I discovered Marianne Moore secondhand, through Christine Fellows. To paraphrase one of her lyrics, what's good enough for Christine is plenty good enough for me. I had heard of her, vaguely, in my modern-poetry survey courses, but now I have an anthology of hers. Well, I have had it for some time, but I just started reading it, haphazardly, whatever poem I happened to open to. I will definitely be spending a lot of time with it. At first, of course, I flipped through the poems referenced in the songs, but that leads to branching out.
"Roses Only" is a sucker punch of a poem. By that, I mean it's the sort of thing that makes you stop when you get to the end and reread it, and pause, and sit in fascination for a few minutes, and have a small epiphany. I'm not going to describe it further. Read it. Don't Google it; you won't find it unless you know the text. You need paper and pages for it to work.
The particular anthology I bought has a rather fascinating introduction. The editor of the anthology was a good friend of Marianne's and had more access to her work than some. Apparently, Marianne was particular about which of her poems were public and which were not. In one case, she edited one of her poems to three lines, after the fact. This anthology, if the editor is to be trusted (and why not?) collects all these half-poems, efforts, and such and reprints them. That's largely why I bought it; after all, I am a completionist at heart.
It's an interesting question: should unfinished art, of any kind, be available to the public? Unfinished books, unfinished songs, unfinished visual art. There's, of course, a question of quality. I haven't read any of Tolkien's latest doctored-up unfinished books, but word is that they suck. Music demos tend to fare better. Finding artists' demo recordings requires connections. In some cases the Internet provides these connections, but not always. The ones I have heard tended to be better.
~*~*~
This afternoon, I both had free time and an obligation to go to the bank. Times like this are perfect to go support downtown Chapel Hill. I had lunch (a grilled chicken sandwich on wheatberry bread with lettuce, tomato, swiss, and orange-cranberry sauce: not bad), and a small dessert (from Locopops. They did not have chocolate lavender today, but the white chocolate/orange/nutmeg one I got instead was almost as good.) I decided to back up my previous post, so I went to CD Alley and ended up with a Tanya Donelly CD and a ticket to the Weakerthans concert at Cat's Cradle in April. My ticket number is in the low single digits. This makes me sad. On the Kristin board someone had reviewed her Chapel Hill concert and said there were fourteen people, total, there. FOURTEEN. Come on, people. This will make only my second concert here, although Glen Hansard is coming to Raleigh in May, so that'll be four.
As for the Tanya CD, I love it.
I also had the best Earl Grey tea of my life. This isn't saying much, considering my only exposure was from tea bags. This was like being punched, while the tea-bag versions were like being tapped on the shoulder, meekly, by someone who was afraid to interfere with your day. I'm only on my first cup, too, and each successive cup gets stronger. I suspect that by the end of the afternoon I will have bruises on my taste buds. Pleasant ones. Incidentally, you know you're frequenting the right coffee shop - or any shop, I suppose - when you recognize the song playing as something you listen to on a regular basis.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
February 27, 2008: On the closing of Schoolkids
One would expect me to have a solidifed opinion on Schoolkids Records' impending closing. After all, I buy CDs, which assigns me to a certified campus minority. If I can indulge myself in a bit of elitism for a moment, I probably care more about my music than seventy-five percent of the people here, and I'm not even a major. I *should* feel as "sad and sentimental" as the letter-writer. I should feel at least a twinge of regret.
I don't feel anything of the sort. I believe I bought one album there in all the time I've been here (which, admittedly, is less than a year) You see, I have a very particular set of musical tastes. I am an ectophile. Schoolkids Records isn't an ectophiles' record store; it is an indie record store. While there are some artists in the ecto-pantheon who would be found in such a place (Cat Power and Feist are two of the ones that come to mind immediately), there are many, many more who would not, and shelves full of CDs at Schoolkids that I doubt I'd enjoy. I have no interest in being spoon-fed Kimya Dawson's freak-folk. (Before you tell me that I'm accepting being spoon-fed the music from Once, I approached the movie from the Irish-music angle, not the indie-movie angle. Carol Keogh loves Glen Hansard's music, and I love Carol Keogh's music, so there's some kind of transitive property working there. It didn't hurt that I read good reviews, of course, but still.)
A lot of this is more elitism on my part. I do have the knee-jerk smug reaction after thinking things like "Well, THIS artist only sells her CDs by mail-order on her Web site and I like her!" I'm sure that every single person I listen to has their own group of fans somewhere in whatever region they hail from. I may be one of two professed Throwing Muses fans at UNC (this bowls me over), but in Rhode Island, Kristin gets cornered by fans. (An anecdote I heard last night. To my immense delight, she stopped to talk to them instead of scurrying and running like other people do. By other people, I mean Idina Menzel, whom I witnessed do the same thing at the Wicked stage door.)
So maybe they're no different than the Chapel Hill stalwarts I have yet to appreciate. But then again, maybe not. Some people have said art cannot exist in isolation, but this just isn't true. It's a sweeping statement, and a single example will disprove it. My example is Happy Rhodes. Happy Rhodes is possibly one of the best vocalists ever. Her range is almost unparalleled. When people compliment female singers' ranges, it usually means they can squeak out some whistle register notes like Mariah Carey. Happy might be able to do this, but that's not why people compliment her range. Instead, Happy has a phenomenal low voice. She can toss off notes comparable to what basses sing in choir. And they sound amazing. She also has a great deal of loveliness everywhere else. As if that wasn't enough, she is a good songwriter and instrumentalist.
I can almost guarantee that you have not heard of Happy Rhodes. It isn't for lack of albums; she's released quite a few. It certainly isn't for lack of talent. It's for lack of "cool," however nebulous and worthless the concept is. Assertive female altos don't sell. Lyrics such as these don't intrigue the kids:
A man is walking toward me
And he's looking pretty strange
He says, "Girl, I think you've
Come to the wrong century"
Now let me get this straight, Man
Not only am I woman
But I'm stuck in this spooky world?
Where everybody moves too fast and
Where are all the trees?
("Wrong Century" from Warpaint)
Happy Rhodes singlehandedly disproves the "art cannot be made in isolation" theory. Her albums are undeniable art and undeniably isolated. Example: her domain name, auntiesocialmusic. Not only is this a nice, succinct description of her ethos, but it points to another, more insidious fact: she can't even get her own damn name as a domain name, due to advertising-revenue squatters. (Throwing Muses have this problem too, although throwingmusic is an awesome domain name and almost better than the obvious choice.) She literally cannot afford to press the matter, and thus she is even more difficult to reach.
This is where the Internet is a wonderful thing, for Happy does have a "scene" of sorts: the Ecto list, named after one of her albums. She's made it onto Pandora because of their efforts, as well as Myspace, last.fm, and all the other outlets. She has a small audience through those places, but nowhere near the level of the people who make it to record stores. I have never seen a Happy Rhodes album in Schoolkids, even though any one of them would be far better than half the stuff that gets sold. And in order for Happy to be played on Pandora, as I believe I've mentioned before, one has to be listening to her similar artists, such as Kate Bush. Kate Bush, although equally talented, isn't queen of the cool either.
So I admit to being part of the problem. I would be perfectly happy to buy albums in brick-and-mortar stores if they would stock the sort of music I like - which, by extension, means that there would need to be a large market for the sort of music I like. When they do, I buy; when they don't, I go to Amazon. Perhaps I go to Amazon a bit more than I could, but still. I am one person on a limited budget with arcane musical tastes. I am no savior. My expenditures per week can barely buy a dinner for four, assuming your definition of "dinner" consists of something more than canned beans and maybe some corn or green beans. (If I'm extravagant they can DRAIN them too! No, I'm exaggerating, it's more than that, but not all that much more.) (The previous sentence wasn't intended as a gratuitous There Will Be Blood reference, in case you thought it was.)
There's still CD Alley, which gives me a much less pretentious feeling when I walk in, even if the walk is further. I'm sure I'm inventing a distinction that doesn't exist, but I don't care. It's on my way to the coffee shop I go to, so on afternoons when I go to get tea, I can also go pick up some music if I am so inclined.
I don't feel anything of the sort. I believe I bought one album there in all the time I've been here (which, admittedly, is less than a year) You see, I have a very particular set of musical tastes. I am an ectophile. Schoolkids Records isn't an ectophiles' record store; it is an indie record store. While there are some artists in the ecto-pantheon who would be found in such a place (Cat Power and Feist are two of the ones that come to mind immediately), there are many, many more who would not, and shelves full of CDs at Schoolkids that I doubt I'd enjoy. I have no interest in being spoon-fed Kimya Dawson's freak-folk. (Before you tell me that I'm accepting being spoon-fed the music from Once, I approached the movie from the Irish-music angle, not the indie-movie angle. Carol Keogh loves Glen Hansard's music, and I love Carol Keogh's music, so there's some kind of transitive property working there. It didn't hurt that I read good reviews, of course, but still.)
A lot of this is more elitism on my part. I do have the knee-jerk smug reaction after thinking things like "Well, THIS artist only sells her CDs by mail-order on her Web site and I like her!" I'm sure that every single person I listen to has their own group of fans somewhere in whatever region they hail from. I may be one of two professed Throwing Muses fans at UNC (this bowls me over), but in Rhode Island, Kristin gets cornered by fans. (An anecdote I heard last night. To my immense delight, she stopped to talk to them instead of scurrying and running like other people do. By other people, I mean Idina Menzel, whom I witnessed do the same thing at the Wicked stage door.)
So maybe they're no different than the Chapel Hill stalwarts I have yet to appreciate. But then again, maybe not. Some people have said art cannot exist in isolation, but this just isn't true. It's a sweeping statement, and a single example will disprove it. My example is Happy Rhodes. Happy Rhodes is possibly one of the best vocalists ever. Her range is almost unparalleled. When people compliment female singers' ranges, it usually means they can squeak out some whistle register notes like Mariah Carey. Happy might be able to do this, but that's not why people compliment her range. Instead, Happy has a phenomenal low voice. She can toss off notes comparable to what basses sing in choir. And they sound amazing. She also has a great deal of loveliness everywhere else. As if that wasn't enough, she is a good songwriter and instrumentalist.
I can almost guarantee that you have not heard of Happy Rhodes. It isn't for lack of albums; she's released quite a few. It certainly isn't for lack of talent. It's for lack of "cool," however nebulous and worthless the concept is. Assertive female altos don't sell. Lyrics such as these don't intrigue the kids:
A man is walking toward me
And he's looking pretty strange
He says, "Girl, I think you've
Come to the wrong century"
Now let me get this straight, Man
Not only am I woman
But I'm stuck in this spooky world?
Where everybody moves too fast and
Where are all the trees?
("Wrong Century" from Warpaint)
Happy Rhodes singlehandedly disproves the "art cannot be made in isolation" theory. Her albums are undeniable art and undeniably isolated. Example: her domain name, auntiesocialmusic. Not only is this a nice, succinct description of her ethos, but it points to another, more insidious fact: she can't even get her own damn name as a domain name, due to advertising-revenue squatters. (Throwing Muses have this problem too, although throwingmusic is an awesome domain name and almost better than the obvious choice.) She literally cannot afford to press the matter, and thus she is even more difficult to reach.
This is where the Internet is a wonderful thing, for Happy does have a "scene" of sorts: the Ecto list, named after one of her albums. She's made it onto Pandora because of their efforts, as well as Myspace, last.fm, and all the other outlets. She has a small audience through those places, but nowhere near the level of the people who make it to record stores. I have never seen a Happy Rhodes album in Schoolkids, even though any one of them would be far better than half the stuff that gets sold. And in order for Happy to be played on Pandora, as I believe I've mentioned before, one has to be listening to her similar artists, such as Kate Bush. Kate Bush, although equally talented, isn't queen of the cool either.
