Sound Design and Assembly

A Top Ten List for People Who Read Top Ten Lists

2009-11-07T08:47:00.004-06:00

The goal, if there was one, was to prove that every "Top Ten Greatest Albums of All Time" list was comprised largely by the Beatles and Bob Dylan. In researching, close to sixteen top ten lists were analyzed and half of those were discarded because, well, really, there's something fishy about a top ten list that puts three Pink Floyd records in a row right under Nirvana's Nevermind or a list that incorporates two Linkin Park records at the #9 and #10 slots. While I don't want to discriminate too harshly, it's pretty evident that the creators of those lists were simply publishing their own personal top tens. The lists that were used in the end are the results of teams of editors, critics and readers polls, and/or some sort of scientific formula (which is laughable, but at least there's a method there as opposed to straight opinion). Here are the results of the eight polls used.

Please note the records in bold face; you'll see that they occur multiple times across each list. If we remove the records that do not appear more than once, we see only eighteen individual records.

I'm sure you'll note that the list from Best Ever Albums is the only list to not have a single record eliminated. The task at hand now, is to calculate how all of these records rank. If were to use a simple method of counting how many times a record is listed, we would surely wind up with multiple records in the same ranking multiple times.
For example:

Record	Instances	Rank
Revolver	6	1
Sgt. Pepper	5	2
Dark Side of the Moon	4	3
Abbey Road	3	4
Blonde on Blonde	3	4
Highway 61	3	4
Led Zeppelin IV	3	4
London Calling	3	4
Pet Sounds	3	4
The Queen is Dead	3	4
The Velvet Undergound & Nico	3	4
White Album	3	4
Exile on Main St	2	5
Marquee Moon	2	5
Nevermind	2	5
OK Computer	2	5
Rubber Soul	2	5
Stone Roses	2	5

This is one way of doing it, but how do we get definite answers? Easy. Let's use a point system, with points awarded inversely to ranking from the original lists, that is to say Ranking #1 = 10 points and Ranking #10 = 1 point.

Record	Points	Rank
Revolver	48	1
Sgt. Pepper	41	2
Dark Side of the Moon	24	3
Pet Sounds	23	4
Abbey Road	20	5
Blonde on Blonde	19	6
Highway 61	18	7
OK Computer	17	8
The Stone Roses	14	9
Marquee Moon	12	10
The Queen is Dead	12	10

White Album	11	12
Led Zeppelin IV	9	12
Nevermind	9	12
Rubber Soul	9	12
London Calling	8	13
Exile on Main St	6	14
Velvet Underground & Nico	4	15

Using these eight charts as our sample and setting it against our chart of instances, we can further calculate the likelihood of seeing each of these records on any given chart.

Record	Likelihood you'll see it (based on % of instances)	Points (total X likelihood)	Likely Rank
Revolver	75	36	1
Sgt. Pepper	63	25.83	2
Dark Side of the Moon	50	12	3
Pet Sounds	38	8.74	4
Abbey Road	38	7.6	5
Blonde on Blonde	38	7.22	6
Highway 61	38	6.84	7
The Queen is Dead	38	4.56	8
OK Computer	25	4.25	9
White Album	38	4.18	10

The Stone Roses	25	3.5	11
Led Zeppelin IV	38	3.42	12
London Calling	38	3.04	13
Marquee Moon	25	3	14
Nevermind	25	2.25	15
Rubber Soul	25	2.25	15
Velvet Underground & Nico	38	1.52	16
Exile on Main St	25	1.5	17

I'm sure you've noted already that Radiohead's OK Computer is the wild card; while you're not as likely to see it appear on a list, when you do see it, it will on average rank higher than many others; proven by consistently showing in the top 5 when it does appear on our sample. Also note that it appears as though Revolver will rank higher than Sgt. Pepper, despite that in the instances where they appear on the same list, Sgt. Pepper outranks Revolver in 3 out of 5 instances, or 60% of the time. In fact, they rank next to each other only once, or 20% of the time. We should also expect to see Dark Side of the Moon in the #3 slot, though on the lists where it appears, it breaks the top 5 only twice, 50% of the time. These figures also show that we should expect to consistently see the same four records in the same four slots:

Revolver
Sgt. Pepper
Dark Side of the Moon
Pet Sounds

Also note that, apparently, Nirvana's Nevermind and the Beatles' Rubber Soul are the exact same fucking record. They have to be. It's been scientifically proven by magazines and you should always believe magazines.

It's Friday: Let's Piss Off Marvel Comics. Again.

2009-11-06T09:07:00.003-06:00

I was fifteen when FOX aired Generation X, a TV movie based on the Marvel Comics spin off of the same name. At fifteen, I had pretty much fallen out of touch with the comic book world; three years earlier was the 30th anniversary of the X-Men (which I was rabid for) and the Avengers (which I never read) and Marvel decided they wanted to shake things up with their titles. At some point, and I'm not sure when this was, they decided to just kill all of the X-Men and reincarnate them all in alternate universes, resulting in (I think) six new titles and I didn't know which one to follow. Besides, I was getting more into X-Factor. X-Factor was tight. Still, though, at fifteen, I armed the VCR with a tape and recorded the Generation X TV movie. I had nothing to go on with it so, unlike most folks who grouse about it, I thought it was alright. It didn't bother me.
I bring it up because the lead character, or one of them, anyway, in this flick, was Jubilee. Most people took issue with the fact that Jubilee is Asian and the actress who played her in this incarnation was not.

In fact, in this video that starts automatically at 6:35, she looks kind of Jewish.
Please also note Matt Frewer briefly reprising his role as Max Headroom.

