Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

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still pooping taiwan

Put da needle on da rekkid...
Home is a good place to be. Even though I’m back around the same unfinished things that have been bugging me for months: the perennially unfinished backyard, the shower that needs new grout, the unpainted walls and unfurnished front room. Yes, it’s all here and all still calling to be completed. For the long term projects at least, it looks as if they’ll have to remain unfinished for the next month or so. Talking to Sharaun the other night, I realized that I’ll be away from work-proper for the entire month of May. Two and a half weeks in Taiwan again, then one day at home before leaving for another two days in Oregon, then a week off while my sister-in-law and her husband are in town. And poof! The month of May is gone.

When I was a kid, my cousin Nathan introduced me to U2 and Depeche Mode, funnily enough – he also introduced me to music in “compact disc” form at the same time. Anyway, I became a die hard Depeche Mode fan… collecting all the cassettes I could find at the local mall’s Camelot. Remember that “frequent buyers” card they’d stamp each time you bought a cassette? I think I got my Ah-Ha or Pet Shop Boys or Wang Chung tape that way, y’know, the 10th one is free or something. Yeah, my head was fried on tunes even at that age. Wow, I apologize for getting off track – but there’s something good about that – it’s writing for writing’s sake! It’s feeling free to follow my thoughts as I go. Back to the story. Today I was sitting around hacking up a bunch of MP3s with Audacity so I could import some nifty new ringtones into my phone, and I was browsing the collection for good songs to splice and dice. I fired up Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration and eventually came to the closer, “But Not Tonight.” I tell you, something incredibly meaningful from my youth is associated with this song. I can’t remember specifically what it is, but just the first few strains of the tune are enough to elicit chills and nearly stir up tears.

Ben and I were talking the other day about open source and free software, and how we’re all proud of our legal machines. However, and it sounds stupid now, I had never really thought about a piece of software that I use on all my machines, and the fact that it includes pirated warez. I’m talking about the K-Lite Codec Pack, which contains several key codecs for all sorts of file types. I use it for DivX and Xvid movies, and all sorts of other junk. Come to find out, it ain’t good y’all. So, I promptly uninstalled it and went looking for an open-source alternative. As usual, SourceForge did not disappoint, offering up the Gordian Knot Codec Pack, which contains everything I need. I am writing about codecs, what’s wrong with me?

For some more semi-tech talk, a couple things. First off, I think it’s totally awesome, and pioneering actually, that the Grateful Dead has started to sell their famous Dick’s Picks and From the Vault series of CDs as digital downloads. For years, the Dead allowed tapers to freely record their shows, offering special tickets for the tapers section. Free distribution of these recordings was also encouraged, although everyone knows that exchanging tunes for money is bad karma. Trading of tapes and eventually DATs or MDs was done in large tents at the show, where people were always in search of an upgrade to their favorite shows (because 10th generation tapes sound like ass compared to sweet, sweet binary cloning). Anyway, you can currently buy all the CDs in MP3 or the lossless, and open-source (again, pioneering) FLAC format. To me, this is the future of music: compressed, lossless online sales for reasonable prices. And when I say reasonable, I mean we get to subtract all the costs that go into a physical disc: manufacturing, packaging, transport, storage, etc. We pay for raw music, right off the soundboard or out of Pro Tools.

Soon, I think we’ll start to see more and more bands offer their music this way – at least, if their big corporate contracts have expired and they are free to do with their art what they will. I mean, who needs packaging? A sweet animated Flash experience or interactive online event is way more cool than glossy inserts. If you think about it for more than a little, you can actually visualize a world in which record labels and contracts are not nearly as important as they are now. At least, as a mode of distribution. Conceivably, you could record and “release” your efforts online without any middle-men. No contract, no percentage to someone else’s pocket. I realize that labels are currently still important as PR machines and the deep-pockets behind payola-funded radio play lists. But there is a hint here of a new paradigm in music publishing and distribution. Homogenized radio is dying, and digital music is reaching an adoption rate where Marketing 101 tells us it will begin to drive a secondary wave of goods and services. Perhaps, with good marketing and some initial investors, you could circumvent the majors altogether. Problem is: you gotta be good. The internet, the global audience, is the A&R man of the new century – we decide what’s good. Hey, I think we just cured another symptom of the majors. So, c’mon expired-contract open-minded artists… let’s do this thang.

