a study in confusion

Last couple weeks have been lots of applying at everywhere. Still no job, what a fucking shock.

I just hate all of this. Just when I think I'm starting to make a little, tiny, tiny fucking bit of progress with you, turns out I'm not. Shouldn't be surprised to much by that, either. Don't even know why I bother anymore. Maybe I shouldn't.

Post end, I'm going to go listen to the Smiths now.

From blog.okcupid.com:

Would you consider role-playing out a RAPE FANTASY with partner who asked you to?

data set: 340,000 people answered

Well, I believe we learned that WYOMING LOVES CONSENT FANTASIES.


lulz.

Yeah, I update Twitter a lot more than this place. Like, semi-daily. Crazy.

I really, really don't have anything {to|I can} say here. So. Business as usual, etc. Going to go sell plasma now.

Okay. Um.

Spent two weeks down in St. Louis. Had a mostly pretty damn good time. Got to go to Pointfest with Meagan, McCormick, Kyle, and a few others (though everyone but Meagan kept running off). Got to see Ludo, Anberlin, and the Used. Spent the rest of the time down there just hanging out, which was both relaxing as hell and a little stressful. Figure that shit out.

Flew back up here, found a cheap netbook, and am now applying pretty much everywhere within walking distance, even though I only expect to do whatever it is for a couple months.

Oh, by the way, if I haven't told you yet: Doc and I are moving back to St. Louis by the end of the summer.

Ever since we decided to close the store, I've looked upon things as 'the end of an adventure,' 'cause really, that's what this whole thing was. Moving across the country to run a business with a couple friends? It didn't end quite the way I'd have liked, but valuable experience nonetheless, etc.

I went up to the mall today with Isaac to grab one of the couches and bring it back here. We got to the store, put the couch on the dolly; then I sat down and remembered just how comfortable the couch was. So we pulled it up to the front of the store, facing out, and peoplewatched for a while. Good times.

At one point, Isaac went to the bathroom, and some random guy came in to look at the stuff we had left to sell. We got to talking, discussed PSPs and Mother 3, and he sympathized with me about the store closing. On his way out the door, out of the blue, he said 'Good luck on your next adventure.'

Ever since then (around 6pm), I've been wondering if maybe some greater cosmic entity than myself made sure I heard that. If maybe there's some new adventure I'm supposed to go out on now, other than wait a month and start working at Roger's bus depot. Is there something I'm supposed to be doing elsewhere?

Hell. Philosophical crisis. I'm going to go do some sudoku or something until I pass out.

While sitting at a restaurant earlier, waiting for food, Doc opened the conversation with this:

'I want a bouncy ball that bounces off the ground with 101% efficiency.'

So we discussed exactly how that would not only A) controvert Newtonian physics completely, but B) implode the universe after a given amount of time/acceleration. (Short version: as an object accelerates towards the speed of light, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, it also gains mass; if, as I believe, Zeno's Paradox only exists in a purely theoretical realm, then when the object attains the speed of light, it also mathematically attains infinite mass, therefore causing the entire universe to almost instantaneously implode around it.) This lasted for about ten minutes, in which time we somehow managed to rope another person into the conversation. 'I have to get in on this,' he said as he leaned out of his booth, just before killing the conversation dead with poorly-informed fears of the LHC.

As the unknown man was leaving, he made sure to wish me a 'happy 4/20'. I didn't bother to point out to him (but made sure to do so to Doc) that, if I were stoned, I would have had a lot more trouble spitting out phrases like 'asymptotically approaching the speed of light' without giggling for half an hour and forgetting where I was.

So, yeah, unemployed now. Buying a plane ticket this week. Playing a lot of video games, sitting around, probably not drinking as much coffee as I should to keep up this hipster stereotype I seem to keep around.

While at the mall earlier, slinging a yo-yo repeatedly, I ran into one of the locals; he related to me a conversation he'd had one of his friends.
person A: 'You know that guy who works at GameOn, looks like Jesus?'
person B: 'Oh yeah, Fuzzy.'
It never ends.

The store's lease expired at 9pm last night, April 17th.

And I should be a lot more upset than I am.

Don't get me wrong, I'm upset and all, but.. eh. It's such a weight off my shoulders, I guess. Add the facts that 1. I spent the entire night having delicious alcohol with our one employee and one of my co-managers, 2. I'm actually kind of okay with things outside of the store, and 3. Swing Life Away just came on.. y'know, I've been in worse places in my life.

I had a lot more to say here, but things like that pale in comparison to needing to go have a drink and sing.

let's pack our bags and settle down where palm trees grow

I love. So much. Not that it doesn't hurt, it does. But I still have so much to give sometimes. </emo>

Details to follow, but we're closing the store in a week.