I still have the tape somewhere and if I recall correctly it also has some episodes of Tales From the Crypt on it and I think there was an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that covered either Brandon Lee's or Kurt Cobain's death.
ANYhoo, I bring it up because last night, and I don't know how this happened, Jubilee came to mind and I realized, "She's really lame." Her outfit and her back story are a little too reminiscent of Robin, in that she's an orphan gymnast (Robin was an orphan acrobat) turned vigilante (like Robin) who wears green short shorts (like Robin) and a red top (like Robin) with a yellow trenchcoat (like Robin's yellow cape) alongside a square-jawed stoic father figure with extensive martial arts training and a checkered past who wears a horned cowl as part of his outfit (Wolverine, like Robin's Batman). She speaks an invented slang that makes her sound brain-damaged (like the Robin featured in Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns).

Possible captions include:

Don't tell me you're not seeing it.
Really?
Honestly, I understand, after the sixty third X-Men character, I'd be out of original ideas, too.
What happens when Marvel writers pick up a fifth of vodka and some DC titles the night before the big meeting.
My brother and I would call this the "Pauken Shuffle".

You pick.

Finally, and the one thing that sets her apart from Robin, is her superpower (Robin has none), which purists and experts describe as "plasma bursts" or some such bullshit when we all know what it really is: She shoots fireworks out of her fingers. This makes her only slightly more useful than Dazzler but still not as useful as Speedball. Remember Speedball? No? There's a reason for that, you know.^{Scroll down to #1.}
So I was laying there in bed, staring at the blurry red lights that were my alarm clock (I've mentioned before that I'm blind as a bat) trying to figure out, "OK, I guess I've got tomorrow's subject. Where do I go with it?" Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that pointing out that Jubilee is a straight up rip-off of Robin is nothing that hasn't been floating around the comics community for decades. (Check it.) Nowadays, at least, Jubilee is known as Wondra, Marvel's attempt at saying "our bad" to DC. She's dressed in black, has no superpowers anymore, and has to use (according to Wikipedia) "tech devices" for superhuman strength and flight. Gone are the fireworks, which couldn't do a goddamned thing for her when she had them, anyhow, when you consider some powerless pipsqueak handed her ass to her without even landing a punch.
At least she's grown up a bit, I guess; found her own identity and whatnot. Doesn't keep her from being completely fucking lame.

Hey, remember when Dave Chappelle played Rick James and then he punched Charlie Murphy and he sang, "UNITY!"? This is nothing like that.

2009-11-05T08:32:00.005-06:00

♩ ♪	♫	♩ ♪
Coffee,	I like	coffee.

Well, I was all set to go off on a tangent accusing some l337 haxxors from 4Chan (Because who doesn't blame 4Chan's l337 haxxors nowadays?) of changing Unicode since the last time I used it, but I found out what the problem is. Then I completely forgot what I was going to gripe about.
Oh, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. Well, some of you may not. Unicode, as far as I can tell, is like binary code except it's cuter while still being just as confusing. In the html world, from what I can figure, there are three components to a Unicode character.

& # x (without the spaces)
This tells the program you're using that you're about to start entering a unicode character. "Ampersand Pound X" kicks off each unicode character because, for some reason, the standard "U+" used everywhere else was too easy to use, so for html users (like bloggers) "U+" is changed "& # x" for what I'm sure computer programmers see as a self-explanatory reason.
A Combination of Numbers and Letters
Sometimes it's a wee bit of 'em, sometimes it's a boatload of them, but the combination of numbers and letters used determines the character. For example, as I often use musical notes, I know that "2669" = quarter note, "266A" = eighth note, and "266B" = beamed pair of eighth notes.
;
The semicolon tells your computer, "Hey, I'm done making a unicode character, now." That's about it.

OH! hey, yeah, I remember what I was going to gripe about. Say "goodbye" again to my days off. I'm sure I had a real good one about that but fuck it.

This week's Not Safe For Wednesday is below this post.

2009-11-04T12:37:00.002-06:00

Is it at all possible that Ashanti's "Foolish" is the worst song ever? I think it is.
For four minutes twenty six seconds, we're treated to Ashanti's incessant caterwauling as she bounces from one melody to the next (meaning sort of the same one) in an attempt to berate Terrence Howard, the guy who played Jim Rhodes in the first Iron-Man movie, better known to some as "the pimp guy from Hustle & Flow", the movie about some pimp guy who tries to become a rap superstar with the aid of Teddy from Hang Time and "that white kid they always put in movies where there has to be a fragile little white kid put into uncomfortable situations with big black guys".
Anyway, Ashanti spends the aforementioned four minutes twenty six seconds trying to cram in as many similar sounding melodies as possible over a sample from the 1983 DeBarge song "Stay With Me". The mind reels in horror as it tries to find out exactly which part of the song is the verse, which is the chorus, or if there's any organization to any of it at all. Sometimes she pitches her voice up for a length of time, sometimes she pitches her voice down for a length of time, most of the time it stays monotone, and she rreeaallllyy likes to drag out vowels. A lot. And the entire time, it seems like there are nine other Ashanties in the background making "ooohhh"s and "aaahhh"s or otherwise parroting the last three or four words of each phrase. I mean, in terms of nothingness, this song ranks as a flat and sterile ceaseless exercise in monotony.
So filled with hatred for this song am I, that I will not embed the video or link to it. You're going to have to Google it yourself if you really want to hear the most bland song ever written.

Not Safe For Wednesday

2009-11-04T08:40:00.003-06:00

Remember: It's impossible to unsee something."