And, because it fits really well here, considering the context – I’ve been busy listening to the new, and freshly-leaked, Nine Inch Nails album, which comes out in a few weeks. I like it. I like it more than that double album I bought in college and hardly listened to, and consequently can’t remember the name of right now. Anyway, some songs are very good, some are OK. Oh, and the contextually relevant bit of this rambling? Seems that Mr. Reznor has released one of the album’s tracks via the NIN website as a GarageBand2.0 file. What that means, essentially, is that he’s released the source multi-track recordings – just like a producer would get before mixing down a final track. He’s encouraging fans to “… create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what’s there.” What an awesome idea. At least there are some musicians out there who are embracing this age of everything-on-demand, no-secrets digital freedom.

On a completely unrelated note, caught this story via Slashdot over the weekend. The part that really caught my eye was the statement: “They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.” Things like this always intrigue me, and I must admit that it’s not always for the most noble of reasons. Somewhere in me, I have this secret wish that some long-lost Christian writings would come up that really through a wrench into modern Christian dogma. No, I’m not rooting for some discovery that would completely deflate billions of peoples’ believes and values – I’m just talking about something that might force people who are staunchly set in their ways to think outside the box and perhaps view their religion in a different way. And I don’t mean things like the Dead Sea Scrolls or Nag Hammadi texts, which stubborn believers can easily write off as offshoot-group documents which simply aren’t part of the Biblical canon. With the whole process of canonization having effectively relegated any non-canon writings to irrelevance; something like an early version of on of the New Testament gospels, maybe on rife with all sorts of Gnostic ideas, would be an awesome rock in the pond. Some small evil imp in the back of my brain would really love to see some self-important, card-carrying Southern Baptist have to chew on a lost verse of John in which Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you, women can speak the word of God as well as a man.”

Holy crap this turned into a long entry… I hope I didn’t blow my week’s wad in one shot. Stay with me, we’ll see what we can come up with. Actually, I haven’t written an entry this easily in a long time, maybe my near week off last week did some good for my writer’s block or something.

Goodnight.

Posted on

war memorial

Cute, and yummy!
Stupid United Express terminal… always smells like hot dogs, and everything’s always delayed. At least I got here today in time for the first flight – so I can actually be the one that starts the domino delay for the poor travelers later today. Anyway, if it wasn’t made clear already – I back. Taiwan was, Taiwan. I had a good time as always, but missed home as always.

I felt much more “local” on this visit. The “acquaintances” I’d met on my previous trips have started to turn into full-fledge friends, and where I used to need a local intermediary to schedule outings with them – now we just get together directly and do things. I had a good time with the usual crowd from the hotel bar, and managed to spend some time with Eric and Suzy as well, who are staying in Taiweezy for 6mos. Towards the end of the week, I really started burning the candle at both ends tho… wandering the streets of Taipei as the sun came up, and somehow managing to make it into work. It’s OK though, because all I needed to catch up was my flight over here – which I slept through solidly, I might add. I guess 48hrs of waking-time doesn’t match too well with ~4hrs of sleeping-time. And, the MP3 player on my phone (you’ll read about it below) faithfully served up tunes for the entire ~10hr flight, without a single bar reduction in battery – I was impressed.

And, because I’m lazy and I did the work anyway… I wrote the following paragraphs sometime this week, but never posted them… so here’s the dump.