Yeah.

Okay, today was... hell.

( bitchbitchbitchbitchbitch )

So I'm spending the rest of my night with a cat on my lap, scrolling through iTunes, trying to pick out songs that might mean something for some fucked-up flipperbaby of a mix CD. I really, really do not want to sleep any time soon, 'cause I figure any dreams I may have tonight will switch back and forth between emo teenager bullshit, and the ritual disemboweling of JJ and half of the mall's management company. (Except for the PR lady they've got. Yum.)

* Upon some autopsychoanalysis, I have noticed that the intended end result of most things I do is, directly or indirectly, to get laid.

* Upon more of the same, I have noticed that I don't really enjoy or desire sex; at least, not to the extent I think that most people do,

So, basically, most of what I do is without a real point.

Note: totally not omgemopost. More of a bemused 'huh.' post.

Thinking about starting a new kind-of-writing project re: music. Might say something about it here later, might let it wither on the vine.

Also, I like crullers.

Night 1 (The Second Stage Turbine Blade)
Night 2 (In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3)
Night 3 (Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness)
Night 4 (Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World For Tomorrow)

Coheed does a four night live stand in New York, and plays each of their albums in their respective entireties.

I am an unapologetic fanboy of the band, so all I'll say is this: if you're not a fan already, you probably won't be after having heard this. It's still damn good, though.

Fair warning: this is all 320kb MP3, so each one of those links point to a zip file somewhere between 130MB and 180MB.

In other news, <null>

Okay, just kidding. Been a long few days, lots of whatever man whatever, but kids, I'm not emo. Just.. out of it. Need some time to internalize a few things, really make myself aware and cognizant of reality. Things can change quickly, even up here; I forgot that.

But hey. I spent all day sitting around at the store, listening to Coheed. Hard for things to seem real bad when you realize that.

I wish my typewriter were up here. I have some letters I want to write.

For whatever reason, I have 'Hey There Delilah' stuck in my head.

Regardless, Coheed and Cambria trumps Hannah Montana, Bluetooth headsets for the win, emotional vulnerability for the lose, cigarettes in the Wyoming winter for the all-encompassing fail, and confusion reigns supreme. Gotta dig it. Start it with a long night at work, end it with Wallace and Gromit and poorly-forethought emails, and you have a night, or something.

Collars. With bells. Why bells? Why collars?

I'm getting too old for this shit.

Dear Christ.

No, no spoilers here. Just wanted to tell you all that it's really, really, really good.

It diverges from the graphic novel slightly at the end (y'know, that one thing that happens that one time?) but my absolute favorite scene from the book is intact, and it hurt even more seeing it on the screen than it did reading it.

Holy shit, that was fantastic.

Our cats are now service animals.

Amanda went to the doctor and got them classified as such because of her hyperacuity, or some excuse like that.

However it works, we can now move into Prairie View, not only with all 5 cats, but without any pet deposits.

Figure that shit out. Filling out application paperwork like crazy now.

That whole 'worrying about bills' thing? Crisis averted; had more money saved than I thought, so bills are paid or being paid tomorrow; either way, taken care of, and the store's starting to pick up again. Not as worried anymore.

The three of us are starting to look for better apartments, 'cause the management company wants to raise our rent, and frankly, this place isn't worth what we're already paying. Problem is we have five cats, and there's very few places in town that are okay with even one or two.

Doc and I went out looking today, and we think we might've found a nice three-bedroom, two-bath; bigger than this place, and not much more money. I'm going in early tomorrow so Doc can take Amanda to look at the apartment and have a sitdown with the apartment staff, see if they can work something out about the felines. If not.. well, I have some small amount of faith that we'll find something.

I want to go back to St. Louis at some point. Probably only for a week, 'cause that means I lose less money, but we'll see. I would prefer to do it before summer hits, maybe around the end of May? I don't know, we'll see how things stand around the end of April, when we should be officially taking over the store. God only knows what hell will break loose between then and now.

One more thing: Doc and I have been spending the last couple weeks (on and off) working on whipping our media center situation into shape. Doc put together a nice little file server, which now has a shitload of TV shows, movies, and anime on it, and I've been playing with XBMC on Doc's Xbox, getting everything tagged up real pretty. We'll likely be replacing the Xbox with a dedicated Linux box running XBMC soon enough, though; then it'll have enough memory for the MediaStream skin. (translation: shiny.)

