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| Saturday, August 30th, 2008 |
maverick_weirdo
|
1:17a |
Juxtaposition I’ve had Vixy & Tony’s CD Thirteen on my filk playlist for four months now, since I picked it up at FKO. Today for the first time it switched directly from A song off of Thirteen ( Erased specifically) to a song off of Shadowbeast (Title Track as it happens). I don’t know why I had never listened to the two CDs together before. Some observations : - The Shadowbeast CD stands up well to the test of time, it is not overshadowed by Thirteen
- yet Vixy has matured as a performer. It is difficult to define, there is nothing wrong with her singing in the older recordings, but she sings with more confidence in the newer CD.
- Clearly the instrumentation is more orchestrated in the newer CD, but I feel it is a difference of style. Comparing the instrumentations would be like comparing a jazz CD to a folk CD.
- Vixy is really into sibilants ;)
- The tricky (but fun) part of comparing the two CDs was to find songs from each that have some commonality, for good comparison. (No, I'm not going to try to do this for All the songs)
- Shadowbeast & Erased actually speak to each other for no reason I can fathom
- The Moon Is Mine & My Love Was Like the Moon: for obvious reasons.
- Collars & Strange Messenger: Songs of scientific “discovery” and it’s limitations.
- No Hurry & Apprentice: Songs of freedom of movement, similar pace
- Ladies Don't Do Those Things & Persephone: Songs of “Never Knew”
While there may be some minor similarities between some songs, it is not a case of "all the songs sound alike". I would not point to any two songs and call them totally intercangable. All together two amazing CDs Current Music: Erased/Shadowbeast |
| Friday, August 29th, 2008 |
pondside
|
9:34p |
I has Amethyst Bear Denise and the kids came over to give my my birthday present early just to make sure I had time to figure out how to pack her. Her name is Tara, she came from buildabear and she has brought me a lovely box of chocolates (attached to her/plush ) and a bouquet of red roses, also attached to her. She is wearing a red velvet bow tie that matches the bouquet of velvet roses and she has THREE hearts because Denise, Dirk and Marshall all helped to build her. When I squish her right hand a recording of them wishing me much love and Happy Birthday resounds. I love my family!!!!!! They are made of awesome with dark chocolate sprinkles of wonderfulness. ( Read more... ) Current Music: Oh what a lucky girl she is.... |
shaddyr
|
8:30p |
On vacation, day 1: Kent's Place AKA the land without teh interwebs
So. We are at Kent's place. Which is awesome. Except I have to explain to him *again* that he really needs to get wireless. Because currently? Jacking signal from someone in the area. Signal that fade in and out.
Pirating an unstable wireless network really sucks ass.
Just sayin'.
Going go bug roommie now. Heh. Funny how even after 12 years of not living together, Kent and I still call each other - and think of each other - as 'roomie'.
Must post before I lose signal again! |
carmiel
|
7:10p |
Spin the Quote Wheel and it lands on... "The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for 5 seconds and think for ten minutes." -- William Davis Current Mood:  contemplative |
admnaismith
|
1:34p |
...and then there were eight.
We lost a member of The Uncommons today.
Ever since we moved my father's old shelty dog, Babe, out of the ancestral home along with my mother, she's become increasingly lethargic. She stopped grooming herself, was unfortunate on the floor, and developed thyroid issues resulting in ear gunk and fur loss. Yesterday, we took her for her third vet visit of the year, and she did not return. This time, she'd been chewing on her own tail to the point where it was bleeding profusely and part of it appeared to have become dead tissue.
It's not clear whether the dog will be put down or placed with a better home, but it is apparent that we just can't take care of her in a house with five (legally) competent people.
I'm breaking inside. It's not that I loved the dog all that much, it's guilt. I keep seeing the image of my dad--of Grandpa Piotr, if you will--and he's just looking at me in an I-knew-this-would-happen sort of way and muttering, "Miles, you useless mutie, I shoulda known you couldn't even take care of the dog like I'd asked you before I died."