Well, being in Taiwan, I managed to pick up a 1GB MMC card for my new Nokia 6230 phone. I’ve seen on the web that there are 2GB cards available in Europe – but I can’t seem to locate them here. So, I settled for 1GB, and now I can hold a pretty decent amount of tunes on the phone’s built-in MP3 player. I tested the functions a little bit, and it seems pretty neat. The stereo headphones I got off Ebay have an integrated track-advance button and microphone, and will automatically pause the music and allow you to use them for incoming calls when needed. My only gripe would be that it’s kinda hard to setup playlists, and you can’t do any folders on the MMC card – so everything gets all jumbled. I did manage to make playlists and get albums playing in their right order, but it’s a little bothersome. Also, the phone doesn’t support any kind of “in flight” mode like some other phones with MP3 players. This means that the radio/antenna is active at all times, which is technically not allowed during flight… but… I’m going to ignore that. Anyway, it’s kinda cool to have a reasonably sized MP3 player built into my phone, handy for long trips when you get a yen for some good tunage.

Today (Wednesday in Taiwan) turned out to be a pretty busy day. Had a lot of work to do so spent most of the day at the office doing e-mail and meetings. Also managed to book my travel for the next trip out here, as well as get Sharaun’s ticket and make sure we had adjoining seats. I hate booking international travel, and trying to coordinate my booked-through-work tickets/seats with her normally booked tickets/seats didn’t make anything easier. But, I did finally manage to square things away, and we’re both set for the upcoming trip. I’m actually looking forward to being here with Sharaun, but not really looking forward to being away from home again so soon. On the plus side, since I had some previous engagements back home in mid-May, what I thought was going to be a three-week stay turned into only two-weeks and change. The bad news though, is that my “previous engagement” was yet another travel-trip, this one to Oregon. So, I’ll get home from Taiwan, get one day back at work, and then hit the air again. And, since Breck and her husband are coming to visit the last week in May, I’ll effectively be out-of-the-office for an entire month – a first for me.

All the times I’ve been to Taiwan, and I’ve always assumed the “dark” tofu was just some variant of the regular tofu. Y’know, different ingredients, different flavor, whatever. Only today did I come to find out that it’s just gelatinous hunks of coagulated duck’s blood. Mmmmm… duck’s blood. It’s funny how something can become unpalatable just because you find out what they really are. I mean, I had no problem eating it when it was tofu – but when it was duck’s blood, I had to really work at chewing and swallowing. Scenes of strung-up ducks spilling out their life’s blood into inch-deep pans filled my mind, and thoughts of just how they form liquid blood into little jello-like cubes… ugh. Anyway, Taiwan never really disappoints when it comes to food experiences. But don’t let my tales of duck’s blood and fish eyes and chicken heads scare you off, the food here is really good – it’s just different.

Until Monday then, welcome home.

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dinner with the family

Outbound once again.
So… the night before last was pretty awesome. I got a call from Sharaun on the way home from work, and in pretty short order we both agreed that we didn’t feel like doing dinner at home. We ended up having an awesome dinner for two at a local Indian joint. Sometimes, even though we’re together most every night – we don’t seem to get enough time to talk about random things. And that one-on-one dinner really hit the spot. We talked about work, about not-work, about summer plans, about all sorts of stuff. Then we made a joint trip to Wal Mart so I could pick up some socks. Afterward, I helped teach her the basics of non-linear equations so she can tutor a former student of hers. Man, I really enjoy algebra. Especially explaining it to other people. I think I could easily be a math teacher, really. I was talking slope-intercept form like it was taught to me yesterday. Anyway, it was a really enjoyable evening with my wife… we need to do that more often.