So I admit to being part of the problem. I would be perfectly happy to buy albums in brick-and-mortar stores if they would stock the sort of music I like - which, by extension, means that there would need to be a large market for the sort of music I like. When they do, I buy; when they don't, I go to Amazon. Perhaps I go to Amazon a bit more than I could, but still. I am one person on a limited budget with arcane musical tastes. I am no savior. My expenditures per week can barely buy a dinner for four, assuming your definition of "dinner" consists of something more than canned beans and maybe some corn or green beans. (If I'm extravagant they can DRAIN them too! No, I'm exaggerating, it's more than that, but not all that much more.) (The previous sentence wasn't intended as a gratuitous There Will Be Blood reference, in case you thought it was.)
There's still CD Alley, which gives me a much less pretentious feeling when I walk in, even if the walk is further. I'm sure I'm inventing a distinction that doesn't exist, but I don't care. It's on my way to the coffee shop I go to, so on afternoons when I go to get tea, I can also go pick up some music if I am so inclined.
Read more...
Sunday, February 24, 2008
February 25, 2008: Oscars
I had no idea the Oscars were so widely derided. Most people, when I told them I was watching, were quite derisive about it. Yes, I am one of Those People. I also watch American Idol, I sometimes throw away paper instead of recycling it, and I own several pop albums.
Now that we've got our elitism out of the way, here were my predictions:
Best Picture: No Country For Old Men.
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Actress: Julie Christie
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett
Best Original Screenplay: Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country
So that was 5/7. Not bad for a first try. Both female categories could legitimately be called upsets, so I'm not too concerned. In other categories, I had promised to throw something at the television if Once lost for Best Song. I like Disney songs as much as anything, but the music from Once is on another plane entirely. The television was OK in the end. I was happy they let Marketa Irglova return to give her speech.
Other than the aforementioned female categories, the ceremony was rather predictable. I suspected No Country For Old Men would beat There Would Be Blood, if only for the fact that it doesn't contain a pop-culture punchline. And in the screenplay category, most sources indicate that the extent of its adaptation from Upton Sinclair was the presence of oil and corruption. Juno was going to win original screenplay both for the exotic-dancer-turned-first-time-Oscar-nominee aspect and for its status as a modern hipster bible. (On a side note, its presence in the ceremony meant I was subjected once again to the musical stylings of Barry Louis Polisar. Sigh.)
As for hosting, Jon Stewart was all right, but this isn't really his ideal place. It's a sincerity vs. subversion thing.
Miscellaneous notes (read: the shallow part of this blog entry):
- Daniel Day-Lewis, when he is not playing a deranged oil tycoon, is strangely attractive.
- Jessica Alba's dress looked like she dipped her breasts into a vat of feathers.
- While I'm on the subject of dresses, Anne Hathaway's was the best of the evening, and Diablo Cody's was simply unfortunate.
Now that we've got our elitism out of the way, here were my predictions:
Best Picture: No Country For Old Men.
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Actress: Julie Christie
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett
Best Original Screenplay: Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country
So that was 5/7. Not bad for a first try. Both female categories could legitimately be called upsets, so I'm not too concerned. In other categories, I had promised to throw something at the television if Once lost for Best Song. I like Disney songs as much as anything, but the music from Once is on another plane entirely. The television was OK in the end. I was happy they let Marketa Irglova return to give her speech.
Other than the aforementioned female categories, the ceremony was rather predictable. I suspected No Country For Old Men would beat There Would Be Blood, if only for the fact that it doesn't contain a pop-culture punchline. And in the screenplay category, most sources indicate that the extent of its adaptation from Upton Sinclair was the presence of oil and corruption. Juno was going to win original screenplay both for the exotic-dancer-turned-first-time-Oscar-nominee aspect and for its status as a modern hipster bible. (On a side note, its presence in the ceremony meant I was subjected once again to the musical stylings of Barry Louis Polisar. Sigh.)
As for hosting, Jon Stewart was all right, but this isn't really his ideal place. It's a sincerity vs. subversion thing.
Miscellaneous notes (read: the shallow part of this blog entry):
- Daniel Day-Lewis, when he is not playing a deranged oil tycoon, is strangely attractive.
- Jessica Alba's dress looked like she dipped her breasts into a vat of feathers.
- While I'm on the subject of dresses, Anne Hathaway's was the best of the evening, and Diablo Cody's was simply unfortunate.
Read more...
Sunday, February 17, 2008
February 19, 2008: CDs, again.
It has been almost two weeks since I started to have a cold, and I still have a cold. Not an uncomfortable one, but one that pulls me out of class periodically to restock on tissues. Something about this strikes me as not right. Colds are supposed to slip away as quickly as they arrived. They aren't supposed to stick around.
In other news, I got around to purchasing a few more CDs:
- Kristeen Young, "The Orphans". I've discussed this one before.
- Letters To Cleo, "Aurora Gory Alice." I've discussed this one before, sort of (Kay Hanley is the frontwoman).
- Donita Sparks, "Transmiticate". The only really new CD on the list; in fact, it came out today. She has quite an interesting past if you look her up on Wikipedia. And her new album, from what I've heard of it, is excellent. I'd like it even if it wasn't associated with CASH.
- Happy Rhodes, "Warpaint". I haven't discussed this before either, but since I am active on the Happy Rhodes mailing list, I figured it would be useful to own more than two of her albums. Several of her songs are available online to preview, and this album is consistently good. It might even be her best. The problem with owning her CDs in practice, though, is that most of said albums are out of print, and she doesn't have a high enough profile for them to be widely available. I finally found this, used, for a reasonable price.
I mainly buy used CDs these days. Something about this doesn't feel right. My moral code prohibits me, these days, from pirating music because the artists don't get paid for it. But then, the artists don't get paid for used CDs either. Not directly, at least. At times I'm forced to do so; when a CD is out of print it's impossible to get it anything but used (unless you personally know the artist and can convince him or her to press just one copy of the songs, which is worse even if it was anywhere close to reasonable!) If this was the only time I bought used CDs that would be fine. One of my rationalizations is that this is simply how I do the catching up in my collection. I can't go back in a time machine to the 1990s or 1980s to pick things up new. (Although the thought is tempting, especially considering the current state of the dollar.) I buy new CDs new, because, well, there aren't any used ones around. I even pay exorbitant import costs (how about that Canadian dollar?) The reason, ultimately, is money. $1.00 for a CD, with shipping, allows me to buy far more than $15.00. Without a real source of income this is very appealing.
In other news, Christine Fellows is coming to the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro. Well, to be specific, the Weakerthans are the headlining act, but considering Christine is married to one of their band members, I suspect I might like them too. This has made my day. The other day I was quite surprised to realize that Nevertheless might be my favorite album *ever* right now. The prospect of seeing her live is great.
In other-other news, Kristin Hersh and crew have this great new project where, for $50, you can get a personalized CD with ten songs, either solo or from the Throwing Muses, re-recorded live. This sounds like a lot until you realize she is taking the time to record 10 songs again per CD. There's a 20-a-week limit, but still. I've already picked out a tentative song list.
There are also crimes against music. I watch American Idol both for the singing and to document them. Tonight's crime was adding a gear-shift to Moon River. What's a gear shift? This is. It was painful. This season, in general, has stronger male performances, but this has come with the arrival of maleisma. What is maleisma? It's a portmanteau I made up for "male melisma". (This is melisma.) Melisma, in American pop music, is generally the domain of female singers, but these singers seem out to change that. I'm not sure how much I like that. On the one hand, it requires a certain degree of vocal skill. On the other hand, melisma is best if it has a *reason* to be employed, and if it is employed *sparingly*; these criteria get broken often. We will see. Viva la...maleisma?
Things to cherish:
- Contrast. Contrast? Yes, contrast. Contrast is infinitely cherishable. (Cherish-worthy? The sky is right cherish-like?) The sky is good for contrast, especially today. Trees against it, tree trunks against it, even buildings against it. Lines against expanse. I am not a visual producer, but I can be a visual consumer.
Things to bemoan:
- Sarah Brightman apparently recorded a tribute to Aretha Franklin for the Grammys. No, that isn't something to bemoan. But one of her fanbots suggested that Sarah should sing Chain of Fools or Respect.
...
There's something very Pat Boone about that.
- In the bathrooms at UNC, in an apparent attempt to fight germs or be eco-friendly or something, the paper towel dispensers have "No-Touch Sensors" which are supposed to produce paper towels by detecting motion. You have to touch the No-Touch Sensors to get a paper towel. Good job.
In other news, I got around to purchasing a few more CDs:
- Kristeen Young, "The Orphans". I've discussed this one before.
- Letters To Cleo, "Aurora Gory Alice." I've discussed this one before, sort of (Kay Hanley is the frontwoman).
- Donita Sparks, "Transmiticate". The only really new CD on the list; in fact, it came out today. She has quite an interesting past if you look her up on Wikipedia. And her new album, from what I've heard of it, is excellent. I'd like it even if it wasn't associated with CASH.
- Happy Rhodes, "Warpaint". I haven't discussed this before either, but since I am active on the Happy Rhodes mailing list, I figured it would be useful to own more than two of her albums. Several of her songs are available online to preview, and this album is consistently good. It might even be her best. The problem with owning her CDs in practice, though, is that most of said albums are out of print, and she doesn't have a high enough profile for them to be widely available. I finally found this, used, for a reasonable price.
I mainly buy used CDs these days. Something about this doesn't feel right. My moral code prohibits me, these days, from pirating music because the artists don't get paid for it. But then, the artists don't get paid for used CDs either. Not directly, at least. At times I'm forced to do so; when a CD is out of print it's impossible to get it anything but used (unless you personally know the artist and can convince him or her to press just one copy of the songs, which is worse even if it was anywhere close to reasonable!) If this was the only time I bought used CDs that would be fine. One of my rationalizations is that this is simply how I do the catching up in my collection. I can't go back in a time machine to the 1990s or 1980s to pick things up new. (Although the thought is tempting, especially considering the current state of the dollar.) I buy new CDs new, because, well, there aren't any used ones around. I even pay exorbitant import costs (how about that Canadian dollar?) The reason, ultimately, is money. $1.00 for a CD, with shipping, allows me to buy far more than $15.00. Without a real source of income this is very appealing.
In other news, Christine Fellows is coming to the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro. Well, to be specific, the Weakerthans are the headlining act, but considering Christine is married to one of their band members, I suspect I might like them too. This has made my day. The other day I was quite surprised to realize that Nevertheless might be my favorite album *ever* right now. The prospect of seeing her live is great.
In other-other news, Kristin Hersh and crew have this great new project where, for $50, you can get a personalized CD with ten songs, either solo or from the Throwing Muses, re-recorded live. This sounds like a lot until you realize she is taking the time to record 10 songs again per CD. There's a 20-a-week limit, but still. I've already picked out a tentative song list.
There are also crimes against music. I watch American Idol both for the singing and to document them. Tonight's crime was adding a gear-shift to Moon River. What's a gear shift? This is. It was painful. This season, in general, has stronger male performances, but this has come with the arrival of maleisma. What is maleisma? It's a portmanteau I made up for "male melisma". (This is melisma.) Melisma, in American pop music, is generally the domain of female singers, but these singers seem out to change that. I'm not sure how much I like that. On the one hand, it requires a certain degree of vocal skill. On the other hand, melisma is best if it has a *reason* to be employed, and if it is employed *sparingly*; these criteria get broken often. We will see. Viva la...maleisma?
