On Self-help Seminars

I love finding these around campus...but you have to read it in an infomercial announcer's voice:

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.)

On Photograms

My life in a photo:

All I can say is the Buddha would have a fit.

Proceeding counter-clockwise from the left:

160GB iPod Video - Classic? I don't know what they call the different versions. Apparently they don't make the version I have anymore. Yes I feel like a tool owning an iPod, but no one else makes them as big. I would've gotten a Zune, but i was at the 75GB mark when I was considering it, and I knew I'd be going over the line soon.

Samsung Instinct - I'd been carrying an old clamshell hand-me-down phone for literally 10 years. People used to look at me funny when I said, "That strange ring can't be my phone, my phone doesn't do ringtones." Anyway, it's sort of an iPhone knockoff, I guess? It suits me just fine, I just wish it cooperated better with my~

Sony DR-BT21G Bluetooth Headset - God dammit I love these headphones. I refuse to leave my apartment without them. I think I was about 15 years old when I first saw a concept image for a pair of wireless portable headphones in some tech magazine. I'd been wanting a pair ever since, and for my last birthday, the combined efforts of my mother and sister, via Amazon gift certificates, yielded me the most awesome headphones I've ever owned. For nearly a decade I was a stubborn mule about my portable audio, and refused to use anything but Sony MDR-G42s. They had been getting harder and harder to find each time I wanted to get a new pair, and this last year Sony finally stopped manufacturing them. In a panic, I decided it was time to take a leap of faith and hope the Bluetooth technology didn't need any more tweaking to be viable. Thankfully they sound just as good as my old G42s, and they're wireless. Grab a Sony iPod Bluetooth adapter, a Bluetooth dongle for my PC, and I've got a pair of headphones, with a built in mic and playback controls, which function with my iPod, PC, PS3, and phone. Good motherfucking times.

Sony PS3 Dualshock 3 controller - Obviously for the PS3, for which I am something of a fanboy. I am a self-proclaimed Sony whore. If I could afford a new laptop, I'd get a Vaio, All my headphones are sony, I tend to buy other products from companies who do business with some branch of Sony (Samsung, Pioneer, etc.). Don't get me wrong. If I could afford a Wii and a 360, and all the games I'd want for them, I'd totally go for it. I'm not so stupid as to turn away something good. But the ever present existence of scarcity means we have to choose sides, and I side with Sony (actually I side with Squaresoft, but they're still sort of allied with Sony, so it's appropriate that my fanboyish ties are slowly wearing.) I actually got my Dualshock 3 when it first came out in Japan. Ordered it off of Divineo for like $80. Pricey, yes, but it arrived amazingly fast considering it had to travel accross the Pacific.

Gingher Scissors - My mom got me these for Christmas this last year. Apparently Gingher is quite a fancy brand of scissors? My mom still has a pair of all-metal Ginghers which are older than I am. They're designed for fabric, so they kind of wear out up against paper. Either all my paper is super-abrasive, or paper just wreaks havoc on scissors in general. A run through a cheap sharpener keeps them working smoothly. Probably killing the blades, but whatever. Scissors are obviously a necessity in the papercraftings.

Olevia TV Remote - Okay, this is kind of symbolic. Nothing too amazing about the remote itself. It goes to a 27" Olevia I got two summers ago for surprisingly cheap. I actually decided I wouldn't buy a PS3 until I had an HDTV as well, and I was lucky enough to find this one on Newegg. Anyway, remote, general media-phile. Very deep metaphor there...

Nintendo DS Lite - Onyx. Fancier than black. I had actually been holding out on getting a DS for quite some time. I knew there were plenty of Square titles on the system, but I didn't want to spend the money, and I kept telling myself a viable DS emulator was just around the corner. Well I got my 11-year-old niece Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for her birthday this last summer (I've managed to get her a Final Fantasy title every gift giving occasion for the last two or three years, gotta get 'em started young), and the back of the box totally sold me. Finally caved and got a DS and an R4 card. Figure it was a reasonable purchase. the DS isn't an incredibly expensive console, and with the R4 card and (omfg super) cheap Micro SD card only costing about the price of a new game, I have zero upkeep cost for the system. Hey-ho piracy ahoy~

Sony PSP Phat - This is actually my...third PSP. I got one back when I first started college. See, I've actually been living on money left to me via insurance from my uncle who died the year before I started school. He was always the avid gamer of the family, and the one who usually brought the latest console at Christmas. Most of my apartment is full of his old furniture, and I take after him character-wise in a lot of ways. Anyway, I rationalized that getting a PSP, which already had a very healthy homebrew scene by then, would be a good way to honor his memory, playing the games he played on an emulator. Well I also thought it would be fun to install the first TV-Out mod. Failed. Hard. Ended up getting a new PSP the same week. Some time later, I bought a third because I thought the second one was dying. Turns out it was just the battery, which I turned into a Pandora battery after realizing the problem (and purchasing the third console). The Pandora has been pretty handy really. A friend of mine, Ian, has brought at least five PSPs to me to mod (always with some unknown acquaintance attached), and I'm happy to oblige. Gotta help the gamer 'cause, you know. I always make sure they have a look through my ISO library before they scamper off. What's the use in keeping the stuff if you don't share it, right? I like the Phat, because it retains the iR port, which makes a nifty universal remote with the right homebrew apps. However, I've modded a few of the new slim & lites. They're quite nice. I wouldn't mind getting one for the TV out capability. Crisis Core on the big screen would be quite fun.

And everything is seated atop a Ginger Self-Healing Cutting Mat - Another Christmas gift from dear-old mum. I'd been using a little paper-sized cutting mat I got from, well, not the school store, but a third party school store that's been on campus for ages. Served me well for six months. Still perfectly viable, but the new mat is hueg liek xbox. It's also reversible, which is kinda cool. Until I got this mat, I'd been using an old drawing board. It belonged to my brother in ages past, and he had scribbled the names of a plethora of shitty early-90s bands all over it. I inherited it, covered it in some more pointless tripe, then eventually pried of the clip at the top, and the bizarre plastic bar covering over the little recessed area (no idea what that was for...it's too small to hold writing utensils...). I spray painted it black to cover all the garbage, and drew a big target on the back with a silver sharpie, for use with my Nerf gun (I've got that same 6-shooter everyone always mods). Used it as a cutting board for papercraft on its own for a while, then started using it with the smaller cutting mat on top. The recessed area makes a nice little receptacle for paper scraps.


Take some time to ponder the symbology in this image. Maybe like, the fact that all the items are black is like...meaningful in that...my soul is like...dark and brooding and like...English majors all read way the fuck too far into things. And like, there's no symbolism in any of this, it's just fucking toys I play with. You know, dude? Wow dude, trippy. For real...Anyway...

One wonders why I would choose to stay up writing all this nonsense rather than enjoy some unconsciousness...

Hey, here's a thought: I'll go do that now.

(Did you get the Boondock Saints reference? Yeah? Good times)