i read this article the other day, and it got me thinking. mostly about two things. first, is there any truth to the idea that albums are getting shorter? second, if so, who cares? i mean, an album is an album, and anyone who is a genuine artist who is making an album as part of being a genuine artist (you know, instead of making an album the record company tells you to make so you can get some cash) is probably going to make it however short or long as they want, and good on them if so.
i mean, most of the extremely short albums and extremely long albums i've ever heard have been by artists who could never be accused of holding up the status quo. i own a mason jennings album that is around 24 minutes long and a phish album that is 78 1/2 minutes long. i paid the same amount for each (approximately), and do i feel ripped off somehow when i listen to the shorter album? no. if i get a disc (like the abovemention phish album) that is completely full to its capacity with songs, i'm still going to be happy if those songs are good. and if they're bad, i'm going to feel ripped off. likewise, if somebody wants to give me 24 minutes of their best work and doesn't like anything else enough to include it on the album, then i'm willing to take them at their word that those 24 minutes are the real deal.
does that mean i think nobody should give a shit whether albums are long or short? no, not really...but after years of concertgoing and blog-reading, i've seen many a concert review spoiled by people bitching because a band played 20 songs instead of 22 (seriously, the excellent wilco show in spokane last year was largely panned because the band "quit early", playing two whole songs less than their tour average). so maybe i'm a little sensitive to the length issue. i don't see why album or concert length should matter that much if what you're getting is excellent. sure, if we hear a good album or see a good concert, we're going to want more. but we just have to listen, we don't have to actually write the songs. that shit takes time.
i saw m.ward this past spring, and it was one of the best concerts i've ever seen. i drove all the way to portland, got a hotel, and hung around all day waiting for the show, to see him play for 55 minutes. is that short by most concert standards? yes. would i have liked for him to play longer? yes. was i appreciative of what i got? yes.
if you don't like it, just take your attention and money elsewhere. but that's a point for the next post...
Aug 9, 2009
Aug 5, 2009
social not working
i just realized why i stopped blogging for so long. because there are too many social networks. everytime i've seen something interesting or read something interesting, or done something interesting lately that i've wanted to share online, i've had to face the aggravating choice of whether i should share it on twitter, facebook, or my blog. and, obviously, it takes a hell of a lot longer to share things on the two things in that list that aren't twitter.
where i first started my blog to keep in practice writing during grad school (even if i'm writing about the most mundane things, it's a different kind of writing than school writing), and that included finding cool things on the internet or in real life and then writing about those.
as much as i like twitter, somewhere along the way of becoming a fan of using it, i also became a fan of just sharing stuff or tweeting about stuff for the sake of being a presence on the intarwebs. and that's stupid. at least for me. so i'm going to try to go back to just writing about stuff for the sheer, unbearable joy (HYPERBOLE!) of it, rather than tweeting stuff because i wanna be a tweeter. some stuff is worth tweeting about, but, really, my life isn't that interesting. yeah, i know, that's a huge surprise to you perhaps. but it's true.
besides, i think that when i post a blog on here it shows up on facebook anyway.
sharing real life on the internet is just getting too complicated; at least if you don't want to spend 45 hours a day on your computer. which, as i learned this summer, i don't.
now that i've said that, i'm going to go work on archive materials on my computer for 45 hours.
a brother gots to get paid.
where i first started my blog to keep in practice writing during grad school (even if i'm writing about the most mundane things, it's a different kind of writing than school writing), and that included finding cool things on the internet or in real life and then writing about those.
as much as i like twitter, somewhere along the way of becoming a fan of using it, i also became a fan of just sharing stuff or tweeting about stuff for the sake of being a presence on the intarwebs. and that's stupid. at least for me. so i'm going to try to go back to just writing about stuff for the sheer, unbearable joy (HYPERBOLE!) of it, rather than tweeting stuff because i wanna be a tweeter. some stuff is worth tweeting about, but, really, my life isn't that interesting. yeah, i know, that's a huge surprise to you perhaps. but it's true.
besides, i think that when i post a blog on here it shows up on facebook anyway.
sharing real life on the internet is just getting too complicated; at least if you don't want to spend 45 hours a day on your computer. which, as i learned this summer, i don't.
now that i've said that, i'm going to go work on archive materials on my computer for 45 hours.
a brother gots to get paid.
Aug 4, 2009
how can this many grapes only cost 99 cents?!
seriously. this bag is the size of my head.
also, two things i just learned:
1. it is awesome to eat a donut in your car, in a car wash, while waiting for your car to be washed.