Things to cherish:
- Contrast. Contrast? Yes, contrast. Contrast is infinitely cherishable. (Cherish-worthy? The sky is right cherish-like?) The sky is good for contrast, especially today. Trees against it, tree trunks against it, even buildings against it. Lines against expanse. I am not a visual producer, but I can be a visual consumer.
Things to bemoan:
- Sarah Brightman apparently recorded a tribute to Aretha Franklin for the Grammys. No, that isn't something to bemoan. But one of her fanbots suggested that Sarah should sing Chain of Fools or Respect.
...
There's something very Pat Boone about that.
- In the bathrooms at UNC, in an apparent attempt to fight germs or be eco-friendly or something, the paper towel dispensers have "No-Touch Sensors" which are supposed to produce paper towels by detecting motion. You have to touch the No-Touch Sensors to get a paper towel. Good job.
Read more...
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
February 13, 2008: Wordplay and analysis
I haven't done book reviews here yet. This blog has been largely about music. Yet I'm an English major, and only a music *minor*, so I think it's high time to rectify that. I just read Mark Dunn's book "Ella Minnow Pea."
I'm a sucker for wordplay. Nick Montfort's Ad Verbum is among my favorite interactive fiction games - it isn't supposed to blow you away with heft and weight like something by Andrew Plotkin, or Tapestry or Delusions; it's supposed to blow you away with CONCEPT, executed well. (Not perfectly, mind you; IF runs into problems because code is finite while the human imagination is infinite. But pretty damn well.) For those not familiar with the game, which is probably most people, the tour-de-force here is that you have rooms described with strict constraints - for instance, rooms where every word must start with "n", "w", "e", or "s". This goes for the descriptions, the item descriptions, and - here's the truly impressive part - the commands available and the parser responses. There are other rooms with other constraints, too, but this is what everyone comments on, and rightly so.
But yes. I love wordplay. I am the sort of person who compiles lengthy lists of words based on certain attributes - starting and ending with the same letter, having 2 K's or Z's, etc. So a book like "Ella Minnow Pea" is right up my alley. The basic premise is that you have an island which reveres the (fictional) Nevin Nollop, who (in the book) created the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" - the one with all 26 letters that everyone knows and types in typing class. There is a large statue of him on the island with said sentence spelled out with tiles. The problem is that it's also an old statue, and the tiles aren't holding up so well. In fact, they're falling. The government attributes this to a Divine Sign from the Revered Nollop, and bans the use of those letters, starting with Z, and then progressing to less expendable letters. Panic ensues.
There's more here than it might seem. The book is an allegory against (religious) censorship, albeit a thin one. There are all sorts of little details that you'll miss if you read it quickly. Admittedly it is easy to skim when substitutions start being used, but don't. Seriously, don't. It is a lot less funny that way. (Among my favorites: Only when 'D' disappears - which is an oblique reference to real-life erasing of the past, or here the past tense - does everyone start to get very drunk. "Intoxica-tipsy" is a great neologism. I might start using it.)
And then, this is just my sort of book. My sort of locale, too. The novel is told in letters - letter-writing, and writing in general - being a revered art on the island - and I'd be perfectly happy to move there if it meant I received such amazing correspondence. E-mails do not have to be concise, nor linguistically dull, but still.
~*~*~
Anything can be analyzed and there is meaning behind almost everything. I think *this* may be one of the fundamental differences between people: those who analyze, and those who do not. Those who look beyond, and those who do not. It isn't an innate difference, of course. I firmly believe that anyone can begin to analyze. I doubt, however, that it's possible to stop analyzing once you've started. At least, I sure can't. Nothing is safe, either.
~*~*~
That last paragraph was circular on purpose.
~*~*~
It is about time for me to start picking out what CDs to buy next. This means going through my massive list of artists. I look forward to the day when I can convert this massive list of artists to a massive collection of music, but at the rate I'm going that will be awhile, and new music is constantly coming out. On the bright side, I am close to filling my first CD jacket.
I periodically Google News search some of my favorite artists both to discover newcomers being compared to them (which accounts for over half of the Kate Bush results), and to see what they're up to. I was excited when Stina Nordenstam had recent news stories, but they were all about a Prince tribute album featuring one of her older covers (Purple Rain). Not a new cover. This makes me upset.
I'm a sucker for wordplay. Nick Montfort's Ad Verbum is among my favorite interactive fiction games - it isn't supposed to blow you away with heft and weight like something by Andrew Plotkin, or Tapestry or Delusions; it's supposed to blow you away with CONCEPT, executed well. (Not perfectly, mind you; IF runs into problems because code is finite while the human imagination is infinite. But pretty damn well.) For those not familiar with the game, which is probably most people, the tour-de-force here is that you have rooms described with strict constraints - for instance, rooms where every word must start with "n", "w", "e", or "s". This goes for the descriptions, the item descriptions, and - here's the truly impressive part - the commands available and the parser responses. There are other rooms with other constraints, too, but this is what everyone comments on, and rightly so.
But yes. I love wordplay. I am the sort of person who compiles lengthy lists of words based on certain attributes - starting and ending with the same letter, having 2 K's or Z's, etc. So a book like "Ella Minnow Pea" is right up my alley. The basic premise is that you have an island which reveres the (fictional) Nevin Nollop, who (in the book) created the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" - the one with all 26 letters that everyone knows and types in typing class. There is a large statue of him on the island with said sentence spelled out with tiles. The problem is that it's also an old statue, and the tiles aren't holding up so well. In fact, they're falling. The government attributes this to a Divine Sign from the Revered Nollop, and bans the use of those letters, starting with Z, and then progressing to less expendable letters. Panic ensues.
There's more here than it might seem. The book is an allegory against (religious) censorship, albeit a thin one. There are all sorts of little details that you'll miss if you read it quickly. Admittedly it is easy to skim when substitutions start being used, but don't. Seriously, don't. It is a lot less funny that way. (Among my favorites: Only when 'D' disappears - which is an oblique reference to real-life erasing of the past, or here the past tense - does everyone start to get very drunk. "Intoxica-tipsy" is a great neologism. I might start using it.)
And then, this is just my sort of book. My sort of locale, too. The novel is told in letters - letter-writing, and writing in general - being a revered art on the island - and I'd be perfectly happy to move there if it meant I received such amazing correspondence. E-mails do not have to be concise, nor linguistically dull, but still.
~*~*~
Anything can be analyzed and there is meaning behind almost everything. I think *this* may be one of the fundamental differences between people: those who analyze, and those who do not. Those who look beyond, and those who do not. It isn't an innate difference, of course. I firmly believe that anyone can begin to analyze. I doubt, however, that it's possible to stop analyzing once you've started. At least, I sure can't. Nothing is safe, either.
~*~*~
That last paragraph was circular on purpose.
~*~*~
It is about time for me to start picking out what CDs to buy next. This means going through my massive list of artists. I look forward to the day when I can convert this massive list of artists to a massive collection of music, but at the rate I'm going that will be awhile, and new music is constantly coming out. On the bright side, I am close to filling my first CD jacket.
I periodically Google News search some of my favorite artists both to discover newcomers being compared to them (which accounts for over half of the Kate Bush results), and to see what they're up to. I was excited when Stina Nordenstam had recent news stories, but they were all about a Prince tribute album featuring one of her older covers (Purple Rain). Not a new cover. This makes me upset.
Read more...
Monday, February 11, 2008
February 11, 2008: This is a music post
Since I am sick, I've been doing not much other than solving cross-sums (I guess they're called kakuro but I grew up on the Cross Sums versions in the puzzle books) (and yes, that means I liked them before they were cool), reading, and listening to music. Mainly listening to music.
Snap judgments on the new albums I bought:
- Katy Carr - Screwing Lies and Passion Play: Katy Carr's unique, all right. If I *had* to compare her style to anyone, I'd say Kate Bush (predictable, no?) only coming even more from the folk side and less from the progressive-rock side. There are a lot of great songs here that need to assert their individual identities. I will say that "Push" is already great.
- Sarah Brightman - Symphony: There is one amazing song on here (Fleurs du Mal), a few decent songs, and then a lot of crap. I feel sad saying this about a Sarah Brightman album, but it's true. Luckily, Fleurs du Mal is so amazing that it makes up for the crap. But seriously. If you're going for a theme, take it all the way.
Things to cherish:
- Irish music. All you have to do to get me to buy your album is say "I'm Irish and I make music." Hyperbole, yes, but not by much.
Things to bemoan:
- Being sick. Please don't start on how bacteria is helpful, and that we only survive on this Earth because they allow us to, and such and so forth. I know. I don't care. Sickness opens up a whole new level of things to bemoan. I hate that I only got about 2 hours of sleep last night, which is probably a generous estimate. I hate having to blow my nose every five minutes, and I hate the fact that my upper lip stings, especially when moving it (this makes eating quite difficult.)
I hate how I am so congested that I can barely hear the world around me. You would think this would be pleasant, but it really isn't. It's like listening to a song that's really badly mixed. It is disconcerting. The traditional way of clearing up your ears (holding your nose and blowing) only works if you really try at it, and not too well. It makes me feel like I'm in a tunnel digging across to another tunnel, and I finally connect, but it's just a small hole (this analogy is lifted from "How I Survived Being A Girl"). But I'm pretty sure that you can do permanent damage by doing this too much.
- Jewel cases. I really, really, really hate jewel cases. You'd think, after buying as many CDs as I have (which really isn't all that many so far, but it's more than at least half the people my age, especially with all the downloads) that I would learn to open a jewel case without cracking the damn thing. But I can't. So I keep my CDs in jackets and throw the blasted things away. This has a few downsides, of course. When I get a house I won't be able to store them on pretty shelves for all to admire, and I lose the back cover art (but then, I don't care about that, just the liner notes.) The other thing I dislike is the non-plastic jewel cases, because I always feel bad throwing them away. Especially if there aren't any liner notes at all (Kristin Hersh's "Learn To Sing Like A Star" is an example; I have that case stuffed in a drawer somewhere.) The other problem is that my cat really likes to sit down on my CD jackets, and pry at them, which can't be good for the CDs inside.
Snap judgments on the new albums I bought:
- Katy Carr - Screwing Lies and Passion Play: Katy Carr's unique, all right. If I *had* to compare her style to anyone, I'd say Kate Bush (predictable, no?) only coming even more from the folk side and less from the progressive-rock side. There are a lot of great songs here that need to assert their individual identities. I will say that "Push" is already great.
- Sarah Brightman - Symphony: There is one amazing song on here (Fleurs du Mal), a few decent songs, and then a lot of crap. I feel sad saying this about a Sarah Brightman album, but it's true. Luckily, Fleurs du Mal is so amazing that it makes up for the crap. But seriously. If you're going for a theme, take it all the way.
Things to cherish:
- Irish music. All you have to do to get me to buy your album is say "I'm Irish and I make music." Hyperbole, yes, but not by much.
Things to bemoan:
- Being sick. Please don't start on how bacteria is helpful, and that we only survive on this Earth because they allow us to, and such and so forth. I know. I don't care. Sickness opens up a whole new level of things to bemoan. I hate that I only got about 2 hours of sleep last night, which is probably a generous estimate. I hate having to blow my nose every five minutes, and I hate the fact that my upper lip stings, especially when moving it (this makes eating quite difficult.)
