new song!

i put up another instrumental. this one's a demo from the sessions for the Ricochet record (yes, i'm still working on it, concurrently with LP3). go to either this page or this one, and it's the one called "crazy stairs". i've been saying all along that this record was going to have some angry metal-esque guitars. so now you can preview them.

DO NOT

UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES...

immediately follow a dinner of mushroom alfredo with extra garlic with a glass of orange juice. ever.

i'm going to go mouthwash myself to death now.

not california

i was chatting with v the other day, and she asked me about how i write songs. she asked me at one point what the fastest song i ever wrote was, and i didn't even have to think about it before responding "not california". i actually wrote it while i was working on my first record, and i was sort of floundering for a title for the record. i had 12 songs, and was going to leave it at that, and then one day i wrote "not california", tacked it on the end of the record, and named the whole thing after it, too.

the song itself was written in somewhere between 5-10 minutes in my office the day after my girlfriend at the time and i split up. i hadn't really been thinking about it since it happened because there was a lot of other stuff conveniently going on, and, well, i didn't want to think about it. i was waiting for a friend of mine to finish up something she was working on so that we could go to lunch, and all of a sudden the melody and the lyrics both just kind of came out on paper. i think it's one of the more "poppy" songs i've written, definitely one of the most straightforward, but i still like it because it means a lot to me.

i don't usually promote myself on here, but if you want to hear the song, you can to here:
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~bbunting/

there are two versions on there, the original studio version (which isn't bad, but it's old and i like to think i sound a lot better now), and the live version (which i like better). it's a little rough; though the band sounds good, it's hard to hear them, and the vocal harmonies suffered a bit on account of it being the first time ever that we tried to do them. but it was really fun playing that show that night, and it's actually my ex-girlfriend (from the story) singing the harmonies. so it was a special music moment, though it might not shine all that much in musical terms :)

how do you keep love alive?

i think i posted this video way back when. but it's a great video (once you get past letterman being letterman, at least). and it's a great song. i mentioned it in the previous post and neglected to mention that it's quite possibly the most smash-ass sould-crushing love song evar. so i wanted to post it. i'm actually working on putting together mixtapes for july and august right now, but once i get those under wraps i was considering doing a mixtape of depressing-ass love songs. this would definitely be the last song on that tracklist.



Lord, I miss that girl
On the day we met the sun was shining down
Down on the valley
Riddled with horses running
Crushing them flowers
I would have picked for her
On the day she was born
She runs through my veins like a long black river
And rattles my cage like a thunderstorm
Oh my soul

What does it mean?
What does it mean?
What does it mean to be so sad?
When someone you love
Someone you love is supposed to make you happy
What do you do
How do you keep love alive?
When it won't

What, what are the words
They use when they know it's over
"We need to talk," or
"I'm confused, maybe later you can come over"
I would've held your mother's hand
On the day you was born
She runs through my veins
Like a long black river and rattles my cage
Like a thunderstorm
Oh, my soul

What does it mean?
What does it mean?
What does it mean to be so sad?
When someone you love
Someone you love is supposed to make you happy
What do you do
How do you keep love alive?
When it won't
How do you keep love alive?

okay.

it's fall again. and you know what that means. cardinals time. i know i'm obsessed with this band all year long and never stop talking about them, but fall seems to be the time when, perennially, there's a great convergence in the cardinals galaxy: new albums, new, big tours, lots of blog posts and all sorts of exciting stuff flying around the internets. it's also the time that i'm just less inclined to listening to new music than, say, late winter or spring or summer. in the fall i'm a lot more inclined to sit around and download live shows from three or four artists i really already enjoy and appreciating the minutiae of each performance; going deeper instead of broader, i guess.

anyway, today was the day. i had avoided, other than hanging my cardinals tour posters in my apartment, any obvious shows of fanboyism lately. then i wore my rose tour shirt to work (without realizing it) and just spent three hours playing cardinals compilations from RAA.com (again, without realizing it). then, after hearing great versions of "cherry lane", "mockingbirdsong" and "how do you keep love alive?" all in a row, it hit me...that this will probably be the only band i listen to for like a month. because i'm insane. and because they're awesome.

stay tuned for that other fall tradition (i.e. madden screenshots) coming soon.

i totally kicked that book's ass.

yeah!

considering walking a mile and a bit for pizza...

(alcohol + nicotine + caffeine + sleep deprivation) + <3 = oh noooooes

why i don't do any of the above things when i have feelings = because then i do them to get rid of those feelings because they scare me.

i feel like a pancake that someone forgot to cook blueberries into even though they were sitting right there on the counter.

that made me think of charlize theron, who i don't really understand what the big deal is about.

seriously, why do i always become amorously infatuated when there are 11 million other things going on? and then when things are slow i'm all like "i like space toys and SNES and rock music and whatever with the girls because i'm cool over here by mice elf, so don't worry about it".

i thought, once, that it was just because when i get frazzled i like the idea of there being someone else who can be comforting and whatever...but that's not it. i'm so over that as of like 2 years ago. i don't try to fill the holes in my life with other people anymore; that's just cruel.

but pancakes should have blueberries in them if blueberries are available.

FUCK.

oh, nuts

picture at 1:37 = FUCK.

great song by billy bragg and wilco.

whoopsie-daisy

i'm slightly inebriated and trying to read henri lefebvre. so i'll let xkcd.com explain my feelings for me.

youtube does something good!

by allowing this video, which i actually found through stereogum, to exist:


also, i want to own the girl in the right's shirt. probably in a larger size.

here's a "real" version of the song, for comparison:


and here's robin from the fleet foxes performing "oliver james" solo and then apparently dying at the end.

best. valentine. evar.

stealing again from RA's blog. i thought this did a perfect job of describing...something...one of those feelings that i have very rarely gotten in my life (maybe like 2, 3, 4 times for like an hour) but once you do you don't really ever forget it and you constantly fail to be able to explain it. maybe i'm biased because one of those 2, 3, 4 times was like 24-36 hours ago.

anyway:

if i could have, i would have asked you if you wanted to go for a walk.

then i would have said, after a nice stroll, where the stars shone out

and a over-grown green leaved tree was all alit with a standing post

light, “….hey freckles” (i would have called her that no matter what she or anybody said)……”hey freckles…….i know you think i’m made of a strawberry milkshake and a cosmos error, but listen…..

why don’t you and i just cut the crap and suck some face……ha ha (laughter-me)…………

and whatever she did right then,

no matter what it was, what she

said,

it would have caught my hair on

fire for a thousand hot summers.

my fucking g o d

max payne might not actually suck dick

so...anybody who's been reading this blog for awhile (i.e. zero people) know my absolute, almost catholic obsession with the max payne series of video games. i won't go into it again here, but suffice to say that when they announced that they were making a movie based on what i consider the two most engrossing, cinematic, and atmospheric action video games ever made that i was a little depressed. you know, because video game adaptations always, always, ALWAYS suck huge dick.

and i didn't want to see what's essentially one of the best games of all time destroyed on-screen.

then they cast mark wahlberg as max payne, and i wanted to be completely dead and have died in the past so i didn't have to die with the knowledge that i now had.

but.

now the final, full trailer for the movie has come out. and it's not bad. in fact, it looks like (at least if you already are into the games) that it might be good. despite the fact that jackie from that 70s show (even though i love that 70s show) is playing mona sax. despite the shitty nu-metal music that plays throughout the trailer. the movie itself seem to follow the spirit and tenor of the game(s). i'm actually sort of excited. max payne, don't crush my soul, please. or i'll be out twenty dollars. ten for the movie ticket and ten for the entire stuffed crust pizza i'll have to eat afterwards to console myself.

here's the trailer:

