Posted March 28, 2010 at 10:57 am by Crumb Bandit
Some dude had a stroke in my store reaching for the very element that made him collapse like a concrete cuddle toy onto the nasty ass floor that I probably mopped with rat infested mold water earlier that morning, all while 9/10ths of the consumers coming and going buying their normal bullshit snack/beer/cigarette dreams didn’t even fucking care to notice. Not a glance. Only some Canadian road bikers here for the great weather actually decided to help the poor fool. They hardly spoke english. Fucking great example of the american dream via Circle K. Just fucking great. My words failed me at the time and I am still dumbfounded. Why everyone didn’t just drop their snacks and what ever the fuck else they had to buy to help the guy is beyond me. Or drop their snacks cause it would take a sane person one second to realize that what Circle K has to offer is not safe for consumption. Not even once a week. Jesus, if you can hear me, we need you back because we are too fucking stupid to save ourselves from ourselves.
How to explain an eegee’s.
“You go to candyland and take a fruit flavored candyland humming bird and blend it up with some evil magic from the north but the evil magic tastes so gOOOOOD and you have to shake it in a paint mixer for two hours otherwise you won’t be able to eat it with a spoon but you can so its …” – me
But do I eat it every god damn day till I have a stroke? Thanks america. You can fucking suck my balls.
Obtain all of the works by Rachmaninoff
Posted March 28, 2010 at 9:27 am by Severed Head
I found a giant torrent the other day, and now these are the only works I have left to download (source: Wikipedia):
Romance in A Minor (1880s) (violin and piano)
String Quartet No. 1 (1890)
String Quartet No. 2 (1896)
Piano Concerto No. 4 (1926), Op. 40 (1928 version)
Paraphrase of Mussorgsky: Gopak from the Fair at Sorochyntsi (1926) (piano and violin)
Deus Meus (1890?), Song of the Nightingale (1894?) (four-part mixed chorus and piano)
Two Boris monologues (1891)
Most of these I’ve found on iTunes… There is only one known recording of the 1928 version of the piano concerto no. 4… I have found it on amazon though. The two Boris monologues I’ve found on amazon as well. Unfortunately for both things on Amazon, I have to purchase the full albums. The only ones I wasn’t able to find anywhere online in recorded form were Deus Meus and Song of the Nightingale
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Posted March 21, 2010 at 10:03 pm by Severed Head
Finished Club Anthems last night. This process takes a bit longer than I thought, but after performing through the album, I’m very confident in my ability to play these songs… Luckily these are all pretty easy. I’ve started the process for “A Guide for the Daylight Hours,” and not only is this album shorter, but it is easier. I anticipate having this done in the next day or two. I also want to try to finish The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories by the end of the week. At this rate, if each album is a week, I will be done before the end of April. So I am still on track!
My repertoire is currently at 14 songs (1:05:02 in length). I definitely know more songs than that, and I actually probably already know most of Local H’s catalog, but I want to wait until I’ve gone through that process to add stuff.
Also, I’ve decided that for step 4 (“Be able to play through the album entirely without sheet music or a recording”), I think it’s fair to be able to look up the lyrics if I can remember the melody. Which I have been doing. With great success. 
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Future progress on this lifelist item: 3, 4
Awesome thing of the week, Music, Robots, Time Paradox, Website
Posted March 19, 2010 at 12:43 am by Severed Head
Just in the last few minutes I found this article, which is really quite amazing. My favorite part is the discussion, and I really feel like I could talk about this stuff forever.
With all of my friends who have large collections of music, I always ask them how they organize it. I didn’t realize there were so many people out there that do this too. I really feel like this thread should evolve into a message board with just questions and ideas regarding music collections. Specifically, the following topics would be very interesting: Software used to access it (iTunes vs. Windows Media vs. cetera), Proper tagging (use of MusicBrainz? How to handle genres), playlists, capitalization, etc. I am just a huge nerd for all of this kind of stuff.