I hate how I am so congested that I can barely hear the world around me. You would think this would be pleasant, but it really isn't. It's like listening to a song that's really badly mixed. It is disconcerting. The traditional way of clearing up your ears (holding your nose and blowing) only works if you really try at it, and not too well. It makes me feel like I'm in a tunnel digging across to another tunnel, and I finally connect, but it's just a small hole (this analogy is lifted from "How I Survived Being A Girl"). But I'm pretty sure that you can do permanent damage by doing this too much.
- Jewel cases. I really, really, really hate jewel cases. You'd think, after buying as many CDs as I have (which really isn't all that many so far, but it's more than at least half the people my age, especially with all the downloads) that I would learn to open a jewel case without cracking the damn thing. But I can't. So I keep my CDs in jackets and throw the blasted things away. This has a few downsides, of course. When I get a house I won't be able to store them on pretty shelves for all to admire, and I lose the back cover art (but then, I don't care about that, just the liner notes.) The other thing I dislike is the non-plastic jewel cases, because I always feel bad throwing them away. Especially if there aren't any liner notes at all (Kristin Hersh's "Learn To Sing Like A Star" is an example; I have that case stuffed in a drawer somewhere.) The other problem is that my cat really likes to sit down on my CD jackets, and pry at them, which can't be good for the CDs inside.
Read more...
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
February 5, 2008: Language and song
The sign alluded to previously,courtesy of my roommate.
I mentioned CASH Music previously. One of the interesting parts of this project is the Read/Write section - basically, encouraging works inspired by the music, or remixes. Well, I was listening to "Around Dusk" and noticed that it was in the same key as "Slippershell". So I started humming Slippershell to the backing tracks, and thought "Hey, this works."
A few hours later, I finished the rough draft of what I have now called the "Slippershell Mix". It keeps the Around Dusk instrumentation, and adds a melange of mostly Slippershell vocals, but with some Around Dusk ones thrown in where they seemed appropriate. I did a bit of tempo and pitchshifting on some of the vocals to shoehorn them into different melodies. Pitch shifting a half step doesn't make the vocals sound too weird; shifting a third works, but is about the limit. Shifting down sounds better than shifting up. Oh, and those Slippershell bells make an appearance. The result is a completely different song. "Slippershell", in its original form, was angry; this version is resigned. Don't worry. The process was incredibly fun. It feels good to complete a project in a way that satisfies you, especially if it's your first attempt.
And it is posted on her site, which makes me ebullient. Of course, every time I listen to it I think "damn, I should have fixed that, too late now". This is similar to when I copy-edit something and then notice an error in the official ink-on-paper version that I missed. But maybe you won't catch them:
http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/read-write.php (It's the one by "sarahcryst" in case you're wondering.)
Things to cherish:
- The weather today. Just windy enough to be comfortable, just cool enough to be comfortable. The perfect sort of day.
Things to bemoan:
- Unnecessary loudness. I think America could collectively be taken back about ten decibels, and it would only improve day-to-day living. This isn't a metaphor. I am simply faced with human-produced loud noises wherever I go.
Read more...
Monday, February 4, 2008
February 4, 2008: Nutrition is good; CASH is good; MLM is bad.
Inspired by one of Kerry's (not all that) recent posts, I have decided to cut back on my corn syrup intake. In practice, this means cutting my processed food intake. This is more difficult than it sounds. I'm already in the habit of reading ingredient labels - having a food intolerance pretty much forces it - but this eliminates even more items. Many cereals, for example. I do live near a co-op (well, by "near" I mean "in about half an hour to an hour's walking distance") which recently removed all items containing corn syrup from its inventory, but this comes with higher prices.
I figure it will be useful to detail what I eat, as a sort of case study. So for breakfast I had a Kashi cereal bar, and for lunch I had a wrap with chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, and hummus. This last part was a bit of a struggle. Normally, the platter comes with hummus and tabouli salad, but tabouli salad is about half onions. So I asked if there was any way I could have a platter without tabouli salad. Mathematically, this should be simple. Your meal consists of a wrap, hummus, and tabouli. X + Y + Z. So if you remove the tabouli, it's X + Y, logically. It isn't X + 2Y. I don't want double hummus. It took me five minutes to finally convince the people there of this. (No, I don't normally think of things mathematically like this. I just amused myself with it, after the fact.)
Anyway. I had a banana and some more water as a snack, at dinner I had a small portion of pork barbecue and a salad with lettuce, carrots, chick peas, peanuts, and oil and vinegar for dressing. I had a small carton of yogurt at about 8. I can do better.
Things to cherish:
- CASH Music: http://www.cashmusic.org/ - Radiohead gets all the press, but this model just might be even more revolutionary. And it's backed by some great musicians. Such as Kristin Hersh. If I had any talent with any instrument whatsoever, I would take her up on her read/write section. I don't, sadly, although if I practice for a few days I can barely stumble through the first few seconds of Let Us Have Done With The Umbrella Of Our Contagion, or rather, the first few seconds of where the piano comes in.
Things to bemoan:
- Multi-level marketing scams and the people who fall for them, and the people who encourage the people who fall for them. This is roughly related to people who propagate chain letters without checking Snopes. It is not difficult, upon receiving a proposal, to Google it in conjunction with "scam" to see what people are saying. I mention this not only on principle. One of my friends has leapt headfirst into the category of enabler. I wish it wasn't considered rude to tell the truth.
I figure it will be useful to detail what I eat, as a sort of case study. So for breakfast I had a Kashi cereal bar, and for lunch I had a wrap with chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, and hummus. This last part was a bit of a struggle. Normally, the platter comes with hummus and tabouli salad, but tabouli salad is about half onions. So I asked if there was any way I could have a platter without tabouli salad. Mathematically, this should be simple. Your meal consists of a wrap, hummus, and tabouli. X + Y + Z. So if you remove the tabouli, it's X + Y, logically. It isn't X + 2Y. I don't want double hummus. It took me five minutes to finally convince the people there of this. (No, I don't normally think of things mathematically like this. I just amused myself with it, after the fact.)
Anyway. I had a banana and some more water as a snack, at dinner I had a small portion of pork barbecue and a salad with lettuce, carrots, chick peas, peanuts, and oil and vinegar for dressing. I had a small carton of yogurt at about 8. I can do better.
Things to cherish:
- CASH Music: http://www.cashmusic.org/ - Radiohead gets all the press, but this model just might be even more revolutionary. And it's backed by some great musicians. Such as Kristin Hersh. If I had any talent with any instrument whatsoever, I would take her up on her read/write section. I don't, sadly, although if I practice for a few days I can barely stumble through the first few seconds of Let Us Have Done With The Umbrella Of Our Contagion, or rather, the first few seconds of where the piano comes in.
Things to bemoan:
- Multi-level marketing scams and the people who fall for them, and the people who encourage the people who fall for them. This is roughly related to people who propagate chain letters without checking Snopes. It is not difficult, upon receiving a proposal, to Google it in conjunction with "scam" to see what people are saying. I mention this not only on principle. One of my friends has leapt headfirst into the category of enabler. I wish it wasn't considered rude to tell the truth.
Read more...
Saturday, February 2, 2008
February 2, 2008: Kristeen Young on the bus with water?
I have moved to Blogger, where I hope I will stay.
I chose the pink color scheme for my blog. It could be argued that I am reinforcing all sorts of traditional gender roles, but I do like the color pink, and purple, which is close enough. I read in another blog that pink was only recently associated with females (and blue with males); by recently, I mean World War II. I don't know if that gives me leeway, but I still like my color scheme, preset or not.
Yesterday night, around 8:30 apparently, someone was hit by a bus at an intersection I frequent often. I had been there earlier that night, even. There is a street sign there that is spelled incorrectly (I'm not a "pedestrain", no matter what the sign is telling me.) I only saw the aftermath of it, from another bus. Needless to say, everyone evacuated that bus fairly quickly at the next stop, as did I. I'd try to avoid the spot if it was at all viable, but it really isn't, so I'm left with an eerie feeling every time I'm there. I don't think she died, or at least she was alive the last time I checked the news, but it's still less than pleasant. I'm sure I'll hear more about it Monday, in the campus newspaper.
Speaking of the newspaper, it took on an eerie prescience. About a week earlier, there was a column about this very thing, on the back page where columns tend to be. What made me remember this was the end, which predicted that sometime soon, a pedestrian would be hit and killed by a car, producing a cathartic experience for the entire campus. It got the vehicle wrong, and the accident happened at least half a mile away from where the article said it would, but I still wonder just what the columnist was thinking if he had heard of the incident.
~*~*~
My quest to reduce my intake of tea and increase my intake of water is, so far, going quite well. Yesterday, I had two large glasses of water to one large glass of tea, and I'm fairly certain there was bottled water involved at one point. I try not to drink as much bottled water, because it just costs money and produces waste, even if that waste gets recycled. But there aren't sinks everywhere.
What am I excited about lately? I'm excited about Kristeen Young. This requires a preamble. It takes considerable courage for any relatively new musician to release a single in which they urge you to kill various entrenched classic-rock icons. It takes exponentially more courage for a woman to do it. Kristeen Young has exponentially considerable courage, and has created an amazing song in the process: "Kill The Father". This is remarkably similar to the "soprano rock" I wanted Sarah Brightman to make all along (but I won't begrudge her the beauty she's created instead.) I haven't yet determined whether I can sing it. There are certain parts that are bound to upset the suitemates.
I chose the pink color scheme for my blog. It could be argued that I am reinforcing all sorts of traditional gender roles, but I do like the color pink, and purple, which is close enough. I read in another blog that pink was only recently associated with females (and blue with males); by recently, I mean World War II. I don't know if that gives me leeway, but I still like my color scheme, preset or not.
Yesterday night, around 8:30 apparently, someone was hit by a bus at an intersection I frequent often. I had been there earlier that night, even. There is a street sign there that is spelled incorrectly (I'm not a "pedestrain", no matter what the sign is telling me.) I only saw the aftermath of it, from another bus. Needless to say, everyone evacuated that bus fairly quickly at the next stop, as did I. I'd try to avoid the spot if it was at all viable, but it really isn't, so I'm left with an eerie feeling every time I'm there. I don't think she died, or at least she was alive the last time I checked the news, but it's still less than pleasant. I'm sure I'll hear more about it Monday, in the campus newspaper.
Speaking of the newspaper, it took on an eerie prescience. About a week earlier, there was a column about this very thing, on the back page where columns tend to be. What made me remember this was the end, which predicted that sometime soon, a pedestrian would be hit and killed by a car, producing a cathartic experience for the entire campus. It got the vehicle wrong, and the accident happened at least half a mile away from where the article said it would, but I still wonder just what the columnist was thinking if he had heard of the incident.
~*~*~
My quest to reduce my intake of tea and increase my intake of water is, so far, going quite well. Yesterday, I had two large glasses of water to one large glass of tea, and I'm fairly certain there was bottled water involved at one point. I try not to drink as much bottled water, because it just costs money and produces waste, even if that waste gets recycled. But there aren't sinks everywhere.
What am I excited about lately? I'm excited about Kristeen Young. This requires a preamble. It takes considerable courage for any relatively new musician to release a single in which they urge you to kill various entrenched classic-rock icons. It takes exponentially more courage for a woman to do it. Kristeen Young has exponentially considerable courage, and has created an amazing song in the process: "Kill The Father". This is remarkably similar to the "soprano rock" I wanted Sarah Brightman to make all along (but I won't begrudge her the beauty she's created instead.) I haven't yet determined whether I can sing it. There are certain parts that are bound to upset the suitemates.
Read more...
January 31, 2008: Pet peeves
For this entry, I thought I'd detail some of my pet peeves - specifically, those related to social networking profiles (read: Facebook.)
