Kablammo!

On the bright side, I suppose I can rent a car now if I ever need to.

To make myself feel like a complete and utter failure (moreso than already—thanks, Celia ;) ), here is an idiotlist:

• Orson Welles was my age when he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane, widely and correctly considered the best film ever. (It’s Terrific!)
• Paul McCartney was my age when he wrote “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and he and his mates recorded Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, about which more need not be said.
• Albert Einstein was my age, and had my job, when he had his Annus Mirabilis, for which he was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize and repeatedly referenced on The Simpsons.
• Neil Young was my age when he released a solo album and an album with Crosby, Stills and Nash, in addition to touring with Crazy Horse (now available as an album as well).
• Ian Anderson was my age when J-Tull made Thick as a Brick.
• David Gilmour was my age when P-Floyd made Meddle.
• Georges-Pierre Seurat was my age when he began work on Un dimanche après-midi à l’ÃŽle de la Grande Jatte (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte).
• Leandro Barbosa was my age (happy birthday, Leandro!) when he was the reigning holder of the NBA 6th Man Award, and a key player on the most exciting team in the league.
• Need I continue?

For the sake of fairness, however, here is a counterexamplelist:

• Eric Blair was my age when he was broke and unemployed, on the brink of eviction and starvation. He considered himself lucky to find a job washing dishes 80 hours a week, as he later described under an assumed name in Down and Out in Paris and London.
• Little help?

• I’m rather ashamed that it took this long for it to finally dawn on me that the design on the carpets by the elevator banks enables you to orient yourself with respect to the building. I mean, I remember noticing the symmetry in the carpet even when I showed up for my interview, let alone when I began coming here and walking on it five times a week. And every now and then, I’d forget which elevator bank I’d gone into, and thus which way I needed to turn when I got out. The solution was literally staring me in the face for over a year and I didn’t notice it. Pathetic, isn’t it?
• So far the most positive thing I can say about Guitar Hero 3 is that I am glad it reminded me how good “Raining Blood” (and Reign in Blood as a whole) are.
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is, without a doubt, one of my two favorite recent books written from the point of view of an autistic boy inspired by father-related issues to go on a grand quest. Though I still like Curious Incident better.

Song of the Moment: «Car Thief» — Beastie Boys

I noticed a hair on the floor, a hair so long it couldn’t have possibly been mine and must have been a remnant from a visitor. I bent over to pick it up, intending to bring it outside and release it into the wind, as one might do with a wayward insect, hoping it might find its way back home. When I picked up the hair, I saw that it was completely straight, and so wispy as to be nearly transparent; but by the time I finished standing up, it had become thick, dark, lustrous and curly. As I walked to the door it grew into a dirty-blonde dreadlock, and by the time I got outside I was holding a wig’s worth of golden braids. I flung them into the air, but the wind wanted nothing to do with them and they fell to the driveway unclaimed.Православни икони

Time for a blogmeme.
» » Continue reading . . .

A not-so-recent-anymore article includes the following:

Music sales have slumped in recent years as more people have turned to file-sharing. The Recording Industry Association of America, which is not a party to the lawsuit, says record companies have brought more than 26,000 actions against people alleging they shared files in violation of copyrights.

I’m not going to address the merit of this lawsuit in particular, or the approach in general. There’s enough of that all over the internet already. Nor will I point out that, during the “recent years”, while “[m]usic sales have slumped”, DVD sales have exploded and RIAA labels have released fewer and arguably worse albums. There’s gotta be enough of that all over the internet as well.

No, my point is illustrated by this list of the past 10 or so albums I’ve purchased, along with the record label (if any) for each one:

• Elliott Brood — Tin Type (Weewerk)
• Holy Fuck — LP (XL Recordings)
• Husky Rescue — Ghost is Not Real (Catskills)
• Junior Senior — Hey Hey My My Yo Yo (Rykodisc)
• Manu Chao — La Radiolina (Nacional Records)
• Maserati — Inventions for the New Season (Temporary Residence)
• Menomena — Friend and Foe (Barsuk)
• Portugal. The Man — Church Mouth (Fearless Records)
• Radiohead — In Rainbows (?)
• Spoon — Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge Records)
• UNKLE — War Stories (Surrender All)

Green indicates an album is non-RIAA, red RIAA (post-purchase, I looked them up here). As you can see, that means one of the past ten CDs I’ve bought (or one of the past eleven albums I’ve bought) has been a release from an RIAA-affiliated label. I guess that means I’m so indie it hurts [1], but it also illustrates that, without even trying, you can nearly eliminate your support for the RIAA and still buy as many CDs as you did before. So while I don’t necessarily doubt that music sales in general have fallen, I have to wonder whether the fall is as big as it’s been made out to be. Articles tend to parrot RIAA talking points, and it’s not clear where they’re getting their numbers from. If their sales figures are only based on the sales figures from their member labels, then the vast majority of my purchases don’t count, and I know there are lots of people out there with tastes like mine (or, God forbid, even indier).