'Max Payne' Theatrical Trailer @ Yahoo! Video

here's the trailer for the original game max payne 2, out back in 2003:

more music that makes me smile like a puppy

just a great, inspirational type song...nobody writes these kinds of songs anymore with any kind of honesty. i'm glad wilco occasionally does.


i love wilco's randy newman impression (i assume it's tongue-in-cheek). also, this i just a great, fun, non-opening-your-wrists type love song.


and for an opening-your-wrists type love song...

loud version of "sylvia plath":


quiet version of "sylvia plath":

ben cries about stupid shit, part 2

while i am revealing my tendency to have the emotional stability of a 14 year-old girl, i figured i'd say that i really love the wilco song "you are my face". there's just something about it that resonates a lot with me, and it means a lot...actually, that whole album does. so naturally when they played it in spokane i got a little choked up. add that to the times i've heard ryan adams play "come pick me up" and "sylvia plath"...

we won't go into the amount of times i've had overbearing emotional responses to really shitty movies...

anyway, the lyrics to "you are my face" stand pretty well on their own, so here you go (via bemydemon.org):

I remember my mother’s
Sister’s husband’s brother
Working in the goldmine full-time
Filling in for sunshine
Filing into tight lines
Of ordinary beehives
The door screams I hate you
Hate you hanging around my blue jeans
Why is there no breeze
No currency of leaves
No current through the water wire
No feelings I can see
I trust no emotion
I believe in locomotion
But I've turned to rust as we've discussed
Though I must have let you down
too many times
In the dirt and the dust

I have no idea how this happens
All of my maps have been overthrown
Happenstance has changed my plans
So many times my heart has been outgrown
Now everybody’s feeling all alone
Can’t tell you who I am
When everybody’s feeling all alone
Can’t tell you who I am

I am looking forward
Toward the shadows tracing bones
Our faces stitched and sewing
Our houses hemmed into homes
Trying to be thankful
Our stories fit into phones
And our voices lift so easily
A gift given accidentally
When we’re not sure
We’re not alone

and i know i already posted this once, but it's fucking awesome.

iraq hussein obama

obama's speech was great. no big surprise, obviously. but still. i can't get over, even 18 months later, how wonderful it is to hear him speak. to hear him speak, frustration evident in his voice, of "washington" and "politics" and "congress" and to see people listen. to see people want him to be their president.

there truly is a different air surrounding the proceedings of the democratic nomination this year; at least different than anything i can remember in my (admittedly short) life. while objective reflection on obama's speech makes me still wonder if we can truly do the things he's said that we can (as a government, country, people, whatever), i think that in our current state, hope is just as worthwhile a national resource as anything else, and i also think that if we can do 25 percent of what he's proposing in the next 10 years that this country will still be orders of magnitude better off than it's been during any and all of my adult life.

something i've noticed during most of obama's televised speeches is that you fairly often see audience members in tears. i have to admit that i've occasionally gotten a bit choked up listening to him speak. and sure, you'd probably see tears on the faces of dedicated servants of well-spoken, hypnotic zealots (which some people seem to characterize obama as), but you'd also see the same tears in the eyes of people who are living out of debt, who can't afford to have children because they know they probably won't be able to feed them, who really just want to have a decent shot to make an honest living or to make a new start and have suddenly been offered it. i think that's what we're getting. i hope we don't fuck it up.

fucking radiohead stream!

the stream, not surprisingly, is totally choked. it was awesome, what little i got to see of it. but i signed off for a minute to adjust my video settings to attain better streamage and there was just no getting it back. i mean, there's a connection, but i only get to see one of every ten seconds of the concert now.

thanks roadrunner. i'm so glad i pay 30 dollars a month to be unable to watch simple video streams on the internet. even msnbc's coverage of obama's speech was jittery the whole time, and it was running on msnbc's servers. fuck you, time warner!

free radiohead

radiohead, live from the bowl in santa barbara, are apparently going to webcast themselves, um, live.

despite the horror of sentence construction you just witnessed, if you like radiohead, go to their homepage (details pending) and check it out. they should be starting any time.

i'm totally going. maybe we can meet there and get popcorn. or, if you're a guy, we can stand next to each other at the huge trough in the bathroom and urinate in it while spilled beer glues our feet to the floor. because you know how much i love that shit.

http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/

521 prompt #1, or "want to read poetry? buy a pennywhistle and a faun"

(for 521):

My first “real” experience with poetry was…traumatic, to say the least. It was my sophmore year of college, and so of course by that point in my academic career I had already sat through a pile of high school english classes in which we read, studied, discussed, and interpreted all manner of the poetry one typically reads in high school. We even at one point interpreted the lyrics of the first track off the Oasis record Be Here Now - which, incidentally, is a much less enjoyable album than What’s The Story (Morning Glory)? I also had an Honors English Colloquium my freshman year at Kent State University that involved reading mostly Wallace Stevens. So, I had thought I had a decent background in interpreting extremely inaccessible poetry when I entered my first Creative Writing class. I was wrong, of course, or else I wouldn’t be wasting your time with this anecdote.

The class was led by a local poet of some reknown and so, while we did our fair share of writing brief stories and dialogues and the like, we mostly focused on writing poetry. It wasn’t until I actually sat down and tried to write my first real poem - joke poems written about my high school teachers for the amusement of classmates didn’t count - that it became clear to me that there was an entirely different skeleton under the skin of poetry that I’d previously been taught to poke and prod.

So, my first point isn’t that if you’re looking for a good way to interpret poetry you should necessarily go sit under a tree for twelve hours and write blank verse about how it makes you feel and in so doing you’ll reach some kind of interpretational epiphany. My point is simply that there are two ends to a poem, and while it’s our job to focus largely on the reading end, wrapping your brain around the writing end is probably going to give a much more holistic and therefore effective view of the material you’re looking at. It’s no substitute for close reading, or for knowing every detail ever recorded about, say, Wordsworth’s life, but it’s a supplement.

I’m disinclined to lay out a step-by-step process through which everyone should read poetry and reap the maximum interpretational benefits; even in my compositon classes I am most comfortable with making suggestions as to how my students make necessary writing and thinking moves and then talking through with them the strategies that they themselves find most productive. So, secondly, instead of doing that, I’ll tell you how I read poetry and from there you can decide if there’s anything to take from that that’s helpful to you.

I read poetry in much the same way as I listen to music (I see a lot of parallels both in the composition of each and in how I personally view them both). When I get a new record, I sit down and listen to it passively the first time. Try doing the same thing when reading a poem. Read through it, definitely note (mentally) things of interest, illuminating turns of phrase, etc. but don’t stop to take notes or to wikipedia biographical details on the author. A lot of poetry, again like music, is very much about rhythm…even a good amount of the poetry that purports to eschew rhythm is still subject to it. Chopping up your reading while trying to mine nuggets of meaning is going to close you off from the natural experience of paying attention to rhythm. Though, naturally, if you’re reading something that runs for fifty pages, you’re not going to be able to hack through it all one sitting. Maybe in that case it’s best to pick a stopping point ahead of time and then take some notes at the end before starting the next section later.

In any case, once you’ve finished your read-through, take some notes. Often, following up on my music metaphor, after the first listen I’ll read some reviews of the album online, or read the liner notes and all the lyrics. With a poem, maybe go back and note certain sections that really jumped out at you, certain turns of phrase, certain places where it seems perhaps like the author is playing with rhythm, or form. The point of the first reading is so that you can gauge your intuitive response. This is where my aforementioned “write your own” strategy will likely pay off the most: though there’s a lot to be said for studying biography and history and meter and whatever else when it comes to poetry, often this instinctive first response is going to be informed most thoroughly by your own experience with the form of writing that you’re dealing with. So even if you’ve thrown down a few crappy poems once and nothing else, you’ll be able to empathize a bit more perhaps with the mode of expression you’re trying to interpret.