I mentioned that new Radiohead track yesterday. Hearing it just got me all Radiohead’d up… and I started listening to Kid A tonight. Man, that album is so outstanding. I can remember getting it like it was yesterday, in fact – I think I even wrote about it way back then. August 28th, 2000: The real new album I am waiting for is Kid A, Radiohead’s 4th – coming in early October. I know it’s going to be awesome. I am hoping to download [it] before it’s released – the promos should start showing up on Napster soon hopefully. September 11th, 2000: Listening to Radiohead’s new one, Kid A. It’s not out for a month yet – Napster. Awww yeah… that album made a huge impression on me. I can remember being the new kid on the block at work. I sat two floors up from the team they put me on. No one even knew I existed. I got no e-mails, no calls, no nothing. For the 1st six months I’d come in at nine and go home at three. I can remember feeling guilty for taking a paycheck for sitting around, listening to music, reading webpages, and writing. Kid A just worked so well with that lonely, out-of-my-element thing that was the first few months of my employment.

Made reservations for my happening-way-too-soon trip to Taiwan tonight. I actually realized that I’m departing US soil in a mere week’s time, and had yet to book flights and hotel. Not wanting to pay the dreaded less than one week booking premium, Wayne and I called the “emergency” travel number late last night and booked our trips. Two weeks people. The notion is seriously dreadful to me right now, leaving a week from today to go to Taiwan again. If it was only a week trip, I think I’d be fine… but two whole weeks. The only other time I was there for two weeks, I started getting seriously antsy for home near the end. And I know I’ve said it a million times, but I always get like this right before I go. Once I’m there, I’m usually OK. I just wish there was some way Sharaun could join me, I think she’d get a big kick out of Taiwan. Ahh… Taiwan… I come to your island shores once more.

And now it’s 11:30pm on Thursday. The trash is at the curb, the dishes are done, and the countertop is clean. And that, my friends, means it’s time to hit the sack. Goodnight.

Posted on

the modern worker

Shiva.
12:20pm on Wednesday afternoon, and I’m right where I want to be for the rest of the day. At home, windows open, music on. Too bad I have to go back to work, that place really puts a damper on my days. I’m listening to a live version of a new Radiohead song that leaked the other day. Seems they’re back in the studio and working on long-player #7. I can’t deny that I consider them to be the most important musicians of the last 15 years, and I look forward to each of their releases with the utmost anticipation. I mean, what other outfit today could see a bootlegged live version of a single new song get a three-paragraph review? Despite my afternoon off yesterday, I still don’t feel right. I’m hoping it goes away soon, I don’t want to be sick and traveling. Yes – that’s right. I’m off for Taiwan yet again in just over a week. You know how I always dread going just before I’m supposed to go? I’m in that phase right now, I just plain don’t feel like going. Two weeks this time, ugh… I feel like I just got back from the last trip. Anyway, I am going, so I better get used to the idea.

Last night I crawled in bed a little after 11pm, and started thinking about how much I didn’t want to wake up and have to go to work the next day. Then, a sentence came to me. Then another. Soon enough, I had enough stuff to warrant me getting back up and out of bed to sit in front of the computer and write a paragraph. I finished it last night before midnight, and almost added it to yesterday’s post – but decided to keep it in case I didn’t feel like writing today. And then, here it is…

I am the modern American worker. I am the employee you hate to love. I complete all that is assigned to me. I foster relationships, work well in teams, and know my field. I will always do what is necessary to succeed. I am easy to get along with. I meet deadlines and assume responsibility. You can rely on me. Resources permitting, I will come through for you 100% of the time. I know how to prioritize. I know how to delegate. I can handle many complex tasks simultaneously without degrading the quality of my output. When you compare me to the checklist, I will meet or exceed all your criteria. Wanna know what else? I feel no sense of duty or loyalty towards my employer; only laziness and comfort keep me where I am. My interest in the company’s success extends only as deep as my desire for a continual paycheck. My work is not inspired. I do not aspire to climb ladders, keep paying me and I’ll stay here forever. I view my job as the necessary evil funding my real life. I say what you want to hear and do what you want done so that you will shut up. Every once in a while I will go above and beyond Joe Employee – but I don’t do this for the betterment of the company or for personal growth – I do this because I know those gold stars at the top of my review might earn me more money. If your goal is to see how much you can squeeze out of me without complaint, my goal is to determine the minimal amount of effort to likewise keep you complaint-free. I will always be like this. The more responsibility you pile on me, the more I’ll pretend to care – and we’ll all be happy. I will express completely insincere feelings so that you think I am one of the ones who “really cares.” I’m the modern American worker, it’s nice to meet you. You can shake my hand if you want, but I just took a piss and didn’t wash it.