Speaking of which, I’ve gone about the task of setting up an HTPC situation. For those of you who don’t know, HTPC is an Home Theater PC… But this is an HTMac. Basically, the idea is to have all of your media hooked up to your TV. So, from my TV, ideally, the end product is this:
A computer hooked up to the TV, very easy and quick to turn on.
A remote interface (right now, my iPod Touch)
A nice interface on-screen(XBMC w/Aeon)
Access to streaming services (specifically, YouTube/Netflix/Hulu/Any other new TV sites I’ve discovered recently)
A database of stored movies and TV shows
Now, my particular situation is somewhat unique right now. A lot of other people will just scrap up an old PC and strip it down to what it needs to work. Currently, I’m just using my laptop and an external hard drive, which I have to lug over to my TV every time I want to use them, but it really does seem a lot better than just watching them on my laptop’s screen. Soon though, I’m looking to purchase an old MacMini and a 1 TB NAS drive. The NAS drive would allow me to access all of these movies and TV shows wirelessly, but I’m not really exactly clear on how all of that works.
One feature I really want, that doesn’t seem readily available, is a shuffle feature for TV shows. I don’t have cable right now, but I do have a fair amount of TV show DVDs. I have a few episodes on my computer so far, and I’d like just to be able to put them on shuffle, as if I had a TV station composed entirely of shows that I love with no commercials. That really seems like the ultimate HTPC situation.
I also seem to be one of the few XBMC users who wants to store deleted scenes from DVDs and TV shows, and have them link up with the movies/TV episodes themselves. I’ve finally figured it out a solution, but it’s not exactly satisfactory. Right now though, it’s only a matter of ripping everything to my external hard drive
Coming soon: Piracy is in the news, and I want to defend the pirates. But not in some stupid way like Cory Doctorow. His point seems to be that “the industry” are restricting the user’s copying of data to very specific ways, which really don’t make a lot of sense, and I completely agree with this. My beef with Cory is that he doesn’t seem to come right out and go “Fuck you guys, stealing is so awesome and convenient that everyone should do it,” but posts a lot of articles suggesting things like “Suing pirates seems wrong” and “Shutting down torrent sites seems wrong.” He seems to avoid the idea that this is stealing, and that these sites have a bunch of movies/music that people are downloading for free to circumvent any sort of payment system.
But maybe I’ve simply misinterpreted something here or there. I’m not posting all of my opinions yet because I’d like to do a bit more research first…
Also, check out this site for healthcare: Top 10 facts to know about health care reform… There are a lot of uninformed/misinformed people out there with strong opinions, so here’s a neutral source with good information. Please read this if you’re going to speak out about these issues. You’d be amazed at how many vehemently angry people are just completely wrong because some stupid fucking chain e-mail got to them first.
Wow. This has become like an actual blog again, and I’m acting like people read this. WEIRD.
See my top bands at least once
Fun, Fun Facts, Lifelist, Music, Time Paradox
Posted March 13, 2010 at 12:07 am by Severed Head
The doesn’t include the obviously un-doable aspect of the dead or broken up! At the time of original writing, my top 11 were:
The Offspring
Paul Gilbert (saw 3/14/07)
Static-X (saw 11/11/01… and 12/13/03, 7/24/04, 6/13/05, 11/09/05, 4/4/07, and 10/29/07)
Local H (saw 6/6/08 (in Hollywood!), 11/9/08 (in Tucson!), and 11/10/08)
Queen (saw as Queen + Paul Rodgers 3/31/06)
Radiohead (saw 8/20/08 (in Seattle!))
Cake (saw 9/13/01, 1/27/06, and 12/31/09 (in Seattle!))