- People who cannot tell the difference between the words "freshman" and "freshmen". It isn't that difficult, people. If you know when to use "man" and when to use "men", why should a prefix suddenly screw you up? Perhaps we should go with the gender-neutral "first-year student" after all. Maybe then, people will get it right.
- People who repeat the last letter of a word, like thisssss. It makes no linguistic sense. There are a select few consonants that you can sustain like that. "Thisss", taken literally, would make you a talking snake. "Yearrr", taken literally, makes you a stereotypical pirate. Some of them can't even be done. Try sustaining a "D". You can't. Why do people do this?
- People who propagate chain letters without checking Snopes. People who propagate chain letters without checking Snopes. People who misquote platitudes from chain letters. The most egregious example I remember was one typical sappy chain letter - attributed to George Carlin. Why isn't this so amazingly incongruous to other people?
I'd feel bad leaving this without things to cherish:
- Sarah McLachlan. Her music has gotten me through my crap week ever since I picked up her 1997 album at the used CD store. It is that good. Really. It is.
Things to bemoan:
- Barry Louis Polisar. You don't know who Barry Louis Polisar is? Remember that song from Juno that everybody plays? He is responsible for it. I seem to be the only one bemoaning it. Desperate for people who felt the same, I turned to Google, but even the great machine could not help me:"Your search - "Barry Louis Polisar is crap" - did not match any documents."
Perhaps this will put my blog on the map, then: Barry Louis Polisar is crap. His voice has all the musical quality of a buzzard with bronchitis. There is absolutely no invention to his songwriting. Nobody would give a crap about him if it weren't for his song being on the Juno soundtrack, and subsequently in every damn store or restaurant into which I set foot. I doubt most people give a crap about anything but that song, in fact.
I am opening myself up to quite a few salvos, I suspect, by endorsing Sarah and bemoaning - you know, I forgot his name already. But the simple truth is that Sarah has redeemed my week, while Barry has made it worse. (His name is Barry, isn't it?)
Read more...
January 30, 2008: We must progress
There were at least a few interesting moments in class last night. One of the students is volunteering at the same preschool where I was last semester. She mentioned that one of the staff members there had been talking with her (which is different already; I don't think I ever spoke for more than a minute to any staff member there.) Said staff member, the class decided, was clearly racist, classist, and all sorts of things. She had told the student that she wasn't used to working with "the Head Start kids" because her only volunteer experience was in her church nursery. What struck me is that one of the other students' first, knee-jerk reaction was "Well, what was she doing *there*?" as if opportunities for growth could not happen. It was a split second revulsion, and it disturbed me for reasons I still am completing.
I am replacing at least some of my iced tea consumption with ice water consumption. It should not be that difficult to do. It fits into the same time span, costs the same amount of money, and will keep me less dehydrated. This is my second day doing so. After about ten minutes, ice melts, and iced tea and ice water taste pretty much the same anyway.
Things to cherish:
- The color of the sky, when there are no clouds. One could argue that clouds are good, because they produce rain, and the lack of clouds means impending drought. I've certainly received enough notices about the town's drought. But forgetting all of that, it is a lovely color. Notice the gradient, how the color deepens the more you look up, and when you look up you can't help but feel a certain reverence, or be overwhelmed. If you ever need a compelling reason why gray buildings are not the original intention of nature, exit the buildings and see the alternative proposed by the sky.
- Doors. Doors are a human construct. Nevertheless, there is something special and perhaps magical about the way that the over-raucous noise of commuting crowds can be silenced by moving a comparatively thin layer of wood and glass.
- The Way Back Machine. Web sites will not disappear anymore. And it archives the small ones, too, the ones I really wanted to see in the first place.
Things to bemoan:
- Google ads. There is a sizable constituency of Google ad patrons who consist of the same people I bemoaned the other day. I do not need to monetize my blog. Blogs should be outlets for personal expression, but more and more, they are becoming polished corporate press-release dumps and desperate attempts to make pennies. Even personal expression is the least of their purpose. Their purpose should be venues for serious thought, something the world at large is solely lacking. How often does this truly happen? How often do we venerate the most shallow sentiments as "so deep"? The thoughts contained in this blog, even, are trifles compared to what the human mind is capable of. We must progress, but too many people have embraced society's love of regression.
- Modern society is always producing something new to bemoan, but I thought I'd share a theory I've had for awhile. Lately there are so many movies in the 'Epic Movie' vein. My theory as to their existence is that people gorge themselves so much on disposable pop culture that, periodically, they reach capacity and vomit it all back up, complete with carefully marketed catchphrases, references, and fads. Come to think of it, this regurgitation is probably carefully marketed too, whether by seasoned professionals or amateurs who deliriously do their best to imitate them, thus propagating the cycle.
Read more...
January 28, 2008: Eavesdropping. Listening. Viewing.
Eavesdropping can be very interesting. Right now I am listening to what sounds like a very distraught chorus girl from our university's production of Sweeney Todd (which I wasn't cast in.) She is complaining about how the director will get pissed if anyone dyes their hair or cuts it, and mentions that since she has red hair, that means she has to be a whore. (Or a Pre-Raphaelite model, but I don't think those were around yet. And, really, there isn't much difference between the two. Just read "Jenny".) Someone else, a guy, is mentioning that he simply found a CD in his collection and it has the weirdest music I've ever heard. It makes me wonder just what that CD is. He just described it as "hip hop mixed with bluegrass." I just lost interest.
Speaking of CDs, I finalized my album purchases today. When I get my gift certificate, I will be buying:
Katy Carr - Screwed Lies
Katy Carr - Passion Play
Sarah Brightman - Symphony
Siobhan Donaghy - Ghosts
Of these, I'm most excited about Katy Carr, whose Myspace I fairly gushed about. "Berliner Ring" reminds me, of all things, of a glossy real-music translation of PASSPORT.MID. (This is a very good thing for a computer-nostalgic like me.) Assuming its album is released in 2008 like I think it will be, it's an early contender for catchiest song of the year. "Army" sounds like what would happen if Tori Amos sat down for a few hours with some Loreena McKennitt and Miriam Stockley CDs and decided to try to improve on the form, recruiting Suzanne Vega in the process; in "Moscow Child," Kate joins in too. (Speaking of Kate, I'm fairly sure the line "I've got a little bit of love here kicking inside" from Berliner Ring is a deliberate nod.)
That's one album each from 2001, 2003, 2007, and 2008. The consequence of getting into music right now is that you have so much catching up to do. I enjoy it; my wallet does not. I keep track on my music wiki of when albums were released. When I buy enough, I will have a sense of how the year was in music. The problem is that I can't really tell that when each year only has, on average, five albums. 2001 is especially sparse; I'm pretty sure it only has two. On a similar note, I hope 2008 is better for music than the previews I've read have convinced me. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong previews, but I can't think of many things I want to buy.
My first year of university has introduced me to practically a tsunami of entertainment. I can now tell you about all Verdi's major operas, and some of his minor ones. You have films. I've seen more movies in half a year than I have in several years before. There are the new releases - I still claim Once is the best film of 2007 - and then the older ones. I've seen Amadeus, and Jane Eyre, and Fight Club, and Dead Poets Society, and reacquainted myself with The Pirates of Penzance, The Swan Princess and The Secret Garden.
And then you have movies like the 1966 film adaptation of Batman. This falls into the mythic category of 'so bad, it's amazing.' It is a movie you have to watch with people, because you catch something else every time you watch it. This time, we caught that not only is everything in the Batcave labeled, but everything in the villains' hideout is labeled too! But pictorially. The Riddler's room has question marks on the door. Catwoman's side of the...viewfinder has an icon (This was before Windows made icons popular, but it's an icon.) with a pink bow, because this was 1966 and feminism was in its infancy.
Things to cherish:
- The magic blogging fairy. (note: This was from a picture on the old site I cross-posted these from. It's this: http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/3187/blogfairytg2.jpg ) I just noticed her. She's right next to Close Blog and Rename Blog. If I really wanted to be a cynical academic I'd gripe about how she's blonde and why, in the modern era, we are still hanging on to those depictions. When my sister and I were kids my mother wanted to buy us fancy porcelain dolls but had an awful time finding ones that looked like us. The brunette ones were usually off brand and not made as well, and they were still about five shades paler than me. But then, this is a thing to cherish. I think it's cute. It's hand designed and doesn't look like it was spit out by a marketing executive.
- Breathing in cold air, really breathing it in. This requires no explanation.
Things to bemoan:
- The way I make money. Among other things, I paraphrase "articles" - the term cannot be used loosely enough - used in search engine optimization. The clients are a heady mix of every kind of probably-ineffectual business/career/marketing coach, New Age snake-oil peddler, retailer of sundry junk, and Internet-for-money person. Their primary destination is splogs. I've checked. Other companies who distribute these articles have been seen with penis enlargement articles. It's indirect evil and I cannot wait for the day when I will not need it.
Speaking of CDs, I finalized my album purchases today. When I get my gift certificate, I will be buying:
Katy Carr - Screwed Lies
Katy Carr - Passion Play
Sarah Brightman - Symphony
Siobhan Donaghy - Ghosts
Of these, I'm most excited about Katy Carr, whose Myspace I fairly gushed about. "Berliner Ring" reminds me, of all things, of a glossy real-music translation of PASSPORT.MID. (This is a very good thing for a computer-nostalgic like me.) Assuming its album is released in 2008 like I think it will be, it's an early contender for catchiest song of the year. "Army" sounds like what would happen if Tori Amos sat down for a few hours with some Loreena McKennitt and Miriam Stockley CDs and decided to try to improve on the form, recruiting Suzanne Vega in the process; in "Moscow Child," Kate joins in too. (Speaking of Kate, I'm fairly sure the line "I've got a little bit of love here kicking inside" from Berliner Ring is a deliberate nod.)
That's one album each from 2001, 2003, 2007, and 2008. The consequence of getting into music right now is that you have so much catching up to do. I enjoy it; my wallet does not. I keep track on my music wiki of when albums were released. When I buy enough, I will have a sense of how the year was in music. The problem is that I can't really tell that when each year only has, on average, five albums. 2001 is especially sparse; I'm pretty sure it only has two. On a similar note, I hope 2008 is better for music than the previews I've read have convinced me. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong previews, but I can't think of many things I want to buy.
My first year of university has introduced me to practically a tsunami of entertainment. I can now tell you about all Verdi's major operas, and some of his minor ones. You have films. I've seen more movies in half a year than I have in several years before. There are the new releases - I still claim Once is the best film of 2007 - and then the older ones. I've seen Amadeus, and Jane Eyre, and Fight Club, and Dead Poets Society, and reacquainted myself with The Pirates of Penzance, The Swan Princess and The Secret Garden.
And then you have movies like the 1966 film adaptation of Batman. This falls into the mythic category of 'so bad, it's amazing.' It is a movie you have to watch with people, because you catch something else every time you watch it. This time, we caught that not only is everything in the Batcave labeled, but everything in the villains' hideout is labeled too! But pictorially. The Riddler's room has question marks on the door. Catwoman's side of the...viewfinder has an icon (This was before Windows made icons popular, but it's an icon.) with a pink bow, because this was 1966 and feminism was in its infancy.