I resisted touching that up from last night’s original midnight incarnation, so it’s 100% raw as-written. Looking back, it seems a little overboard and harsh – but I guess it makes its point.

I found this article fascinating. It’s long, but the author writes well and the subject is something I’m a tiny bit familiar with, working in the Indian-rich field of engineering. Once, a friend and co-worker of mine was taking vacation to head to India for his arranged marriage. He’d never even met the woman who’d be arranged for him, but had corresponded with her via phone or e-mail. He was not scared or nervous, but excited. I remember him telling me, “You should come to India for the wedding. I cannot pay for your plane ticket, but if you are able to come you will not have any other expenses. You can stay with my family, and all your food and lodging will be taken care of.” He told me he would be “honored” if I attended… and to be honest, I really considered going – it sounded like the experience of a lifetime. Too bad my pockets aren’t overflowing with money, or else I would’ve. Anyway, read the piece if you have time… good stuff.

Goodnight.

Posted on

the hare won, right?

Focus.
I’m back. Did you miss me? Whatever, you’re full of crap. I bet you didn’t even check the page yesterday, you damn sunshine patriot. So; yeah. I took a writer’s vacation. Work dictated it more than anything… but I’m not going to say I didn’t kinda enjoy not writing. Today I got a bunch of lackluster paragraphs rounded out with a couple links to tunes. Maybe listen as you read along, I don’t care… it’s ultimately your bag. Enjoy.

Can I tell you how much I like this Aqueduct album? Oh, I can’t? Sorry then. Wait, who the eff are you to tell me what I can tell you? This internet thing is a free medium last time I checked. So: Dang I like this Aqueduct album! You people who may think you’ve heard it before, say, on the OC or something – shut up. So what if it was on the OC already… so what if the OC seems to be rapidly gaining on me in terms of the illustrious “I found that band” cred? The OC! I show for teenagers about cute and rich and white high-schoolers who drink beer, oh and there’s lesbians and indie music all over that biatch. Anyway, you should check out the album, it’s called I Sold Gold, and even though the revered PF panned it – I’d recommend it. Rock this track and tell me what you think.

As much as I don’t want to, I’m going to get up in the morning and go to work. Sometimes, I get this feeling… like something big is on the horizon. It usually comes in the morning, with the cold air. Today it came strong on my way home for lunch. Almost transcendent for a minute, I just get this feeling like I’m on the precipice, about to step off the edge or something. Not a scary feeling… an excited one. I don’t think I have the shining or anything like that – I just think it means something good is going to happen. I don’t usually serve out MP3s, but here’s the song that was playing when I got my good vibes… listen to that awesome guitar breakdown at the end with the fast video-gamey sounding part. As for the vibes themselves… I dunno. Summer is coming and the sun is still shining on my way home from work, maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m gonna win the lottery; then I can finally stop shaving altogether.

Why didn’t I write the past couple of days? Business trip my friends. Yeah, more customer visits. You remember the last time I was in Taiwan?, well some other customer-dudes wanted to hear that material – so Wayne and I made the short trip to present to these fools. As usual, we owned the audience. I was telling Wayne, I created the bulk of the material I presented over a year ago… and have just morphed it ever since. Oh sure it’s changed over time, but I swear I only made the effort once – the rest is just tweaking. What I’m getting at is, I’ve been presenting the same crap for over a year now. Considering, I’m pretty damn good at talking about this material. I don’t practice anymore… don’t worry about it… just go up and do the song and dance. Don’t worry, there was never any passion to be lost. It’s a loveless task, but I rather like it.