Yesterday was the anniversary of his death.
It ain't fair.
I've been taking care of his wife, and of his special needs only grandchild, who are understandably closer to me and maybe more entitled to the attention than a dog, and working long hard hours trying to solve the problems of dysfunctional other people. I haven't been HOME to pay attention to the dog, and the rest of the house had their plates full too.
Mother's so out of it I don't think she even knew the dog any more. She certainly wasn't able to bend down and pet it or anything. No one except SIL perhaps had time to pay much attention to her, and The Redhead was allergic to her fur. But....dagnabbit, I just feel so bad I can't stand it. I just feel weary all the time.
Current Music: Snoopy don't come home. |
sar_anon
|
9:14a |
Obama's Acceptance Speech I didn't get the chance to listen to it last night, but I did take the time to listen to it this morning. Honestly, I was blown away. If you want to listen to it, or read about it, go to NPR.org( My thoughts in more detail ) |
carmiel
|
9:31a |
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maverick_weirdo
|
10:43a |
a*CHoo Good news: I finally caught up on sleep for the month of August. Bad News: I've been sick since Monday. I managed to make it into work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday this week, but I've been sleeping most of the time I wasn't at work Current moving plan is that my last day of work is two weeks from today, and then start packing the truck three weeks from today Current Mood:  sick |
jenrose1
|
2:13a |
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| Thursday, August 28th, 2008 |
admnaismith
|
9:10p |
The OTHER Denvention--Chapter The Last
I find it entertaining how they intersperse the biggest and most powerful Democrats in the nation with some county clerk from Wizzlebee, Oklahoma. Maybe they just keep a buncha people in the wings for whenever a politician doesn't use up all of his allotted time, and then they fill the gap by saying, "Hey, Elmer--YOU get out there for two minutes!"
That said, Barney Smith was downright heartwarming. I kept waiting for him to put a toothpick in his mouth and say something like, "I may not have much book larning, but my Momma always used to tell me Stupid is as Stupid does--and so I guess that thar Bush Administration shore is Stupid!"
Al Gore--very intelligent. Didn't talk down to people, but probably didn't hold their interest much either. He's just more than the country deserves, and I guess I'll have to get used to it.
About 25 retired generals standing shoulder to shoulder--as with last night, the military regulations say the ones still active CANNOT make appearances like that--to say that John McAncient neither has the judgment to make wise military decisions nor does he understand the 21st century, but that they trust Obama to lead. Pretty effective way to rebut the whole GOP "Democrats don't like the troops" lie.
Dick Durbin--better than I thought. He drew attention to a certain tall, gaunt candidate from Illinois who was hooted at for lack of experience, having served but one term in the House, and how they said that we couldn't take a chance on a neophyte, even if he could talk up a good speech--not with the country so divided. And how that man became one of the strongest, most successful Presidents in America. I've been wishing people would draw on the Lincoln-Obama comparisons more, and it was Durbin who granted my wish.
The intro movie--I've already forgotten it; the Spielberg veterans' one last night was so much better.
And then, the main event.
Heck, he'll carry my state easily; I already know my political work over the next two months will be on the much closer US Senate contest. But I wanted to rush out there into the streets and shout Obama from the rooftops.
I don't think I've ever seen a better speech. Not Obama four years ago. Not Cuomo in 1984, not Clinton's MLK tribute, not Billy Graham after Oklahoma City, not Gore during An Inconvenient Truth. Those are maybe the only ones I've seen live that came close.
This was history.
This was spectacular. Out of the park.
Not to mention that he was speaking directly to what my own household needs. Aid to families trying to send kids to college. National health care with lower premiums than what we're paying now. Help for families needing to care for elderly relatives.
I'm still savoring that speech, like a fine wine. I can't wait for him to be President. Until now, that was mostly impatience at getting the Bush League to LEAVE already, and no matter if they elected a six foot heap of clothes to take his place. Now, I want Obama on his own merits. Hope you are the same.