When all this is done, sitting down and watching something will go something along the lines of:
a) turn on TV/surround sound/PC or Xbox
b) select 'Movies'
c) pick a movie
And bam, gorgeous HD movie for you long time. I am far too pleased with this.

(Also, BitTorrent is a hell of a thing. Downloaded all of The Young Ones, Jericho, a bunch of other shit; also checked out Monty Python's Flying Circus from the-best-library-ever (yeah, all 16 DVDs, for two fucking dollars) and we're in the process of ripping/transcoding/copying it to the file server. So uh we rock.)

I'm done here.

Sometimes I hit forget to set a private flag on things I put on here until a few hours later. It's rare, but it happens. Oh well.

There is not much going on up here, really. Sitting at work, wondering about how I'm going to pay bills (mine and the store's) with how little we're making nowadays. I am.. worried, to put it mildly.

but hey things work out blah blah blah. whatever, we'll see, i'm not holding up too much hope.

And stupid, stupid me spent last night first looking up my own credit report, and upon finding that it was pretty decent, all things considered, spent a while looking up Dell's financing terms on laptops, 'cause man I could go for a Mini 9 running Leopard. (Name it Gatito? Would fit in with the G-theme Doc has going.) I'm an idiot, someone dissuade me from this course of action.

I'm trying to get my last.fm profile to mirror what I actually listen to, as opposed to what I listened to for two months in 2005. I'm kind of amazed it's changed that much in only three years--

oh God, it's 2009, it's been four years. what happened, where has my life gone. ;_;

Self-loathing, blah blah blah, emo bullshit.

I'm not looking forward to much of anything at the moment.

Alcohol, sleep.

braveSaintSaturn finally released Anti-Meridian, the conclusion to the trilogy begun with 2000's So Far From Home and continued with 2003's The Light of Things Hoped For.

And I can't review it.

No, it's not perfect, but it's Reese, Dennis and Keith. I can't review it. I can't be pretentious about it.

I will say this: just like both of the other albums, just like a lot of Frenzy stuff, it broke me at the end. Just completely snapped me over its knee and broke me.

Dear Christ, I remember why I stopped listening to these guys for so long.

Doc put together an NAS box (FreeNAS is pretty badass, surprisingly), and I'm killing the network backing up my music (all 170 gigabytes or so of it) onto it.

I started it copying around 2am Friday morning, and as of 24 hours later, it has alphabetically worked its way through to Mindless Self Indulgence.

So, in other words, no albums for a couple days.

But that's not the point. This is.

I want you all to tell me what you've been listening to recently. I will use this, and try to make recommendations (with samples, if I have them) to better expand all of our musical horizons.

Likewise, if there's something you think I need to hear, now is the time! Fill me in on what I've been missing by making fun of Pitchfork. (I'm sorry, but TV on the Radio's Dear Science is absolute shit, and The Airborne Toxic Event... really isn't that bad. Far better than 1.6/10. Twats.)

So. Music. <points at comment button> Go.

Ludo Broken Bride (2005, ~128kbps MP3)

It may only be five tracks long, but you'd be hard-pressed to find an album anywhere near this solid, no matter how long it is. Half an hour of the best rock (pop, punk, country, metal, etc.) you will ever find anywhere. (And they're from St. Louis! How righteous is that?) Standouts: Fucking all of it.

Another album coming in a little while.

1. Thanks to Doc's extreme assistance, I have a desk up here now. And it's a beast. All solid steel construction, except for the inch-thick wooden desktop, along with a nice side island and five good-sized drawers. This thing could take a direct hit from a ballistic missile and still be solid enough to tap dance on. It also makes a nifty bed for Linus.

2. Oh yeah, I have a cat now. His name is Linus (I didn't pick it), he's about 10 years old, Siamese, and entirely too adorable and affectionate for his own good. He's doing a fantastic job of helping keep me sane up here.

3. I've been wanting to try the White Russian flavor that Monster sells for a while now, and the other night, I did. Verdict: slightly watered-down White Russian without booze. I am impressed! Still not as good as Low-Carb, though.

4. Nothing works better for marketing a gaming cafe than a big-screen TV with an NES emulator on it. Nothing. Got a friend in here right now playing around on it, and it's drawing the idiot kids in like flies. Unfortunately, I think the Dandy Warhols I'm playing is driving them away.

5. Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia is a damn good album. Yes, I'm putting it up soon, along with Broken Bride, and whatever else I can think of. Suggestions?

That's all. For now.

And fuck those '25 things' memes.

Doing this St. Louis thing. (not the East St. Louis Toodle-Oo, shut up Steely Dan) And it's not working out fantastically so far.