After the first reading, go back and look in-depth at the sections or lines or phrases that you thought were most engaging. Or that you thought were important-sounding. Often, to me, these things aren’t really the same thing. I’ll read a section of a poem and think “that’s a good way to describe light filtering through a canopy of trees” but ultimately I’m just drawn to that section because of pretty imagery, whereas a section that is seemingly clearly a reference to the poet’s redheaded mistress might not change the way you look at the world visually but it’s probably important in terms of author biography or history. I think each of these types of concerns are just as important to interpretation in their own way.

Gravitate towards the parts that interest you, for one reason or another and once you do some scholarly-research-type work with those sections, ideally the combination of your emotional reaction and empircal evidence will start to yield bits and pieces of a coherent reading. The important thing to realize is that poetry isn’t often immediately accessible in terms of an overall meaning, and may, at times, even intentionally attempt to foil such searches for clarity. Sort of climbing a cliff, you need to find your handholds, and lock onto them, and then go from there.

It’s important to remember, though, that how the poem makes you feel, how and where it strikes you, is just as important as any historical or consequential knowledge you can bring to it.

rift

i always listen to music on the way to work. for years (and sometimes i still) i have derided the people in our culture who are super-connected to their audio devices - first CD players, now iPods and iPhones and all the derivatives of those that are available - for willfully maligning the real world...for not wanting to engage, for shutting themselves off and immersing instead in yet another selfish pursuit in an already intensely (and psychopathically) selfish and individualistic society. i'm not a hypocrite (for once) for this. i didn't listen to music at all on walks for the first six months that i worked here. i took every possible different (but timely) route to work, noted all the details, took pictures and pretty much absorbed everything. but also in that six months i never once ran into anyone i knew on those walks, never ran into anyone who seemed interested in talking...and after so long even an interesting landscape becomes pretty unchanging.

so i started listening to music. i bought a walkman (my first and only ever, my little blue shoulder-bag buddy) and some rechargeable batteries (which are actually on their way into senility finally after three years of hardcore abuse). because of all the music i write, though 117 percent of listening to music is pleasure for me, a 36 or so percent is also studying, so this was actually in a way "work" time on my walk to and from work. i couldn't walk and read, i couldn't walk and plan my seminar responses or my lesson plan for composition at the same time. but i could study music but just listening while i walked. so that's what i did.

i listen to a lot of mixes, a lot of live music, a lot of internet radio a lot of streams of radio shows...but not a lot of albums. despite the fact that i have about 500 albums, i don't really listen to any of them much. the walkman forced me too. it can't connect to the internet, and even the best soundboard recording doesn't carry well over a walkman > shitty earbuds connection (too much treble, not enough volume; it can be listenable if you remix the show specifically for walkman/headphones, but it's never worth it...the same shows sound incredible on my 5.1 speakers at home or even on my laptop sometimes). so i was "stuck" with albums. it was good; it got me thinking about a lot of things i wouldn't be thinking of otherwise. it also built up something like 900 days' worth of album-listening. which means pretty much everything i put on nowadays i've heard at least once. the newness is gone. but, because my listening selection for any day is pretty much random, i'm still always a little surprised. like today when i pulled out phish's rift. occasionally this happens, grabbing a very seminal album (for me) at random. it's cool. rift is an album that i can listen to and honestly say that had i never heard it i would be a completely different type of music fan, musician, etc. it was a turning point for me. and so being at the point now where i have every note memorized but can still remember the significance of those notes the first time i heard them is sort of like dating someone for five years and then seeing that smile that still flashes you back to how fucking nervous you were the first time you saw it and realized how beautiful it was and the kinds of crazy shit it was going to likely cause you to do.

rift, along with round room is the phish album that most clearly communicates the broad spectrum of phish's ability as a group of musicians, as well as succeeding in putting a reasonable facsimile of their live sound in the studio. at times it's frenetic ("rift", "maze"), at times dreamy anastasio/marshall-style jazz ("fast enough for you"), wacky and multi-layered ("sparkle", "weigh"), sprawling ("horn", "it's ice"), and so on. there's a little of everything, and while some phish albums like picture of nectar and billy breathes might be more accessible at times, this is the first phish album (chronologically) that really shows all of the band's different faces. it's more a primer than an introduction. it's not meant to make your comfortable, it's meant to say "here's what to expect if you care to hear more". and it's great.

i've been listening to orchestral and classical music since i was about seven, and so "horn" was actually the first song that took hold of me from this album. it starts out normal-phish-y enough, but then leads into a reall sparse but effective, atmospheric trey solo that then turns into an instrumental that sounds more like a "piece of music" than a "jam". "rift" is also an easy sell. the first track off of the album, it's constantly soaring, has suitably mythological lyrics, and page's piano playing (the main reason i got into the band in the first place, actually) is top notch.

some of the stuff in the later parts of the album gets a little weird if you're not used to phish yet (like "all things reconsidered", their take on the npr show "all things considered"'s theme music), but again, it's representative of what to expect from this band. also, "mound", with its multi-voice chorus and out-of-context blues intro is, in my opinion, one of the most structurally interesting pieces of music the band has ever come up with.

anyway, it's a great album and changed the way i think about music. gigantically. i was already on the verge of losing respect for cookie-cutter music and artists that refuse to take chances before i heard this album back in 2002, and once i did, i threw out my radio (okay, not literally).

download "rift"

download "pueblo nuevo" from the buena vista social club soundtrack (because it's got a lot of awesome jazz piano in it and i'm nice)

the marches of stepford

toria referred to our apartment community as "stepford" the other night, and the name stuck for me. except that instead of being a place where lots and lots of perfect-looking but bored domestic-robo-moms plot world domination, our stepford is a place where otherwise promising and intelligent underclassmen plot debauchery, liver poisoning and the conferring of sexually transmitted diseases upon one another.

nonetheless, there's an air of the surreal around the entire place. i love my apartment; don't get me wrong. but i think if i could transplant this apartment to the westview terrace hill, i would. for years, i've argued that the rhetoric that describes post-college as "the real world" is disingenuous. for me, my four years of college, while filled with a fair amount of partying and good-time-having, was much, much more work than the two years i spent afterwards working the kinds of jobs "normal" people work. also, during my time in the "real world", my partying, drinking, etc. increased exponentially on account of, well, the fact that the real world isn't that hard to live in. it doesn't require thought and work most often, just repetition. however, a large percentage of the students i see at stepford every day and night couldn't possibly be farther from the real world. they seem intent on extending adolescence as long as possible, and not, i assume (perhaps unfairly) out of a desire to explore their options or anything half so interesting, but instead simply just because it's easier, more fun, and you get laid more often.

i was walking to class yesterday at 8:20 or so, the same route i've taken to campus every day since i got back here from ohio, when a huge fucking flock of underclassmen descended from the hills of stepford, upon the bus stop and the sidewalk. i turned off at harvey st. (or whatever that road is called) and climbed the c street hill rather than follow the fifty-some odd students up b street. it was weird. it was like that lemmings game, only in real life. everyone on their cell phones, etc. if we had been in seattle or new york, it would have been fitting. here, it held the air of too many people insisting on taking their reality with them. which just rubs me the wrong way. so i'm actually considering getting up like 20 minutes early to bypass this spectacle every morning. it just feels wrong. maybe i'm just jealous because i don't have a pre-destroyed trucker hat that i can wear ironically.

my jeans do actually have holes in them (a few pair) but that's because they were on sale at penney's for 15 bucks and they were the only decent-quality jeans i could find in canton that were under 25 dollars that fit my oddly-shaped ass correctly.

one last thing about stepford: the insane amounts of water waste. as i've gotten more and more into environmental concerns and sustainability in the last year, this just annoys the fucking shit out of me. there are sprinklers seemingly every five feet in the whole of the allotment, anywhere that there's grass. which is a lot of places. this wouldn't be a problem by itself if the sprinklers didn't run seemingly 24/7. i've heard them at 7am, at noon, at 5pm, at 5am, and so on and so forth. the best (worst) part is that ostensibly they're meant to improve the lawn (hence "emerald downs"). however, all that fucking happens is that the water oversaturates the soil, and when the water table moves, all the water fucking seeps out into the bottom of the hill near stadium way, essentially turning the entire entrace of the allotment into a marsh. you literally sink into it to your ankles, even if it hasn't rained for weeks. and if it has rained (like it had today) then it's nigh impassable. so fucking weird. what purpose could this possibly serve other than to be back-asswards and wasteful?

i dunno. i have to go to class.

i married that black hole after all

the first day of school

so, my first day as a student (again) was today, after a year and a half as a not-student. it was a day i just sort of thought would never come, and now that it has...well, i don't know what i think. but, let's celebrate with the day's top 3 grad school words!