Andrew W.K.
ballboy
Primus (saw 12/9/06)
Muse (saw 12/12/04, 7/22/06, and 9/20/07)
Andrew W.K. and ballboy are the only 2 bands on the list that I haven’t seen… For ballboy, a trip to Edinburgh may be in order! All of the bands I would still consider among my favorites, although I’m not sure if I would include Andrew W.K. up there or not. In terms of bands, the only one I could think of who could replace him would be Nick Cave… Whether I changed them out or not, I have not seen either perform. That said, Andrew W.K. is coming on the Warped Tour, but I don’t know that I would want to sit through a bunch of terrible bands to see him play a short set. I guess if he were one of my favorite artists, then I would. But that’s part of the question then, isn’t it? Either way, ballboy is going to be the most difficult one to see (or Nick Cave if he is added to the list)
Posted March 12, 2010 at 11:55 pm by Severed Head
I have obtained an electric organ, and it is pretty badass. NOW I just need to learn how to play it reasonably well… Again, I wanted a very specific goal. I’ve decided on the following songs to learn:
Muse-Megalomania
Nobuo Uematsu-Dancing Mad (FF VI), Immoral Melody (FF IX) (intro)
Radiohead-Motion Picture Soundtrack, Fake Plastic Trees
Pink Floyd-Us and Them
Posted March 12, 2010 at 11:51 pm by Severed Head
1st Ending (Good ending) obtained (with Crono’s clone and a pyozo doll, Magus alive, 11 cats (!), going through the Black Omen)
I still have endings 2-13 to do, and perhaps the 1st one again, if I feel like beating it with Magus dead (so Frog can turn into Glenn!) and crashing the epoch into Lavos
Overall, this game is really fun though, and I think I’ll enjoy beating it that many more times. It makes it easier that each time gets shorter and shorter too… Unfortunately, I’m going to have to play the playstation port in order to really get the most out of the endings. This is unfortunate because it takes goddamn forever just to load menus and battles. Ah well.
Beat all of the Final Fantasy games
Posted March 12, 2010 at 11:32 pm by Severed Head
This only applies to the main series games… That is, no sequels, tactics, MMORPGs, etc.
FF I-Completed
FF IX-Completed
FF X-Completed
I decided not to finish all of the side quests. Just tonight, I decided that. While I do feel lame for leaving that out, it’s a huge commitment in time that I just can’t see myself having. Plus, there’s not a lot of point in most cases. In Final Fantasy X, I got all of the ultimate crap, because they were all do-able, and they were all somewhat fun, or at the very least, interesting. In Final Fantasy I though, it took so much time getting 100% bestiary and 100% item collection (for the record, this wasn’t even on easy mode). And some of these things don’t exist in certain ports of the game. For example, I want to get Final Fantasy II for the iPod Touch, and I doubt there’s something which measures the beastiary or item collection.
And screw the hard mode games and all that. I just want to beat each one. That’s it. I don’t want to re-do Final Fantasy IX with the twelve-hour run through to get a single item.
And for all of my geeky completist attitude, I still have Chrono Trigger to beat fully (though it sucks that I have to do it on the PSX version because it takes so goddamn long to load every fight and menu).
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Fun, Guitar, Life, Lifelist, Limb, Lists, Music
Posted March 12, 2010 at 3:57 pm by Severed Head
So, a while ago, I made it my goal to learn the catalogs of all of my favorite bands, and I thought it’d help me a be a better musician and guitarist overall. I made a list of what bands I wanted to learn the discographies of, but I did not fully define what I wanted to do to accomplish this. It’s important to set very specific goals, if not purely for motivation. So, I’ve put the artists’ catalogs that I want to learn in order, from least difficult to most difficult. It is important to note that Local H is excluded from this list because it requires a particular kind of guitar. More on this in a bit.
My goal is to try to get through an album a week, but, as I move on, I’m sure that will become more difficult as the albums become more difficult. For example, one Jimi Hendrix album could take months, and don’t even get me started on Paul Gilbert.
