Call Me Atom Tan.

This second, I'm seeing just what you are seeing. This is how I share.

I got home and hit the gym, my first time with the iPod. Observations: 1) Man, it's great to have some music of my choosing to listen to while I work out. 2) Man, it's pretty damned difficult to keep a handle on an iPod while working out. But, I managed. It ended up stuck in my pants, right where all the fine fine ladies of the Y dreamed of being.

Home, and not much to do. I brewed up a pot of coffee and have been sitting at the computer, alternately transferring CDs to the iPod and doing some writing of the non-blog sort. It's an odd little thing, a dark and violent story on which I'm not terribly attached, but which I need to get out of my head and onto paper. It came out of a bizarre dream that I had months ago, and, if nothing else, it will be a good writing exercise for me. The Clash end up figuring in fairly significantly, "Combat Rock," in particular. We'll see where it goes.

"Combat Rock" has a special place in my heart. I'd had and consumed the first three albums for quite some time, but the post-London Calling era came to me a bit later, for reasons I don't quite recall. As a sophomore in college, I snagged my first girlfriend. That summer, I ended up coming to stay with her in Nantucket, where she was working in a sandwich shop. Her place was unusual, a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen cleaved out of the back of an "antique" furniture store catering to the rich who set up summer homes on the island. Drilled wormholes, artificial weathering, and assorted other tricks turned crap into treasure. The eyes and wallets of the beholders, I suppose. There was a small basket of battered cassettes on her dresser, and from here, I took my first real listens of "Combat Rock."

I'd heard "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" enough times to forward past them pretty much whenever they'd come on, but the rest was like finding treasure. Pieces of these songs still give me chills to this day. The first clangs of the muted guitar strings on "Know Your Rights," the pronunciation of "alooominyum" for "aluminum" on "Car Jamming," and most indelibly, the repeated I thought I saw Lauren Bacall from the same song. Sometime later, when I was visiting my good friend Ryan in NYC, he yanked out his guitar and started playing "Atom Tan." His version of the song still sticks in my head, and it's always killed me that when I pick up a guitar, I can't touch the song.

So, God bless you, and may you rest in peace, Joe Strummer. And thank you Mick, Paul, and Topper, and a special thanks to Jen. The heartbreak was a bitch, but I appreciate your holding onto those tapes.

Time to split. My sister called, and I'm going to go enjoy a sisterly beer with her.