At work, I have complicated system of Post-It Notes task-management. I have a mid-sized pad on which I keep my medium-to-long term obligations in a asterisk-prefixed list. Not necessarily in priority order, just a list of everything I need to get done in one-to-two weeks time. For one-off obligations, I have one of those tiny little pads, and I take quick notes and stick them to the top of my laptop. Those are low-time-investment do-today things, I have to clear them off before the end of the day. In this age of cellphones and PDAs and high-tech little black books – my primary organizational system consists of Post-It notes. This is all I have for this paragraph, I realize it’s a little weak… but I’m going to talk more about work after I hit return twice.

After being a member of the working class for several years now, I’ve come to a rather shocking conclusion. Either, 90% of the workforce is stuck in 1st gear – or I have an amazing capacity to do things at mach speed. I’m not saying this to brag, I’m trying to document and explain an observable phenomenon. Through experiments conducted by myself and on myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can do what management considers to be a multi-day task in three to four hours. Again, I’m being totally serious and not trying to blow my own horn here (lots of masturbatory colloquialisms in this paragraph it seems; y’know blowing one’s own horn and doing experiments… oh, you get it). Anyway, I’ve been blessed with this incredible talent – and I use it to my advantage on every occasion possible. My big secret is that my week’s work really only took me one solid day. If this is true, I have an untapped potential to increase my workload by up to as much as 80%. You want what done? Uh-huh. Due Friday? OK, I’ll get working on that right away. Right away Friday morning… sucker. Cut me a check, it’s the weekend already and I’m beat.

You think they’re gonna make new dinosaurs? Goodnight.

Posted on

around the 4-layer spiral

Watch out, we're coming to the crossover.
I set out to take this weekend slow. And what’s more, to make the most of it by waking early each day. My original plans were to finishing up planting the various flora and fauna we’d purchased but not completely installed last weekend. But some late-season rains put the brakes on that. The rain was nice tho, it was particularly heavy for California – with thunder and lightning which is a rarity here. Back in Florida, thunderstorms are a daily occurrence in the summer, so they tend to make me a bit nostalgiac.

Y’know, I’ve heard of anger management problems, and I don’t think I have one of those. I do think, however, that I have a frustration management problem. Sometimes, I get unbelievably frustrated – with everything. Today is one of those days. Usually, some small legitimate thing triggers the frustration… but from then on everything else just seems to get picked up and added to my big rolling snowball of irrational frustration. On days like today, everyone drives infinitely slow. Everywhere I am is just an obstacle that’s keeping me from where I want to be. Everything I’m doing is just a waste of time keeping me from getting to what I really want to be doing. I finally get to a point where I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin, then I realize I’m upset over nothing and just let it go. It’s usually right about then that have to use the bathroom and a stray pubic hair somehow gets plastered across my pee-hole and splits my normally manageable precision stream of urine into an un-aimable V shape consisting of two separate streams. It’s God’s little way of telling you to give up. Yeah, I definitely have a frustration management problem.

I haven’t talked music in a while. Maybe that’s because the latest records stacked on my multi-platter arm are somewhat well known to begin with. It seems that either the collective ears’ of America’s youth are finally responding to the weekly subliminal indie dosing they get from the OC, or I’m simply experiencing a loss of power to my commercial-acceptance shields. But you gotta admit, the recent explosion of MTV2-phyllic new-new-wave rock acts really do have an addictive sound. And with that in mind, I was pretty pumped that Sharaun and I managed to score a bunch of tickets to a local small-club show by one of the aforementioned aforenamedcoattail-riders, the Bravery, that’ll be going down next week. With their album in-hand I’m really looking forward to it. Aside from the best the “new alternative” stable has to offer, I’ve recently acquired the latest Ben Folds album, as well as the new Stephen Malkmus joint. Both are worth investigating if the Killers and their extended family-tree are beginning to wear on you.