I'm sure some of you are familiar with that clip of pterodactyl porn that's been out there since time immemorial and, really, that's what I was going to go with today. There's also the really disturbing to see E.T. porn that hopefully less people have seen as it doesn't really turn anybody on, it exists solely to prove that the internet itself exists as an exhibition for the talents of folks who like to do nothing besides destroying one fond childhood memory after another. My generation had E.T. and Care Bears and Smurfs, that kind of shit. My brother, being 6²/₃ years younger (yes, we count it like that), had shit like the Power Rangers. That porn exists, too. Chances are that if you ever liked anything at all ever at any time in your life, somebody's made a porn of it, because internet service providers don't do background checks for things like, "Is this person a sick fuck? They can have a clean criminal record, a perfectly sane psych profile, and good credit, sure, but are they a sick fuck?"
Here, let me pick something I like, right off the top of my head.
Lancelot Link.
There, I liked that show as a kid. Now let's see what happens when I type in "Lancelot Link porn" into Google.
Nothing. Good. That's probably because of some bestiality laws, though.
Let me pick something else. Cactus. Let's see what happens when I type "cactus porn" into Google.
Oh, come on! Really!?!?
How about "high fructose corn syrup porn"?
You gotta be fucking kidding me. I mean, we're not dealing with things I like anymore, I'm just pulling words out of thin air and putting "porn" on the end.
Ford Fiesta.
Timberland.
Jaywalk.
The House That Jack Built.
Marigold.
Times New Roman.
Post-It Note.
Etc...
Anyhow, I was looking for the pterodactyl porn and in my search I found instead something more intriguing that I'd like to share with you, my little illiterati: The World's Most Awesome Flame Thrower.

This is what I got.

2009-11-03T09:24:00.004-06:00

Going through the help wanted ads as Mitzy keeps a keen eye on a lady bug she found on the window. Been practicing loudly the past few days, only a few things coming out that I'm even happy with. Keep trying to think of ways to get around the issue of this computer's speed so I can do some recording. Keep thinking of how I should start packing a little this Friday since I have some big boxes from the supply shipments at the hostel. Laundry yesterday; the powder detergent I got from the hostel clumped up and didn't rinse away properly so, when I pulled my laundry out of the drier, every single article of clothing looked as though I had used it as a jizz rag, so I had to do my laundry a second time using Dave & Laura's detergent. (One of them accidentally ate my last three eggs, so I figure we're even.) (No need to replace the eggs, Dave.) Georgie's all over me about how many résumés I send out per day, like she's my mother, claiming that "nobody knows what's going on" with me, "nobody" meaning her as I've gotten only the irregular question from Dave and Laura never asks; I figure it's none of Georgie's damned business. I don't hang out with her much anymore, anyway, and, when I do, I feel forced and awkward which sucks because when I don't hang out with her, I feel lonely and resentful. Wow, that last part looked like a diary entry. I better go find something to do before this gets weird.

Can we all agree on something?

2009-11-03T08:40:00.000-06:00

Nothing. I got it.

A Tribute to Bucket

2009-11-02T08:30:00.003-06:00

Tom and Maran came by to pick up Bucket last night. Bucket started freaking out and hiding while Tom took a seat on the stairs, apparently he fucked up his knee. I had the dubious honor of loading the big squeaker into the cat carrier. I'm still not happy about it.
Here are a bunch of pics of Bucket from back in July when Mitzy was still a baby.

Here he is showing Mitzy how to look out a window.

The infamous "open the tuna your-damned-self" shot.

Im in yr camra, makin yr shot cute.

God speed, you ginormous squeaker.

So, nobody told me we went back to standard time.

2009-11-01T18:56:00.002-06:00

As a result, I was at work an hour early this morning. I didn't find out until I was making dinner earlier and I saw that the clock on the range didn't match the one on my phone or this 'puter. No wonder today felt like a long-assed shift. I place the blame squarely on you, my little illiterati.

How do we begin November? By going back to work!

2009-11-01T07:27:00.012-06:00

And what do we do at work? No, besides that. That's right, we kill time. Get ready for a link happy post as I take you on a marvelous journey to some of my time killers! Yeah, I got nothin'.

BallDroppings: Maddening, absolutely maddening. Download the downloadable version after spending some with the online javascript one to avoid issues with freezing up after you successfully trap all the balls into making your cacophonous symphony. Because, c'mon, you're going to want to trap the balls before it ever dawns on you to construct a tune out of those things.

Show of hands: Who remembers this guy?

Tinydrum3.0: Looks like Q*Bert, sounds like the first three little notes to the Star Trek theme, and somehow, when I play with it, I feel magically whisked away to a time of samurais and shamisens. There are three ways to interface with the dmf tinydrum: You can click on the blocks as the wave goes by, you can click on the little grid above that, or you can enter coordinates in the text box at the top, try these: 4369-34952-8738-17476-17476-4369

Grotrian Pianos: Do you ever find yourself just kind of sitting around after that rerun of that episode of Reno 911 that you didn't laugh at the first time is over, you're kind of gin drunk, and you think to yourself, "You know what would sound awesome if it were fucking horrifying? Beethoven's 'Fur Elise'." If you think that way, well, you're not fucking normal. Even I don't think that way and I'm two steps away from being classified as a frotteur so, baby, when I call the kettle "black", I have particular qualifications.

Because it's "pot", get it? No? I got nothin'.

Fear not, though, because the brains behind Grotrian Pianos aren't normal either, they're German. So while you're clearly not in your right mind, neither are the developers behind this toy, who clearly wanted to take beautiful classical music and turn it into a complete mind-fuck.

Virtual 909: aM labaoratory has a ton of stuff to sort through, including our aforelinked 909 drum machine clone. There's also a 303 bass machine clone ^Here, a pulse-width tutor ^Here, something called a wavepole synth ^Here, a cutesy toy called Tonewheels ^Here, and a Tone Matrix ^Here which was incorporated into the Hobnox Audio Tool.
16650,0,16400,0,4104,0,1056,0,16908,0,1088,0,2056,0,4224,0

If you don't like music, you might like cats. If you don't like cats, you can get the fuck out and not come back.

To your left, you should see a big blank space. Right click and select "Play".

How do we end October? By celebrating my first day off in a month.

