On Inconsistency

I address this to you, O, reader who has yet to discover this secret shame of a blog, dedicated to nothing but talking about myself: Sorry about the massive number of posts on day #1, followed by zero on day #2. I'm not sure what finally put the fire in my belly to go ahead and make this stupid thing. Probably the need to bitch about my supposed "usurpation," without having a place to do so. Anyhow, I picked a silly time to start, because I have three papers due this week. The first, as you can see, is on ol' Thomas Hobbes and his wacky textual adventure: Leviathan. Maybe I'll post the finished paper; you'd like that wouldn't you? Of course you wouldn't, what the fuck are you smoking. Anyway, after Hobbes, due on Wednesday, I've got another on Descartes due Thursday, and finally one on Wittgenstein due Friday. A bit of advice: if you don't like writing, stay the fuck away from philosophy.

Cool thing I found out last night: the Dave Brubeck Quartet is in town playing at the school's big auditorium Thursday and Friday. The Thursday show, which will arguably be the better, as it features the Quartet playing with the One O'clock Band, was already sold out by the time I learned of this whole affair. However, they held the group over for another night as a result of the overwhelming ticket sales. Regrettably the Friday show is just the Quartet, but hey, that's still pretty God damn awesome, especially considering UNT students get in for free. Should be a nice way to relax at the end of a long, essay-infested week. Also found the date for this year's annual Lab Band Madness performance. Went to the show last year, and it was un-fucking-believably awesome. The show features all 9 of the UNT Lab Bands, playing some of the most ass-kickin' Big Band tunes you can imagine. What really amazes me is that they try to play as many original compositions by UNT students and alumni as possible. Thinking about this, I made another effort to try and track down the tunes of a Bob Curnow work called Suite Seasonings last night. One of the lab bands played the third movement, Cayenne, at last year's show, and I was absolutely mesmerized. I actually ended up finding some free demo versions with Curnow talking a little bit over them, but more than adequate considering the tunes don't exist on any officially released album.

On a similar note, I was recently introduce to Pandora Radio by a friend of mine who is equally audiophillic. I've been spending a lot of time searching through torrent sites and whatnot (omgpiracy) to find some of the better artists I've been exposed to through the Music Genome Project. I'm finding (unsurprisingly) that my stations all seem to drift toward a Jazz-Funk type orientation. I've loved Big Band since about the first time I ever heard a Glenn Miller tune, and years of forcing myself deeper and deeper into the larger Jazz niche has really yielded some excellent listening material. Of course, the unforeseen consequence was that I now have absolutely no concept of popular music of the day. I guess some of us are just doomed to live in another generation's pop culture, never in our own.

One of the bands that's really struck me as having an excellent sound is the Mitchell and Dewbury Band. Regrettably, they're so obscure that there's only one tune they've produced that can be found in torrents anywhere. I did find a site that was selling the particular album I'm after for $.15 a track, and I must admit I was really tempted to just fork over $1.50 for some great music. However, just before completing the registration form, I had a crisis of conscience (my conscience apparently working in the opposite direction of normal people). The course of action I eventually settled on (and I'm sure this completely defeats the purpose of Pandora), was just to use a trick I utilized for the making of the Cloud WIP video, which is to split the line out on my PC, sending the normal line to the stereo, and using a male-male line to run the other half right back into the line-in port. From there I can record anything I'm hearing in Audacity, with the precise level of quality originally used. In the case of Pandora, despite being a streaming source, that quality is excellent. I'm beginning to think it I should just keep a running recording any time I listen to Pandora, and just split the tracks up later. I'm always willing to go searching around for a band that seems good, but when I can't find them, this is a really nifty method for playback "on demand," as they say.

Anyhow, I've got a paper to get back (three, actually). Once I finish those, I really need to get to work on build the Cloud model, because I think Ninjatoes is really starting to pick up his pace. So if you don't hear from me for a bit (and it's not like you would, no one's even found this ridiculous web-log yet), don't worry. I'm just busy composing bullshit for another purpose.



(Did you catch the Half-Life reference? No? Go back, you'll see it.)