Current Music: Everything Possible |
pondside
|
8:36p |
Read first, purchase second
This would be a good idea.
I just bought the special Vancouver Island cracker breads and special cheese to take with me. No nuts, seeds, fruits, dairy products, or anything else that anyone might ever want (ok, I added the last part)
So -- I guess I'd better eat a lot of really really good cheese in the next 2 days! |
nimuejohn
|
7:21p |
Because I don't want to talk about work If I were ever to spend $500 for a dress, it'd be here. Just sayin'. --------- Speaking of spending huge wodges of money, I need to book my flight for AXXIdental soon. I've been waffling on whether to spend one or two nights in London before taking the train up to Grantham, and now this article comes out in the the Sunday Travel section of the Republic saying you can't get an egg and a sweet roll in London for less than $20. I mean, I knew the exchange rate was bad, but oy. I'd like to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's Midsummer Night's Dream, and with a 2:00 PM arrival in Heathrow I can probably make it to an evening performance the same day, if I don't mind being Miss Jetlag Q. Crankypants. The alternative would be flying in a day earlier, and maybe bring my own egg and sweet roll with me on the plane, if the TSA isn't afraid I'm going to make them into a bomb. Thoughts from any of you with a greater proximity to London? Are the prices really that bad? |
admnaismith
|
4:59p |
Thankful Thursday
Hard to do this when it is the third anniversary of my father's death--but that may be the most important time.
Today America makes history and nominates Barack Obama as President of the United States.
This time next year, I'll be someone's uncle. That can't be all bad.
My totkin loves me, and is cute as the dickens.
And...well you out there care, too. I'm glad.
Current Music: Dimes keep on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the furniture |
runnerwolf
|
2:29p |
Thankful Thursday
1. Getting help.
2. Calming IM chats.
3. Lists I can finish.
4. Hospice.
5. The strength I learned from my grandmothers. (if not the pride).
6. An interesting book for Graduate School.
7. Getting the financial stuff for Grad School done.
8. No more checks to my BA School. (I still have loans from then, but through SallieMae).
9. Paying off the car.
10. Good snuggles. |
hsifyppah
|
1:22p |
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pondside
|
10:44a |
Proofs returned. Awaiting finals Well, as soon as their IT folks fix their server I'll have my final proofs. Will say yes, lovely and Make It So.The time is coming... ( Read more... ) Current Mood:  chipper |
shaddyr
|
7:56a |
Got through the first week...
So. Have managed to muddle through the first week on the new shift.
Getting to work for 8am seems too late. The traffic is surpsingly light - I was actually expecting it to be much worse. Even this morning, in the rain, it wasn't too bad.
Getting off shift at 6:30pm is teh suck. I'm going to have to start planning a lot of pre done dinner for the kids to warm up after school (OMG! SCHOOL! NEXT WEEK! Thank GOD!) or put the crock pot on in the morning before I go.
