click makes real big.

not beyond what's going around the intertubes anyway, but I'd like to note:

And yes – I criticized Whelan rather harshly. But that’s what the blogosphere is about. Blogging is not for the thin-skinned. And you would think that someone who spends their days trying to destroy other people’s reputations in dishonest and inflammatory ways wouldn’t be so childish and thin-skinned.

You'd be wrong. Like, every single time.

Cornelius - Point.
Totally awesome. Posting the video because it, too, is awesome.

*Radiohead update:
Turns out the folks who suggested Amnesiac were on the money. Behind the scenes, I was, uh, "bequeathed" a large portion of their catalog, and it seems that every time I hear a Radiohead song that's interesting, or good, or where Yorke's voice doesn't feel like it's stabbing me in the spine, it's from Amnesiac.



Anyway, one thing about the endowment I was bequeathed is that I can no longer fit my music collection on the music drive. Kind of a pain. I don't have the time to surmount that obstacle, so most of what I got remains unlistened-to. I've been tying to rectify that by putting things on my thumb drive and taking them to work to listen to. And thus far:

*A Silver Mount Zion - He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms...
*Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons
Yes, please! The guy's voice is a little annoying, but he doesn't use it much, and the music is WAY in the pocket of 'things that are highly interesting to me.' Definitely backing this up with a purchase or two...



*Acidwolf - Legacy 1995-2005
Electronic music, as I've said before, is generally a pretty hard sell for me. This has some interesting bits, but the lion's share of it borders what I don't like about electronic music - there's nothing here I haven't heard a million times before, and nothing that stand out stylistically. There's a million artists - like, literally - that sound like this. And actually, reading up on the guy this sounds like the project he does that I'd be LEAST inclined to like. I may check out his other stuff, but acid/rave music by and large doesn't do much for me.



And I'm finally listening to Kayo Dot's Blue Lambency Downward right now, but I have yet to hear a Toby Driver/Maudlin of the Well/Kayo Dot record that made ANY sense to me on first listen, so I'll hold off on a review for now...

[posted to facebook last weekend}

I dream of reviewing these things individually and in depth, but it's just not realistic. So, brief notes on purchases from the lat couple of months:

Dan Deacon - Bromst
pretty fucking cool

Big Business - Mind The Drift
hugely disappointing from a sound/production standpoint

Masada Book 2/Jamie Saft Trio - Astaroth; Book of Angels Vol 1
piano jazz trio; doesn't sound very Masada, but grows on me every time I hear it

MB2/Masada String Trio - Azazel; BoA vol 2
haven't heard this much, but I like what I have heard

MB2/Mark Feldman & Sylvie Courvoisier - Malphas; BoA Vol 3
piano & violin duo; really cool

MB2/Koby Israelite - Szobas; BoA Vol 4
crazy stylistic mishmash/jump-cut chaos!

yes, I am purchasing all of the new Masada releases and in order, too

Mastodon - Call of the Mastodon
Mastodon - Remission
got these at the same time and they haven't differentiated from each other yet. Early Mastodon was pretty raw!

Mastodon - Crack the Skye
this is by far the most excellent thing I've bought this year.

Electric Wizard - Witchcult Today
Black Sabbath-worshiping doom/stoner/sludge. This kind of stuff is a dime a dozen, and I can't stop buying more!

Anthology of American Folk Music, Harry Smith,ed.
Harry Smith collected tons of pre-war shellac records and saved them from being melted down during the war. Later he released a quasi-bootleg 3-volume set on the then-new LP format, and that was the first thing rereleased when the Smithsonian bought the record label. I've been collecting a lot of indigenous and ethnic music to get some distance and perspective on the conceits of western music and the pop culture explosion of the 20th century, and it's good to hear what American music was like before then...

Kayo Dot - Blue Lambency Downward
have not heard this yet

Bill Frisell - All Hat OST
or, as it should be subtitled, "Bill Frisell records another 120 versions of 'John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man'"

Venetian Snares - Filth
speaking of things I can't get enough of, Aaron Funk creates another 45 minutes of grating, short-attention-span drill and bass, and I buy it. That's just how it works.