2. it is the opposite of awesome if the passenger side door's weather stripping has fallen off and everytime the wash-hose sprays on that side of the car, it actually sprays through the door and you are forced to defend yourself.
that was the most eventful car wash of my life.
i'm supposed to see phish at the gorge this weekend. i only have one of the four tickets right now; the others are still supposed to be coming in the mail before friday. i wouldn't be surprised if i just didn't get them. the entire thing (the band reunion, getting tickets, going to the gorge, etc.) has sort of seemed like a weird dream anyway. that said, it was a dream that cost me about 200 bucks, so i'd better get the goddamn tickets.
you know, i never really appreciated the foo fighters when they were famous. maybe they still are, i don't really listen to the radio. but i picked up most of their discography this weekend and i'm really liking pretty much everything i hear. i would have liked it even more like five years ago. oh well.
my friend emily dropped off donuts for me this morning, mistakenly thinking i was working in pullman and not moscow. by the time i got to the donuts, they had been poached slightly by other grad students. not that i blame them. if i had happened upon a box of donuts, i would have taken the entire thing.
hearing "big me" again makes me remember constantly making horrifically awkward eye contact over and over again with the girl i had a crush on during our 8th grade dance. you know, instead of actually just talking to her. good to see some things never change.
it feels oddly good to spew random garbage text into the intarwebs again.
another interesting note: i was washing care bears using the traditional method today (bear tied into pillowcase, inserted into washing machine) and somehow funshine bear got loose during the spin cycle. i tied that pillowcase tight, too. this just confirms what i've suspected since i was 3...my care bears are actually alive.
yeah...i found my care bears from when i was a wee laddie while i was home, and couldn't not bring them back to my apartment for some reason. there aren't enough fluffy, cute things around here.
i'm getting old and soft. i'm never going to friended on facebook by megatron and starscream at this rate.
also, two things i just learned:
1. it is awesome to eat a donut in your car, in a car wash, while waiting for your car to be washed.
2. it is the opposite of awesome if the passenger side door's weather stripping has fallen off and everytime the wash-hose sprays on that side of the car, it actually sprays through the door and you are forced to defend yourself.
that was the most eventful car wash of my life.
i'm supposed to see phish at the gorge this weekend. i only have one of the four tickets right now; the others are still supposed to be coming in the mail before friday. i wouldn't be surprised if i just didn't get them. the entire thing (the band reunion, getting tickets, going to the gorge, etc.) has sort of seemed like a weird dream anyway. that said, it was a dream that cost me about 200 bucks, so i'd better get the goddamn tickets.
you know, i never really appreciated the foo fighters when they were famous. maybe they still are, i don't really listen to the radio. but i picked up most of their discography this weekend and i'm really liking pretty much everything i hear. i would have liked it even more like five years ago. oh well.
my friend emily dropped off donuts for me this morning, mistakenly thinking i was working in pullman and not moscow. by the time i got to the donuts, they had been poached slightly by other grad students. not that i blame them. if i had happened upon a box of donuts, i would have taken the entire thing.
hearing "big me" again makes me remember constantly making horrifically awkward eye contact over and over again with the girl i had a crush on during our 8th grade dance. you know, instead of actually just talking to her. good to see some things never change.
it feels oddly good to spew random garbage text into the intarwebs again.
another interesting note: i was washing care bears using the traditional method today (bear tied into pillowcase, inserted into washing machine) and somehow funshine bear got loose during the spin cycle. i tied that pillowcase tight, too. this just confirms what i've suspected since i was 3...my care bears are actually alive.
yeah...i found my care bears from when i was a wee laddie while i was home, and couldn't not bring them back to my apartment for some reason. there aren't enough fluffy, cute things around here.
i'm getting old and soft. i'm never going to friended on facebook by megatron and starscream at this rate.
oh, right.
i just spent most of 2 months having the craziest, dislocatingest, most interesting summer break evar. i'd promise that i'll post pictures and recount fun things, but honestly i'm still posting pictures from my san francisco trip, and that was in february. dammit, i need to:
1. stop doing fun things
2. hire an editor
3. get more free time
or a combination of those things.
anyway, more later.