I mean. Well. It's working, but things are not as I expected them to be? I did not come into this town for drama, so I'm ignoring it. It's just easier this way.

Who wants to hang out this week? I am around, and have nothing planned past Monday.

Also, who's doing what for the Super Bowl? Looking for a party, etc. (Jen/Tait/Courtney? Eh? Eh?)

Ah, screw it.

I've been downloading Aqua Teen and Harvey Birdman instead.

And a bunch of albums.

And all 35 fucking DVDs of MST3K. (Eventually.) Yes, Jen/Tait/Courtney/whoever-else, all of it. Every episode. One day it will be mine, and then if I get unlazy it will be everyone's ever.

Regardless! You all should tell me what album(s) you want. I do fill requests, you know.

And no, Meagan, your vote for 'omfmorefirewaterunfunfunf' does not count here.

White Russians ftw. Less than a week until St. Louis, and two weeks of (very possibly) mind-crippling drama. Joy of joys.

BACK OFF, I'VE GOT A SHRINK RAY

Firewater Get Off The Cross... We Need The Wood For The Fire (1996, ~128kbps MP3)

The album that started a very, very good thing. Tod A., late of Cop Shoots Cop, grabs Yuval Gabay, Jennifer Charles, and a couple others, goes all indie and shit, (well, more so) and cranks out twelve fantastic songs. Well.. nine. There's a couple meh tracks in there, but framed in the right context, you'll enjoy them just as much as the rest of the album. If you dig this, I heartily recommend finding copies of The Ponzi Scheme and The Golden Hour, two other releases from the group. I'd also recommend some Gogol Bordello, if the mood strikes you. Standouts: "Some Strange Reaction", "When I Burn This Place Down", "I Am The Rain"

In the meantime, I will leave you with this analogy:
Fuzzy : TV dinners :: Lewis Black : Candy corn
'son of a bitch.'

As a test:

The Hush Sound Like Vines (2006, ~193kbps MP3)

Blame Candice for this one. Another release from the Decaydance stable, but unique in the fact that the band has dual lead singers: one male, who sounds a lot like Brendon Urie, and one female, who has a just absolutely amazingly beautiful voice. Also, lots of piano along with the generally upbeat, almost stereotypically Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen sound. More than the sum of its parts. Standouts: "We Intertwined", "Sweet Tangerine", "Where We Went Wrong", "Wine Red"

AH-HAH-HAH I AM A MANIACALLY AMAZING CODER

I HAVE HAD ENTIRELY TOO MANY ENERGY DRINKS TODAY

Hey, if LJ is going down, I might as well take advantage of my audience while I can.

Anberlin New Surrender (2008, ~210kbps MP3)

Another excellent album from Anberlin. Their 2008 follow-up to the masterpiece that was Cities continues to impress, though maybe not to the same degree. It may not convert any new fans, but anyone who has enjoyed their previous work will find no fault on this disc. (AllMusic, hire me now.) Standouts: "Breaking", "Feel Good Drag", "Disappear"

Spent the last several hours coding up an AppleScript that does most of that work for me. Workflow goes like this:
* Select an album in iTunes
* Run the script, which zips up the album into my Dropbox/Public/Albums folder, which then automagically gets uploaded to my Dropbox
TODOs:
* Export the art for selected album to a file (~30mins work)
* Fill in the template for the above HTML and copy it to the clipboard (~5mins work)

I love me some AppleScript.

Just so you know.

This time, I've got a couple of albums for you that were each the first release from their respective groups. Very different styles each, but I've been listening to them both a lot lately, so.

Margot and the Nuclear So and So's The Dust of Retreat (2006, ~210kbps MP3)	Authority Zero A Passage in Time (2002, 160kbps MP3)
I honestly don't really have any way to describe this album. It's just.. beautiful, honestly. Call it emo if you want, but you'd be missing out on a hell of a thing. Just give it a chance, let me know what you all think. Standouts: "Skeleton Key", "Dress Me Like a Clown", "Barfight Revolution, Power Violence"	Luckily, this album is a bit easier to describe: Nice mix of punk, with sprinkles of reggae and ska. Fantastic stuff, very much archetypal summer music. Warms you right up, just what I've been needing for this climate. Standouts: "A Passage in Time", "One More Minute", "Over Seasons"

Let me know what you think, kids. More of your opinions mean more free albums for all of you.

Spent it exactly like I spent Christmas and Thanksgiving; in a town I'm still not completely comfortable in, sitting at the apartment, watching TV/playing video games. I don't do the holiday thing.

Resolutions? No. Hopes that things will change/get better/whatever? Not really.