Max: Brain Dump 1000
I took one day off and now I am back to rambling about random things. Oh well.
Right now I am listening to Pandora.com. Pandora is an interesting service. One puts in a song, band or musician one is interested in, and based on various characteristics it creates a "station" that will find and play similar music. The downside is you can't tell it to play a particular song, but you can listen to an array of music you may not have otherwise heard.
Right now I am listening to artists similar to Mayhem, a Norwegien black metal band. Yesterday I stumbled across a documentary called Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. The director is an anthropology professor and metalhead named Sam Dunn. If you saw him, you would think "metalhead" before you would think "anthro prof". The documentary is about an anthropological study he did on his fellow metalheads. He provided a detailed list of the various subgenre's in metal, one of which is Norwegien black metal. What makes Norwegien black metal an entity unto itself is as much the musicians themselves as the style they play. While many metal bands play at Satanism and other "anti-social" themes, most members of Norwegien black metal bands are hardcore Satanists who are anti-social buy most standards. Among their activities are burning churches, murder and in the case of Mayhem making jewelry out of the remains of their lead singer's skull after he ate a shotgun.
So far the bands that have played strikes me as being like most hardcore metal bands, a lot of pretty, aggressive noise and nowhere near enough bass.
Today I tried Google's Google Reader service, an RSS agregator. So far it is pretty cool. All my favorite blogs can be read on one page. It even has a feature that will search a site for you if you don't know the RSS URL. I just read on the Digg.com that OJ Simpson just got $3.5 million to write a "fictional" book about his wife's murder. It is going to be titled If I Did It. Oy!
I have switched to a different station on Pandora. This one is based on bassist Brian Bromberg. I find it captures his maintstream acoustic jazz work while ignoring his wilder electric work. It is good for a more mellow mood.
I noticed when I changed the station that there was a blurb at the bottom of the page that promised information on how to listen to Pandora on my stereo. The first words out of my mouth - yes I talk to myself - were, "I'm already listening to Pandora on my stereo. My stereo just happens to also be my computer." If am listening to music, there is a 90% chance I am doing it on Starbug. It's where I have iTunes, access to sites like Pandora.com and it has some decent speakers. Outside of Starbug, the only other places I listen to music are the idiot box - VH1 Classic, The Tube, BET J - or in my car with my iPod and iTrip. Via la convergence.
It is only 8:15 and I am yawning. That means I can either get some caffiene in me and stay up until midnight, or try to keep going until I drop. As the only caffiene in the house is Dr. Pepper and that is technically Laura's, I will be going for the latter option.
I am a bit annoyed that I can't practice proper touch-typing right now. I managed to mash the tip of my right pinky finger and it hurts too much to type with it. Laura and I hired two of her cousins to, under the supervision of Laura's father, build the addition we are putting on the house. Lately one of them has taken to not showing up. As we pay them by the hour, we aren't losing money, but it is slowing the work down. Today I got drafted to help carry pressboard sheeting up to where they were putting the roof on the porch that is on top of the new addition. It is a two man job, but two men were not always available. Lately I have no interest in standing around doing nothing, but I found myself doing a lot of that. After a half hour or so, I decided that I was going to bring the sheeting up myself. At one point I was starting up the steps when I needed to put the sheet down so I could get a better grip. I wasn't paying enough attention and my pinky ended up between the sheet and one of the steps. Right now my pinky is more of a purpley.
Workaholics used to confuse me. I could not understand why someone would willing choose work over recreation when it was not absolutely necessary. Now that my brain is unclouded by depression I can see that one person's work is another's recreation. My wife does not understand the appeal of spending my day on the computer or learning math or comp sci. For me, these aren't work. They are recreation. Just need to figure out how to get paid doing it.
Writing is s different critter. It is both work and recreation. When I am staring at a [virtual] page with absolutely no idea what to write, it is incomprehensibly frustrating. But when the words come, even when they are just lame ramblings such as this, it is a buzz like no other. The only other thing in my life like that is my bass. When I am struggling to develop a new skill, technique, understanding, etc., the only thing that keeps me from going Pete Townsend on my bass is the realization that Laura would never let me buy a bass again. But when I start to get it, when it starts to flow and I don't even really have to think about it, it is like unto a drug.
The wife is home and I am over 1000 words. Hopefully more words and greater coherance will come tomorrow.