Overall, though, it's nice to not have to crawl out of bed at oh dark 30. Waking up any time before 5am for purposes other than heading to the airport for a vacation ought to be illegal. |
admnaismith
|
7:15a |
August Book Post--Down the Rabbit Hole Edition It’s Down the Rabbit Hole Month here at the Admiral’s Book Post, due to a plethora of culture shocks, non sequiturs, odd characters, surrealisms and just plain nonsense. Hope you are the same. ( Going Down the Dusty Rabbit Hole: The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron )( Going Down the Tropical Rabbit Hole: The Scorpion Fish, by Nicholas Bouvier )( Going Up The Rabbit Mountain: The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann )( Going Down the Russian Rabbit Hole: Collected Short Stories, by Anton Chekhov )( Going Down on the Rabbit Hole: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland )( Going Down The Rabbit Hole Dentata: The Great American Stay-At-Home-Wives Conspiracy, by Dan Merchant and B. Scott Taylor )( Going down the Legal Rabbit Hole: A Practical Guide to Oregon Criminal Procedure & Practice, by Paul J. DeMuniz )( Going Down the Rabbit Hole of the Future: Maximum Light, by Nancy Kress )( Little Rabbit Hole on the Prairie: Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather )( Going Down The Political Rabbit Hole: The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman )( Going Down The Original Rabbit Hole: The Complete Nonsense Book, by Edward Lear ) Current Music: ...except for Bunnies. |
ohiblather
|
9:25a |
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peteralway
|
3:50a |
Dulcimer Music: Virtual Worldcon I think it might have been two years ago, maybe three, when it seemed that half of Livejournal was off to Worldcon. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) catalana lamented that she couldn't go, and had a "Virtual Worldcon"--a sort of imaginary gathering in comments on one of her posts. I imagined that I'd end up sitting in a corner in the consuite playing a little tune on the dulcimer, and just for fun, actually wrote a little tune and posted a midi of it. It's a sweet, simple, easy-to-play little piece, probably worth doing in a filk circle, since it's just a minute long so people won't get all cranky and bored waiting for their turn. Here's a recording I did tonight: Virtual Worldcon |
| Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 |
hsifyppah
|
11:11p |
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| Thursday, August 28th, 2008 |
peteralway
|
12:44a |
Peeps what impress me It's cool having friends that impress you now and again. Frinstance, catsittingstill, who I think of as a songwriter, always strikes me both with her intellect and ethics when she rants about politics, as she has done recently. And I was lucky enough to get a little gem in email from sweetmusic_27 the other day. She's got it up on myspace now, but for us myspace impaired, she's kindly allowed me to upload TJ's and Drummond Castle. Drummond Castle is one of those trad things she fiddles so famously, but TJ's is a working title for one of her originals (she says it's untitled on her myspace page). It's a slow piece that just cries out to segue into a traditional Irish fiddle tune. The first time I heard TJ's/untitled, I had a shiver up my spine. It's one of those tunes that I wish I could write. But even if I could write it, I'd never be able to play it, and I'd have to have a machine do it with no feeling, and, like, what's the point. Anyway, I had a point. Oh yeah. Amy's not just a hot fiddler, she's becoming a very fine composer. So make clicky and give a listen. |
| Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 |
admnaismith
|
9:02p |
The OTHER Denvention, Third Day
OK, I got off work and turned on the TV in time to watch the Senatah fwom Woad Iswand tawk abawt the Democwatic Pawty.
I mean, I know he votes the right way and stuff, but he's from Rhode Island! He's an incumbent who, if he gets just 75% of the vote, will have had a bad day at the polls. And he talks like Elmer Fudd! Is this the best use of prime time? We've got dedicated hopefuls in close races trying to become our Congressional reinforcements, and they're good, charismatic speakers and they're being outspent by the Big Money Party and could probably have benefited from some free national exposure. Where's Al Franken? Where's Darcy Burner? Where's Anne Barth and Rick Noriega, and Daily Kos's hunka Senator McDreamy, Scott Kleeb? Where are the trio of liberal Cubanos vying to take Miami back from the old crackpots who lost their Havana casinos in the 60s and have spitted hate every day of their lives since then?
Then Bill Clinton took the stage, and I forgot to complain any more. You know it's been a lousy eight years when I find myself wanting Bill Clinton back, but...yes, I want Bill Clinton back. And so did the crowd. They just would not stop cheering. He smiled and waved. They kept yelling. He smiled again, aw shucks. They kept yelling. He gestured, OK simmer down; they kept yelling. He said, that's enough now; they kept yelling. He said PLEASE! Sit down, I got a speech to make, and those who were still sitting jumped to their feet. Doddering old grandpas got to their feet and clapped and clapped until their hands bled, and finally Big Bill just launched into a populist red meat for the base speech that fed something inside me for which I only just then realized I had been starving for.