The Telescopes - Singles Compilation
utterly indistinguishable from My Bloody Valentine

Porn/Merzbow - ...and The Devil Makes Three
Hey, it's a Merzbow album! SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Occasionally some drums, guitar, and analog keyboards peek through, but mostly SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

On order:
Dinosaur Jr - Farm
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Nadja - When I See The Sun Always Shines on TV
Children - Hard Times Hangin' at the End of the World
Nels Cline - Coward
Heaven and Hell - The Devin You Know
Shitmat - One Foot In The Rave

Mostly because I didn't want to pass on any of these. As always, click to hyoojenate:



( five moar )

Rare, I know.

I can run reports showing what labor was imported for each week in 2008.
I can reconcile those figures to ADP gross payroll figures.
I can reconcile those figures to what was posted to the general ledger.

The moment I try to reconcile ADP gross payroll to the general ledger, it's like trying to reconcile quantum physics and general relativity: certain variables go to infinity and suddenly I'm looking at a discrepancy far larger than anything I'd previously explained.

Accounting fail shall continue next week, assuming I don't get picked for yuri doody.

My router problems got so annoying it kept me away from here. Almost every time I hit my friends page it would kill the router, so I just stayed away until I had time to deal with it.

I did some online research and found there were lots of people that had the same problem, specifically with my type of router (Netgear WGT624 v2, that identifies itself as v3 when you log in). Netgear doesn't even acknowledge the problem, let along provide a solution. Even the volunteer moderators on the Netgear board were putting out the same kool-ade. (And what kind of person volunteers to moderate the discussion board for a hardware company's product? That makes NO sense to me...)

I was unable to find any hacks or workarounds, and the only solution anyone had found for the problem was...
Throw money at it.

So I have a brand-new, sleek, shiny Linksys router that was a pain in the ass to set up but now is serving my as many pictures as I throw at it from any website I choose.

The only downside is that its security model is incompatible with my oldest computer which now can't connect to the internet at all, further decreasing its usefulness...

Oh well. I can has internet now.

Diagnose THIS shit!

I've got the cable from the Time Warner evil empire plugged into ye olde Netgear router, running a secure network called NoMeansNo, 'cause that's how I roll.

For a little more than a month now, the router has been going south. I'll be surfing merrily along, hit a link, and... NOTHING. The signal light on the cable modem beeps right along, but displays no outgoing signal when a link is clicked. Reset involves pulling the plug on the router, then plugging it back in.

Because of lazy, and busy, and because I've thrown enough money at computer problems to know that throwing money at computer problems is not a solid fix-it strategy, I've been dealing with this for a while. And some patterns have emerged. Namely, that it doesn't seem to be dying, but that certain sites shut it off.

At first, it seemed to be associated with livejournal. I'd have, say, a tab each for lj, facebook, and twitter going; I'd hit reload on lj and switch tabs, and suddenly the send light on the router would go off and stay there. BUT in the last couple of days I've narrowed it down to an rss feed and the blog it feeds from: amandapalmer.net.

And specifically this link does it with 100% reliability: http://bit.ly/afp032409
The text and web graphics load, but the pictures in the post itself load only partially, then my router stops and the network is no longer visible.
This happens on both Mac and Windows. I have not tried other browsers than Firefox.

Any ideas?

I am rapidly approaching a denouement.

I'm getting older.
My energy level is waning.
I'm out of shape.
My lower back has been bothering me - mostly due to the out of shape part; I keep pulling muscles, and they take weeks to heal.
My low energy/no motivation periods may or may not be lasting longer, but they seem to be more crippling than they have in the past.
And work is demanding more of my time and attention, and just generally being a bummer.

In short, I will soon have to choose between what I like to do with my time, and what I do to make money.

And there's really no choice to be made: the job is toast. Abandoning music, in favor of the office job and perhaps an increased level of exercise, leads inexorably to a life of bummer after bummer, zero personal fulfillment, an early grave, and a fat paycheck.

Fuck the fat paycheck. Fat as it is, it's not large enough to retire on, and I'm being hemmed in at work from trying to grow myself and my potential and the attendant paycheck growth potential. The company pension plan folded one month after I joined the company, and I've lost $10,000 in 401k money in the last year. Taking current value versus time in the program, I will be 62 be the time my 401k account reaches $100,000. Granted the market won't be bad forever and it probably won't actually take that long, but I really don't have a lot to look forward to in this life if I continue on this supposedly 'sane' path. I don't even care whether I show up tomorrow morning or not; in fact, I'd rather burn the bridge so that working in an office is never an option again...