2009-10-31T09:14:00.003-05:00

October had 36 posts, yielding 1.1 posts per day. So how did we spend this month of going to work every day, looking at Craigslist every day, feeling like shit every day, and struggling to keep this a music blog every day?
Posts this month: 36
Posts per day: 1.1
Number of posts that were musically related: 14 (39% of total, once every two and a half days)
Number of musically related posts that were about recording: 0
Number of musically related posts that involve a picture of my dad: 3 (0.8%, less than once every ten days)
Number of musically related posts that involve Laramie, WY: 2 (0.5%, once every twenty days)
Amount of money made from proposing new slogan and t-shirt design to Laramie, WY's tourism board: US$0
Amount of money this blog pulled in for me over all: US$0
Longest post: It's Friday: Let's Piss Off Bob Marley's Ghost (Still can't find the word count feature in MSWord 2007)
Shortest post: Great (4 words)
Number of posts that I'll deliberately not finish because it's my first day off in a month and I don't particularly want to spend it all in front of a computer: 1 (This one.)
Chances that I'll spend my day off in front of the computer: 50/50

It's Friday: Let's Piss Off Hollywood for Fucking with Werewolves. (As close to a "Halloween Edition" as you can get.)

2009-10-30T08:00:00.002-05:00

I'm not fucking around; I'm a werewolf man. When it comes to monsters either in movies, mythology, or folklore, the werewolf is my favorite. Some of you may be well aware of Universal's upcoming remake of the Lon Chaney Jr. classic, The Wolfman starring Benecio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot. It'll be a welcome escape from the sea of crap that Hollywood's been making lately with werewolves and an even more welcome escape from how Hollywood has thoroughly pussified the vampire. I don't fear Hollywood pussifying the werewolf, because they've already fucked it up aplenty. Things can only get better from here. But how have they fucked it up?

The Idea That Werewolves Thrive in Underground Secret Societies
What was that shit? Underworld? Yeah, Underworld wasn't the only one. Hollywood loves a good secret enclave because it's an easy to set things up for struggle and what not. The problem is that werewolves are rogues. They're rogues because of isolated attacks. If there was an underground society, that would require a mass outbreak to account for the sheer number required to build said society. This means they multiply and they get along and they pool their resources toward a particular goal. The problem with this is that werewolves don't have a goal. The ones that enjoy their lycanthropy are particularly rare. They turn into wild, murderous animals once a month that have no desire to dominate the globe. They wish only to kill.
The road to finding out what made you a werewolf generally involves going it alone, which means you aren't exactly going to go joining our aforementioned underground society. Since nobody's going to believe you, you're not going to find too many support groups. And because everybody from gypsies to the ghosts of your victims are telling you to kill yourself, you're probably not in a hurry to start meeting new people. Think about it, you're online talking to your werewolf buddies in your Werewolves Anonymous chat room and everybody simultaneously types "zteysrxfcjgklhyi".
Because it's a full moon and everybody's changing, you see? No? Just me? Ehh...
That brings us to...

The Idea That Werewolves Are Into It

Because, yeah, this guy looks totally into it.

There are a few exceptions here and those exceptions are known as villains. But if you want the hero to be a werewolf, then, for the most part, he spends the entire movie investigating what happened to him and how to reverse the curse before the next full moon, which doesn't really work; he still has to die by the end. Know why? Because the werewolf has only one weakness: Silver. And that tends to kill them. And by "tends to" I mean "will always".
For a werewolf to be into it, that means they'd have to choose to be a werewolf. People choose to be vampires because they're afraid of death and they know they'll maintain some semblance of humanity and they can rationalize shit by figuring they'll just feed off of bad people. Nobody chooses to be a werewolf. Sure, there are far fewer weaknesses for a werewolf, but you don't get the benefit of immortality. You don't get to control when you change. Your entire anatomy has to change once a month, including your skeleton, so you know that shit's got to hurt. You kill and eat a bunch of people regardless of what kind of people they are and then you can't remember it.
That and your clothes get fucked up. Now you have to time when you wear your favorite t-shirt along the lunar cycle. Being a werewolf sounds like it sucks.

The Idea That Being a Werewolf is Fucking Awesome
It looks like being a werewolf is awesome on the surface because, well, look at the list of weaknesses:

Silver.

BOOM! That's it. What the fuck else is going to fuck up a werewolf? Let's look at that list again:

Silver.
Not a gotdamn other thing.

But let's get this straight: Werewolves are not "God's Forgotten Children of the Night". No. They're fucking animals. They're fucking big assed animals. They're fucknormous lupine mindless killing machines. While it sounds awesome to kill your enemies and then nobody can trace the crime back to you because what's left of them resembles an animal attack, you run the risk of also killing friends, family, and lovers.
You're going to beg to be caged on the next full moon and nobody's going to believe you. If you don't get committed or sent to a shrink, you're going to kill again. Eventually, people are going to start looking at you funny, one thing will lead to another, and you're staring at your mother, lupine eye to human eye, as she pumps round after silvery round into you.

"And I taught her how to handle a firearm. So put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. Because, you know, you can do that now. Because you're like a dog. And dogs can put their heads... Aw, forget it."
Longest caption possible.

Enough of all that. How can Hollywood fuck this up any further?

Make Werewolves Sexy
Yes, they turn into insatiable beasts once a month. They're also hairy. And hungry. And, uh, dangerous. While a part of me would love to see a werewolf porn because of the inevitable numerous references to "doggy style", the fact remains that werewolves are hardly sexy.

Make Werewolves More Human
Now you're just missing the point. Some werewolves are depicted as bipeds, others are depicted as quadrupeds, but one thing is constant: They're fucking mindless animals. Giving the wolf identity any sort of motivation completely misses the point and removes the element of inner torment that makes the werewolf such a compelling character. Look, when they turn into animals, they're supposed to be animals. I don't care how many legs you have them walking on, just make them animals.

CGI
CGI werewolves look like shit. Plain and simple. Repeat this simple mantra: "Animals, not Danimals."

There you have it. As we exit the era of vampire revivalism and try desperately to get away from this bullshit zombie craze, we can now see where Hollywood has and will go wrong. Let us fold our hands and pray. Pray for badassed mindless killing machines.

Yeah, we're going there.