1. problematize (of course)

2. cyborgian (this was new to me)

3. catechismatize (this was mine, spoken semi-ironically)

i have an internet blog: these feelings matter to the internet

i have some feelings today. these feelings are mostly good. like i have feelings about teaching and those are good because i didn't spontaneously combust and everything went well and i'm excited for the class because i think it's going to be a good one even if i totally blow chunks at teaching google docs and such.

other feelings include:
hungry
sleepy
bored
restless
hungry
clean
caffeinated
hungry
well-dressed
hungry

what am i to do about these feelings?! perhaps i should ruminate upon each of them at length! on the public part of the internet, so that everyone can follow along with my thought process while reading!

actually, that might be fun. let's try it:

ishouldtakethebasketballoutsideandplaywithitnoishouldbuysomethingfromthevendingmachine
noi'mgoingtobehereforlikefivemorehoursmaybeishouldsleeponmydeskbutthatwouldbe
embarrassingifmynewofficematecameinandfoundmemaybeishouldjustgohome
iwantpizzapizzapizzapizzaandSNESandmycollectionoffluffy
victorianesquepillowsandaboxofpuppies!

whew. yeah, that's annoying.

fuckin' yeah!

awesome.



consider my copy purchased.

my burritos bring all the boys to the yard

i fucking kick ass at making burritos. that's all there is to it. anything mexican, i can cook it up like a motherfucker. same with italian. beyond that it gets sketchy.

also the taco seasoning mix i made is HOT. like OH GOD AM I GOING TO BE ABLE TO EAT THIS hot. but i'm a masochist so it's cool.

my nervousness about teaching tomorrow is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it's technically the only thing i have to do tomorrow. my day starts at like 830 and is over by 10. not bad. that's going to come in handy when i have a shit-ton of reading to do in later weeks.

i'm planning on hanging around all day tomorrow anyway and doing the zoe's thing if that's still on. but still. it's good to know if i totally lose my mind and turn into a psychopath i can go home and sleep.

is it just me, or does the singer for calexico sound a little like m.ward? apparently calexico has done an album with iron + wine. i gots to get my grubby mitts on that.

after reading all the reviews of last night's cardinals show (five new, never-before heard songs!), listening to a lot of ryan adams pandora radio tonight, and having seen wilco a few days ago...i have a terrible cardinals hankering. now that i see my schedule and realize that even if i had fronted the cash to go see them in seattle on tuesday i couldn't have made it work timing-wise helps a little...but still. right now i want to see the cardinals more than anything else in the universe. okay, maybe there's one other thing. but second most.

a LOT of stuff has happened since wednesday morning. it's weird to think about it all. but i also feel like i've finally, in the last three or four months, given up on any residual ideas about misery-as-chic, or thinking i'm undeserving of happiness, or that it's not worth the work, or i'll figure it out someday but not now, or that it's easier to just be miserable. it's not. i'm really learning to swallow my pride and be humble and say, basically "i don't know how to fucking do anything, and i need to learn". and then i'm trying my best at learning. so, good. that might be the only thing that's going to get me through the next four years. i have great colleagues, but i can't expect to get as lucky with people as i did last time i did this. if i do, then great, but i need to stop falling back on luck and build something to land on when luck runs out. if it doesn't, cool. i would be fucking crazy-happy to be wrong. and i already think i might be, based on the last week. but we'll see.

i don't know if i'm going to sleep tonight. it's the start of something really big, if i end up actually finishing. i'm nervous. i feel like i'm getting married. except instead of marrying a women i love i'm marrying a black hole that's going to fucking pound my molecules backwards into time if i don't be careful. gah!

that said, i think i'm about 100 times more ready to deal with everything than i was 3 years ago, and i got through okay that time.

five hours away from Zero Hour. the shit just got real.

what i did last night instead of sleeping

well this and also watching hot fuzz and shaun of the dead and being a little drunk.

higher-quality pics

here're a few more uploads that i did at higher res because i like them better.





























i'm hoping to play around with these a little with my photo editing stuff and see if i can make anything cool out of them. i'll post them if i do.

festival pics

here's some pictures from the lentil fest on friday night. my new MO when i'm not working is to hang around in really social places with a camera and take pictures because it seems to make striking up random conversations with people a little easier. plus, taking photos is just fucking cool and i think i'm starting to like it just as much as writing or singing (don't tell anyone). unfortunately, i suck at it. at least for the time being.

the "divine or lutheran church":


















...and "vine savior lutheran church" on the other side, five hours later:

i wanna be your kingpin, livin' in...spokane

finally, i've gathered enough of my wits for a wilco review.

the show was great, and the fleet foxes opening was not, by far, the least impressive part of the night. they were spectacular, and it was a fucking shame that there was like 50 people in the crowd when they started and about 200 by the time they ended. everybody seemed to be really into them, though, except for one dude who pretty crassly interjected a shouted "who are you, anyway?" towards the end of a song. the band replied pretty well to the heckling, fortunately (no ryan-type meltdowns at this show), even responding to the abovementioned guy with a casual "we're hannah montana". later on someone screamed something from the crowd that was pretty unintelligible, but that the lead singer thought was the phrase "shadow captain"...so the band decided to change their name from fleet foxes to shadow captain, which was then what tweedy introduced them as, hilariously, later in the night.

they played "white winter hymnal" and "blue ridge mountains" and a few other great songs i recognized, and the lead singer (whose name escapes me) played a solo medley at one point, including an INCREDIBLE version of "oliver james", which might well have been the best point of the whole concert, including wilco. this prompted a standing ovation from pretty much everyone in attendance. they opened their set with a few songs i didn't recognize, and they segued them all into each other until the whole thing became a really cool, almost 15-20 minute long song. it was more like listening to an orchestral piece than a rock band. very cool experience. i'm definitely picking up their two albums after this. the crowd stood and applauded when they finished, for a few minutes at least, while the band themselves cleared their gear offstage. it was the first time i'd ever seen an opener basically begged for an encore.

wilco came on not too long after, and opened really mellowly with "sunken treasure" and a few other acoustic-y type songs. this was a little disorienting because i expected them to blow the roof off right off the bat, but in retrospect the songs were really solid, and tweedy's voice was a lot more multidimensional than it comes across as in most recordings. i was stoked to hear "company in my back", one of my favorite wilco songs, and that's when things started rocking. they rocked out the outro to "you are my face" too. by this point pretty much everyone in the venue was standing, and we would continue to stand for the whole show, with the exception of "how to fight loneliness".