Things to cherish:
- The magic blogging fairy. (note: This was from a picture on the old site I cross-posted these from. It's this: http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/3187/blogfairytg2.jpg ) I just noticed her. She's right next to Close Blog and Rename Blog. If I really wanted to be a cynical academic I'd gripe about how she's blonde and why, in the modern era, we are still hanging on to those depictions. When my sister and I were kids my mother wanted to buy us fancy porcelain dolls but had an awful time finding ones that looked like us. The brunette ones were usually off brand and not made as well, and they were still about five shades paler than me. But then, this is a thing to cherish. I think it's cute. It's hand designed and doesn't look like it was spit out by a marketing executive.
- Breathing in cold air, really breathing it in. This requires no explanation.
Things to bemoan:
- The way I make money. Among other things, I paraphrase "articles" - the term cannot be used loosely enough - used in search engine optimization. The clients are a heady mix of every kind of probably-ineffectual business/career/marketing coach, New Age snake-oil peddler, retailer of sundry junk, and Internet-for-money person. Their primary destination is splogs. I've checked. Other companies who distribute these articles have been seen with penis enlargement articles. It's indirect evil and I cannot wait for the day when I will not need it.
Read more...
January 26, 2008: Consider the fractal, and the journal
I spend my days on self improvement, but not in a practical form. Consider the fractal. (I realized the 'lilies of the field' reference about a second after I birthed this phrase, so...pun not intended.) I spend my hours carefully tinkering away at the image at high magnifications. I construct all the beautiful caverns and cliffs and valleys in vibrant colors, beautiful but little, little only if you're zoomed out, cavernous if you're zoomed in. But I've neglected the outside. This explains why I can write novels about the hypothetical splits in my personality, from Sarah to Dusty to Katharine, and how I can construct fully living character with backstories and families and loves and needs (the writing novels, unfortunately, is a bit more difficult here), but the simple act of sustaining a conversation between a question, answer, subsequent question, and subsequent answer eludes me more often than I'd like.
I will not stop this level of self-examination and commentary, because I believe it produces things of value. Why else would I blog? I kept a journal for a few months at my volunteer site as a class assignment, but I discarded the teacher-as-audience aspect after day one and began to write it with myself as an audience. There are some practical results: the inclusion of cursing, the mass amounts of parentheses, and more pop culture slang than I'd prefer my private language to incorporate. (On a side note, the word "parentheses" does not look at all like it sounds, at first. You have to sound it out for it to make sense.)
But I have this journal, and I was re-reading it yesterday afternoon, in lieu of free wireless Internet access. I realized how utterly fascinating it was to me. I realized that it had actual insights. All the details, saved from oblivion. The children's personalities, if not completely saved, at least sketched so my memory can fill in the rest, and my imagination can provide a few missing details. It's a snapshot of me slouching towards age 19, a view of my freshman year thoughts and experiences, almost as much as my English project commonplace book was (where did I put that, anyway?)
Things to cherish:
- The soft, glowing green of traffic lights. Humans made this. I have yet to find it in nature, despite it being nominally green. It is still pretty.
Things to bemoan:
- Goosebumps. I think they must have served an evolutionary purpose, but in my life they are an uncomfortable vestige.
~*~*~
Post script: I realized that talking about journals means plenty to me but nothing to others, because others can't access my WordPad documents. Which is good, because I have some incredibly personal stuff there. This is personal in a way. But I figure I'll share some excerpts. All names have been changed, since these are preschoolers we're talking about.
~*~*~
Time to draw. Jason, I think, gives me a piece of paper and I draw a flower and a sun. He asks me to draw a flower and sun on his paper, but the volunteer sheet specifically says I'm not supposed to draw for them. I get them to draw the circle (for the centers) for both but the petals/rays aren't working so finally I give in and just guide his hand. And then I stop guiding in hopes he'll catch on. I think he did. It's hard to tell when guiding stops and someone else drawing begins.
Shawn is the only one there. He is mindlessly battering away at his Play-Doh. I play around for a bit and then amuse myself by making a little turtle with this little turtle-press thing that is awesome. Unexpected development time. Shawn LOVES this turtle. He goes into this totally uncharacteristic (I thought) rhapsody about how it's so cute and he loves it and such. Then he asks if it's Donatello. That took me a second to realize he's talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I say it is, and then I make three more who are supposed to be Leonardo, Rafael, and Michelangelo. Unexpected development: He is REALLY FREAKING PROTECTIVE of these turtles. Whenever I make a MOVE he tells me not to hurt the turtles. He is a turtle mom. It is just strange and unexpected all around. I decide that turtles aren't Halloweeny enough and make a black cat (with orange Play-Doh though. The black Play-Doh is questionable.) He still yells at me not to hurt the turtles. After awhile I leave him to his beloveds.
A problem I have with the place. Everything is so regimented, as you can tell. There isn't any real free play. Even at stations, they make them restrict themselves to specific activities. I talked about that last week. Also. All the speech is so regimented. When people are collecting books, they must say "Book in, please." Those words. They say it without emotion and without even knowing what the hell it is, I think. And when one of the kids is told to go play with Brett, their line is "Come on, Brett. Let's go play." With no emotion whatsoever. (It's almost autistic, actually, the way the kids say it.) I mean, the alternative is that he spends his time by himself and it will be traumatic. But this is just as bad. It is disturbing, too. I don't like it at all. And what kind of a sentence is "Book in, please?" anyway? It sounds like something a computer came up with. The kids sound like computers saying it. I don't like it at all. It puts subversive ideas into my head like trying to convince the kids that individuality is good and such.
Samantha thinks she is a dog. I have no idea why. There are two options here. Either she freely and independently decided to imagine she was a dog, which is weird, but understandable, or the other kids (Alisha seems to be ringleader) have TOLD her that she is a dog, which is creepy Lord of the Flies shit. I guess I could have told her that she is not a dog but the second theory is out there (or so I think. I COULD BE WRONG...) but anyway. Maria plays along. She pets Samantha's hair as if it is dog fur. The whole thing is fairly creepy.
I will not stop this level of self-examination and commentary, because I believe it produces things of value. Why else would I blog? I kept a journal for a few months at my volunteer site as a class assignment, but I discarded the teacher-as-audience aspect after day one and began to write it with myself as an audience. There are some practical results: the inclusion of cursing, the mass amounts of parentheses, and more pop culture slang than I'd prefer my private language to incorporate. (On a side note, the word "parentheses" does not look at all like it sounds, at first. You have to sound it out for it to make sense.)
But I have this journal, and I was re-reading it yesterday afternoon, in lieu of free wireless Internet access. I realized how utterly fascinating it was to me. I realized that it had actual insights. All the details, saved from oblivion. The children's personalities, if not completely saved, at least sketched so my memory can fill in the rest, and my imagination can provide a few missing details. It's a snapshot of me slouching towards age 19, a view of my freshman year thoughts and experiences, almost as much as my English project commonplace book was (where did I put that, anyway?)
Things to cherish:
- The soft, glowing green of traffic lights. Humans made this. I have yet to find it in nature, despite it being nominally green. It is still pretty.
Things to bemoan:
- Goosebumps. I think they must have served an evolutionary purpose, but in my life they are an uncomfortable vestige.
~*~*~
Post script: I realized that talking about journals means plenty to me but nothing to others, because others can't access my WordPad documents. Which is good, because I have some incredibly personal stuff there. This is personal in a way. But I figure I'll share some excerpts. All names have been changed, since these are preschoolers we're talking about.
~*~*~
Time to draw. Jason, I think, gives me a piece of paper and I draw a flower and a sun. He asks me to draw a flower and sun on his paper, but the volunteer sheet specifically says I'm not supposed to draw for them. I get them to draw the circle (for the centers) for both but the petals/rays aren't working so finally I give in and just guide his hand. And then I stop guiding in hopes he'll catch on. I think he did. It's hard to tell when guiding stops and someone else drawing begins.
Shawn is the only one there. He is mindlessly battering away at his Play-Doh. I play around for a bit and then amuse myself by making a little turtle with this little turtle-press thing that is awesome. Unexpected development time. Shawn LOVES this turtle. He goes into this totally uncharacteristic (I thought) rhapsody about how it's so cute and he loves it and such. Then he asks if it's Donatello. That took me a second to realize he's talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I say it is, and then I make three more who are supposed to be Leonardo, Rafael, and Michelangelo. Unexpected development: He is REALLY FREAKING PROTECTIVE of these turtles. Whenever I make a MOVE he tells me not to hurt the turtles. He is a turtle mom. It is just strange and unexpected all around. I decide that turtles aren't Halloweeny enough and make a black cat (with orange Play-Doh though. The black Play-Doh is questionable.) He still yells at me not to hurt the turtles. After awhile I leave him to his beloveds.
A problem I have with the place. Everything is so regimented, as you can tell. There isn't any real free play. Even at stations, they make them restrict themselves to specific activities. I talked about that last week. Also. All the speech is so regimented. When people are collecting books, they must say "Book in, please." Those words. They say it without emotion and without even knowing what the hell it is, I think. And when one of the kids is told to go play with Brett, their line is "Come on, Brett. Let's go play." With no emotion whatsoever. (It's almost autistic, actually, the way the kids say it.) I mean, the alternative is that he spends his time by himself and it will be traumatic. But this is just as bad. It is disturbing, too. I don't like it at all. And what kind of a sentence is "Book in, please?" anyway? It sounds like something a computer came up with. The kids sound like computers saying it. I don't like it at all. It puts subversive ideas into my head like trying to convince the kids that individuality is good and such.
Samantha thinks she is a dog. I have no idea why. There are two options here. Either she freely and independently decided to imagine she was a dog, which is weird, but understandable, or the other kids (Alisha seems to be ringleader) have TOLD her that she is a dog, which is creepy Lord of the Flies shit. I guess I could have told her that she is not a dog but the second theory is out there (or so I think. I COULD BE WRONG...) but anyway. Maria plays along. She pets Samantha's hair as if it is dog fur. The whole thing is fairly creepy.
Read more...
January 25, 2008: Copy editing and coffee shops
A lot of people seem to find my zeal for copy editing surprising. I know it surprises me at times. I was in a research study yesterday, and part of the assignment involved asking me what I remembered from a few news articles. Well, what I remembered most was an article misusing "freshman" as a plural, when it isn't a plural at all. It's habit, it's obsession, and it's something I do all the time. It's to the point where I can scan a paragraph and think that something looks wrong, and then discover upon a subsequent close examination that there was indeed an error there. (Of course, this inevitably produces quite a few false positives, but I figure it is a sense I can refine.)
The thing is that copy editing is tied to a very innate, instinctual response in me. I see something spelled incorrectly and something inside me recoils and shudders. Lately I like to think of it as my personal role in a great war against decay. Decay can be good, of course, when tied to nature. The decay of a beautiful thing, however, is tragic. Averting tragedy to preserve beauty seems a worthy goal to me. Linguists have many terms for people, or at least self-aware people: prescriptivists, descriptivists, and such. Postscriptivists? I don't pretend to know what any of this means. It is a project I will tackle later. I do, however, believe the English language is beautiful. I'd have to, in order to do what I do. But every day I see it decaying around me. I've read the quotes about how being able to think of only one spelling for a word is a sign of lack of creativity. The problem is that everyone reported to have said such things had already mastered the language, and only *then* did they deliberately tinker with it. ee cummings knew English inside and out. High school students don't purposefully set out to push the boundaries of contractions vs. possessives when they screw up "its". (Before you comment on the punctuation/quotation mark thing, that is intentional. Punctuation belongs outside quotation marks, logically. The only reason it is otherwise was because printers were too cheap centuries ago. Britain agrees with me.)
