| of robonia |
[Jul. 28th, 2007|12:09 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Eye in the Sky, Alan Parsons | ] |
There is a window of dust that I am capable of managing alone. Too little, and I can't seem to get it into the dustpan. Too much, and I'll chase it around into a "Starry Night" then give up after two to seven hours. The Buddhists, who have abstracted mopping....
Hi Minhister, I have been working so hard on putting everything together at the house and stuff. Hope we can hang out while you are here. |
|
|
| now with fixed links. |
[Feb. 1st, 2007|08:51 pm] |
OK, watch this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pnP9CjDxRDM
and then watch or listen to this hit song:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fpfpON3IoeQ
OK sure, the first one is a little more experimental and probably deconstructs something and I like that. It feels like folk art projected onto cubes scattered across a dark gallery floor. But I'm here to argue that the Timberlake is experimental in many regards, turning hard techno synths into a ballad and backing them with beatboxing. Sure the lyrics are cliches pulled out of a crusty Crown Royal bag found on the floor of an exclusive L.A. club according in some way to the I Ching.
But most of what Panther says is "moobogooboomoomoo". Anyway, all I really wanted to rant about was, if you like the Panther alot (like me) or moderately, or think it's cool (but not that good, or not fit for your bag), then I really want you to like the Timberlake, or at least admit it's cool. It's some weird shit for pop, and he does some weird hand gestures to boot. Don't be a music snob.
I do like Panther though. check this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=zsRCxYRnunA
I read in one of Lauren's music journals a piece about listening just to sound. I'm trying to be more objective, and the practice is helping me hear even old faves like Sonic Youth in a different way.
And while we're at it, Austin's own Ghostland Observatory: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gqt0hrWlNBI
Devastating live show.
See ya later! |
|
|
| evolution |
[Jan. 22nd, 2007|10:47 pm] |
in a few weeks perhaps, myself and Minh and Tyler will be firing up pur new team blog. That'll be about music mostly, and this is not really about my life at all anymore, so I might go whole hog with this thingand leave word vomit whenever I don't feel like playing music. Prepare accordingly. |
|
|
| Happy Holidays |
[Dec. 23rd, 2006|03:41 pm] |
I hope everyone is having a good time. I'm in West Texas with my Sister's family getting frozen. I'll have some photos on flickr (octosnaps) later on.
RP |
|
|
| filling the silence |
[Sep. 10th, 2006|12:49 pm] |
Wow, its the longest silent stretch in my friend-page history. LAtely Tyler and I have been spuriously hitting the shift key, playing keyboards, guitars, drum machine and bass. We have completed a cover of "I'm on Standby" and started a few Air-like songs. The melodies and lyrics are the hard part. Lyrics are painful, and it is especially ahrd to sing in front of Tyler with just the two of us in the room. I think it would be cool to record vocals in front of a live studio audience, like The Price is Right style.
If we get four or five good songs together I might start looking for ways to put them on the web.
Today I intend to ignore lawn maintenance and nuture my sore throat back to health, maybe attempting electronic music for the last time before apple can sell me a merom-based laptop... dammit. |
|
|
| |
[Aug. 31st, 2006|10:36 pm] |
One of the recurring themes of my whinejournal has been the lackluster performance of my iBook 800MHz as the heart of an electronic studio. I don't know if the 800MHz is to blame or a bad Reaktor VST/AU implementation. Let's not forget the power of my inner critic to stifle my creativity, but hell, a crashing music app will make you weep as well.
But all that whinig is sure to wane as soon as Apple comes out with Merom Mac Book Pro's. Usually, I check my email obsessively when a prospective date might have sent me some sweet words or a sad excuse, but the Mac Book has got me sweating as hard as I would be if they were announcing my hot new girlfriend. Well, they need to hurry up already because I'm sick of loading up the apple store every day. Do I have to wait till the 12th? If I go around pantsless in Cupertino, will they give me an NDA and let me know when and how much?
Will that be worth the negative effect on my ability to meet cool single ladies? |
|
|
| cows |
[Aug. 31st, 2006|03:17 am] |
We should genetically engineer cows to have fins sticking up like stegasauri. These fins would actually be comprised mostly of ribs. I think we could come up with a cow that yields about 25% of its body weight in rib meat.
I also think we should breed dogs to be unable to bark between 9pm and 6am.
While we're at it, let's genetically engineer sea monkeys so that the females appear to have small bows on their heads, like Ms. Pac Man. That way you know what to name them aside from new-agey sexless names.
Stupid barking dog waking me up 100 times since 11:30. Come on people.
