Wise Words:
When life gives you lemons -- PUCKER UP!
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Thursday, July 31, 2003
Attention: this blog is getting a face-lift.
00:56
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Where the hell did my archives go???
16:48
Sunday, July 13, 2003
On listening this post shall be. (Reading you better be.)
But first: I will be struck down by a meteor!
How will you die? Take the Exotic Cause of Death Test
Okay. Random linkage aside...
Now would be a good time to post about music, since I just went to Lycos and came up with a master mp3 list that I hopefully will update regularly (ie, whenever necessary). My reason for staking a piece of cyber-land and developing it into an indicative list of what artists and songs I like is that, with international ideas in mind, there may come a time when I need such a reference page visible and accessible wherever I may be, when I wake up in the middle of the night far, far away from home and crave a particular song...
If you've ever been stumped by a few notes, a riff -- or even just a sound rolling about in your head, you'd know what I mean. There have been times that sounds have popped into my mind, leaving me to muddle over them for days until I finally recall to which puzzle the piece fit.
I also plan to come up with a music video list, too, and for the same reasons, so be on the lookout for that.
Moving on: in a corner my room, behind the television, sits a thin, rectangular, black shelving. Snugly between slits in the plastic case sit cassette cases, holding ribbons of music from up to a decade past. Knowing that those cassettes won't last forever, I'm hunting these albums down, usually on Kazaa but on the Web, too. To give you an idea as to what music I'm talking about, I recently found all the tracks to Better Than Ezra's Deluxe and last Sunday I went on a very random Whitney Houston hunt.
But the artist at the top of my Most Wanted List is none other than Toad the Wet Sprocket. Anyone remember them? Not likely, since they were big some seven years ago. But quite frankly, Dulcinea is one of the first albums I fell in love with; "Fly From Heaven" and "Windmills" sit at the top of my Top Ten of All Time. Go ahead, listen to the samples and tell me if they're not good. (Both play in Windows Media Player. Go here if the links don't work.) Lyrics? I always thought "Nanci" was good in that respect -- "you bend your words like Uri Geller's spoons"? Come on, isn't that great? Unique and clever, at the least? How often do you find lines like that in today's world of Britney look-alikes and wannabes? And VH1's explanation of "Nanci" is cool, too.
Searching on Kazaa has its other boons: I found a live, acoustic recording of Come Down. (Sound clip plays in Real Player. Go here if link doesn't work.) Besides hearing a female British DJ say the word "sprocket," this mp3 has the added plus of exemplifying the energy, the verve in a Toad performance. Needless to say that it is getting quite a bit of replay on my Winamp player.
Besides Toad and whatever cassettes I have, I'm also looking for music and music videos from the '80s, instigated by a viewing of George Michael's "Freedom '90" on MTV. If anyone can think of some classic '80s videos and / or music that you think I should include in my collections, please don't hesitate to email me. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for another installment concerning music.
23:32
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
OK.... I know I haven't posted in a while, but this new layout is weird. It'll definitely take some getting used to. Thanks, dearest Blogger, for making life more disorienting than it already is.
So, what's new in my life? Not much, besides the new posting page layout. Have I mentioned how strange it looks? [Scribbles on mental memo pad: Must grow acquainted with schnazzy blogging changes.]
I know I'm not very consistent with posting on a regular basis, or even just posting. But here's hoping that I will be consistent long enough to update the WHoB on what I've been doing recently with my life. Thus, I present to you one installment (of how many, I'm not quite sure) discussing what the hell has been going on with me. This first post deals with literature -- so if you're the kind not interested in reading about, well, reading, you'll just have to wait until next time. Too-da-loo!
The news in literature: I've been loooooong done with Naipaul, so long in fact that I hardly remember what tome I ravished next. Oh, that's right: from India I returned to the US with a reread of some short stories and now I'm staying stateside with a collection of long-neglected longer ones.
I must admit, returning to the 1996 anthology was quite nice; dating back to my high-school days, they brought back memories of Griffin-related angst -- and the joy that materializes upon the realization that I no longer need to masquerade as a collar shirt-wearing, shirttail-tucking behemoth with an eagle's beak and a lion's tail. But I digress.
Robert Olen Butler's "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot": clever and hilarious. Stephen Dixon's "Sleep": witty, with a nicely crafted protagonist. Deborah Galyan's "The Incredible Appearing Man": clever and tasty with its bits of classical literature. And Melanie Rae Thon's "Xmas, Jamaica Plain": a vivid memory of the story's setting appeared, poof into my head as I was rereading it. There are plenty more, of course, and they were all nice to revisit.
As to the Granta: I really, really miss receiving those collections-in-a-mailbox, but have I either the money or the shelf space to subscribe? The Granta staff so kindly offered the American Long Story with a subscription renewal; just a few more bucks for more Granta and a free book? I may be penniless, but I'm not stupid.
Pulling the American Long Story off the shelf required me to take down all the issues I have of Granta; I got to the bottom of the stack, to the very first one I received -- fittingly, that first issue's topic was, and I kid you not, "Food". No wonder I developed an instantaneous taste in the magazine, huh? A few after "Food" is the "India!" issue. Exclamation point aside (and to this day I really have no good idea why there is the exclamation point), I ought to reread that sometime. Given my recent experiences, I may enjoy that more than I did as a frustrated, zit-infested teen with no means of learning that there is a world and there are cultures past these gas-guzzling, fast-food-engorging, Wal-Mart-shopping walls erected everywhere my eyes roam.
Sandwiched between those stoned-grain stories of Americana was a meaty, spicy bit of Bellow. Herzog certainly has the potential to be a captivating and interesting read, I will confide; but the names, the names -- besides those dropped by the Romanticism-studying protagonist and his Russian history expert of a lecherous wife (can you see where my interest in this book lies?), the text is also peppered with people prominent in the early 20th century, names that are at best vaguely familiar to me. It's tough to enjoy without a biographical dictionary by one's side. I intended the Granta to be more of an escape from than a replacement for the Bellow... but it's looking more like the latter.
Enough about reading. For the next installment -- a bit of listening, perhaps?
...Oh, before I forget: if anyone knows of a story [or perhaps an allegory] told by Kirkegaard concerning ducks and a church, please, please let me know.
02:50
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