2009-10-29T08:46:00.006-05:00

It's... What is today? Thursday? Day 30. Yeah, it's day 30. Tomorrow, I guess I can roll with pissing folks off, but what about today?
Well, I'm afraid I'm left with no choice. I've been sitting on this one since I started this blog, and now, with this being the thirtieth day in a row at work, after two years, I have to pull out my safety net. The dumbest possible post ever.

Who Would Win A Fight Between...

	Henry Rollins
Glenn Danzig

Standard Dad Joke Time!

"They both look like a couple of pussies to me."

I should get points for the effort I put into the graphics alone.
Well, let's get started comparing our two pugilists.

Height:
Rollins: 5'9"
Danzig: 5'3" - 5'5"
Weight:
Rollins: 125lbs-195lbs
Danzig: 215lbs
Style:
Rollins: Unknown
Danzig: Jeet Kun Do and Muay Thai

Height / weight stat sources:
http://www.celebheights.com/s/Glenn-Danzig-3345.html
http://www.celebheights.com/s/Henry-Rollins-1176.html
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/archive/index.php/t-747340.html

Well, Henry clearly has the height advantage, but Danzig's got the mass and the martial arts training. From here, though, we have to consider a few things. First, both men got into weight training, according to the same old apocryphal stories, because they were sick of getting fucked with. (You have to remember that they come from an era when punk rock equaled faggotry, and homosexuals had to face violence at every turn.) The thing is though, that Glenn, according to a few stories, was a dick. Henry, on the other hand, was clearly shit-house rat insane.
Secondly, Glenn was way into theatrics, with all kinds of rubber bat wings and fucked up hair cuts. Henry was... well, shit-house rat insane. He squeezed billiard balls to prepare for shows. I mean, yeah, I have some fucked up pre-show rituals: I fast and I don't wear my glasses. I don't squeeze thermoset balls and grind my teeth.
Thirdly, after all the hullabaloo concerning the stats, consider the following video evidence of a lithe, pre-weight training, Black Flag era Henry Rollins educating a fan on why you don't try to take his microphone.

Are you going to try to take Henry's microphone? I wouldn't try to take Henry's microphone. Look at the swing he's got. Completely untrained, violent, almost simian. I've taken a few martial arts classes myself, you know (What white kid from the 80s didn't?), and that's not how you swing a punch; that's how you basically club the shit out of someone when you don't have a club handy. Also note the blatant disregard for those caught in the crossfire; it's not that Henry's not letting anything get in his way, it's that he doesn't give a fuck if there's something in his way or not. Fuck, he might just get distracted and start fucking up somebody else; not because they were in the way, understand, but because they were there. That kind of brute animalism spells nothing but danger.
Let's check the video evidence of Glenn.

Wow. That's a recent video, too, so he's got the mass and the training and what happens? A guard straight knocks him out with one punch. We're talking a regular guy who, at least from the punch thrown in the video, does not appear to have training in two martial arts disciplines like our Mr. Danzig. Glenn is pissy because he wants his band to go on. Security guy says it's not possible. Glenn breaks out the playground push. Guard tolchocks him on his fine vonny litso.
Equally hilarious is the female member of Glenn's entourage who proclaims that the punch was a cheap shot. Cheap shot. Right. All of a sudden the guy with training in two martial arts disciplines is unable to block a punch he could see coming from a mile away; how unfair! Fuck, man, I could see that shot coming. Lord knows that if I couldn't block it, I'd dodge it.
So, what have we got? We've got Tall, Svelte, and Crazy vs. Karate Chop McTiny.

	In a ring.	In the street.
Back in the day.	Henry.	Henry.
Today.	Glenn.	Henry.

Rationale: Henry, as stated, was straight up fucking insane back in the day, making a rabid Taz look like one of those "World's Cutest Kitten" videos on YouTube. Today, he'd probably be a formidable opponent in a street fight because Glenn not be prepared for all the "cheap shots". Glenn would take him in the ring if only because, when you go in the ring, you can expect the other person to swing. However, I would seriously question Glenn's judgment in using his face to block the punches.
So there we have it, it's Henry. Where I was looking to get a bunch of mileage out of this one, it actually went by pretty quickly. Be sure to tune in tomorrow when I... uh... well... be sure to tune in tomorrow when I figure out what I'm doing tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy this Black Flag hair chart.

Not Safe For Wednesday

2009-10-28T08:00:00.001-05:00

Say you're a big Bruce Campbell fan. You know, in the past two weeks your viewing choices have included The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Burn Notice, and My Name Is Bruce. My Name Is Bruce is loaded full of references to Evil Dead and includes a cameo by Ellen Sandweiss, who played Cheryl in Evil Dead and, as it turns out, stars in a web series, Dangerous Women with her female Evil Dead co-stars. Dangerous Women can be found at strike.tv, which hosts a wide array web series and short films, including this one, Buttfucker. No nudity or pornography involved, but loads of filthy language and girly underwear clad butts.

I got nothin'.

2009-10-27T08:30:00.002-05:00

OOOOOOhhhhhh fuck. What can we talk about today? What is today, anyway? Day 28, I think. Should I wait until Friday to piss off the Jesus Lizard and Aerosmith? You know because there's a slide part in "Nub" that sounds a bit like a slide part in "Rag Doll". Seriously, I can only assume that that's how fucking "Rag Doll" snuck into my head this morning. I mean, it's like this: When you have to find one specific video on the internet and multiple videos of one song exist, you're going to listen to that song a lot. When you listen to the same song over and over in a short period of time, you're bound to suffer some side effects. Yesterday, I walked around singing "de no sacar los manos"* over and over and somehow, in my sleep, my brain connected these two completely different songs because of one similar instance of slide guitar.
Here's a song about an amputee trying to masturbate. Here's a song about - uh - women or sex or something.
Here's a song that incorporates jazz into punk rock. Here's a song that filters the blues through horrible 80s production techniques.
You get where I'm going with this, right?
So, how do I get back into the swing of things? I don't know. Somebody give me a musically related topic. I'll expand on it. In the meantime... Ugh, just waiting for day thirty two.