Still, as ridiculous as a goal as this is, whenever a musician has played with Paul Gilbert, they’re always impressed by his knowledge of the catalog of basically every band… And this isn’t just any old band too. This isn’t Nirvana and ballboy and The Offspring (like me). This is The Beatles (a ridiculous catalog), Van Halen, The Who, etc. I’d really like to get to that point. It really shows dedication. And I can acknowledge that it might not be until my 30s or later that I finish learning all of these. That’s why it’s a lifelist.
Anyway, here is the list of what I want to do… First, I want to go album by album for each band, starting with the earliest album chronologically and working my way to the most recent album. Next, I want to learn any b-sides or alternate/live versions (to a reasonable extent… I’m not going to learn every single guitar solo from every Primus bootleg I have, but I want to figure out their main structures and cues)…
Now, what it means to actually even learn a song becomes an issue. The following criteria are what I’m looking for:
Be able to play the main guitar parts (rhythm and lead)
If there is no main guitar, a guitar version. If it’s chords on a piano, I want to learn all of those on guitar. Or maybe piano. But the main chord progression. There will certainly be exceptions to this, and I’ll bring those up in upcoming entries.
The guitar solos (or the equivalent, if it is a flute or I don’t know… god knows what… Just a really important part)
For certain bands, particularly, Local H, a special guitar is required. When Scott Lucas plays, he has a bass pickup attached to his guitar, and has two outputs, one for the bass, which goes to a bass pedal and bass amp, and one for a guitar. I want to make a guitar with this set-up, and be able to play all Local H songs in the same manner, switching back and forth between the pedals. I feel this is the only true way of REALLY learning the catalog. Otherwise, I might be playing the chords in a different way than Scott does.
So, in terms of the actual method of learning all of this music, I have this order:
1) Play through the album while listening to it.
2) Notate how I played them, make it as short hand as I possibly can (a lot of the ballboy songs will be stuff that takes up less than a line like Cm-Eb-Bb=main riff)
3) Put the album on shuffle and be able to play the entire thing without sheet music
4) Be able to play through the album entirely without sheet music or a recording
5) Add all of the songs that I learned to a “Repertoire” playlist, and, after finishing an album, go through a fair amount of this playlist, and be able to play through it without sheet music. This will help to keep the older stuff I learned in my head.
Anyway, the first artist I’m working on is ballboy, and the first album is Club Anthems. Next up is A Guide to the Daylight Hours. I’m going to try to get both of them finished by the end of the next week… Hopefully with another album, even. We’ll see. Here’s the to-do list for ballboy:
Club Anthems
A Guide for the Daylight Hours
The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories
The Royal Theatre
I Worked on the Ships
B-sides/Acoustic arrangements
Future progress on this lifelist item: 2, 3, 4
Listen to all the music in my music collection
Posted March 7, 2010 at 11:54 am by Severed Head
21/52 (40.4%) days @ 10/22/07
23/53 (43.4%) @ 11/19/07
31/57 (54.4%) @ 1/31/09
36.2/61.6 (58.8%) @ 9/22/09
40.2/67.5 (59.6%) @ 3/7/10
At this rate, it looks like I’ll never get there. But I assure you, I will. For the last 8 months or so, I have spent a large portion of my time listening to old episodes of Loveline and The Adam Carolla Show and The Adam Carolla Podcast. I am glad to say that I am finally caught up. In the last 8 months, I’ve listened to 32.4 days worth of talk radio. During the last week or so, I caught up on a lot by listening to them on double speed, but regardless, that is a lot of listening in 8 months. I’ve set up a new listening scheme that I will not be listening to any new old talk radio, but only ones that have come out in the last few days, so that I can be caught up. But mostly I have a system of listening to my unlistened to music. All of the albums I have not listened to will be listened to in their correct order, all of the soundtracks (movie and game and opera) will be too… So you are going to see a very large increase in listening. Which is cool. If you are following this kind of crap. In fact, here’s a graph of all of this crap:
Also, if you look how much music I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten a crapton in the last 6 months or so. Anyway. Yeah. Just some nerdy statistics crap.
Future progress on this lifelist item: 2, 3