craig brought back the muppet (the old red guitar, not me) because it'd gone out of tune in his hot apartment...
and he'd cut off a broken string end 'cause his cat kept playing with it.
the broken string was actually the part of the first string between the nutlock and the tuner... the e-string itself was still intact and in tune... gotta love those double-locking tremolo bridges...
anyway, i tuned it up and plugged it up to the boogie to exploit the insanely loud pickups for a while...
really ballsy tone, great for G'n'R and metallica tunes... got into playing some taildragger, went to do a trill on the G string, at the first fret (E blues shit, you know) with my ring finger.... and of course, that means my whole hand was moving up and down... quickly...
so the end of the string had already gone in and out of my index finger one time around before i felt it scrape the bone the second time.... only then did i yelp and yank my hand away quickly.
neal and craig were in the next room, craig watching neal play (read, "lose very badly and repeatedly") rayman on the playstation. they heard the yelp and the ceased cheese metal. neal calls out, "what, did you break a nail?"
so i look at my finger as i squeeze it between the thumb and middle finger -- still not pausing to put down my pick in my right hand... two large droplets of rich red blood spring forth from the pad of my index finger --- one in the center of the swirl of my fingerprint, the other dead center of the guitar-player's callous that i've been building up for the last ten years... must've hit pretty hard...
i reflexively tuck the finger into my mouth and begin sucking out the possibly infected blood; puncture wounds aren't bad for airborne infection since they don't get much exposure to air, but craig had just been saying his cat had been playing with the string... this isn't like the time several years ago when i accidentally drove another 0.009 gauge steel guitar string all the way through my right hand's index finger --- that one was pretty much sterile...
and of course, like an idiot, i tried to answer neal's ridiculing query while i had my wounded appendage in my mouth... "mmmmprmrmprmprrpfhfhfff...." then i realized he was merely taunting me. "mumpfhooo."
"what was that?"
when i repeated myself i made sure to enunciate very clearly...
and as i put down the guitar to go get my bottle of rubbing alcohol, i said, just because i know how he hates mental imagery... "i just love that bone-scraping sensation..."
---
and not five minutes later, i've got the guitar in my hand... going for a low note, bend it up -- OW! okay, go light on the index finger for a few minutes....
Mon, 14 Jun 1999 23:34:18