City of the Dead

"California State Penal Code #297 prohibits burials on grounds other than established cemeteries"

That's how "colmahistory.org" introduces Colma, California in its very first paragraph. With 1500 residents, Colma is easily designated as a town rather than a city. Underground, 15,000,000 dead make for a full city. Seventeen cemetaries including a pet cemetary take up 73% of its land, making Colma a teeming necropolis otherwise best known for its large Target and Circuit City. The town motto is "It's great to be alive in Colma.""Kill-yrself then kick it in Colma" might be a more thematic name for this, but way too long a URL.

My family and I stayed in a Daly City Inn that borders Colma so closely that it may as well be annexed. The innkeepers were a smiling married couple who offered us fresh saltwater taffy as two elderly basset hounds shuffled around behind the desk. It was late August, which the weather did not reflect. That's characteristic for the Bay Area but hasn't felt so fitting since. Hundreds of knotty leafless trees reached their branches out for consolation from the blanket of rolling white fog that obscured everything but empty hillsides and shining black gravestones.

I live nowhere near the valley, anymore. Odd transitional town, but I'm no one to argue. The saltwater taffy was just as sweet as the innkeepers assured me it would be, and eating candy in foggy weather is a pretty solid treat even on its lonesome.

"PVA Returns"

The future can never risk bringing about a paradox by speaking to us in words.

After finishing the last post, I used advanced tactics of the 21st century to get a link through to Pleasant Valley Aerospace by means other than their semi-deserted MySpace page. They got my message, but never replied--or, at least, directly. A day or so later, two new songs were up with no explanation anywhere.

The songs were solid, but more importantly, their page had ceased to be a static front for ideas frozen in time. I was pretty stoked about that but didn't think the update actually meant anything. I was wrong. This morning I had been awake for something like nineteen consecutive hours so nothing in the entire world made any sense to me. That sensation amplified ten-fold when I went on Pleasant Valley Aerospace's 'space, and discovered that they had uploaded their entire album "Missing Persons" along with a blog that reiterates their space-age persona just playfully enough to be cool and mysterious without being vulnerable. (I'd like to consider myself at least a small part of their "swift kick in the ass.") I'm not sure if they put up the album as some kind of a fuck-you for a sentiment they didn't like or as a cheerful response to interest, but either way it's real good stuff.

Anyhow, almost all of this information is pretty extraneous. You should go listen to it right now. It'll be a good backdrop for your next hour or so, and even if you don't like it, you'll have something to think about.