Archive for category Ａｂｏｕｔ

• In this post I said the world was “literally going to hell”. Some people apparently believe in a literal Hell, or at least think that’s a reasonable thing to believe in. I don’t. I was thinking more about global warming, and the economic disasters which will leave us ill-equipped to deal with the problems it will cause, creating a kind of hell on earth. It’s literally hot. Get it? Get it? Hell? Hot? Huh? Plus the only way to slow down the heating might be to pump sulphur into the air. More than we already do. The Earth won’t literally become a burning, sulphurous pit, it will just literally be very hot and/or filled with sulphur. Or maybe we decide to just stick it out with just the heat. I think the sulphur part is optional for a decent hell, but everyone seems to agree it’s hot. It sucks cause I grew up with the idea of nuclear winter, which literally was cooler. (Ooh! I don’t have to publish this do I? Ech…) But that was so much worse! You’re looking at much more and sudden extinctions with the nuclear winter, but it weirdly seemed less terrible, or maybe less likely. We seemed to have more control over it not happening, which it didn’t. But maybe it still will. (See, there’s hope!) Maybe all of this shit will happen and all cancel itself out. Then things can keep going along perfectly, exactly how it is now. (It’s going so well!) Really I think everything’s just going to get really expensive. That alone will kill millions and bankrupt almost everyone else. But I’m an optimist. I also used the phrase “the way I figure it”, which I don’t think I’ve never said out loud, and won’t.
• In this post I claimed the local record shoppe was the only source of Shonen Knife T-shirts in the 90s, when I’ve posted a video of people buying shirts right at the live venue like a normal person would. I was 14 in 1993 and did not have the kind of parents that took me to stadium shows which SK was then playing, opening for Nirvana. I did see them on almost every return visit since then in various clubs. (Bowery Ballroom, North Star Bar, Johnny Brenda’s) You are definitely missing out if you have not seen them live. But anyway, now that I think about it, you could also get the shirts through Rockabilia when it’s catalog mysteriously appeared in your mailbox upon the subscription to Spin or whatever. And that was probably paid for by my mom. But I had more than one shirt I tells ya.
• In a totally nonexistent post, I didn’t talk about the new font I installed just for the post headings, because the default one always bugged me. There just wasn’t much to say about it. There’s also not that much to say about unicode font renderings in Firefox vs. Chrome. Either one is good. I guess. Yeah, it’s fine. I got the font from Neojaponisme.
• I didn’t really post about this but can we all agree that Varg Vikernes is mostly just a racist at this point? Because a lot of people deny the racism[edit:no one does this] or try to ignore it, or justify it because he says some other “smart” things. And he made some cool music a long-ass time ago—I think it was a fluke. Most of it’s not that good. Yeah, this guy almost sounds intelligent if you cut out the parts where he blames everything on Jews. That’s really his whole thing. He has no real philosophy: he’ll side with anyone anti-Semitic. Nazis, Muslims, Christians, whatever. I was disappointed in the final cut of Until the Light Takes Us, but strongly recommend the 2-disc set that includes the full interviews. Unlike Fenriz who is strongly apolitical, or Hellhammer who has some horrible views of life but doesn’t intellectualize or apologize, Varg will say whatever makes him seem like a guy you want to buy a record from. Remember when his last record came out and he changed the name? He said he didn’t want to sound racist because he’s all not about racism anymore, so don’t worry record buyers who don’t want to support a racist, it’s cool. But wait, there’s a lot of racists that will possibly buy anything they agree with politically (a la the Skrewdriver school of record sales)? Oh, I guess it is pretty racist. Guys, it’s super-racist. In fact, forget about the anti-religion thing. Any religion is cool, as long as you buy the records, and hate Jews. No one can pretend not to see this is anything but middle school level sociopath bullshit.
• So, my love for Fiddler on the Roof is wholly unironic. Life without Jews would be grim and frostbitten indeed. Speaking of which—total aside—Immortal, in this Until the Light movie…people weren’t ever laughing at you because of the music. Maybe some people were. Jerks. I love Immortal too. I don’t see any contradiction. But context is everything. That movie was a little ridiculous.