Incidentally, if not for downloads, I wouldn’t have spent actual money on any of those albums.

* * *

[1] Adam, if you’re reading this, you can consider this post an explicit recommendation to listen to all those albums listed above. Sorry this still isn’t a proper mp3blog, but at least it’s trending in that direction. In any case, all of those albums qualify as ‘best of new music’ in my book; other than the Elliott Brood, which came out in 2004; and the Junior Senior, which came out in 2005 but wasn’t released Stateside until this year. Though the US release of the Junior Senior album does come with an EP of all-new material—which is the entire reason I bought it, since I already had a copy that I got in Denmark this spring.

I’m so bourgeois right now, it’s not even funny. Not only am I the kind of person who spends his evenings listening to jazz on his hi-fi while sipping single-malt Scotch, but I’m also now the kind of person who orders prints of artwork featured in Harper’s magazine. What can I say? I like Lichtenstein’s work and references thereto, and I love biting satire (and Scotch).

Time for an idiotlist.

• I need to get some earplugs. It was a great show, but my ears still haven’t recovered from it. My high-frequency hearing, in particular, is markedly worse than it was this time yesterday.
• If your band is called the Young Criminals’ Starvation League, it’s incredibly appropriate (and hilarious) when you and the drummer come out with stockings pulled over your heads. It’s also quite impressive that when you sing four songs through the stocking before finally getting sick of it.
• Speaking of costumes, and Halloween, seeing the keyboard player wearing a cardboard Washington monument was great on its own—but when he briefly played “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” between songs at one point, it was magnificent.
• I ordered the same drink three times, and was served by a different bartender each time (all of them at the stage-right bar). The first time it cost $5, the second time it cost $7, and the third time it cost $10. The third one was the best value of the bunch.
• Strange, but perhaps not unexpected, that I do better and feel better after going out and getting home late and tipsy than I do after a restful evening and a full night’s rest. No use in fighting it, I suppose.

It’s been pointed out to me, and rightfully so, that my last post has more than a little in common with the Wondermark strip excerpted below:

While I can’t really disagree with that, there’s another comic that does a better job of summing up my life as a whole right now. It’s excerpted below:

Go ahead and read the whole thing. It really hits the nail on the head, except for minor details like the typewriter (people use computers nowadays) and the convertible (I ride a train). I’ve had Work is Hell for 12 years or so now, and of all the cartoons in it, that’s the one that’s stuck in my mind the most—especially the last panel—because it seemed like it portrayed such a singularly unpleasant and stultifying way of life. Now, though, I know better, because I’ve lived it. It’s really not all that bad… until you start thinking about it. Which, in a way, is really the whole point of the last panel.

(Apologies to Juhan Viiding.)

Taevas kisub kõrgeks, sügis astub maha.
Jälle kukub asju diivanite taha.
Liikumatult istun iseenda süles,
pole mingit soovi võtta asju üles.

I’ve been exhausted for weeks, and I don’t see it getting better any time soon. I managed to pull off what amounted to a Herculean effort at the end of FY07, but instead of having some room to breathe I still feel like I’m on the verge of drowning in a sea of useless crap.

There was a moment somewhere, maybe even a week or two, where I was nearly in a ‘zone’ of some sort, which manifested itself in a surprising (and timely) bout of productivity. That productivity, though, was born of not giving a crap, which might not be the best thing in the world, and anyway the crap-giving has returned. Or maybe it hasn’t, I can’t quite tell. Either way, I’m left with a profound sense of ennui. Again.

There are so many things I’ve been meaning to do, and most of them have been on the list for months. Things like filing my state tax return or getting my car inspected I can probably continue putting off fairly safely, but if I ever want to go back to school I need to write an application essay like Right Now, This Instant. And if I ever want to get my colors I need to finish writing that other essay I started in the spring when they were getting impatient about how long I was taking. I ended up being able to stall for time a bit, but now that time has just about run out.

And then there are the other things. I’ve never known what I wanted, but for a little while there I felt like I was at least on the right track, and it was a situation worth pursuing. But I’m not sure anymore of that, either.

Title refers, at the very least, to the following:

• my sudden awareness of just how good an album Beautiful Freak really is.
• my plan for dealing with all the stuff I should have gotten done earlier in the quarter and fiscal year that are about to end.
• my tentative baby-steps towards figuring out what it is I actually want.