I gotta make this music shit pay somehow. No two ways about it.

I have seed money. I have a record that is nearly complete and sounds like nothing you've ever heard in your life. I have enough material in the vault that I could weather years of writer's block if it ever came to it.
I also live in a very expensive part of the country. Moving from the OC is not merely an option, it will probably be a necessity. $1300/month for a 2 bedroom is doable, but will probably exhaust my seed money in about a year.

I need:
A city.
Workable public transpo system preferred.
A scene where people actually go to see bands.
Musicians.
Friends.
Outdoorsy things to do and see.

So:
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
Santa Cruz
Portland
Seattle
Austin
New York
Florida

Los Angeles is probably the best bet. As much as I hate hate hate hate hate it there, there's lots of places to play, lots of musicians to hook up with, and some of them actually play odd things. Plus the film industry is there, and my best bet for my stuff is to try to get it in to films. LA largely fails the outdoorsy stuff, but I guess that depends on where you are in the city.

San Diego does not appear to have much of a scene. A couple places to play, lots of out-of-town tribute bands.

SF would certainly not solve my rent problem. Plus it sounds to me like people don't actually go out to see local bands much.

Santa Cruz. Didn't particularly enjoy it the first time I lived there.

Portland. Places to play, musicians to play with, small but present avante-garde, not far from Seattle. If I definitely go the band route, this should be the place.

Austin. Don't know a damn thing about it, but it's Texas - about as remote from the film industry as possible, and hundreds of miles from other places to play.

New York. Shares a lot of the benefits of LA and the downsides of SF.

Florida. Oh HELL no.


It's hard to think about in any real way. I like it here. I have a shit-ton of friends here - even though I don't get out to see them much. My family is here. I don't WANT to leave, but staying here is not serving any purpose beyond comfort, and is thus part of the trap I find myself in.

So I'm pondering...

I am still awaiting the eternal bliss, though.

So here's an old one:

Cross-posted from the facebook. Mostly because this is the most writing I've done in ages...

At first I didn't think I could name 15 albums that totally changed things for me. But as a total music dork, once I started really thinking about it I made it to 38. I've whittled it down to 18, but these are just the most important of the most important...

0.5 Yes - Roundabout
Special mention goes to this track. One of my earliest sentient memories is walking around in our apartment on Balboa Blvd in pitch blackness with the acapella section of this emanating from mom's clock radio; it was totally fascinating to me and this one incident, more than any other, is probably what hooked me on music to the degree that I am...

( on with it, then )

So hot on the heals of [work meeting redacted] wherein it was discussed that [redacted, but essentially: your ass is ours for the whole month of March] (and the possibility of [redacted] at the end of THAT) comes, well, THIS:
http://www.yoshis.com/sanfrancisco/calendar?y=2009&m=03

Yes, folks. JOHN FUCKING ZORN is going to be in California and putting on various shows from 3/10 to 3/15. Note they've cleverly structured it so people like me will want to see Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights, and so might as well catch the stuff in between as well.

Except for me, I'll be [redacted]

So I know it appears that I've gone off to the great FaceBook in the... FaceBook... but I'm still around. I still use my LJ friends page as an rss aggregator and I still read you all. Haven't been talkative and haven't had the attention span to make anything more than stupid one-liners that are more suited to Twitter and/or FaceBook status update.

Also trying to step away from the internet; yoga, guitar playing, mixing, writing music, working, etc. I'm even thinking about reading more actual, you know, BOOKS.

Anyway, here's a FB cross-post:

OK Radiohead fans:
Convert me.
I'm about to go wild at Amazon and purchase multiple Masada and Queen records, and I will give this band another shot. I have a lot in common musically with the three of you that I tagged (Matt, Norm, Ray, not a livejournal between 'em - ed), and you all seem to be really into this boring derivative band with a stupid name, SO:
Please to be suggesting a record that is not OK Computer that stands a chance of convincing me that this is more than an inexplicably popular band that is totally boring and derivative and has a stupid, stupid name.
Thank you!

That goes for anyone else - I will buy one (1) Radiohead album and dump it in the iPod and actually listen to it multiple time. Whichever one gets mentioned the most will get the nod.

I'm still processing that reality.