* Roughly translated: "Don't pull out your hands."

I'm copping out today because I'm still training the new guy.

2009-10-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

Hey! Remember crowd surfing? Remember that? Yeah, everybody used to do that. I did, too. David Yow is forty nine years old and still singing the entirety of the Jesus Lizard's "Nub" whilst being held aloft by the crowd.

DAY 27

I think...

Wait...

Yeah.

Pretty sure...

Yeah.

DAY 27

It's NOT Saturday. (Thanks McGarvey.)

2009-10-25T14:49:00.003-05:00

Long-assed training day. Day 26. Been thinking a lot about setting up a new feature: "Ask a Punker" whereby folks would send in their various punk-related questions and I would answer them in an over the top esoteric and scholarly manner but not at all snide because I hate when punkers act all fucking holier-than-thou just because they have some rare hardcore 7" from some unheard of local band from, say, the Laramie, Wyoming underground punk scene. Yeah, you know why it's rare? Because the band couldn't afford to print more than fifty and they gave forty away to their friends. Wanna know why they couldn't sell them? For the same reason they couldn't afford them: Nobody's fucking heard of them. So you can take your Internal Combustion or whatever the fuck they're called 7" and bloit oucher ass because nobody cares. You know why they don't care? Because everybody knows that the only good hardcore band was Black Flag.
Yeah, maybe it would be like that.

It's Day 25

2009-10-24T08:39:00.003-05:00

Today is Saturday. I know this because yesterday was Friday, and I was aware that yesterday was Friday because the day before that was Thursday. Today is Saturday. I know this because I mark the calendar, normally I do, anyway, but it looks like I missed a day and now I wonder but I know today is Saturday. I know this because of which night shifter relieved me yesterday. Today is Saturday. I know this because I asked my roommate and he said "Totally." So, today is Saturday.

DAY 25

Great.

2009-10-23T12:13:00.000-05:00

It's fucking snowing again.

It's Friday: Let's Piss Off the Straightaways

2009-10-23T08:13:00.004-05:00

I don't know what happened, but the Straightaways, my old hardcore band, popped into my head. Not the songs, but the break up. I don't know if I ever went over that before, at least not while I was sober.
I know that, generally, on Fridays we have these long superfluous posts with plenty of fun, candy-colored graphics and photographic evidence but, you see, all my photos from the Straightaways are from an era of "analog photography", back when cameras used this stuff called "film". Since I packed up my scanner and my photo album (pictures arranged chronologically in an air mattress pump box) months ago, there won't be any of that, I'm afraid.
So where do we begin? Do we start at the beginning? Do we start with the break up? Do we introduce our cast of characters?

In alphabetical order by last name:
Bob: Drums / Vocals. Formerly of Northwest Ohio's own Three Quarter Tank. Did some time in some Florida punk bands. Loved hardcore punk, Buddy Rich, and tons of cymbals.
Charlie: Vocals / Guitar. Songwriter, artist, loved Nirvana, Ramones, Black Sabbath, Misfits, Queen. On again / off again part timer in Chaotic Euphoria.
Karl: Bass / Vocal. Formerly of the USMC Reserves. Loved Primus.