Why don't any of my LJ friends update anymore? My entried must have stunned them into shy silence. |
|
|
| workin day and night |
[Aug. 10th, 2006|10:28 pm] |
|
I'm sitting down, because if I get up, I'll wiggle and twist and stomp and clap, all thanks to Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson completely busting the envelope open in 1979 with Off the Wall. This is an album that has the balls to open up with Don't Stop Til You Get Enough and follow with Rock With You. This guy can dance on freakin lasers! It's got cowbell, finger cymbals, and relentless snares on the two and four that pound so heavy and hard you'll be flat and dehydrated by the end, like an extra virgin olive in Italy. Michael Jackson, you can definitely deliver on the vocals, but Quincy pumped the blood, guts and greasy sausage-biscuit-with eggs glory into the delicate vinyl grooves of this beast of a record. If you don't discover unused joints in your pelvic region while listening to this, let me know because I might get some investors interested in starting a camp to help you people out. Get on the floor friends, these beats mean something. I have a feeling when man emerged from the primordial soup, he banged rocks together on the two and four just after he figured out how to kill a cheetah with a tiger jawbone. We were born for this, and we need it like we need air and water. I can't believe I was considering creating music that wasn't danceable. The drums are the most important part of music to me, even if they play the same groove for thirty minutes. Next stop, Kraftwerk. Hopefully my neck doesn't snap. |
|
|
| inner critic |
[Aug. 9th, 2006|11:49 pm] |
tired of the inner critic conspiring with the slow hardware (iBook 800) I entered into a journey through my record collection. My intention: rock your booty.
The venue: my house. The tools: Ableton Live and a stack of mp3's.
The setlist so far:
Around the World (Daft Punk)
I Can't Go for That (Hall N Oates)
Way You Walk (Papas Fritas)
Evil Woman (ELO)
Hot (Missy Elliot, RATATAT semioffical Mashup)
Seventeen (Ladytron)
Cars With the Boom (LTrimm - a must-hear)
Crash (Gwen Stefani, sounds a lot like cars that go boom to me)
P*Licker (a mashup of Khia, M83 and Aphex Twin found online0
Got it Twisted Sister (Mashup from web, Mobb Deep and Rapture)
Dare (Gorillaz, DFA remixes disc)
Wheelz of Steel (Outkast)
Brown Skin Lady (Black Star)
Knowing Me Knowing You (ABBA)
Flashlight (Parliament)
Curls (Madvillian -I just listened to this four times consecutively, it rules!)
Just a Friend (the BizM)
Whatever You Say (9th wonder w/Pete Rock -- so good)
Then I might wrap up (accidental pun there) with a hip-hop tune I concocted from The Advantage's version of the Zelda underworld theme and some raps I made about girls. What else would I rap about?
This is going to be fun to read in ten years, assuming the ice caps don't melt all over LJ's hard drives and we don't all explode into glowing green goo by then.
My whole gig would run completely differently if Apple could come out with Merom notebooks tomorrow and ship one to me by Saturday. Get on that, Apple. |
|
|
| house work |
[Aug. 5th, 2006|09:56 am] |
Woah for crying out loud, its an endless avalanche of paint, boxes of crap I obviously don't use (since it hasn't left a box in 2 months) and laundry laundry laundry. I haven't always felt like attending to said pile of domestic duties. Last night I felt justified in playing an hour of Halo 2 online and listening to the foul nonsensical exclamations of microcephalic juvenile pituitary mutants who have more xXSK1LLzXx than I.
Having small piles of miscellaneous mail, cd's, shoes, mail, file folders, light fixtures, home improvement store bags full of forgotten mini-projects, and gummi worms laying around is like having a swarm of mosquitoes in your house. Every time you see one, it's sucked a little of your blood out of you, and it seems pointless to swat the little annoyance because there is an endless supply and they will be one of the last beasts to go extinct.
On the upside, my friend Minh is hilarious: http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca/story.php?f=2&t=1084&i=&v=f&story=1084
(I have a thing about links where it is impossible to cut-n-paste).
Check my flickr page and you'll see my rock and roll room in progress, I guess I steal all my color combinations from WIRED magazine. |
|
|
| stale notes |
[Jun. 28th, 2006|09:22 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Built To Spill, Ancient Melodies.. | ] |
Won't someone help me find new bands to follow? I didn't even buy the new Built to Spill. I think it would be a fine album, but lately I've been listening exclusively to bands that have been around for at least 5 years. I guess I need to poke around MySpace in search of more. I started listening to John in the Morning again today, it is a pretty good listen if a bit trend-heavy.