"hummingbird" was great, with jeff doing this weird sort of jogging dance during the outro where he went back around the keys and sort of behind glenn and then jogged back around at the end of the song. and who doesn't fucking love "hummingbird" anyway?

the next few songs were energetic rereadings of the studio versions; they didn't sound much different arrangement-wise, but they were a lot more intense and at this point the crowd was really getting revved up, especially in front. then nels ripped open "impossible germany"...i mean every solo i've ever heard him play on this song is lightning, but this one in particular went on for probably a minute and was just amazing. i was happy to hear "jesus, etc." too, but it was sort of a slow, weak version, honestly, compared to what they were doing with all the other songs. "misunderstood" brought the vibe back up though, with tweedy screaming the "nothing!" outro for about a minute and everybody screaming along with him. lots of fist-pumping.

one of the highlights of the night was hearing them perform "california stars", a song that i've performed at a few shows myself and which is a pretty meaningful song to me for a number of reasons.

the last three songs were completely rocked out, and tweedy apologized for singing "hate it here" right after telling the crowd how great they were and how much he liked spokane and how he wanted to come back (contrary to all the people who apparently thought this was a shitty show and the band skipped songs because they hated the crowd, tweedy did in fact remark on numerous occasions about how great the city and crowd was, though he complained on our behalf that we weren't all drunk...in response to one of his appreciative speeches, glenn climbed up on his drum kit and screamed, so i think the band had a good time, even if the crowd wasn't good enough for "real" wilco fans).

they came back out for one encore with "heavy metal drummer"...and that's such a perfect song, i don't really need to say anything. really cool light show with it too (and with "cali stars", a bunch of white stage lights filtered to look like starlight). kingpin was great, with tweedy wondering why we weren't all drunk (no-alcohol venue) and then jumping into it with "i wanna be your kingpin...livin' in spokane" which he pronounced as "spoken" but then apologized, and then singing the next verse "i wanna be your kingpin, livin' in...washington". it was pretty great.

then they brought "shadow captain" back out for an encore of "i shall be released", which was probably the other best moment of the show. it was a really somber, soulful rendition of the song with tweedy and the foxes (or captains?) rocking something like a four or five part harmony.

the second encore (late greats/casino queen/outtasite) was just all three songs run into one another in a fucking insane blanket of noise and feedback, just a full-on jam freakout that was basically a ten minute orgy of sound with the occasional chord change to differentiate one song from the next. awesome. my ears were ringing like hell afterwards.

i thought, based on other seated theatre shows i've been to, that this crowd was beyond pumped. we screamed after every song, people were dancing in the aisles, and the band seemed to love it. apparently we weren't up to normal wilco crowd standards, but whatever. everyone seemed to be having fun and if there weren't stumbling drunken assholes tripping all over the place, well, to me that makes a concert MORE fun. maybe i'm just getting old.

my only real regret is finding out afterwards that they had "spiders" and "ashes" on the setlist and didn't play them. those are probably my two favorite wilco songs, all-time and i would have fucking shot through the ceiling to hear them both in addition to what we actually did hear.

nonetheless it was a fantastic show, and i will definitely go see them again if the do come back to spokane. or even seattle, maybe.

there are a lot of show photos here, if you're interested.

look at all that not-hair!

i took a picture for posterity of my short-ass haircut. because once i start getting tattoos and crazy clothing accessories and stop making sure any of my outfits match and don't cut my hair for a year and nobody wants to be friends with me anymore, we can all look back on this picture and say: "well shit, that's the normalest ben ever looked". *collective sigh...*

i'm so far behind i'm ahead of myself

so, monday (tomorrow, sort of) is the beginning of classes. i'm teaching MWF and taking classes TTH, which should be nice in the sense that i only have to wear one hat each day instead of switching around crazily.

i'm still going to write a wilco review and post some pictures of the festival yesterday...just lots of other stuff going on. maybe tomorrow night.

at the moment i am somewhat dejected drinking in my living room for some reason. very classy, i know. actually it's just really depressing the opposite of cuddly. bleh.

i haven't always been this crazy...

...at times in the past i've been crazier. for example, this email, which explains a real-life experience (not a dream) that i had in 2004 during a freezing winter night in kent, ohio:

i want to tell you guys about something that happened
to me a few nights ago, which you might find interesting.
i'm pretty sure this is a result of andrea finally putting
too many unmarked spices in her food, but i left kent
village at two o'clock am a few nights ago, and walked
outside, where it seemed extremely warm and cozy (i was
wearing a sweatshirt) i just sort of stopped for a moment
and looked around, and realized that nothing was moving but
me, and that everything was really foggy and surreal. so i
got in my car and drove home, but i somehow knew i couldn't
drive faster than 15 mph because if i did, the road would
fill with cars and i would die. then i got home and stood
on the porch for what must have been at least a half hour,
saying over and over in my head "come out, people. it's
okay, don't be afraid." then i went inside and made some
rice. somehow, even though i had left andrea's at 2, when
the rice was done (usually at least 45 minutes of cooking)
it was only 300. i ate half the plate (i know this because
when i came back home, half was left on the table) and
then apparently wandered back outside. this time, i
realized two things. first, that i could change what color
things were just by looking at them and thinking hard
enough. second, there was a feeling in my head that kept
telling me to walk towards this particular point in
campus. so i started walking there, and in what had to
have been a 2 hour walk, where i was using my super-sense
to circumlocute the location of this weird feeling, i never
saw a single car or person, but lights kept flashing in my
peripheral vision. every time i turned to look, though,
whatever it was was gone. well, i finally got to the
student center and was about to locate the source of my
feeling when i realized (this is true) that i wasn't hungry
enough, and the only way to get hungry enough was to go
home and eat more. so i hurried home as fast as i could,
ate the rest of the rice, and then fell asleep. when i
woke up in the morning, all of the toilet paper was gone.
i have no idea why. no drinking or smoking accompanied
this adventure. strange, no?

instead of sleeping, i'm watching the second and third bourne movies

because they're awesome and because it's too cold to sleep and because i've had too much nicotine and caffeine today anyway. so i'm doing that awake-sleeping thing where i just chillax and it's mostly like sleeping anyway except my eyes aren't shut.

every time i sleep lately i have these crazy, usually fucked-up scary dreams anyway (except last night when i slept like a puppy).

also, it's cold as fucking hell in my apartment tonight. it's like 49 outside and i'm too cheap to turn the heat on. but i get to wear a crazy sweater that doesn't match the undershirt at all. and you know how excited i get about that shit. yeeeeah, boyyyy!

also, i might get to eat pizza again.

i went to the lentil fest tonight and had a great time because lots of people i know are awesome and i did stuff with them but also had some time on my own to climb around on shit and sneak places and take lots of pictures. some of which i'll post tomorrow, before or after i go back to the lentil fest. i'd do it now, but other things like not thinking about feelings and overthinking things calls and i should attend to that. and the third bourne movie.

when it gets really cold, i get really cuddly. that's my embarrassing admission for tonight. unfortunately, there is no outlet for this urge, as my Puppy Generator is still strictly in the drawing stage and girls are all afraid of me or me of them. sigh. at least i have an awesome bed. when i use it, which is rarely. it's really pretty underappreciated. i'm sorry, my bed.

i have to admit something shameful.

today i combed my hair, dressed up nicely (by my standards) and tried not to say "fuck" a lot...in order to impress a girl. i'm not sure if it worked. "impress" is maybe too strong a word, anyway.

i was thinking about this on my way up to spokane for the show. at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do, as did trying to be doggedly social all day and afternoon. in retrospect, though, i wonder.

this sort of magical, movie-romance-esque feeling came over me suddenly (within the last 48 hours) and i responded almost immediately with unmitigated aggressiveness (once again, by my standards). this felt like a good thing to do, like something that most people would encourage, but i felt a little weird about it in some corner of my head too. so, locked in the car on the highway earlier with no way to escape myself, i thought a bit about it.

every relationship i've ever had, or come close to having, or been interested in having, with the exception of my very first one, has involved some outside third party. whether it was me wanting to be with someone while i was already dating someone else, someone who i had feelings for not being single, or other, more confusing and weird permutations of those two situations...i've never entered into the possibility-exploration stage of a relationship without there being outside pressure of some sort.