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Been going through my Amy Winehouse mp3s of course. Thinking about how cool her attitude seemed when I first “Rehab”. I’m not a 12-stepper or anything, but I’ve cut way back on the sauce since then. I think her antics may have helped show how uncool it can get. Not to preach cause some people handle it fine, but I seriously stopped listening to her completely after being into her a lot and it shows in the duplicates in my playlists from songs being on numerous mixes. I’ll posts some of these old mixes again when I figure out a more clever way of doing it. They were made to be put on a CDR and were mostly for car listening—it’s all about segues and repeatability. My car CD player broke and I would replace it with a digital player if I had the money and I bet you would too. The CDR mix is not coming back. But I did spend a lot of time on em and like how they turned out, and there’s some really oddball tracks I got off myspace. That myspace period of 05-07 when it worked had a vibe that seemed to be going somewhere that just evaporated. Moving on, but trying not to forget it entirely. Some good stuff.

Been posting on 8tracks since April but haven’t been posting them anywhere or even linking to it. Working on a new one one now, doing one a month. I like the short mix idea. You can get a pro account and post longer mixes, but c’mon. Give everyone a break. You can link to other mixes to play after yours out of your liked mixes. It’s nice. No big deal. I always get stupid idea for mixes but never make them cause I take mixes way to serious. If you’re forced to keep it at 8 songs it can be fun. I like fun, on occasion. The only thing about 8 tracks mixes is they only play in order the first time through. I still sweat the segues. You’ve got to pay attention for 8 songs is all.

Got a profile on Mixcloud too, but didn’t post anything, might not. It’s very pro at Mixcloud. You can do more like a podcast there if you like. Thought about it, but I need to do through iTunes I think and I refuse to set it up on my main machine here. Unless there’s another way to make an m4a with chapters which is how they want you to it. I really need to get other laptop working. I was pretty terrified for a while to be working with no backup and lately by anxiety has really subsided, but for no good reason. I’m not completely fucked if this machine tanks, but I’m mostly fucked. Been using various services for cloud storage, I’m not totally buying into that concept for everything, but it’s obviously useful. Storage is not the only issue tho, of course.

But that’s got nothing to do with mixes. But what does really? Isn’t a mix like ending a blog post? Not really but they’ve got to end somehow.

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I think everyone has been moved by the recent tragedy of Amy Winehouse’s murder of 93 innocent people. Some wonder if we should still listen to her music. I think it’s pretty good. The music, not the murders. But was it that good? Maybe we made too big a deal out of it. She wasn’t much a live performer. Unless you count murdering 93 people performance art, which I DON’T.

RIP

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[edit: The singer's name in romaji is Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. The song is by Nakata Yasutaka and the video is by 6%DOKIDOKI]

I’m sure everyone that isn’t actively avoiding current J-pop (most people) or me (again…) has seen this damn PON video. I watched this thing again today (for science) via FF’s autocomplete, frantically typing “ponponpon” and going to the page itself. I saw another upload by Warner Japan in the sidebar along with the expected response vids. Oh shit. They made this thing even crazier! There’s more animations added! The mix is different! Everything is crazier! Nnnnnnnnnnnope. Just me. Could be the heat, but I think this video definitely has caused some amount of brain damage:

July 16

July 18

If you’ve seen it already, watch the 2nd one first. It’s crazier. Yet it’s exactly the same. I had to make a draft post just to watch them at the same time, but why not share the insanity. There’s no way you’re leaving this post without watching this entire thing twice and then again simultaneously with a nice Steve Reich effect. (Planned! All planned!)

Did they take 2 whole days to realize they could have gone with a better preview image? The original is like the lone split second that looks like a normal video. But youtube’s default preview pic is exactly the midway point, which is at 2:07:

CONSPIRACY!

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