I met Karl when I was in high school and I was looking for a drummer, which Karl was at the time. He wasn't bad, but I was stoned so I don't recall if he did anything memorable. Nothing came about that aside from one of our longest lasting in-jokes, "Guy Sharona", which I'm sure Adam can post the lyrics to in the comments section. We each went about our merry ways after that until I heard Karl came back from basic training.
Fast forward through a few failed line ups and there I am asking Karl, "You want to start a band?" He said, "Sure." It was that simple. We played with a few guys here and there who didn't really make the cut, one guy had an elaborate hydraulic hi-hat mechanism that took forever to set up. I think his name was Dan.
After practicing for a few weeks, maybe it was a month, I was hanging out at Chaotic Euphoria's practice space and Bob comes in to the garage and says, "I quit Three Quarter Tank today." Demi said, "Cool, join Chuck's band." It was that simple.
Now, I can bore you with long, involved tales of the road and shows and records and what not, based mostly on fuzzy memories encumbered by wwaayy too much fucking pot and the angst of a nineteen year old man who'd never tasted pussy, but I'll cut right to the quick and explain the break up.
The Straightaways had been together for a year and a half at that point, give or take a couple months. We had played this club, the Bottle Rocket, in Toledo as a part of their Joey Ramone tribute night. About twenty or so bands, each one given four Ramones songs, played on shared amplifiers and drum kit. All the bands had to bring was their guitars, basses, drum sticks, and leather jackets. It was understood that we would be playing for free which we did a lot, so it wasn't a big deal. Besides, it was for Joey, our Punk Jesus.
The Bottle Rocket was a fledgling venue at the time (it eventually closed) and thus had a number of things against it. First of all, it had no damned money. Every venue gripes about not having any damned money, so that's par for the course, but I mean they really had no money, which is why they had to find a way to convince bands to play for free. Given the success of the Joey Ramone tribute show, success as in they charged a cover and the bands never saw a cut of it, on top of all the booze they sold, they figured they had stumbled across a new avenue of income generation: Tribute shows.
Before we go any further, can I state the obvious? Joey Ramone is dead. Iggy Pop is alive.
It struck everybody, I think, a little odd when the Bottle Rocket put out the call for an Iggy Pop tribute show, but we figured, "Fuck it, why not?" and set about learning a couple Stooges covers, not exactly the most daunting task. As the date veered closer, we discovered that there were only four bands on the bill. I don't remember the other two, but I remember there was us and Chaotic Euphoria.
By this time, things in the Straightaways were becoming fairly strained, and it's hard to list the reasons in any sort of categorical order or do it with any amount of delicacy. Essentially, I was the one who started the band. I wrote 90% of the songs, I was in charge of the artwork. I was, more or less, the creative force in the band. So it stung a little when, in the band I started, I was beginning to get called out for not being "punk enough" for my own fucking band.
Bob had been around more blocks more times than either Karl or I had, so we relied on him for his connections. He started to feel as though we were taking advantage of him in terms of booking shows and was sometimes, not often but often enough, vocal about this. In order to maybe smooth things over, Karl and I booked a show to try to show that we were willing to try to put in he same amount of leg work as Bob. When we told him we booked a show, he exclaimed, "What show!? I didn't book it!" We should have seen that it was going downhill from there, but we soldiered on.
Then there was Karl. It took an act of congress to get Karl to pitch in on anything. Bob and I got along most when we had to go to Kinko's, primarily because Karl wasn't there. Why wasn't Karl there? He had no damned money. Why didn't he have any damned money? He blew it all on pot and Ritalin. Karl paid for his share of the recording session we did at Flag City with an Epiphone Strat copy. It was kind of like that... all the time.
So I wasn't punk enough (I was also said to be childish, which, yeah, I was), Bob was taken advantage of, and Karl never paid for his share of anything. This sounds like a band that will last, right?
By the time we got to the Iggy Pop show at the Bottle Rocket, our little camp was already pretty tense; we were trying to fake having a good time and trying to steer clear of arguments on a constant basis. We got to the show to find that out of all four bands that signed up, only the Straightaways and Chaotic Euphoria were present.
The night wore on and both camps began to get a bit antsy. We were looking to start soon but the venue wanted to wait until the place was more full. It didn't look like that was going to happen. It was poorly promoted, there were no fliers, there were only half the bands, the guy that was being paid tribute wasn't fucking dead... It wasn't going to happen. Eventually, and I don't know how this happened, Chaotic Euphoria got on stage and started sound checking... without the sound guy present. It was somehow thrust upon me to go find the sound guy.
Something you should know about the sound guy: He hated both our bands.
I don't remember how I found the sound guy (lots of pot, you understand) but I do remember that the gist of it was that he was downstairs in the bar having a good ol' time. I remember going up to the stage in the barren, unpopulated venue and telling the CE gang that the sound guy was downstairs "getting drunk", which we assumed he was. Demi and Greg simultaneously yanked their cables as Chris Allen got up from behind the kit, they then proceeded to pack their gear as not a single employee took notice. I went over to Karl and Bob and told them the same thing. Bob knew what I was shooting for: "Let's get the fuck out of here." He looked at Karl and said, "If we leave, we'll never play here again." I looked at Karl and asked, "Are we going or what?"
So we left. Bob stayed behind, a mixture of shock and anger on his face as his two bandmates grabbed their gear and walked out.
At the bottom of the stairs, the door guy stopped me and Karl and asked, "You guys are done already?"
We haven't started yet.
"You're leaving!?"
Well, we'd play if we can get a sound check.
"He's not upstairs yet!? Hold on, let me get him!" And the door guy ran panicked inside to find the sound guy as Karl and I walked off in one direction toward his car and CE walked in another direction toward Greg's.
Within a half hour, we were all at Karl's smoking pot. The phone rang. Karl took it. I heard only his side of it and this isn't verbatim (lots of pot, you understand) but I recall him saying a lot of "fine"s and "OK then"s and "I can't stop you"s; stuff along those lines. He hung up and announced that Bob had quit, that he was mortified over having to explain where not only his band was but his friend's band as well.
The following day, in trading off equipment that we had borrowed from each other, Bob tried to insist that he hadn't quit the band, almost like that episode of Seinfeld where George quits and then goes to work the next day acting like nothing happened. I told him basically that I wasn't playing that shit in as civil a tone as possible.
The younger version of myself figured that he had tried to call a bluff that wasn't there, force me to make my threat empty when we were at the Bottle Rocket, and the next day he had made an appeal to rejoin the band or at least insist he had never left that I read as another power play that I wasn't having any of. He had, in my book, made one too many of those, the Bottle Rocket being the last straw in terms of Bob telling us what to do. For as much as he had pissed and moaned about how the band should be a democracy, Karl and I were wary of his control issues.
That's not saying that I wasn't a childish dick about it.
Who wants to be in a hardcore band, anyway?

I had a real long one today.

2009-10-22T09:37:00.002-05:00

Honest Injun, been working on it for two hours now. Another trainee to train in this morning. And he doesn't even start until November 1st. I fucking hate this shit. They're coming back right now.

DAY 23

Not Safe For Wednesday (Day Twenty Two Edition)

2009-10-21T08:33:00.006-05:00

Today is day twenty two. Today begins week four. Today, I train the new guy. I really need a day off. A cigarette. A blowjob. Some Grey Goose & grapefruit juice and a kickin' lounge music soundtrack. In the meantime, though, I've gotten really into memes like Advice Dog, Socially Awkward Penguin, and Success Kid because, well, I'm losing my fucking mind over here. As soon as I get a day off, which I project will be some time after day thirty fucking two, I'm taking all the money I have on me and I'm - I'm - putting it in the bank and not enjoying myself.
You know what? I don't even care about this week's NSFW. It's an animated .gif, hidden behind Advice Dog, and it's up to you to decide whether or not you trust said advice. If you don't know about Advice Dog, you should probably investigate as to whether he's a credible source. (Hint: Generally not.)

Centaur

She hates meeses to pieces.

2009-10-20T08:13:00.008-05:00

Item 1: Today is day twenty one, which means tomorrow starts week four. Don't ask me if I've had a day off yet because I just fucking told you I haven't. I woke up this morning (♩ dun ♫ den-un ♫ den-un) at about six o'clock (♩ dun ♫ den-un ♫ den-un), turned off the alarm clock (which wasn't set to go off until 0700CDT anyhow), and rolled back over, not reawaking until 0742CDT, at which point I sprang upright and wiped sleep from my eyes. Because I don't know how to fix the clip on the shower head aside from duct tape and nobody else is very much into that idea, I've been showering over at the hostel lately. In fact, I've started doing lots of things at the hostel lately.