thusly, i think my reflexive response in this current situation was to react as if i was facing a deadline. as if i was in competition with an army of invisible suitors and it was only a matter of time before one of them took my place.

what a stupid, stupid, stupid reason to do pretty much anything.

i did a lot of things today that i would normally perceive of, in someone else, as toolish, or boorish. and, afterwards, i felt bad about it. then it took me awhile to figure out why. then i figured out why.

a friend of mine said to me yesterday by way of advice: "start as you mean to go on". starting a relationship by trying to ooze charm and be hygenic is, for me, not doing that. even if that act gets me a foot in the door, so to speak, i'm not going to keep it up forever. it's disingenuous and unfair to pretend that i am. so. stopping that already. doing my thing. taking my time. figuring out what i want to do. actually, you know, getting to know somebody before making huge assumptions about their personality. all good things to do. and then...if that makes me unattractive...well, how could i really blame anyone for that? i'm a pretty fucked-up mess lately (read: the last few years) and while i've made my peace with that, i can totally understand how other people wouldn't, or couldn't.

i've learned how to keep growing and learning and having fun alone, and while that's not the ideal situation for me, it's gone from an unliveable situation to a liveable one in the last few years. and i've finally gotten to that point where i can accept the fact that people (females especially) might not be particularly fond of "the real me"...that's fine. there are tons of people who i'm sure are absolutely wonderful, beautiful beams of sunshine that i know after five minutes of talking with them i would hang myself if i had to date them. knowing that, if lots of women feel the same way about me, how could i possibly take that personally? i can't.

jesus, i was gonna eat pizza. i just had to get that down. back in the morning probably with a show review. it will have the words "loud" and "good" and "rock" and "NOM" in it a lot.

wilco setlist - no review yet

i'm tired and want to eat pizza and go to sleep, so i'm going to write my review tomorrow (and hopefully find a setlist for the part of the show that the fleet foxes played). but here's the wilco setlist, courtesy of viachicago.org:

Sunken Treasure
Remember the Mountain Bed
Company In My Back
You Are My Face
Hummingbird
Shot in the Arm
I am Trying to Break Your Heart
Pot Kettle Black
Handshake Drugs
How to Fight Loneliness
Impossible Germany
Jesus, Etc.
Misunderstood
California Stars
Hate It Here
Walken
I'm the Man Who Loves You
----------------------
Heavy Metal Drummer
Kingpin
I Shall Be Released (w/ Fleet Foxes)
-----------------
Late Greats
Casino Queen
Outtasite (Outta Mind)

great show. would attend again. A+++++++

it just turned into fall all of a sudden...

...everybody's wearing sweaters and it's windy and i love the weather, but i'm so fucking tired. thinking of all the stuff i've done and what i still have to do makes it worse instead of better. standing in the rain in spokane for 2 hours tonight waiting for doors to open does not appeal to me.

there's some possibly good, new stuff coming along right now (not just writing and singing, but socially, maybe emotionally, maybe maybe blah blah). it's a day's worth of work just trying to sift through it all. people who are thirty years old and work eight hours a day and think that wipes them out...you try working 12 hours a day and also still caring about the world and love and paying attention to shit and caring about something beyond yourself and also about yourself and see how fucking easy that is. it is not, for your reference.

i'm not complaining. i mean, it's a choice i make every day to keep doing it. but man, sometimes i just want to sleep for a month, or get like an hour-long hug, or figure out how to love someone and/or be loved without it turning into a fucking job, like it often does with me, in my stupid head.

mostly i just want to have a moment to catch my breath. that was supposed to be this summer, but that ended up being more about learning more about how to be alone and how to live with myself and that's not the same thing as time off. i might try to go to the show tonight. i have no doubts that the show itself will be awesome. it's just the getting there and back that worry me. i don't see an end to all of this weird metaphysical, and physical and emotional and work-action anytime, ever, for like the next four years...and the chance to just make tonight a temporary end and just fucking kick back and time out sounds awesome. but i'm probably panicking. that's easy to do when you talk to yourself more than anyone else. maybe i should go. maybe i'll take a nap first. zzzzzz...

i'm still trying to come up with a name for my new place.

the "batcave" doesn't seem appropriate anymore. this place is too chipper to be a cave. maybe i could call it like "ikea, jr." or "ben tries to be a real person". it could be a performance piece as well as a living space.

maybe just "the beige blizzard" or "the tan tornado".

it's been raining for nigh on three days here, ever since the crazy thunderstorm i blizzog'd about below. it actually doesn't bother me at all; i grew up in a place where it rains just about daily for five months or so out of the year, and honestly the sound of rain is a really relaxing, cleansing sort of sound for me. as much as i love the humidity-less air and climate in pullman, i do miss thunderstorms and heavy rains and splashing around in puddles and just, as crazy as it is, those kind of gray, cold, pre-rain overcast mornings when most people wake up and frown at the sky on the way to their cars and jobs. on those days i walk to work with a huge smile on my face, mostly.

i didn't sleep at all last night, and then i slept some this afternoon, but i haven't eaten anything since lunch. i'm not even noticing these things as they go by. i think that means i need to get into a better life-rhythm before classes and such start so i don't melt into mashed potatoes the first time i have to deal with something difficult. i'm eating now, sleeping shortly.

one of my RA posters fell off the wall while i was gone today...took a little chunk out of the paint on its way down to chip the desk and then smash glass all over the floor and, eventually, awkwardly into my foot. smash glass into my foot. that's what it did. yep. fortunately it was like a 3 dollar frame. it's hanging in the frame and glassless right now until another trip to moscow makes itself necessary.

more orientation tomorrow, then wilco. i'll be excited once i get there. i hate hate hate going to movies alone, but i've learned that it's better than the alternative of staying home by myself just because there's nobody to do anything with. it's good for me to get out occasionally. all the same, i hate the feeling of seeing something momentous or interesting or engaging and then just having tons of pent-up response-type feelings and not being able to share them. but that's my problem. anyway, i'll likely be feeling a bit angsty about that and about trying to figure out where to park in spokane and still get to the show on time while feeding myself, etc. i can handle cities when there's lots of walking involved...but cars? not so much. it's like there's a whole culture of car-drivers who mainly see cities as aboveground subway systems, and then there's the walkers who find the interesting stuff partially because they want to and partially because they have to wade through it to avoid the cars. obviously, the second option makes more sense to me. so when i'm in the first category, i get nervous. give me the highway. srsly.

orientation was great today. all the new people seem great (and i say that in complete honesty). the student panel was fucking awesome and i'm really lucky to have the kind of colleagues around that i do, despite my hesitations about the job itself. i do feel a bit more like i'm figuring out what i'm supposed to be doing here...i was a big fan of the "destiny" rhetoric back in may when i accepted this position, so i might as well stick with it...even though i feel like there are a lot of other things i need to do/take care of with my life right now, and being here is getting in the way of some of that...it's also good. i can't tackle everything at once. and some of those other issues may actually be sorted out en route to a Ph.D without my having to force them. there was at least a little evidence of that already today, in a few ways. i don't know why i always feel like i'm the one who knows the best way to get to everything. i don't.

i'm absolutely in the mood to sit and blab at someone for like four hours right now. but. there's nobody around. and i have to get up in six hours and orient all day and then drive to spokane and go to a show and then drive back at like midnight in the morning and not die or try hard at least not to so if i do i don't have to feel like it's my fault. and then i get to get up early friday morning and do more 101 planning. so...i'm going to go read a bit of this smarmy-ass book about corpses and then hopefully sleep.