Ah well. I haven't posted much because I've been so busy doing house junk, shopping for home improvement and decoration items, having a migraine, and having kick-ass BBQ's. That's right, I have a grill, it burns charcoal, I am now a Texan. I own property here man! I'm not going to get a shotgun, unless I hear about an actual zombie attack on the news. Then I'll get two shotguns and one high-caliber pistol. Zombies have gotta DIE! Um, again, but this time for real! |
|
|
| Bear Vader |
[May. 23rd, 2006|11:56 pm] |
|
They've got bears. This one was by far the best. |
|
|
| Commercial Dr. nostril shot |
[May. 23rd, 2006|11:55 pm] |
Dr. stands for Drive, not Doctor. The Drive is a strip of delicious foods and hippie goods and services, like tofu doggie massage and yoga billiards. I had wonderful turkish lamb kebab with a pretty good local microbrew lager. They were out of the stout.
Vancouver, it's the moistest. |
|
|
| vancouver, BC |
[May. 23rd, 2006|11:45 pm] |
I like Vancouver, there are huge trees everywhere, efficient buses, and the population density in the city proper is extremely high so you can really walk around. It juts out on a wee peninsula out into the bay there.
I wouldn't come here without some sort of agenda, and if you plan to rent a bike and ride all over the place (as I did) be sure to check the weather websites obsessively. Instead I walked around in the rain.
In all, I like Vancouver, but I would like to come back some day with an agenda.
Now I am going to spend the rest of my night planning my Montreal visit. I'm excited about my hotel for Friday and Saturday night, a cheap and centrally located spot called Hotel Du Noveau Forum. Riggidy rock-it y'all. I hope nobody gives me lip for not being able to do the parlez. Maybe I will pretend to be straight from Puerto Rico and give them lip for not hablando.
I don't buy records in foreign cities anymore, just shoes (maybe), postcards, and most of all food. I hope I can rent a bike for friday and Saturday to keep my metabolism up. I want some French, and hopefully a little moderately priced highfalutin food. I also hope to catch some lounging action. We'll see how it all plays out.
I'll post a flickr photo or two now. |
|
|
| MBV |
[May. 11th, 2006|09:35 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It) | ] |
Which My Bloody Valentine song would I NOT rate 5 stars?
Also, when a game is Rating Pending, it's rated RP!
Ok sorry.
I'm closing on a house the 30th. Party at my house. Did I already say that? Well you are all invited. |
|
|
| bored at La Quinta |
[Mar. 27th, 2006|09:29 pm] |
I'm in Phoenix, AZ, on a La Quinta bed where I have been practicing my talk for Wednesday and Thursday. The Wrens' "This Boy is Exhausted" just played, its garbled lyrics reminding me of the chance I had to confront Michael Stipe with my own interpretation of the bridge to Sitting Still. So loud and reverberating literally and figuratively but its intended value simultaneously internal and obscured.
In the desert here (if this does not qualify as desert, I think geography stands for revision) anything which can collect water seems to proclaim it proudly. Cacti grow two or three meters tall, reflecting the sunset from their tough, slick green or purple hides. They grow into tantalizing abstract sculptures spindly and balanced, unlike the rigid crags of the mountains on the horizon. Every plant guards its stash. The palm trees here are brown and tough until their lofty crests, where at 20 meters or so they have a firework burst of green, still ridged with spines but probably more tempting to the mandibles of any ambitious insect or bird. The cacti are covered in their famous spines, most species I have seen in the city having the thick kind that could release blood in an act of gloating. "See, your puny skin so easily concedes precious fluids!" These are much more tolerable than the tiny hairs inflicted on me by my past potted specimens, which are visible only as a reflective filament on the arm or palm of the hand, and detectable by a sickly itching sensation and red throb of irritation.
The humans here seem so proud to have established a civilization so abundant that they have erected monuments to waste. This hotel has two fountains within ten paces of one another, and a swimming pool bared to the expansive sky. The burrito shop has a porch the size of half a tennis court, the whole thing shaded pragmatically with the familiar canvas umbrellas, but also equipped with a misting system. In the summer, in the desert, people would rather eat outdoors in a humid spray of tepid water than retreat to shelter from the sun? I'm sure there are regulations controlling when water can be remaindered back to the sky gods, only to become a cloud over Austin, Texas three days later. Nonetheless, I was shocked to see a cremation service on the other side of the road. Haven't they read Dune? I haven't, but I watched both major movie versions. The dead are 70% water! |
|
|
| |
[Mar. 21st, 2006|02:03 pm] |
My last post kinda sucked so I want to say I am picking up the pace with music and such, and trying to be more self-sufficient than ever.