Work on the digital migration project continues. I’m halfway through Lennon, and have started my first real attempt to cross-check what I’ve ripped with the complete database of what I own. The goal is to find holes in the ripping, and make dang sure everything I own is digitized before I start selling off the then-redundant discs. When I started all this, I actually printed out a copy of my database and highlighted each album as I ripped and verified it, sometimes making notes if something was notable. But the whole effort has dragged on so long that I’ve not only lost track of what I was doing, I’ve lost the printout. So now I’ve got this folder full of music and no real way to check it against what I own. But, with a little creative manipulation of the DOS ‘tree’ command, and some fancy cutting/pasting tricks – I managed to get a side-by-side list of my collection and what’s already been ripped to the drive. I’d like to thank OpenOffice 2.0 beta for most of my data manipulation and srpreadsheeting, if you haven’t yet – check it out.

Speaking of software – having the right tools has played a large part in my willingness to pick up this project again. Ripping discs is not so bad when they’re all commercially available and the ripping program can look them up in freedb to get all the track names. But bootlegs, transfers from vinyl, and other rare/odd discs just won’t freedb – meaning the only option is to type all the information in by hand. I recently downloaded a couple more utilities that have proved perfect for the task of tagging those pesky non-freebd-able albums. Moosic Organizer lets you actually search the freedb site and manually apply an album to one that won’t lookup on its own. And MP3 Book Helper has an “import from CSV file” feature, which allows me to copy a bootleg’s tracklist off any website into a spreadsheet, save it as a CSV file, and tag the album in one-click that way. Sure beats typing every track in by hand.

Finally got around to watching Ray tonight, great movie. Watching some of those club scenes was really powerful. Seeing greasy, sweaty, hard-working musicians pouring their every ounce into their instruments… it reminds me of the feeling I got the first time I heard Otis Redding’s set at the Monterey Pop Festival. Kyle brought over a tape his dad had made. Side A was Wilson Pickett; side B was Otis. Some was live, some was studio, and it was my first real chance to actually “listen” to soul music. On that day, we had decided to pretend we were kids again – and had broken out our old slot car tracks. His track was compatible with mine, so he brought over his cars and track, and we pieced together a massive circuit that sprawled and twisted its way around the floor of my bedroom. We must have listened to that tape three or four times through as we gunned our little cars on to victory. Up the side of the bottom bunk along vertical U-turn, around the 4-layer spiral, down the extended straightaway and into the hairpin around the closet door. For some reason that memory stuck with me, the four speakers I’d arranged in each corner as a mock quad setup blasting Try A Little Tenderness over the clicks and clacks of little cars moving from section to section on the track. Some things I think you’re just supposed to remember.

Goodnight.

Posted on

false profit

Fakir. Get it?
I haven’t been writing because it just hasn’t been in me. I sit down with the laptop, write a couple thoughtless sentences and give up. Before, I may have pushed myself to get something done, to get something up, but I don’t see the point anymore. As it is, I’m already shamed by my matching-shoe entry last week. The reality is, I write a lot. I write a whole lot. Every night I crank out paragraph after paragraph. One wonders if it’ll ever dry up. It’s like wondering if, with all the music that’s been made in the history of the world, how people still manage to come up with an original tune. I guess when the variables are infinitely arrangeable, there’s always a chance for an original. Not that anything I write is terribly original or even worth reading, but at least there’s no threat of “drying up.” I can keep pumping out sentence after sentence of crap. Here comes some of it now, enjoy.

As sore as I am, I’d trade sitting in my cube today for the sunny and sweaty yardwork of yesterday in a heartbeat. With Blind Faith’s eponymous, and only, LP blaring from the windows while I heaved the breaker bar at the rocky “dirt.” Instead, I’m sitting here on my already-tired-of-being-sat-on ass, listening to the Arcade Fire live on Morning Becomes Eclectic. A decent performance, but it’s not like I was in need of convincing when it comes to the awesomeness of this band. The problem is, when you release an album that is so stunningly good, so noticeably standout from everything else released that year, following it up is rough. I remember reading about Radiohead’s follow-up phobia after releasing the universally praised OK Computer. As if to silence the murmurs of “can they do it”, Radiohead released Kid A as the follow up and blew everyone’s mind again. I’m hoping the Arcade Fire can have their own mind-blowing follow up, and their sophomore effort is probably the one future album I’m currently most looking forward to.