Breakdown of Activity

Day	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Activity	D	D	D	D W	D W	W	W	W	W	W	W	W	W	W 卍	W	B J W	B J W	B J W	B J W	B J W	J¹ W

KEY: B = Bathin', D = Drinkin', J = Jackin' Off, W = Writin', 卍 = Attempted to write forward to upcoming edition of Mein Kampf

¹ I have plans.

Anyhow, I get to the hostel this morning, head into the vacant dorm and jack the hot water on. And guess what. There is no hot water. Great, fucking great. Alright, fuck it, pack it in, let's just get the damned coffee. If I stink, I stink, I don't give a fuck, besides, I haven't exactly been doing any strenuous activity lately; I'm a goddamned desk pilot. In October. When the fuck am I going to sweat?

Item 2: Say you've recently procured a nice dress shirt. A new nice dress shirt. This is important because you have only two other types of dress shirt in your closet.
The first type dates back to high school when you were somehow convinced that you wore size XL everything. It was a phase you went through that is now over. Because that phase has been over, you have plenty of barely worn, like-new dress shirts that are way too big for your svelte frame and look practically ridiculous on you, like you're wearing a parachute. (Your mother still sends you items in this size. You make do.)*
The second type of dress shirt comes from a period where you let your ex-girlfriend dress you, because you could admit to being absolutely clueless about fashion. These shirts are what she described as "vintage". They are what your girlfriend after her described as "Yeah, they look cool but they're kind of ratty. I wouldn't wear that to a job interview."
So, when you go to a job interview, you have the option of looking like a little kid wearing a big boy shirt or like someone has been putting cigarettes out on your back all night.
Now, however, you have a new dress shirt. It fits. It's new. It looks good. You know this because you tried it on. You looked in the mirror and you thought, "That's a nice looking shirt." All of a sudden there was a particular wonderment in the air as you imagined the possibilities; the jobs you would score, the women you would bed, mostly the women you would bed but that's just because you've been hard up for a while. There's one thing, though, that prohibits the dream from becoming a reality: You have a muskrat hanging off of your mouth.
In order to land upcoming jobs and bed lots and lots of women, you decide it's time, since it has been three months to the day, to trim the sumbitch down to ¹/₄" in length.

What I look like when I can't get Zestfully clean in the morning.

What the fuck are we giving you all these goddamned hormones for, then!? Keep this shit up and you're gonna find your ass wedged in a sesame seed bun!

Item 3: Lastly, last night, I went to the hostel because I forgot my milk in the staff fridge which somehow went bad before the "sell by" date. Not at the chunky state yet, rather there were solids forming and floating. Before the fuckin' "sell by" date.
While I'm talking to Georgie - Well, hold on, let me explain something right quick.

You see, only new arrivals come to the front and all guests are given an access code to the back door.

So one of the guests comes to the front door and explains that he's just been mugged, which is why he didn't use the back door. The problem is that now the muggers have the access code because the access code was written on his receipt which was in his wallet. Also on the receipt is the hostel's address. Considering the clusterfuck of smarts that this place is lately, I insist to Georgie that we change the code. She says she doesn't think it's necessary. I know why she doesn't think it's necessary: She doesn't give a fuck, she's in the throes of a depression spell at the moment. Fuck that, she knows damned well and good that it's pretty fucking necessary considering the past week of bullshit around here and that on top of all that, we've had people sneak in (as opposed to break in) the building without the access code, and those people were just looking to sleep. Now we got some assholes with the access code who are looking to rob people. It's time. To change. The code. I do my convincin's and we go about changing the access code and informing all four of our guests what the new access code is. This is about 1900CDT, maybe it was 2000CDT, I don't know. I tell Georgie that I'm staying and I'm walking her home. She insists that she'll be fine and I tell her I'm not hearing another word of it, I'm walking her home.
What!? Like you wouldn't look out for your ex-girlfriend/roommate/coworker.
We get home without incident and we hear Mitzy making her I'm eating noise, a rrruuurrr-wwoo-rrruuurrr noise, and since she hasn't been fed yet, because I haven't been home to feed her, we inspect to see what the fuck she's getting uppity about.
Baby caught her first mouse.

* By the way, Mom, I'm a men's shirt size 15 - 15¹/₂ and I wear a 30 X 30 pant for future reference.

You know what we do on the nineteenth.

2009-10-19T09:25:00.004-05:00

Yes, yes, I know. You hated the haikus. You don't care about this being the twentieth day in a row without a day off. Some of you don't even give a shit about the music portions of this blog. Well let me remind you who's running this joint: The motherfucker with a three month old beard.

Further, let me go on to say that my mom pointed out last night that a surefire way to piss off an Imperial Stormtrooper would be to throw dirt clods at their back. While this is not exactly Star Wars themed, she did go on to point out that removing the armor and the subsequent cleaning and scrubbing with a nonabrasive pad (don't want to take the shine off that armor, boys) would be a royal pain the ass.
Anyhow, I woke up late. Here, watch an old kitteh video from August that I never posted.

Alice In Splice Up Land (Tell me if I've posted this before.)

2009-10-18T09:03:00.002-05:00

I have this sinking feeling that not only have I posted this, but that I've posted this twice.
Anyhow, this guy, Pogo, takes old movies and splices them up into trip-hop videos using sounds from the movies to create a rhythm. According to the Pogo entry at Know Your Meme, the main element of the musical composition is built on a sine wave. Now, you can't trust folks who study memes to know what that sound actually is. It's a pad of some sort with a scratchy vinyl record sound pasted in. For a good long while, I was wowed by this Alice In Wonderland splice-up (Like that? You can use it.) because I figured that he was using nothing but sounds from the movie and that the pad sound in the background was actually part of the string score. But after reading the Know Your Meme entry and watching his other splice works that incorporate similar techniques and timbres, I'm not so sure. Impressive, none the less.
Just tell me if I've posted this before.