I mentioned, before, how my reaction is similar to that of hearing something off key. It makes you flinch. It's knee jerk. It isn't right, and I don't like it at all. People singing out of key aren't deliberately trying to compose avant-garde, atonal masterworks. They're simply making mistakes, and mistakes that just sound bad. Of course I make mistakes too. The word "hygiene" always trips me up, no matter how many times I type or write it, and no matter how ingrained the "i before e" ditty is in my associations. I'll bring back my music metaphor here. I am very capable of singing something sharp, or flat, but I can (usually) tell when I do so, and can thus correct myself.
~*~*~
Yesterday, I went through my Artists to Check Out list, which is quickly becoming cumbersome. A while ago I split it up into a "To Check Out" and "To Buy" section, but that is nowhere near stemming any tide. The majority of artists on the list are people I heard on Pandora and liked, and wrote down so I would not forget. You can probably already see the problem with this: my income is far less than what would be required to buy after I hear, especially with the amount of new music I hear whenever I venture out onto Pandora. The result is that they languish on the list until I forget their names and definitely what they sound like. The only way, also, that an artist may be removed from the list is if I've familiarized myself with - usually, this means "bought" - everything in their repertoires. Needless to say, artists don't disappear very often.
What I have now is a plethora of one-off female singer-songwriters whose music I could not tell you anything about; I forgot even the tracks that made me write them down in the first place. Last night I decided to rectify this and did some "checking out". The result was something like a morning after, dozens of times over. Many of them were just bland, some I was just not in the mood for (a lot of the folk artists, for instance). It was disheartening. I almost wanted to prune the list, but then I'd lose them permanently from my memory. Perhaps I just need another day for one of them to click.
Or perhaps it's a result of my musical needs lately. It's funny to call them "needs," isn't it? Something more accurate would be "music that I want to listen to." What I want, versus what I need. And what I want is turning out to be a lot of pop music. I've mentioned Kay Hanley before; that seems to sum up what I've needed to listen to. I think about this because it's about time for me to buy new CDs. Siobhan Donaghy's "Ghosts" is on the list, as is the new Sarah Brightman album. That leaves one or two slots. Kay or her band will fill one. I'm not sure what the second will be yet. Should I buy a CD that I only have pirated mp3s of? Discover someone new entirely? 2008 is thin, so far, of definite new releases I want. This is probably due to lack of research, but still. I bought 51 CDs last year. I want to equal, at least, that amount this year. Can I do it? We shall see.
~*~*~
This afternoon, I had nothing to do until 7 PM and did not want to sit in my dorm room for six hours. Can you blame me? I've spent too much time sitting in rooms. And I was stressed. I had utterly failed to complete a conversation. It had started, but only got to question-answer-question-answer until I left the room, a bit too hastily, I think. After all, where did I have to go, anyway? It troubled me. I miss so many opportunities for conversation and it is truly sad. So I needed to do something in an attempt to distract myself. My solution was to go out and caffeinate myself. I go to coffeeshops to drink tea. Coffee baffles me. How can something that smells so wonderful taste so bad? No matter. Tea both smells and tastes good, so I will go drink it. But where? I have the remains of a gift card to Caribou Coffee from my birthday, but their tea is honestly not the greatest. It's passable, but not an adventure. I could go to the campus coffee shop but that would just make me sit in the bottom of the student union, which is really almost the same thing as sitting in a dorm room. I remembered that there was a place someone in our dorm had told me about, that I wanted to find since it had consistently good reviews online.
So I walked, in the opposite direction from downtown. I had forgotten the exact number of the place. All I knew was that you just kept walking, until you thought you'd gone too far, and then you'd find it. In retrospect I could have looked it up - I did have my laptop with me - but I only realized this after quite a bit of walking. It was a pleasant day for a walk, in any case. It wasn't too cold, and there were birds out. I walked a long way, until I was sure I had gone too far. I walked past so many bus stops and houses and streets. I finally decided to turn back, after encountering a couple who wanted to know where a bus stop was. I, of course, had no idea. Then I noticed the place, from a sign next to an antiques shop (the first commercial building in what was probably at least half a mile). My vague description was completely accurate, it seems. So I stopped in and it's a very nice place, which serves a solid pot of tea. On the walls are paintings made on old boards from a farm, which turn out to be considerably prettier than the premise would lead you to think. It's smoke free and the music is good. There's no free wireless, but that just encourages me to blog. It's certainly worth going back on Friday afternoons where I need to fill hours.
Friday afternoons, I can think of so many things to do. When I have disposable income again there's a used bookstore that I was enraptured by. It also has cats. I went in there one afternoon and started reading so many children's books, in a kind of dream of nostalgia. I'll purchase some of them. There was also a nice Christina Rossetti biography I was interested in, that I hadn't read. And there are other things to do. I can put off lunch until after music practice and go find new and interesting places to eat. I can drink more tea in various places. I can go downtown and hunt for inappropriate uses of quotation marks for a blog I read. I can take a bus and get off at the first place I haven't explored. The possibilities are endless. Solitude might be the cure for loneliness, or simply fermenting yourself to better share your life with others. Either way, I should cultivate it someplace other than a dorm room.
~*~*~
Things to cherish:
- The sun. Cherishing the sun is certainly not new, but I'll do it anyway. The way it shines through windows with warmth in the middle of January. The way it paints bright stripes down your skin. The way it shines through windows, coating the brick path below you with what seems like a thin dust of chalk until you're in the midst of it. The way your hair feels, after being warmed by the sun.
- Cobblestones. Perhaps I frequent the wrong places, but I am daily faced with what seems like the imminent extinction of the cobblestone. This troubles me. There's a nostalgic element to cobblestones to me, probably, but I just like them better than concrete or asphalt or cement. I also like flagstones. When I imagine my dream house, I have now added both to the perimeter.
- Birds. I should spend more time outdoors without listening to human music, because I'm always surprised by how beautiful birds' music is.
Things to bemoan:
- The dust and detritus that collects on laptops.
- Blogging for money, everything about it.
The thing is that copy editing is tied to a very innate, instinctual response in me. I see something spelled incorrectly and something inside me recoils and shudders. Lately I like to think of it as my personal role in a great war against decay. Decay can be good, of course, when tied to nature. The decay of a beautiful thing, however, is tragic. Averting tragedy to preserve beauty seems a worthy goal to me. Linguists have many terms for people, or at least self-aware people: prescriptivists, descriptivists, and such. Postscriptivists? I don't pretend to know what any of this means. It is a project I will tackle later. I do, however, believe the English language is beautiful. I'd have to, in order to do what I do. But every day I see it decaying around me. I've read the quotes about how being able to think of only one spelling for a word is a sign of lack of creativity. The problem is that everyone reported to have said such things had already mastered the language, and only *then* did they deliberately tinker with it. ee cummings knew English inside and out. High school students don't purposefully set out to push the boundaries of contractions vs. possessives when they screw up "its". (Before you comment on the punctuation/quotation mark thing, that is intentional. Punctuation belongs outside quotation marks, logically. The only reason it is otherwise was because printers were too cheap centuries ago. Britain agrees with me.)
I mentioned, before, how my reaction is similar to that of hearing something off key. It makes you flinch. It's knee jerk. It isn't right, and I don't like it at all. People singing out of key aren't deliberately trying to compose avant-garde, atonal masterworks. They're simply making mistakes, and mistakes that just sound bad. Of course I make mistakes too. The word "hygiene" always trips me up, no matter how many times I type or write it, and no matter how ingrained the "i before e" ditty is in my associations. I'll bring back my music metaphor here. I am very capable of singing something sharp, or flat, but I can (usually) tell when I do so, and can thus correct myself.
~*~*~
Yesterday, I went through my Artists to Check Out list, which is quickly becoming cumbersome. A while ago I split it up into a "To Check Out" and "To Buy" section, but that is nowhere near stemming any tide. The majority of artists on the list are people I heard on Pandora and liked, and wrote down so I would not forget. You can probably already see the problem with this: my income is far less than what would be required to buy after I hear, especially with the amount of new music I hear whenever I venture out onto Pandora. The result is that they languish on the list until I forget their names and definitely what they sound like. The only way, also, that an artist may be removed from the list is if I've familiarized myself with - usually, this means "bought" - everything in their repertoires. Needless to say, artists don't disappear very often.
What I have now is a plethora of one-off female singer-songwriters whose music I could not tell you anything about; I forgot even the tracks that made me write them down in the first place. Last night I decided to rectify this and did some "checking out". The result was something like a morning after, dozens of times over. Many of them were just bland, some I was just not in the mood for (a lot of the folk artists, for instance). It was disheartening. I almost wanted to prune the list, but then I'd lose them permanently from my memory. Perhaps I just need another day for one of them to click.
Or perhaps it's a result of my musical needs lately. It's funny to call them "needs," isn't it? Something more accurate would be "music that I want to listen to." What I want, versus what I need. And what I want is turning out to be a lot of pop music. I've mentioned Kay Hanley before; that seems to sum up what I've needed to listen to. I think about this because it's about time for me to buy new CDs. Siobhan Donaghy's "Ghosts" is on the list, as is the new Sarah Brightman album. That leaves one or two slots. Kay or her band will fill one. I'm not sure what the second will be yet. Should I buy a CD that I only have pirated mp3s of? Discover someone new entirely? 2008 is thin, so far, of definite new releases I want. This is probably due to lack of research, but still. I bought 51 CDs last year. I want to equal, at least, that amount this year. Can I do it? We shall see.
~*~*~
This afternoon, I had nothing to do until 7 PM and did not want to sit in my dorm room for six hours. Can you blame me? I've spent too much time sitting in rooms. And I was stressed. I had utterly failed to complete a conversation. It had started, but only got to question-answer-question-answer until I left the room, a bit too hastily, I think. After all, where did I have to go, anyway? It troubled me. I miss so many opportunities for conversation and it is truly sad. So I needed to do something in an attempt to distract myself. My solution was to go out and caffeinate myself. I go to coffeeshops to drink tea. Coffee baffles me. How can something that smells so wonderful taste so bad? No matter. Tea both smells and tastes good, so I will go drink it. But where? I have the remains of a gift card to Caribou Coffee from my birthday, but their tea is honestly not the greatest. It's passable, but not an adventure. I could go to the campus coffee shop but that would just make me sit in the bottom of the student union, which is really almost the same thing as sitting in a dorm room. I remembered that there was a place someone in our dorm had told me about, that I wanted to find since it had consistently good reviews online.
So I walked, in the opposite direction from downtown. I had forgotten the exact number of the place. All I knew was that you just kept walking, until you thought you'd gone too far, and then you'd find it. In retrospect I could have looked it up - I did have my laptop with me - but I only realized this after quite a bit of walking. It was a pleasant day for a walk, in any case. It wasn't too cold, and there were birds out. I walked a long way, until I was sure I had gone too far. I walked past so many bus stops and houses and streets. I finally decided to turn back, after encountering a couple who wanted to know where a bus stop was. I, of course, had no idea. Then I noticed the place, from a sign next to an antiques shop (the first commercial building in what was probably at least half a mile). My vague description was completely accurate, it seems. So I stopped in and it's a very nice place, which serves a solid pot of tea. On the walls are paintings made on old boards from a farm, which turn out to be considerably prettier than the premise would lead you to think. It's smoke free and the music is good. There's no free wireless, but that just encourages me to blog. It's certainly worth going back on Friday afternoons where I need to fill hours.