Begin random unrelated paragraph.

I don’t think I’m the only one, but maybe I am, who feels like he really only knows a fraction of what people may think he does. I’m talking specifically to the work environment. I’m not an expert, in honesty I retain very little. I’m a fake, a practiced charlatan, and a cunning opportunist. Over my short time on this planet, the only real skill I’ve mastered is knowing how to influence peoples’ perceptions. An expert at getting by, proficient at faking it, and revered in the field of hype – I’ll come to you with nothing in my head and anything you’d like on my tongue. You’d think after a while, I’d get called out, cold-busted. Nope, I know enough to lay down safety nets… just like always, I know just enough to get by and nothing more. I come to school to do the bare minimum for the As and honors. Even with all your persuasiveness, you’ll not impress upon me your get-ahead attitude, I’m too satisfied with simply getting-along. Relying on my pseudo-skills to advance me… I will let your perception carry me. Thanks.

End random unrelated paragraph.

My week-long AIM screename mixup has been an exciting and interesting thing. As you may remember, it all stared last Saturday when I got a bunch of IMs from people I’d never heard of, all of them thinking I was someone named Zak or Charlie. Throughout the week, the IMs continued. Despite my frequent ignoring them, and, when responding, my adamancy that they had the wrong person – I learned a lot about the people IMing me, the person(s) I was supposed to be, and IMing and today’s youth in general. For instance, I learned that the job of a child predator really isn’t that tough. In just the first day of mistaken identity, these girls’ freely offered their names, ages, and location. I didn’t ask, and I even told them I was an old man who they didn’t know. It mattered not. Unasked, they sent pictures and even phone numbers; I learned what schools they go to, what dance studio they attend. It didn’t matter to them that I was a stranger – they could care less. That, to me, was a little disturbing.

I addition to a somewhat shocking lack of information-guarding, I learned that instant messaging is extremely important to these kids. The girls who were IMing me ranged from 12-14 years old, and they were relentless. They also have their own language. I like to think of myself as still being fairly-in touch with the youth culture of today, but some of the abbreviations and idioms they were using had me rushing to Google for a whippersnapper-to-geezer translator. Seeing how important IMing was to these kids made me realize that this is a entirely new communication medium. Something my generation and the ones preceding it simply didn’t have. It’s real-time note-passing, but with the added bonus of distance to reduce inhibition. As a behind-the-curtain method of communicating, it’s extremely efficient for the hormone-charged youth to conduct faceless flirting – which everyone knows is much easier than mustering up in-person game. Like the long flirty phone calls of my generation, IMs flying through cyberspace are today’s kids’ way of developing those oh-so-important teen infatuations. I guess it was just interesting to me that they probably don’t even consider that they are the first generation afforded this indirect and immediate type of communication.

And, to round it out – I finally got back to my long-running project of digitizing all my music. When I stopped, I was at about 80% ripping my entire CD library. Then, when I upgraded my PC my ASPI layer got all screwed up and my ripper wouldn’t work at all. My intense hatred of working with computers on my own time kept me from properly debugging the problem until tonight, when I forced a reinstall of the ASPI layer and got things back up and running. When I stopped before, it was at the daunting task of getting all my Beatles and Beatles related materials ripped… and now I’m happy to report I’m almost through with George Harrison and on my way to Lennon. Soon it will be Macca and finally the Fab Four themselves. When that’s done, all that’s left to do is walk through the collection and make sure every CD has digital representation. Then, reap the second-hand rewards via Ebay, local record shops, and secondspin.

Goodnight all. Good. Night.