They’re harmless garter snakes, but the ex-wife is terrified of them. For the master bedroom’s en suite bathroom, I bought another Brondell Swash EcoSeat S101, my favorite bidet, since my Toto K300 is for elongated toilets and that bathroom can only have a round toilet or risk the shower door not being able to swing open. Lowe’s sells the Swash EcoSeat S101 these days in both round and elongated flavors, so I was able to skip Amazon for this one. The new bidet installation will probably be the first thing I do when I gain access to the house late next week since I will probably be spending a fair amount of time over there. I’ll also be bringing shower gel, shampoo, and a change of clothes or two since I’ll likely need some showers after taming the jungle that is sure to be growing in the backyard, meaning I will also need to load up my lawn mower, trimmer, and a pair of new shower heads. I don’t like the idea of sharing a shower head with strangers, even if it’s the very shower head I installed long before they moved in. The flow limiter cannot be easily removed on the new version of that shower head, so I’ll be drilling it out. I’ve tried a few models, some with various bells and whistles, but simplicity, as always, reigns supreme, so I reckon I’ll be sticking with my trusty Briout shower heads that cost about what I spend on lunch at the office.
 
I’ll need to pick up a new refrigerator and outdoor grill at some point too. The grill can wait until the end of the season if it has to, but I’m probably just getting a basic Weber kettle grill anyway, so savings would be minimal. I stand to save a bit more if I can wait on the refrigerator until the Independence Day sales. I am planning on getting the GE GSS25GYPFS. I was really happy with the GE it will be replacing and, thirteen years later, it still works, but the shelves are in very poor condition and the ice maker is dead. The GSS25GYPFS is more or less its successor. It doesn’t have any bullshit like Wi-Fi or screens and it’s slightly more spacious than the Whirlpool I was also considering, with a much better ice maker and marginally better cooling performance.
 
It’s starting to get really exciting. I cannot promise to be moved in by Independence Day, but I plan to at least be able to see the fireworks from my own house. There is absolutely nothing to celebrate about this country, but I have a six-year-old and some of my neighbors go wild with the fireworks.