I’m gonna continue these posts at the end of each month but keep them shorter.

Haven’t gotten much writing done, been working on backup and cleaning. Keeping up with Anki. Catching up on podcasts. This WTF with Dave Grohl is pretty great. That reminds me, the SubGenius Hour of Slack had a nice run this past year with the Ol’ Rev. Stang pretty much completely dropping character for several episodes, (#1350-1360) just talks about life. It’s back to the usual stuff now, which is still fun if you haven’t heard it a million times. Which also reminds me, I’ve gotten into repeating myself a bit at times. Like, am I doing a bit? There’s not even a joke in them. Rehearsed bits with no jokes, repeated to the same audience. That’s no good.

• Followups

  In my end of the year post, I said Perfume didn’t put out an album, but Spending All My Time had two great B-sides (available on iTunes), which should count for something. (Remember FAKE IT was a b-side from 2010.) Also I didn’t mention the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu album but I don’t think it was that great as far as having new songs on it. (Her first EP was surprisingly solid for what seemed like a one-off joke act.) On the album, only Drinker was up to the standard, I thought:
  
  (Hopefully the fan that made this video was just taking a break from some kind of paid work.)

  It’s cheap on Amazon right now. Got most of the good songs on there. I’m not liking the newest stuff. This music is like a butterscotch sundae at it’s best; the aesthetics of it is like the syrup and the good songs are like some quality ice cream. If the songs are not all the way there it’s just like eating a bowl of wet sugar.

  Also I mentioned Koda Kumi’s Lay Down and Crytal Kay’s Delicious na Kinyoubi almost randomly. I realize this is an almost embarrassingly transparent confession of my fantasy of wanting to be dominated sexually by a Japanese woman who does not quite entirely know English, and then go bowling with and African-American/Korean woman who does. This is a relatively benign fantasy, but it’s not only racist, it’s waaay too specific. I’m not going to apologize for subconscious urges, but I can’t believe I was just putting that out there like that.

• Instagram

  I’ve started getting comfortable with this thing. I like the square format, and I used to be uptight about the filters but you can get a good effect, depending. It feels like I can take pictures that feel more a drawing or painting I would do. I haven’t felt like that about digital photography before. I like how I can make it more about just the photo, Flickr I’m still gonna use but with all the metadata and everything it’s just like blogging, documentation.

• Facebook

  Using fb to deal with people you could deal with in any other way is nuts. Great for keeping in touch with message board buddies and that’s about it. I have a page now (I renamed the Hakujin page) for whatever. It’s more like “the label” page, but I don’t even want to call it that anymore. I keep trying to bring everything under one…thing. And keep bringing it back to music (and related art.)

  I’m working on a new podcast too that won’t have anything to with any that stuff. I might make a another new general podcast after that. I was trying to put all those ideas together before and that did not work obviously.

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Maybe this should really be the final monthly post. I could do it it quarterly. I don’t really feel like commenting on events, I’ve stopped doing this on twitter mostly too. I’m just going to be staring in mute horror at my computer screen every so often.

Do I even need to talk about personal stuff? I don’t. I don’t have to do any of this of course. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Took the JLPT again. I did a lot better than last time I think but that thing is still brutal. Zoned out about half way through, like, “What am I doing taking this test? What am I doing with my liiiife?” One a those. I’m taking all that discussion over to the Lang-8 blog entirely in Japanese. Maybe join the site if you’re into that, it’s decent.

Also I had a table the Punk Rock Flea Market that went great. Rodney Anonymous almost bought my old drum machines. Then someone else did. Mostly sold comic books, Japanese tapes, stuff like that. (Had CDs too but didn’t sell many of those.) I will be doing that as often as possible in the future.

Networks

I gotta make a new frontpage with just links an like, I dunno, something. I gotta get back to working on other stuff. Yeah the facebook thing didn’t work, no one cares. If someone cares I’ll try to fix it.

Corrections & Follow-ups

Thinking about Obama. I like Obama. Whenever I see this dude on TV I seriously think, “wow, this guy is President”, but in a good way, not the George Bush way. I think the people that have the most issues with him should be the Progressives and Civil Liberty-types. Which would be where I would put myself. Crazy right-wing Republicans of course will hate almost everyone, but if you’re a moderate Republican, Obama should totally be your dude. Pretty much what he is, like Clinton. If that’s as good as we can get, I guess it’s gotta be good enough. Which maybe it could be if everybody stopped the bullshit. There’s just so much bullshit. Why can’t politics be more like the internet?

I’m just trying to keep doing my own thing, ok. Obama has this thing about him, I feel bad saying anything bad, like I’m going to run into him and it’s gonna be awkward. I feel like I could be at Melvins show and suddenly there’s a voice behind me like, “I hope they do Night Goat”. And it’s Obama. And I’m like, “O-o-o-b-b-ba-ma! W-what—uhm—oh, hey man, you like the Melvins?” And he’ll be like, “Everybody like Melvins.” And everyone turns and looks at me like, of course Obama like the Melvins, you fucking asshole. They’re not even surprised he’s there. It’s totally cool. Except for me. I had to question it. And it’s no random thing, Obama’s totally fucking with me, because of course he reads this blog. Nobody else does, I’m just some jerk who hates Obama, can barely even deal with his sudden omnipresence, which is totally normal. Fine. I can deal. Just me and Barry. Guy with his finger on The Button. Hangin’ out. On the blog, at a show, Punk Rock Flea Market…Taco Bell: He’s gonna be there. I accept it. Alright?

Also, I joined Spotify but I don’t pay for it and I don’t use it much. It’s about as cool as Last.fm when that had most things streaming, but you probably know how that went. It seems crazy to me to think that this new thing is going to be super-permanent and all-inclusive. I don’t get how people can ditch their record collections for it. Don’t you remember when you walked into like a Tower Records or an HMV superstore and the feeling that that was the biggest thing in the world that was completely indestructible? Maybe you don’t…that’s what it was like. Those stores made millions in profits and now they’re gone. Spotify makes no profit yet. (Eventually I think enough people will sign up for paid accounts with reoccurring billing, then gradually use it less as the novelty wears off. This could make them the new Columbia House.) It’s cool, but it doesn’t replace everything. It does replace my old Last.fm playlists, which I’ll redo when I get around to it.

It’s come to my attention that the song Rock ‘n’ Roll Kenchoushozaichi, recorded by Minimoni in 2003, is a cover. This makes my count off, but I’m not fixing it.

I made it sound like all the songs on that Damage Manual album sound the same. They don’t; just relative to the songs on a Pigface album. The compositions are varied but they’re made up of the same components. Get me?

I don’t think that Andes Manta record is totally live. The vocals have gotta be overdubbed.

I don’t know what I’m thinking sometimes.

There’s still an end of the year list coming up because I hate myself. %