Some kind of head cold. The wife has it, too. Darling Daughter is thankfully immune.
In Lieu of an update, enjoy some Radio Birdman:
Category Archives: Blog
Where the Hell I Have Been, or 70 is a Suffusion of Yello
Periods of time come when the thought of adding content to a blog puzzles the will. The evergreen political nonsense saps the spirit. Repeating the same arguments to the same applause sounds agonizingly dull.
Besides, it’s springtime outside. The human animal was not meant to remain inside shut up with People Being Wrong on the Internet when the trees bloom and the thermometer finally creeps above the magical number of 70.
And besides that, I’ve found an entirely new way to express myself.
Youtube posits this as the “Official video” of “Oh Yeah” the tune by Swiss electronica duo Yello. The track hit #51 on Billboard in the spring of ’87, and appeared in Ferris Bueller, Secret of My Success, and any other scene where the director wanted a montage expressing a character’s sudden overpowering desire. ‘Cording to Wikipedia, they had a whole slew of albums and such, and had regular hits on the UK charts and the US Hot Dance Club/Club Play Singles chart. Still most of us know them from this, if we know them at all.
Well they’ve put out an app that will make you a DJ.
Yellofier video tutorial from Yello on Vimeo.
Downloaded it on a whim, spent a few days playing with it. It’s genius: intuitive and idiot-simple.You can record any sound and turn it into a not-bad-sounding electronica song in a few minutes. I have done so, the results are silly.
Yellow Boom from Andrew Patrick on Vimeo.
That’s the first thing I made on the first day I messed with it. Nothing to it: theme and variation. The one’s I’ve done since are better, better enough that I download them to my iTunes and like them on repeated listens. I’ll post them somehow later: on Soundcloud, maybe. “Duke Bike Rider” is my phony rock-n’-roller stage name. We all wear different hats.
This is spring: your ears perk up and you try something new. Your life renews.
Mid-Way on Our Life’s Journey…
…I found myself overladen with Things to Do. You know the story. Blogging will be light for the forseeable. Right now, enjoy some Dante:
I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
about those woods is hard – so tangled and so roughAnd savage that thinking of it now, I feel
the old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well,I’ll tell what I saw, though how I came to enter
I cannot well say, being so full of sleep
Whatever moment it was I began to blunderOff the true path.
The only way out is through…
I Write About the Rolling Stones
One of the things I had in mind for this blog was a combination of my politics blog, Revolutionary Nonsense, with my music blog, Genre Confusion, mostly because writing two blogs was exhausting. And while my political writings shifted over here with ease, the music criticism hasn’t. Genre Confusion was about a lot of things (hatred of trendies and their trendy music mags, pointing out the iterations of the music-industry double-helix), but the major project was called Rating My CD’s: a review of every last disc in my collection, by genre, alphabetically, and by release date. Which is to say, I start with a group of basic rock discs (as oppose to Jazz, Blues, Hip-Hop, Punk & Metal), and I review the Beatles before Johnny Cash, and I do Rubber Soul before Revolver. I managed about 50 of these before Genre Confusion got folded. You can check the noise out here.
Since the move, I’ve managed to review the following:
- A Cheaper Kind of Love Song by Baltimore alt.country crew Red Sammy
- My three REM discs: Automatic For the People, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and Reveal
In that last one, I promised “Next week, the Rolling Stones.” That was in April of 2012. So, Yeah.
Whatever. Check this space for a lot of rambling about the World’s Oldest Rock n’ Roll Band. I’ve got a few Stones CD’s, so this could take a while. What’s a week, anyway? It’s not like the Stones are going anywhere.
Men this old have no business making a song this good.
(Yeah, I changed the theme again. The other one shrunk the blog posts too much.)
I did it Again.
I changed the theme.
Why?
I liked Esquire; I really did. The look was the best one I’ve had. But the functionality was nil. All the widgets got stuffed to the footer. I wanted to display my business more prominently. So, after clicking idly around, I settled on Grid Focus. Sure, it’s kind of newspapery, but that’s kind of what I’m looking for right now. And if someone ever figures out away to put widgets in the sidebar/header of Esquire, I’ll go back in a minute.
Anyway, no, you’re not seeing things. I’m just never satisfied with the way this blog looks.
Hurricane Sandy is About to Ruin My Weekend. Even if Nothing Happens
Last year, with Irene glowering down on us and a baby on the way, I went into a kind of proto-daddy super-protective fury: buying up pallets of bottled water, jerky, batteries, etc.
Now, I’ve got Sandy about to give a big kiss to a blizzard/Nor’Easter. Gah. I don’t want to freak, but when the local Wal-Mart is selling generators by the truckload, it’s hard to avoid it.
One Wants a Splash of Color
Yes, every now and then I’m going to refresh the theme of this place. I liked the Chunky Theme: it was uncluttered, and displayed everything in big bold letters. But I felt the need for some brightness, and Chunky was sedate in a turquoise kind of way.
And taking pictures with Instagram is utterly un-Chunky…
So welcome to Esquire. I’ve been eyeing it for some time, but always demurred due to the lack of Page Links. But I can live with displaying them at the bottom, where my Twitter and Category links already were. So anyone desperate to read my About Page and such, that’s where they’ll be. I’m thinking of publishing my Essays in book form anyway.
There’s another change in the works. I’m getting kinda bored with paying attention to the election. Everything’s in horserace mode at this point, and anyone emotionally committed to one candidate or another is probably feeling a bit like the horse. So that leads to weariness and reticence. Scrolling Insty and Memeorandum and Twitter for fodder is easy, but I don’t remember anyone asking for a re-post of what the rest of the Right-o-Sphere is already talking about. Granted, that’s how blogging works, but it doesn’t quite satisfy all the reasons that I do it.
So I’m going to try to put more original content here. I’ve got writing projects moldering around here, and precious little time to do anything. And what is a blog, if not a place to work through the noise in your head.
Obviously I can’t swear off politics; the folly of man, and attempts to undo that folly by expanding the authority of man, is a well running never dry. But It cannot represent the majority of my written works, and if Obama wins, I’m going to need something the break up the apathy and despair.
I’ve Been Sick…
Exploding sinuses, gross phlegm expelling from all parts of my body. And the baby is teething, so I can’t quite get enough sleep.
Surprisingly, she’s not exactly sedate…
So that’s why no blog. You get to that point where you leave work and the last thing you want to do is aggregate the internet for ideas worth commenting on.
It’s the standard sinusitis predicating bronchitis. When I lived in my last apartment, which was a dank swamp in the dark heart of St. Mary’s County, this was a continuous loop: I was practically crushing up Z-packs and mainlining them. I blame my on-again, off-again smoking habit.
Come to where the walking pneumonia is….
Of late, a combination of OTC Claritin and regular sinus rinses had helped me manage the problem. Last week I missed a few pills and didn’t start the washes right away, so now I’m at the bottom of the cycle, all tired and mucinexy.
New content is coming. When I can spare the breath.
Out and About.
Baptism and such. Expect little blogging.
Time Keeps On Slippin, Slippin, Slippin…
…into the future…
And yes, that will be all the explanation you get for my recent absense.
