Archive for category Ａｂｏｕｔ

Which is…what. But I gotta keep doing it. So, I took the JLPT on Sunday. More than that I cannot say. That thing is locked down tight…I may have already said too much. My failing score could be voided! I might have passed, but barely (it’s simply pass/fail). The test is not easy is what I’m saying. I find out in February. Oh, I’ll take the thing again regardless. I got 3 more levels if I pass this one. What else have I got? This thing was at Villanova, which is just outside of North Philly. I never get up that way and I sure have no other excuse to be on the actual campus. Seems like a hell of a school, couldn’t imagine it. Makes you think. I might have bummed me out more if everything were not in the shape it is. That part of the school was all devoted to business classes and a few years ago you’d be thinking all these kids are definitely getting better jobs right out of school than I will ever get. But now, who knows? You almost feel bad for them. Yeah, I don’t know. Things in general…not looking too great. But you could almost forget all that on such a nice campus. Colleges are like the malls of intellect. On the way there I noticed a few random protests; on the way back I saw a lot of sandwich boarders announcing going out of business sales. Lot of panhandling, a couple bums, but a lot of charities and kids from schools. Lot of activity in the streets. Went slightly out of my way to check out a sound art installation I had heard about but it seemed to have been taken down. Some interesting neighborhoods along that way, at least, parts of neighborhoods. Glad I have a car now to check stuff out like this but I barely ever have money to do anything after the obvious. But I used to be horrible with money when I had steady retail work. Think about going back to that sometimes (or if it’s even possible) but I was so depressed. I’m a total fuck-up right now but I don’t want to kill myself. I think some things can get better. Like it might seem like I’m selfishly wasting resources just driving around “checking things out”, but I’ve set it up so I can decontaminate sea life damaged in oil spills while I’m driving. Some people (haters) will say it’s too dangerous to operate a motor vehicle while combing sludge off a puffin, but what’s “safe” really? You’ve got to pick your battles. %

The recent breakup of R.E.M. didn’t get me too upset. I was going to say their last couple albums weren’t great but checking their wiki it turns out they did a whole 6 albums out after Monster. Wow. Right now I’m listening to their new best-of on NPR. No regrets, I think. I thought Monster was good. It managed to be right on the edge of weird rock I was getting into. Post-Nirvana, a lot of people I knew got more into Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters was a big deal to them. That’s stuff’s ok but didn’t really do it for me. Post-Monster, R.E.M. wasn’t very weird or very rock at all anymore. They could have broken up in 95 as far as I’m concerned.

(Now this is just getting weird. I forgot all about this video.)

I remember a point when I stopped listening to them on purpose. Same thing with Nine Inch Nails, weirdly. I might still have a copy of Monster somewhere and I have a couple of the early ones on vinyl. But Automatic For the People was pretty heavy for a while there. Automatic into The Downward Spiral back-to-back a few times will give you an idea of the mood I sustained for long enough to not want to revisit it. Both great albums tho. (Great CD design on these too, wish I kept them for that alone but couldn’t even look at them anymore.)

Whoa, half way through disc 2 I definitely do not give a fuck anymore. I’ll admit the late 90s stuff was still good, I just wasn’t feeling it at the time. But after that, oh no, not at all. This makes me want to buy a new copy of Eponymous tho. I really recommend that one. All the best early stuff. I don’t even like Green or Out of Time as albums, never bought them. Some great songs, but they are all played to death on radio. (They do not even include Radio Song on here, which was kind of a hit, but was pretty annoying. [Sorry, KRS!] Not nearly as annoying as Shiny Happy People tho.) I think the only early song I knew when I got Eponymous was It’s End of the World, which is the last song and I decided pretty quick it was the worst of the bunch. Still like it but it’s that good of a collection. It also has the single version of Radio Free Europe, which is a better mix. It might have a couple different versions of other songs. All those songs have great production.

REM’s demo tape is now floating free. Worth a listen. Interesting back story on that tape going through a member of the Philly band Bunny Drums at a gig in a venue in Cherry Hill, NJ which I never knew existed.

So that’s interesting. %

Why celebrate a world divided by arbitrary date orders?

Save it. 11-11-11 Gelatine celebrates their 11th anniversary.

They seem to have dialed down the horror aspect of the image since I last checked in with them. (The singer used to dress as a bloodied, diapered mummy.) They’ve always seemed to be inspired a lot visually by Junko Mizuno. But it’s gotta be a good show either way. %

Sorry, I’ve turned the redirect on and off a few times. Thought I had found a way to redirect the main page without redirecting the feed but it hasn’t worked, so there’s a large gap that starts with talking about this blog like it’s been here for a while. It has, couple years now. You haven’t missed much (some top 10 lists). I didn’t plan the RSS to redirect at all it’s just a thing that happens. I liked the idea of a clean full stop to the old feed, which is why I stopped the redirection and deleted the feed. But I wanted the page gone without deleting the blog. I found a way to delete the feed (unless you were already subscribed), and everything looked nice and neat. But the internet is not nice and neat and apparently has its own idea of how things go down. It’s possible you’ve even visited the page without noticing the url change. I really didn’t make it clear. Or I might have in a posted the explanation in an entirely new feed. (Not much use to you! Heh heh, please subscribe to the new feed.) According to Google there are still 15 of you. (There were only 10 when the blog was running and that’s still 9 more than sub to the new one.) Of course the internet isn’t as popular as it was 2 years ago, so I can’t expect much. (Altho people say RSS is dead, but I gained readers on a dead blog.)

If I can keep it going in some kind of consistent direction, I might become a fan enough of my own work to make a facebook fan page. So far I’ve mostly been into the design of the thing. But if everyone looks at the net on their phone now (…when did nerds become such fashion victims, just saying…) it’s probably not a great idea to keep spending time on how it looks on the screen. “How about the writing, Jim, maybe work on the writing more.” Yeah, that’s a good one, Disembodied Voice Of The Blog. “Have you thought about maybe writing some record reviews?” This post is OVER. %