Since we last discussed grandma, we'd moved her out of the horrible, dingy, run-down old folks apartments she lived at in beautiful South Gate and into a really nice nursing home in Long Beach.

Her quality of life had been going down exponentially in the last couple of months. She'd long been having shoulder problems, which came from the use of her walker; she was way underweight and could not seem to put more on; and her mind was starting to go. Worse, she was aware of it - she knew she was forgetting things that happened a few hours before, and knew that it was weird that she occasionally could not identify where she was or why she was there.

She was tested for Alzheimer's disease a couple times, and it definitely wasn't that. We'll probably never know, but whatever it was it was affecting her coordination. Apparently she fell last week, and mom said when she visited that she wasn't even herself - completely confused, talking really slow, no real vestiges of her personality there. Apparently she fell again last night, but this time no one else was around. My Aunt Maureen showed up for a visit and found her unconscious on the floor, bleeding from a cut to the head. Apparently she was awake when she got to the hospital, and aware of who she was and that she'd fallen, but she did not live long enough for my mom to get there, which sucks beyond anything I can conceive of at the moment.

Grandma was an old-school liberal intellectual. She married catholic, but I don't know if she was ever a believer; certainly not when I knew her. She kept being pronounced barren or told she should not have more kids (I forget) again and again, but kept having kids - Maureen, Mike, Vicki, John. So according to the medical establishment of the 1940's, Vicki shouldn't exists and therefore neither should I. She adopted Jim Wilson (I believe he's her second cousin) and raised him as her own.

She'd been a retiree on a pension for as long as I can remember. Never much of a materialist, during the 70's and 80's she save the excess of her living expenses and go somewhere every year - Europe, Turkey, different parts of the US. She was an amazing artist - to this day I still adore her sepia-style art, where she would freehand-sketch a scene in brown sharpie, then add watercolor accents in a paler color of brown. She also worked in oil (most of which she sold on consignment) and watercolors, which we probably found a hundred of when we cleaned out her apartment a few months ago.

She was able to live independently well into her old age, requiring assisted living only in about the last 4 or 5 months of her life. It's probably for the best that she went now, as her current state of living was already making her miserable.

Still, I'm going to miss her.

Yesterday I was doing busywork and listening to one of my many new Bill Frisell boots, and I decided it was headphone time. I turned the iPod off and went out to the car.

Upon return, the iPod was dead. The play clicker didn't click and no amount of futzing with it could bring it to life.

And it was like having the internet go down and suddenly realizing how dependent you've become: that's my car stereo! That's my entertainment at work! I have all the songs for the next record tagged in there! There's an iTunes-only album that I accidentally deleted off my hard drive at home in there!

I have to get another one... NOW.

So I WENT to the Church of Scientology after work intending to buy another one. Ran into capitano and bride, buying an iPhone. Went up to the front and noticed the Recycle iPod = 10% off new one" sign and said SHIT YES and went out to the car for the old one.

Was flagged by one of the orange shirt guys on entry and told him the story. He futzed with it for a moment and said he probably couldn't get me in at the Genius Bar that day, and I said whatever I'm going to recycle it. He flagged down a sales guy for me, and when I reached down for the iPod it was ALIVE.

Sales guy plugged it into a laptop and futzed with it for a long time; figured it was messed up but had no idea why. The battery was drained for some reason - it's NEVER had battery problems. Told me to restore it.

Spent most of last evening duplicating playlists BY HAND (thank you for making THAT easy, Apple). Restored and added some bare essentials. It appears to be alive, and appears to be holding a charge. We'll see what happens today...

(click for gallery, etc)

As you can see from the previous years (2007, 2008) I generally look for the oddballs. But even though I've heard that music instrument sales are stable right now, it looks like everyone just brought out their grade-A items and left the weirdos at home. As a result, I actually took pictures of actual ludicrously-priced vintage guitars.

These things are supposedly priced as such because they sound "better." But are you actually going to play a guitar that you spend $40,000 on? No you're going to hang it on a wall, or put it in a case in a closet for it to "appreciate." You can't even fix or replace the fucked-up hardware these things have because the value will plummet the moment the soldering iron touches it. Recockulous. It's not a Stradivarius, people: it's a Fender. Get over it.

Even knowing I have it all backed up to 2 separate drives and have mp3s of all of it, deleting 2 years worth of work off my hard drive is nerve-wracking...