Right now I am listening to Pandora.com. Pandora is an interesting service. One puts in a song, band or musician one is interested in, and based on various characteristics it creates a "station" that will find and play similar music. The downside is you can't tell it to play a particular song, but you can listen to an array of music you may not have otherwise heard.
Right now I am listening to artists similar to Mayhem, a Norwegien black metal band. Yesterday I stumbled across a documentary called Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. The director is an anthropology professor and metalhead named Sam Dunn. If you saw him, you would think "metalhead" before you would think "anthro prof". The documentary is about an anthropological study he did on his fellow metalheads. He provided a detailed list of the various subgenre's in metal, one of which is Norwegien black metal. What makes Norwegien black metal an entity unto itself is as much the musicians themselves as the style they play. While many metal bands play at Satanism and other "anti-social" themes, most members of Norwegien black metal bands are hardcore Satanists who are anti-social buy most standards. Among their activities are burning churches, murder and in the case of Mayhem making jewelry out of the remains of their lead singer's skull after he ate a shotgun.
So far the bands that have played strikes me as being like most hardcore metal bands, a lot of pretty, aggressive noise and nowhere near enough bass.
Today I tried Google's Google Reader service, an RSS agregator. So far it is pretty cool. All my favorite blogs can be read on one page. It even has a feature that will search a site for you if you don't know the RSS URL. I just read on the Digg.com that OJ Simpson just got $3.5 million to write a "fictional" book about his wife's murder. It is going to be titled If I Did It. Oy!
I have switched to a different station on Pandora. This one is based on bassist Brian Bromberg. I find it captures his maintstream acoustic jazz work while ignoring his wilder electric work. It is good for a more mellow mood.
I noticed when I changed the station that there was a blurb at the bottom of the page that promised information on how to listen to Pandora on my stereo. The first words out of my mouth - yes I talk to myself - were, "I'm already listening to Pandora on my stereo. My stereo just happens to also be my computer." If am listening to music, there is a 90% chance I am doing it on Starbug. It's where I have iTunes, access to sites like Pandora.com and it has some decent speakers. Outside of Starbug, the only other places I listen to music are the idiot box - VH1 Classic, The Tube, BET J - or in my car with my iPod and iTrip. Via la convergence.
It is only 8:15 and I am yawning. That means I can either get some caffiene in me and stay up until midnight, or try to keep going until I drop. As the only caffiene in the house is Dr. Pepper and that is technically Laura's, I will be going for the latter option.
I am a bit annoyed that I can't practice proper touch-typing right now. I managed to mash the tip of my right pinky finger and it hurts too much to type with it. Laura and I hired two of her cousins to, under the supervision of Laura's father, build the addition we are putting on the house. Lately one of them has taken to not showing up. As we pay them by the hour, we aren't losing money, but it is slowing the work down. Today I got drafted to help carry pressboard sheeting up to where they were putting the roof on the porch that is on top of the new addition. It is a two man job, but two men were not always available. Lately I have no interest in standing around doing nothing, but I found myself doing a lot of that. After a half hour or so, I decided that I was going to bring the sheeting up myself. At one point I was starting up the steps when I needed to put the sheet down so I could get a better grip. I wasn't paying enough attention and my pinky ended up between the sheet and one of the steps. Right now my pinky is more of a purpley.
Workaholics used to confuse me. I could not understand why someone would willing choose work over recreation when it was not absolutely necessary. Now that my brain is unclouded by depression I can see that one person's work is another's recreation. My wife does not understand the appeal of spending my day on the computer or learning math or comp sci. For me, these aren't work. They are recreation. Just need to figure out how to get paid doing it.
Writing is s different critter. It is both work and recreation. When I am staring at a [virtual] page with absolutely no idea what to write, it is incomprehensibly frustrating. But when the words come, even when they are just lame ramblings such as this, it is a buzz like no other. The only other thing in my life like that is my bass. When I am struggling to develop a new skill, technique, understanding, etc., the only thing that keeps me from going Pete Townsend on my bass is the realization that Laura would never let me buy a bass again. But when I start to get it, when it starts to flow and I don't even really have to think about it, it is like unto a drug.
The wife is home and I am over 1000 words. Hopefully more words and greater coherance will come tomorrow.
posted by Max Dobberstein at 10/19/2006 07:12:00 PM
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