Friday afternoons, I can think of so many things to do. When I have disposable income again there's a used bookstore that I was enraptured by. It also has cats. I went in there one afternoon and started reading so many children's books, in a kind of dream of nostalgia. I'll purchase some of them. There was also a nice Christina Rossetti biography I was interested in, that I hadn't read. And there are other things to do. I can put off lunch until after music practice and go find new and interesting places to eat. I can drink more tea in various places. I can go downtown and hunt for inappropriate uses of quotation marks for a blog I read. I can take a bus and get off at the first place I haven't explored. The possibilities are endless. Solitude might be the cure for loneliness, or simply fermenting yourself to better share your life with others. Either way, I should cultivate it someplace other than a dorm room.
~*~*~
Things to cherish:
- The sun. Cherishing the sun is certainly not new, but I'll do it anyway. The way it shines through windows with warmth in the middle of January. The way it paints bright stripes down your skin. The way it shines through windows, coating the brick path below you with what seems like a thin dust of chalk until you're in the midst of it. The way your hair feels, after being warmed by the sun.
- Cobblestones. Perhaps I frequent the wrong places, but I am daily faced with what seems like the imminent extinction of the cobblestone. This troubles me. There's a nostalgic element to cobblestones to me, probably, but I just like them better than concrete or asphalt or cement. I also like flagstones. When I imagine my dream house, I have now added both to the perimeter.
- Birds. I should spend more time outdoors without listening to human music, because I'm always surprised by how beautiful birds' music is.
Things to bemoan:
- The dust and detritus that collects on laptops.
- Blogging for money, everything about it.
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January 24, 2008: Strawberries and such
If you ever want to be profoundly disturbed, read an ingredients list. Having a food allergy makes this necessary for me. I want to get to a point, sometime, where I can eat only things whose ingredients do not sound like bioweapons.
I bought a container of strawberries today, in my ongoing attempt to rectify this: good for my body, uneasy on my wallet, but anyway. I pulled out a strawberry and saw green detritus around the base. At first I thought it was just a remarkably dirty strawberry, so I tried to scrape it off. It wouldn't scrape off. Then I realized: There were tiny leaves sprouting from where the seeds would be. About twenty in all. I stopped to admire it for a few minuts. I almost felt bad for its being picked. A worker out there probably passed it by, trying to make their quota (I saw a documentary on this once), and now it's here, and its leaves are suspended forever in that moment between seed and leaf. I'm going to save it somehow. I almost want to name it.
I am starting a new section here: Things to Cherish and Things to Bemoan. Little things matter too, for they illuminate larger things.
Things to cherish:- Whomever decided that it would be a good idea to immerse tea leaves into hot water. I've cited tea before, but it bears a seocnd mention.
Things to bemoan:- An overheard statement that the only good TV shows were by Jerry Bruckheimer. Statements of opinion that include words like "the only good..." are naturally suspect.
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January 19, 2008: Snow, anthropology, and Kay Hanley
Global warming disturbs me for childish reasons. I know that there is a very real possibility of the world ending. But what I really care about is the impending extinction of snow. Yes, snow. Remember that? It's like rain, but BETTER, and is the only form of precipitation I will gladly venture out into.I like my hair when it is snowing. That isn't shallow at all, I know. But the contrast of snow against my hair, or my coat, is pretty to me. I like how you can look up into the light and see the snow falling, in real time, and then I also like how the fact that you are pausing draws more snow towards you. I like watching fields become white. I love the way clumps of snow collapse when stepped on.
I've found myself enrolled in an anthropology class, which means that I am subjected to several readings about self and society. I have problems with this. Anthropologists, in my possibly wrong view, are infatuated with the self as a reflection of society. I don't like that idea. People should be individuals first. Some of the worst inhumanities in history happened when people defined themselves in terms of groups, rather than in terms of themselves. So when I read things such as "the need to rewrite the self and the social," I become angry. I'm quite happy with myself. I'm not going to rewrite myself just because an anonymous anthropologist on a photocopied Blackboard document told me to. Any changes in myself will come about naturally. I think this might be a typical 4 trait.
The other readings concerned themselves with things like insider versus outsider ethnographies. In favor of the insider version, usually. I think there are sometimes advantages to an outsider's view. Neither way will bring you the truth; just different portions of it. The example I used was our hall. Either you have a wonderful learning community with tight-knit people, or a bunch of people who will not shut up at 11 PM when people are trying to study or sleep.
These are the people who are experts at crafting discussion-board posts where it is difficult to tell whether they are regurgitating their classroom notes or Wikipedia's entries, or whether they might be saying something new. I think most people *could* come up with original thoughts. I just think too many people don't bother. The slacker has a certain cachet. It's so hard to tell. Certain details might give it away, such as calling the Wife of Bath "Bath's wife." Bath is a place in England, not a person. She isn't married to a guy named Bath (although, considering her character, that isn't such a stretch..) No, "of" means "from" in this case. The same as the Barber of Seville. It's not saying that he cuts the hair of a guy named Seville. He's a barber and he lives in Seville. Things like that get to me.
Someone told me I should take a linguistics class. I like the idea. It'd help to know how my language was put together. I have freedom to take electives again after demoting journalism to a minor, so I think I might. Right now that makes me an English major with two minors in journalism and in music. I'm happy with this, and after meeting a kindred community in the school's English major association, I'm fairly sure I've made the right decision.
On a completely different note, I rediscovered Kay Hanley's music recently. I say "rediscovered" because anyone who was around in the 1990s probably had exposure to it, whether through Letters to Cleo or through movies (that was her band in 10 Things I Hate About You; she provided the singing voice in Josie and the Pussycats.) Her Myspace page is here: http://www.myspace.com/kayhanleymusic and the song "Nicky Passes Marble Arch" is exactly the sort of fun '90s relic I didn't know I missed. The entire thing is one big hook. It reminds me somewhat of Sheryl Crow, whom I like regardless of any adult contemporary associations.Of course, I'm waiting to buy new CDs until my money stabilizes somewhat. Also on my list is "Ghosts" by Siobhan Donaghy. I'm on a pop kick lately. If I analyze it I'll probably find a reason, but I'm too busy grinning to analyze. That could seem like a rather insidious statement, but I mean it in the best possible way.
I'm fond of ask500people.com but the latest question made me laugh: "Do you like go to the IRAN on vacation?" I know it's from someone with English as a second language, but I can't help reading it in a teenage voice: "Do you, like, go to the Iran on vacation?" It made me laugh.
Last night, I saw Juno. I was fully prepared to hate this movie, having already written it off as hipster pop-culture pastiche. But a strange thing happened around the midpoint: I began to like it. The thing to realize is that the main character is exponentially less self-aware than she thinks she is. She's 16, after all. Her almost-but-not-quite-affair with the adoptive father brings this out. Sure, she thinks she's instigating things. Sure, she puts on lipstick before she goes. But she's still oblivious. She has no conception of what homewrecking entails until she is nearly catapulted into it. The scene evokes legitimate discomfort. (It also makes you wonder: between this and Hard Candy, isn't that enough for typecasting?)
The other great part was Jennifer Garner's performance, which was absolutely authentic. Several reviewers mentioned that they hated her in the beginning, which made me wonder if I missed something, because I never did. I bristled a bit at her "born to be a mother" comment until I realized that it was true. Children bring her such unmistakable, unfakable happiness that I'm amazed that this was acted.
Yes, I have quibbles. I see the implications behind the fact that the protester is among the only characters not given lines in lithe English (the endless repetition of "borned" comes to mind.) Most of the references did indeed serve as ways for Diablo Cody to show off everything she knows about. And I absolutely hate about 80% of the soundtrack. But any movie that provokes an emotional response is good by me.
I've found myself enrolled in an anthropology class, which means that I am subjected to several readings about self and society. I have problems with this. Anthropologists, in my possibly wrong view, are infatuated with the self as a reflection of society. I don't like that idea. People should be individuals first. Some of the worst inhumanities in history happened when people defined themselves in terms of groups, rather than in terms of themselves. So when I read things such as "the need to rewrite the self and the social," I become angry. I'm quite happy with myself. I'm not going to rewrite myself just because an anonymous anthropologist on a photocopied Blackboard document told me to. Any changes in myself will come about naturally. I think this might be a typical 4 trait.
The other readings concerned themselves with things like insider versus outsider ethnographies. In favor of the insider version, usually. I think there are sometimes advantages to an outsider's view. Neither way will bring you the truth; just different portions of it. The example I used was our hall. Either you have a wonderful learning community with tight-knit people, or a bunch of people who will not shut up at 11 PM when people are trying to study or sleep.
These are the people who are experts at crafting discussion-board posts where it is difficult to tell whether they are regurgitating their classroom notes or Wikipedia's entries, or whether they might be saying something new. I think most people *could* come up with original thoughts. I just think too many people don't bother. The slacker has a certain cachet. It's so hard to tell. Certain details might give it away, such as calling the Wife of Bath "Bath's wife." Bath is a place in England, not a person. She isn't married to a guy named Bath (although, considering her character, that isn't such a stretch..) No, "of" means "from" in this case. The same as the Barber of Seville. It's not saying that he cuts the hair of a guy named Seville. He's a barber and he lives in Seville. Things like that get to me.
Someone told me I should take a linguistics class. I like the idea. It'd help to know how my language was put together. I have freedom to take electives again after demoting journalism to a minor, so I think I might. Right now that makes me an English major with two minors in journalism and in music. I'm happy with this, and after meeting a kindred community in the school's English major association, I'm fairly sure I've made the right decision.
On a completely different note, I rediscovered Kay Hanley's music recently. I say "rediscovered" because anyone who was around in the 1990s probably had exposure to it, whether through Letters to Cleo or through movies (that was her band in 10 Things I Hate About You; she provided the singing voice in Josie and the Pussycats.) Her Myspace page is here: http://www.myspace.com/kayhanleymusic and the song "Nicky Passes Marble Arch" is exactly the sort of fun '90s relic I didn't know I missed. The entire thing is one big hook. It reminds me somewhat of Sheryl Crow, whom I like regardless of any adult contemporary associations.Of course, I'm waiting to buy new CDs until my money stabilizes somewhat. Also on my list is "Ghosts" by Siobhan Donaghy. I'm on a pop kick lately. If I analyze it I'll probably find a reason, but I'm too busy grinning to analyze. That could seem like a rather insidious statement, but I mean it in the best possible way.
I'm fond of ask500people.com but the latest question made me laugh: "Do you like go to the IRAN on vacation?" I know it's from someone with English as a second language, but I can't help reading it in a teenage voice: "Do you, like, go to the Iran on vacation?" It made me laugh.
Last night, I saw Juno. I was fully prepared to hate this movie, having already written it off as hipster pop-culture pastiche. But a strange thing happened around the midpoint: I began to like it. The thing to realize is that the main character is exponentially less self-aware than she thinks she is. She's 16, after all. Her almost-but-not-quite-affair with the adoptive father brings this out. Sure, she thinks she's instigating things. Sure, she puts on lipstick before she goes. But she's still oblivious. She has no conception of what homewrecking entails until she is nearly catapulted into it. The scene evokes legitimate discomfort. (It also makes you wonder: between this and Hard Candy, isn't that enough for typecasting?)
The other great part was Jennifer Garner's performance, which was absolutely authentic. Several reviewers mentioned that they hated her in the beginning, which made me wonder if I missed something, because I never did. I bristled a bit at her "born to be a mother" comment until I realized that it was true. Children bring her such unmistakable, unfakable happiness that I'm amazed that this was acted.
Yes, I have quibbles. I see the implications behind the fact that the protester is among the only characters not given lines in lithe English (the endless repetition of "borned" comes to mind.) Most of the references did indeed serve as ways for Diablo Cody to show off everything she knows about. And I absolutely hate about 80% of the soundtrack. But any movie that provokes an emotional response is good by me.
Read more...
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