simple math wednesday

1. laptop = Fender
2. Ben playing guitars or jams or trying to play percussion = Lazy Blazers
3. my latest youtube videos < any sense
4. (the amount of time spent playing on my computer yesterday - amount of time talking to real people yesterday) > (the amount of time spent playing on my computer today - amount of time talking to real people today), therefore (happiness today > happiness yesterday)
5. hours of sleep - 2 = 0
6. pie > cake
7. frozen pizza > stomachache
8. my age now - my age three years ago = 17 years
9. 30 > hours till wilco > 28
10. how much money i'd be making if i was still doing math > how much money i make writing and teaching + eleventy billion dollars

some afternoon bile

exhibit A.

what. the. fuck.

if vampire weekend is "punk", let alone the "most punk band of 2008", then up is black and white is east.

i see what you're doing here, prefix, and i even appreciate it to an extent because it's an interesting point you're making that being preppy is now somehow come full circle to the point that it's somehow rebellious, that prep is the new punk, that paul simon is the new husker du, that vampire weekend is the new nirvana. that's all very well and good, except for the part where it doesn't make any fucking sense.

i mean...okay, i AM one of those people who wants to hate vampire weekend but can't. they write good songs. but a band taking themselves seriously even though they write good pop music and not sad bastard folk or black metal or grunge or whatever is one thing. but making them out to be on the level of, say, the replacements or (insert your favorite punk music here) simply because they aren't ashamed of their image or their influences doesn't make any sense to me. U2 isn't embarrassed by the fact that they make millions off of sappy, super-processed stadium-rock. does that make them boundary-pushing rebels? i should get off my high horse. this article just sort of rubbed me the wrong way.

dismounting...now.

i think it was the liquor store or laundry-mat

since about three years ago when comforting things like on-demand hugs and getting to sleep next to someone at night ceased to be a possibility, i've dabbled in a number of replacement strategies, but not too many come as close to satisfactory as the combination of a pizza and warm pajama pants.

yes, i wear pajama pants when it's cold(er), because i (like any sane human male) wear boxers instead of briefs and despite all of the reasons they are superior they are a) not very good at trapping heat and b) fairly indecent if you have to answer the door in a hurry (aka you get lots and lots of packages from amazon.com at like eight in the morning all the time).

anyway, this isn't really a replacement, but it's a comfort. sometimes it's good to have hopes and dreams and wants that you haven't really acquired yet; but sometimes it's better to appreciate the things you have as more than just stepping stones to something better.

so, sleeping in a slightly dryer-warm bed after watching a movie and eating way too much pizza might not be the most exciting night on the block, but it works. i'm getting better at seeing the good in what i'm learning to make do with. with a lot of things. it helps.

i was a little bemused to see that RA deleted a bunch of his blog posts that i've been tangentially referring to throughout the week. it's sort of frustrating...i mean, there is absolutely nothing forcing him to blog interesting shit; it's not like he has a quota or a record label requirement or anything. and it's totally cool that he does it at all. i guess there's just a lot of things he writes that i find myself relating to on a very elemental level. the kinds of things that it would be nice to be able to go back and read again, you know, maybe even a day or two after the original post goes up. but it's always gone by then. i don't really see what you gain by constantly sort of erasing your tracks...i know it's a dumb thing to complain about, but think of how'd you'd feel if every time you cracked open one of your favorite books and was unsure as to whether this might be the one and only time you'd get to read it, that maybe after you were done it would - zap! - disappear and you'd never, ever be able to find or buy or read another copy again.

it's not a huge deal...i'm just a packrat, and a lot of the stuff he's written and posted over the last year has sort of helped me attack some of my own problems from new angles. it'd be cool to be able to hold on to that stuff. but then again, i suck at letting anything go. hence the packrat thing. plus, like i said, i don't understand the point of posting and then deleting everything ad nauseum. and i'm bad at dealing with things i don't understand. with people i don't understand. you can do the wackiest, most fucked-up shit, or the most mundane, boring shit and as long as it makes sense to me on some level, i'm fine with you. but i'm very very very easily frustrated by people acting in ways that don't make sense to me. that's probably why i never have many friends at one time. it's probably why i have to substitute pizza for girlfriends...

orientation starts in a few hours. i should probably try to get some sleep. i'm excited to meet people, but i also despise small talk. and not sleeping. so it's going to be an interesting morning. a little less than 48 hours to wilco. if i can get to spokane in one piece (and fucking get back in one piece) it should be great. pizza calls...NOM NOM NOM

apartment tour

for those of you who aren't of the still-picture persuasion, i now have a video presentation of my new living quarters.



and here's a video of the thunderstorm that went down last night. because it never storms here. and it did. and it was awesome.



and here's a video of much better storm that took place on a particularly long night of ground-sleeping in kansas in 2006.

maybe i should just become an art-douche and get a tumblr

seeing as how i obviously have OCPD (obsessive-compulsive posting disorder). i'm working on the two videos from last night, in case anyone cares.

while i'm working, in case you missed them the first time, here are the videos that serve as a reasonable summation of this past spring and how my brain was (not) working.







(note: "mr. potter", of course, refers to the antagonist of "it's a wonderful life", starring jimmy stewart)

now i understand why everyone else loves "summerteeth" and i have a hard time getting into it

because it sounds like the beatles. it sounds exactly like the fucking beatles. and i love the beatles. i do. but i also love wilco, and wilco is wilco, not the beatles. which is why i love "summerteeth", but i love it less than all the other wilco albums, despite the fact that it has some badass songs on it and i'm currently typing whilst stomping my feet and bobbing my head because of it.

oh, and "via chicago" is not a beatles song. it's a fucking song that rips your heart out and stomps on it and doesn't care if you deserve it or not, which is something the beatles would never do. sometimes i think i should just put "via chicago" and "dear chicago" on loop on my computer and just sit down and write a whole fucking novel because it would probably come out like all fractured and crazy and seething...like woolf's "the waves" or something.

wilco's been playing "pieholden suite" a lot lately. if they play it thursday i might asplode.

someday i'm going to standardize my use of quotation marks and italics on this blog. someday i will also comb my hair and open a grilled-cheese bar in some cool college town and then the world will explode because i'll finally be doing my job instead of pretending at things.

hey hey hey

think critically, MOTHERFUCKER!

huh?

movies and music and books and sometimes other peoples' wishful thinking leads us to believe that conflicts, romances, friendships, self-inquiry, etc. are always wrapped up in a neat little package that can easily be explained by a chalkboard diagram. learning is always a sudden, dramatic epiphany, victory and loss are black and white.

not really true. i think the best you can hope for (if you're not hell-bent on deluding yourself, of course) is to appreciate little moments. little moments between those big ol' scary gulfs of nothing that we instinctively want to give meaning to but can't. moments that are like signposts in the woods; not momentous in their own right, but useful in that they help define a little of the chaos. they say "yes, you're still going the right way" before you plunge back into the trees.

these little moments give us a chance to look and realize that maybe everything we did while hacking through that last big gulf of nothing wasn't completely fucked-up or wrong, maybe we're doing something right while being lost and flailing around like...well, like someone who's lost and flailing. or maybe you realize that you did do a lot of fucking up, but because of the equanimity of follow wanderers you were forgiven for that and can go on your way. i feel like i've been in the middle of one of these moments off and on for a day or two, and now it's passing again. sigh. it's humbling being lost, on having to rely on other people's directions. or other people's forgiveness. but we should be humble. look up.

i made some videos and stuff

but then actual real life things happened and oh also i remembered that my movie-editing shizz is on my laptop. which is like miles away. or a mile away. regardless, i can't edit my film of my apartment tour/tonight's orgasmic thunderstorm without it. so no video for you.

i'll edit it tomorrow, i promise.

for now it's shower and then mystic quest time. i wish i hadn't eaten that pizza last night. though watching "lars and the real girl" and eating pizza was a pretty transcendent experience.

though to be fair, making eye contact with someone who's prettier than i am can sometimes be a transcendent experience when you have the amount of stimulus in your life that i currently have.