I've been going to the in-laws' house each night so I can see it all on C-SPAN. They got pundits on every other channel who just can't get enough of the sound of their own voices, and cut the feed from the convention floor during someone's speech so they can blather on about what Obama MUST do to win over the Meth Moms, the Lebowski Dudes and the Coveted Fucktard Voting Bloc. Why people haven't stormed the networks and clubbed these chipmunk-people to death with their own blather is beyond me. They didn't do this in 1992. What the heck happened.
Kerry was so happy to see the enthusiastic, warmed-up crowd that his face drooped with joy.
Then they had a military video in support of our troops overseas. It was a great video; they didn't overdo it, they didn't even get overtly political; it was all in subtext. Young warriors telling their stories, showing you the view from their boots. You're proud of them, and you want them home or on a front where armed conflict really is absolutely necessary. The video was followed by a parade of retired top military brass (you have to be retired in the military before you're allowed to make political speeches in uniform, and I still don't get how come Republican officers on active duty seem to do it time and time again without any apparent disciplinary consequences) ripping into the Bush-McCain theory of solving the Middle East.
And then Biden.
Good Lord, what a lot of Bidens there are! Biden grannies and Biden totlets and everything Biden in between. There were more of them than there were Kennedies in the biggest Kennedy family portrait done to date. Now we know how Biden gets re-elected to the Senate so handily each term--half the population of the State of Delaware is his own family!
And he was in top form. I didn't know he lost a wife and daughter in a car crash right after being elected to his first Senate term, and that Senators Humphrey and Mansfield had to talk him out of stepping down before even being sworn in, and that he's taken the train from DC to Wilmington almost every working night since 1972, to be there for his motherless kids as they grew up, and that he's got a son about to be deployed to Iraq. You think this is someone who puts families first? You think he'll be motivated to end Operation Colossal Screwup? You think maybe he's not as insulated a beltway insider as people might think from someone who's served six terms?
I was skeptical of the Biden choice at first, but I guess Obama, having known him personally, knew things that I didn't. He'll be a fine Vice President of the United States.
But who was that guy who came out at the end? That was weird--wasn't he supposed to be in Billings MT tonight?
Current Music: That's the way we became the Biden Bunch |
nimuejohn
|
8:37p |
Doesn't anybody stay in one place any more? Tomorrow morning my oldest friend in Arizona climbs into a truck with four cats and a dog to follow her husband to Maine. I first met Carrie back in '83, about a week after I moved here, when I looked in the back of an issue of Yearnings, the Elfquest fan club newsletter, and called the chieftess of the local holt. This evening she came by with some boxes for me to hold on to so they don't sit in their old house while potential buyers are traipsing through. It's not as true as it used to be, that nobody moves to Phoenix to stay. But an awful lot of the people I know have moved away, and not long ago I finally admitted to myself that I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a place that's just too frakkin' hot six months out of the year.
---------------
I gave my cousin Ann a call this evening, to doublecheck that she was hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year as usual, before booking my flight. We were both a little stunned to realize we hadn't spoken since Thanksgiving '02, which was right before my dad died. If that sounds a little strange to those of you with all kinds of close family connections, well, you guys have always seemed a little strange to me. My parents married relatively late (in their 30's) for someone of their generation, and as a result the youngest of my cousins is about ten years older than me, and the family's scattered to the three winds with the exception of a handful still hanging out in Tacoma. It just struck me as About Bloody Time that I made an effort to keep in touch. Mom's doing well for her age, but she is having some health problems, and is eventually going to have to give up the house, though my brother and I are doing what we can to make sure she can continue living there. (Cliff does some maintenance jobs, and I wound up assembling a few things while I was up there in July, and we convinced her to hire a guy to take care of the yard.) But it's getting harder for her to travel and I don't know how many more times she'll be able to come down here over Christmas.
I'm rambling now, aren't I. |
aladriana
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6:23p |
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pondfilk
scared