Additionally, i just read VOX which was so entertaining. Its EROTIC yeah but there are so many precious details that are hilarious. It makes you think of all the idiosyncratic things you do throughout the day without noticing. Now I'm reading Mark Leyner's My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist again. I appreciate it more and I forgot most of it so it's like a brand new book. Hooray.
From SXSW, I picked up Dirty Projectors which is like avant garde tropicalia mixed with some Prince and some prog business. Also I dug Au Revoir Simone who are for the moment unreleased in the US. They have a myspace page of course. I can't really stand the interface and infrastructure of myspace, but everyone is on there so what the hell.
I'm out sick and actually feel kinda poopy so I'm gongto rent a star wars cartoon and vegitate for a while. |
|
|
| various |
[Mar. 7th, 2006|10:19 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | bloggy, ramble | ] |
| [ | music |
| | bloc party samples on emusic. | ] |
I get tired of people saying random, no offense it just doesn't make sense.
I joined emusic, and promptly downloaded about 35 songs. That was a blast.
I've been slowly starting a band, we have a song, or all the parts necessary to make a song, and I guess I have two. I don't really like to work alone so this helps alot. I can't write lyrics because I can't get over self-criticism involved. It'll pass. I need to do more reading too.
I got my next position at work, so soon i won't have to deal with talking to customers. Talking to them and solving their stuff is cool, feeling like I'm eating a whole pack of hot dogs at once in one bite is decidedly uncool. I'm lucky in that I usually don't worry ahbout stuff the moment I shut the car door in the parking garage. It's a fun job, challenging, all the things I thought it would be. But in my next position I'll have more authority to tell people something simply won't get done.
My network seems to clogged with easy cheese right now, so I'll write later. |
|
|
| Things I Roasted |
[Jan. 3rd, 2006|07:05 pm] |
Roasted beef of some cut or another with sage, rosemary, and Gorgonzola.
Chicken with Olives, Pimientos, Roma Tomatoes, Garlic.
Lechon: Big ol' Boston Butt with garlic stuck into it, oregano, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Happy New Year y'all. Close your analog-holes and any other pirate-related holes you might have, such as your parrot hole. |
|
|
| cause I spent so many months away |
[Nov. 7th, 2005|10:22 pm] |
I haven't felt much like posting just because it hasn't seemed that exciting. I've been spending time more than investing it, or investing it in things I don't really post here because I'd rather talk on the phone about them. I see now why they call it whineJournal because now that I'm fairly satisfied, I'm not inspired to post.
I am a Team leader at work now, just like in The Office (The BBC one). I think it's fun, and I think that's OK, despite Dilbert and his colleagues.
Since my last post, I must have seen too many bands play to remember. Or too few that were memorable. Did I tell you about the miserable shmuck at the Yo La Tengo show? I think so. To add some whine to what has so far been an excuse, I will post a story about the weirdos who sat next to me at Capote the other day.
When the movie first began, even as the screen was still black except for titles, then man behind me to my left began laughing. He laughed through his nose, perhaps out of courtesy or perhaps in the way one laughs to demonstrate that one has caught some subtle point that would later have to be explained to one's companions, if said companions had not made excuses not to go to the movies today. This continued for the first several minutes of the film. As Capote leaned over to look into the murder victim's coffin, I leaned into Laura's ear to say "I hope that basset hound finds what he's looking for." She went into her own version of the nose laugh, in order to not laugh out loud at a completely inappropriate moment.
Then there was a couple, seemingly sherpa guides of Texas. They came in 20 minutes late, carrying so much stuff that I think it was whatever they couldn't fit on their pack llama. The elderly woman had a long wool coat (this is Texas, people, and it was 75 degrees F outside) and a purse the size of a breadbox or a microwave oven from 1975 with a knob that turns to control the time of exposure. She sat in the seat next to me, despite the theater being at only 20% of capacity. She sat next to me the way I saw a ram at the state fair lay down once. He had to lay carefully to prevent his enormous pendulous testicles, already one inch from the ground, from colliding with knee or floor. The woman sat down laboriously, letting the purse fall perfectly balanced onto my knee, and allowing the coat to lay on my cheek. Over the course of the next 2 minutes, she tidied her husband's belongings and a grocery sack she was carrying before finally folding the coat in her lap and placing the purse on the ground. All of this without even a glance to acknowledge my saintly, wordless tolerance. Once settled, she and her husband simultaneously tore into bags of candy or prescription drugs wrapped in cellophane designed to alert rescue workers of the presence of snacking avalanche survivors under snow cover up to 4 feet. Promptly, Laura and I relocated to the center of the theater, chuckling with respectful restraint. |
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
roctobotics's journal
but ready to ROCK