1. stop doing fun things
2. hire an editor
3. get more free time
or a combination of those things.
anyway, more later.
heat stroking out
for some reason, i respond very, very poorly to heat. as i explained to LD today, any heat above 80 degrees literally just makes me hate everything and everyone on earth 24/7 until it goes away. unfortunately, it's been around 95 for the last few days in pullman. that = RAGE.
for one, why the FUCK do no campuses have places to park anymore? i mean, i realize that complaining about parking on campus is like complaining about genocide (in that everyone does it, i mean)...but there is the general 10,000 spots-for-20,000 students complaining, and then there is the it's-the-middle-of-summer-are-you-serious complaining. i have been unable to find any kind of parking on three different college campuses this week, parking that i needed for the purposes of running short errands each time.
okay, let's get one thing out of the way before i continue ranting on the internet: i don't like parking passes. i don't buy them. ever. because, since 1999, i've walked to school every day, and i don't see the need, if i drive my car to campus once a week, to pay three figures a semester to park (maybe) on campus in premium (maybe) parking areas. it's stupid. if i was a commuter, yeah, i could see it being worth the money. but i'm not. unfortunately, it seems like nowadays, every campus i spend any time on is being renovated to make pass-parking more prevalent and non-pass-parking at best incredibly time-consuming and inconvenient and at worse non-existent. i don't get this. there's clearly a market for people like me, who need to access campus via car maybe once or twice a week, or for 15 minutes a day, and who pay meters to do so. every single day of my eight (?) semesters at WSU all the parking meter spots outside avery were full. and for those who didn't pay the meter, the university raked in even more money by ticketing them. so to say that metered spots don't bring in cash doesn't fly. now those meter spots are gone, replaced by a pass-only lot and a pedestrian mall.
i hate to say it, but in this instance, KSU is somehow the innovator when it comes to non-pass parking. when i went there, there was a large pay-per-hour lot located centrally but unobtrusively on campus that one could always access, could always park at, and could, provided one returned within an hour, only have to pay a quarter for parking. it was the perfect solution.
with a parking lot like that, i could avoid situations like today, where there is literally nowhere on campus that i could park my car legally (both because of construction and because of pass-only lots) where i could access my building on foot after parking in fewer than 15 minutes. i have a box of books i need to get to my office, and there's really no way to get that box there. there's a perimeter of mixing trucks circling the building at 500 or so feet, then a ring of pass-only lots, and then local neighborhoods (whose curbs, surprisingly, are already all full of cars).
obviously i'm just flailing around pointlessly, but i've never understood this all-or-nothing approach to campus parking. i guess my life is just going to continue to be IMPOSSIBLY HARD! WAAAAH!
anyway, i'm also pissed that dabco jacked up their laundry rates to 1.25. again, no big deal, but when the heat sets in i tend to have blood in my eyes.
kill.
and such.
for one, why the FUCK do no campuses have places to park anymore? i mean, i realize that complaining about parking on campus is like complaining about genocide (in that everyone does it, i mean)...but there is the general 10,000 spots-for-20,000 students complaining, and then there is the it's-the-middle-of-summer-are-you-serious complaining. i have been unable to find any kind of parking on three different college campuses this week, parking that i needed for the purposes of running short errands each time.
okay, let's get one thing out of the way before i continue ranting on the internet: i don't like parking passes. i don't buy them. ever. because, since 1999, i've walked to school every day, and i don't see the need, if i drive my car to campus once a week, to pay three figures a semester to park (maybe) on campus in premium (maybe) parking areas. it's stupid. if i was a commuter, yeah, i could see it being worth the money. but i'm not. unfortunately, it seems like nowadays, every campus i spend any time on is being renovated to make pass-parking more prevalent and non-pass-parking at best incredibly time-consuming and inconvenient and at worse non-existent. i don't get this. there's clearly a market for people like me, who need to access campus via car maybe once or twice a week, or for 15 minutes a day, and who pay meters to do so. every single day of my eight (?) semesters at WSU all the parking meter spots outside avery were full. and for those who didn't pay the meter, the university raked in even more money by ticketing them. so to say that metered spots don't bring in cash doesn't fly. now those meter spots are gone, replaced by a pass-only lot and a pedestrian mall.
i hate to say it, but in this instance, KSU is somehow the innovator when it comes to non-pass parking. when i went there, there was a large pay-per-hour lot located centrally but unobtrusively on campus that one could always access, could always park at, and could, provided one returned within an hour, only have to pay a quarter for parking. it was the perfect solution.
with a parking lot like that, i could avoid situations like today, where there is literally nowhere on campus that i could park my car legally (both because of construction and because of pass-only lots) where i could access my building on foot after parking in fewer than 15 minutes. i have a box of books i need to get to my office, and there's really no way to get that box there. there's a perimeter of mixing trucks circling the building at 500 or so feet, then a ring of pass-only lots, and then local neighborhoods (whose curbs, surprisingly, are already all full of cars).
obviously i'm just flailing around pointlessly, but i've never understood this all-or-nothing approach to campus parking. i guess my life is just going to continue to be IMPOSSIBLY HARD! WAAAAH!
anyway, i'm also pissed that dabco jacked up their laundry rates to 1.25. again, no big deal, but when the heat sets in i tend to have blood in my eyes.
kill.
and such.
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