no really, the movie was good. dana, you should see it even if you just lick the screen every time ryan gosling appears on it. i did the same thing with that one girl that's in it. it's fine. they understand.

i can't believe i haven't finished this mystic quest game yet. i wanted to fucking own the shit out of it, and now i'm only halfway through 24 hours after starting. i really need to finish so i can start my madden 2003 season. because i know how much you can't fucking wait for there to start being football screenshots up in this bitch again.

i remembered i like tupac a lot today. and death metal. and i'm on the fence about the new stereolab album. everyone's praising it because there's no 10-minute long droning songs with weird arranged passages. but that's what makes stereolab fucking awesome.

has anyone seen "everything is illuminated"? i'm thinking of watching it (it's in my lap right now), but i'm afraid it'll just make me all road-trippy and wanderlusty and make me want to do crazy shit for crazy reasons like freedom and love and junk. by which of course i mean awesome things for awesome reasons.

i said during a conversation today that i would love to date someone who can't cook. i just love cooking and also feeding people so damn much it's like fulfilling some basic animal need for me to be in love with someone who is kitchen-stupid. i mean, i guess the ideal solution might be that we both know how to cook, just to be safe in case i accidentally fingerpicked my fingers off or something...my last girlfriend cooked like a motherfucker and it was awesome. so. i'm a hypocrite. maybe.

if you want to see what i was up to yesterday, lauren wrote a pretty damn good synopsis of the interesting part (read: the part that actually featured me interacting with other awesome people). clickety clack. i hope it's cool that i linked to your blog, lauren. if not, tell me and i'll cease and desist.

the world is really big. and there are lots of black, empty spaces between things. but those spaces aren't as big as they seem like they are when you're looking right into the middle of one. sometimes smiling is free. and so are roses (ween reference, anyone?)

okay, i seriously have to shower now. to the ducks!

here are some pics, of me in my place, i took them tonight, something something in my car, duh-duh, duh-duh duh-duh

i think the subject line says it all.

cop fail

okay, bowes sent me this and as much as i usually don't find wacky local news type things funny, this was hilarious. it also brought back some of teh memories, if you know what i mean...

oh, shit.

saw this in the washington post by way of RAA.com...i don't even know what to say. the stupidity of people who keep wanting to make money off of distributing other people's art (not to mention the stupidity of the government in constantly refusing to objectively consider any information- or product-sharing over the internet) just infuriates me. it's literally the technological equivalent of refusing to let women vote because of the fear that they might all become hysterical and vote for some damned vagina-centric thing and then we'd all be out of luck. fucking idiots. yet another thing that, in twenty years when nobody buys physical music anymore and everyone has internet in their cars and homes and offices instead of radio or satellite, we're just going to shake our heads and think: "why didn't we have this 20 years ago? we had the technology back then..."

this is why.

Giant of Internet Radio Nears Its 'Last Stand'
Pandora, Other Webcasters Struggle Under High Song Fees

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, August 16, 2008; D01

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Pandora is one of the nation's most popular Web radio services, with about 1 million listeners daily. Its Music Genome Project allows customers to create stations tailored to their own tastes. It is one of the 10 most popular applications for Apple's iPhone and attracts 40,000 new customers a day.

Yet the burgeoning company may be on the verge of collapse, according to its founder, and so may be others like it.

"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."

The transformation of words, songs and movies to digital media has provoked a number of high-stakes fights between the owners of copyrighted works and the companies that can now easily distribute those works via the Internet. The doomsday rhetoric these days around the fledgling medium of Web radio springs from just such tensions.

Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies.

Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures.

As for Pandora, its royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million, Westergren said, a level that could doom it and other Web radio outfits.

This week, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) is trying to broker a last-minute deal between webcasters and SoundExchange, the organization that represents artists and record companies. The negotiations could reduce the per-song rate set by the federal panel last year.

The two sides appear to be far apart, however, with Berman frustrated.

"Most of the rate issues have not been resolved," Berman said. "If it doesn't get much more dramatic quickly, I will extricate myself from the process."

"We're losing money as it is," said Westergren, a former acoustic rocker. "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money."

The digital reproduction of works in print, audio and video has provoked waves of lawsuits over who should benefit from copyrighted works distributed over the Internet.

The media company Viacom sued YouTube for running clips. Record companies have sought to punish file-sharers. And in radio, the digital transformation has recharged long-standing disputes over how much performers and their record companies ought to be paid when a song gets played.

By contrast to traditional radio, which broadcast only one song at any given time, Pandora's technology allows listeners to create their own stations, through which hundreds of thousands of song are played simultaneously.

For example, if a Pandora listener expresses a preference for "Debaser" by the Pixies, Pandora will search its catalog for songs that have similar musical qualities and create a station accordingly.

Soon after its launch, Pandora drew raves and listeners. Revenue at the growing company, which is supported by venture capital investors, was slated to rise above costs for the first time in 2009, Westergren said.

Then came the decision by the Copyright Royalty Board.

"I was on the bus when I get this message on my Treo," Westergren said. "I thought, 'We're dead.' "

SoundExchange, the organization that represents performers and record companies, said it supports the higher royalties for Internet radio because musicians deserve a bigger cut of Internet radio profits.

"Our artists and copyright owners deserve to be fairly compensated for the blood and sweat that forms the core product of these businesses," said Mike Huppe, general counsel for SoundExchange.

The Copyright Royalty Board last year decided that the fee to play a music recording on Web radio should step up from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2006 to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2010.

Multiplied by the millions of songs and thousands of listeners Pandora serves, that means the company will have to pay about $17 million this year, Westergren said.

The effect may be even worse for smaller outfits. Many small webcasters have said that the royalties as determined by the copyright board would be 100 percent to 300 percent of annual revenue, said David Oxenford, a lawyer who represents some of them.

"Obviously, that's not going to work," he said.

Even more galling to webcasters is the fact that they pay more for playing a song than traditional or satellite radio, a result of patchwork regulation created as each technology emerged.

Traditional radio pays nothing in performance royalties, though SoundExchange is pressing to change that. Satellite radio pays 6 or 7 percent of revenue. And then there are webcasters, which pay per song, per listener.

Using listener figures from Arbitron for XM Satellite Radio, it is possible to estimate that the company will pay about 1.6 cents per hour per listener when the new rates are fully adapted in 2010. By contrast, Web radio outlets will pay 2.91 cents per hour per listener.

SoundExchange officials argue that because different media have different profit margins, it is appropriate to set different royalty rates.

Moreover, they complain, Internet radio stations have done too little to make money from playing their songs.

Pandora makes advertising money only from spots placed on its Web page, not on audio ads that run between songs. Other stations are similarly struggling to persuade companies to pay for advertising in the new medium.

"We're taking this challenge very seriously," Westergren said. "When we have our board meetings, the central topic is the revenue trajectory, not how happy our users are."

He said Pandora has a 30-person ad sales operation, or about 25 percent of its workforce. The company will soon start running subtler ads similar to those on National Public Radio, too, he said.

"Something like 'The next half hour is brought to you by . . .' " he said.

Westergren and other webcasters argue that Web radio, which generally plays a far wider range of music than is offered by traditional radio, provides invaluable promotion for many independent musicians.

Matt Nathanson, a singer-songwriter who has recorded for both major and independent record labels, said he is worried that the demands placed on Internet radio could "choke" the industry before it gets its footing.

"Net radio is good for musicians like me, and I think most musicians are like me," he said. "The promotion it provides is far more important than the revenue."

Westergren, seemingly wearied by the constant haggling over the issue, signaled that Pandora's investors may also be impatient for an end.

"We're funded by venture capital," he said. "They're not going to chase a company whose business model has been broken. So if it doesn't feel like its headed towards a solution, we're done."