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Archive for September 2001 I don't mind seeing ads for new stupid exercise equipment. The two most stupid ones I've seen are a long, thin plastic stick you wiggle (like you would a plastic ruler to get that Jell-O sound effect), and just today, a circular tube with a ball in it. You keep the ball rolling around the inside at a steady pace. I suppose that has some isometric benefit... Anyway, my complaint is not that these are being thought up. It's that each one claims to be the best all-around workout. I'd like to hear them say "if other workout machines haven't WORKED OUT for you (tee hee), you may want to try our new experimental one. The back and forth motion will work the abs and lower back." But JUST those parts. It's even worse when a machine claims to tone everything, even though it's called the Absinator or Glutebomber or something specific. I've sort of kept myself from reading http://www.nightmareproject.com, because a lot of the dreams in there bother me. I've noticed that the dreams of others can bother me in two ways: some bother me because I have no idea how you dream some of this stuff, and some bother me because they sound right up my alley of something I COULD dream that'd scare the crap out of me. The worst kinds of nightmares seem to involve failure to understand motive, failure to act due to an inability to understand. The concept of communication and being able to communicate is very important to me. The nightmares I've read that involve an inability to understand one's own apparent behavior bother me because I feel bad for the person who dreamed it. Regardless, dreams are just dreams. I don't believe they carry that many secrets about your subconscious. For example, some find themselves shocked at their own behavior in dreams, where they actually *kill* someone they love. While this would bother me a lot, I know two things: 1) I never dream this way. If something bad is gonna happen, I'm gonna be alone. I don't ever feel betrayed by my friends and family, nor do I try to hurt them. 2) If I did dream this way, I'd rack it up to my mind trying to scare me. I've had dreams where I kinda know it's a dream, and I think "here we go, what's the worst thing that could happen here? I bet I know..." and no sooner do I think of it does it happen, occasionally with a (stupid) twist. http://www.nightmareproject.com/nmdsp.mv?202 Check out this person's nightmare. It's not AWFUL, but it resonated with me because of that voiceover. That's the embodiment of failure to understand why something's happening. And then to never find out why it was said? That's what bothers me. Yeah, I hate voiceovers in dreams. They're largely menacing, or at least bring bad news. But lately I've had a lot of very weird dreams. Not scary, just weird. For example -- two nights ago I dreamt I went with my mom to some sort of shipyard. She was there to inspect the grounds and I tagged along, probably because I essentially work in shipbuilding. In the shipyard there was a small, bus-sized submarine, looking like the Yellow Submarine, except it was purple and entirely covered in crushed velvet. We walked up and down the body, and Mom checked this and that, and was hollering to be shown this part or that part to check. One of my managers showed up with two other guys, and I was getting kinda embarrassed. Another part was pretty disturbing, disturbing if you get right down to it, for you to listen to, but I was pretty okay with it during the dream. I guess I won't say it here, but it makes me think even scary dreams are arbitrary, because by all rights I would have been screaming when I saw/did this thing, but at the time I thought "hey, here's a good idea." How many people have the FBI/CIA arrested in the last two weeks, regarding the WTC? Something like 500? The fact that we're not hearing charges bothers me. "Witnesses" all, or for the most part. I wonder how many will have been arrested once this is over. Also, Adam shows me The Onion is finally putting up new material after its self-imposed exile. But this material didn't quite strike me as funny... sure it's the same as before, but it's obvious the writers aren't happy about what's happened either. The articles have a bittersweetness to them. I like them. A big screw you to CrushLink.com. I have never used their services, nor will I, nor do I expect anyone who knows and has a crush on me to have used it, because my friends aren't that stupid. Here's how it works: 1) No one has a crush on you. 2) CrushLink.com sends an e-mail notifying you of this crush, saying that you'll get three or four or eight hints about this person if you sign up for this, buy that, click here, fill out this survey, submit your e-mail to junk mail purveyors, and so forth. 3) I have never gone beyond receiving the e-mail. Actually, once I clicked a banner, seeing no harm in that, and it spawned several pop-ups and so forth, and having done that I went to get my hints, and it starts by saying "please enter the e-mail addresses of girls you think may be the one, and we'll tell you if you're right." I received another e-mail today from them, saying they'd give me "six JUICY hints" if I fill out a form signing up for some prize drawing. But the link to the CGI on their site... I'd expect it to be /cgi-bin/crush.cgi?acct=T489B42L or something unique, denoting my unique situation. The last time I went, it was something like that. This time, it's just "sixhints.php3." They're not even trying! And another thing: how many damn hints do I need? How about THEIR DAMN NAME? I don't think I can even come up with six hints vague enough such that I wouldn't know who it was by hint three or four. BUT -- here's the thing. A lot of people aren't gonna fall for it. But some do. I'm sure many follow the tree all the way up. Maybe their inbox is jammed with crap every single day. But they had to have gotten some kind of closure. And I wanna know what CrushLink.com had to tell them at the end. Do they make up a name? Does it throw some error message at them? I'm curious... someday, I'll create a junk mailbox and do it, and see what happens. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-092101balzar.column I really like this guy. EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: I like this guy too! http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092101howard.story http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-091901balzar.column Good editorial on the sputtering stock market, as lots of cowardly investors pull their money out. 49% of Americans polled recently said that all Arabs should have to carry a special identification card and submit to above-normal security measures at airports. I have a great idea. We can do that, but then if anything else starts going wrong, we could sort of "round up" all the Arabs and let them stay in some special reservation area or "encampment" of sorts. Then we could keep an eye on all of them until we deemed this terrorist threat to be over with. You'll never let me be completely proud of you, will you, America? http://www.nightlightpress.com/airsick/helplessed.mp3 (~420 KB) My time has come / I'm headed back I can't wait to have a bacon snack, aw yeah-yeah Here's 26 seconds of me and three layers of guitar. I'm not that good yet... I played one original part, then cut and paste, cut and paste. Pretty much what I do with Checkerboard Nightmare. The guitar solo was pieced together by the note. Yeah, it doesn't sound so cool anymore, does it? People have said it's good I'm trying to provide something to ease the pain a little, but is this the right time to be easing the pain? I read a column by Lance Morrow at http://www.time.com. He's saying we need to stay angry and thoughtful, and not try to gloss over this as we would a car accident or natural death. There were people behind these murders, and now is not the time to be complacent about it. I think he's right, as noble as it is to try and move forward to show them they haven't hurt us. Haven't they? I tell you, if I hadn't put the strip up already, it'd have stayed down since Tuesday. Perhaps it is a good means of escape, but I don't think we should be looking for escape right now. I'll have to remedy this somehow. Thank you, Docsane. =========== America: The Good Neighbour. Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record: "This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars! into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -! not once, but several times - and safely home again. You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbours have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those. =========== I hear that the attacks were organized in some other part of the earth I'm not familiar with. Like the Arab part, or something like that, where all those guys live. I want to say "Zaire." Zaire. That's a country, right? That sounds sort of Arab. Those Zaire bastards. So let's nuke the Arab countries, and any surrounding countries for good measure. I'd say 80 or 90 H-bombs per house should do it. USA, USA. A lot of the time I'm on the verge of crying after today's events... watching them play the damn film over and over and over again. I feel sick. It was very hard for me to commit to putting the strip up for tomorrow. I'll do it, for people who want to try and move ahead. There are lots of places to grieve; adding this insignificant site to the list isn't going to mean much. But if I can make someone laugh at Chex's stupidity tomorrow instead of thinking about what happened, I'll do it. But if I hadn't done the strips last week, I wouldn't be coming up with anything at all this week. Give blood. http://paydirect.yahoo.com/PD/onePage/onePageRedCrossMoney-drv.pd The first thing I thought when I saw the news today about the terrorism was "last days." We just had a 4.2 here. Nothing like an earthquake to send everyone scurrying like ants. It's pretty much been agreed on that the failure of the new ELO album was (partly) the fault of Sony, who failed to do ANY advertising for the release whatsoever. Many more news organizations reported on the tour's cancellation than they did on the tour existing. But then most fans believe this to be the only error committed: underpromotion. And I don't think it's true. Zoom stands to move fewer than 100,000 copies by the end of the year, by my rough estimate. It's weak because there's no market for ELO anymore. At least, there isn't going to be a new market. To anyone outside of the rabid fan base, ELO meant pop-sounding, string-laden disco-y music. Not Secret Messages era, not Time, not No Answer. A New World Record and Out of The Blue. As one person wrote, the new ELO album should have been marketed as a sequel to Out of The Blue and/or A New World Record from day one. That should have been the direction. Two, the songs should have used an orchestra. And if not, he should have toured with an orchestra. The fans who follow ELO weren't quite ready for the new Wilburys sound, so the public at large would probably be a lot less ready. If they remembered anything about ELO. Many would back Jeff up and say "hey, he doesn't owe us strings and '70s-style ELO." No, he doesn't. But does that mean whatever he wants to call ELO is ELO? It's hard to accept. Another thing I dislike in general was the revisionist ELO history first presented in the liner notes of Flashback, which has since become canon. The liner notes of 1990's ELO box, Afterglow, presented ELO as a band. Jeff was quoted, Bev was quoted, ELO was an entity. The band formed and broke up. In Flashback, it's very clear that it's an all-Jeff affair. Suddenly ELO was Jeff Lynne and some studio musicians who happened to record all the songs with him and tour with him. The other members (save Richard, who didn't join ELO Part II) aren't even mentioned by name. Even in recent interviews, Jeff refers to Bev as "the drummer" and tells stories about "one band member" or "one guy." He worked with them, studio musician or no, for more than a decade. "This guy?" Here's how the whole thing should have been played out, barring Jeff making nice with his old bandmates: - Jeff uses an orchestra, both on the album and on the tour. - Jeff includes one or two "over-the-top" ELO style songs, and uses the same layering technique he did on the old albums. (Or not -- but these days, Lynne's production technique consists of turning down the treble.) Or if he's not dead, get Mack to handle production again. - Have a few current artists guest on the album. Not everyone current is Limp Bizkit or Backstreet. Tal Bachman is a huge Jeff Lynne fan, he'd have done it for free. There are plenty of honorable current musicians out there. BEFORE you say that's cheap, putting guests on there like Santana did for his album Supernatural (an album which consists of tracks by many hot guest artists and Santana lazily playing 30 or 40 total notes per song for the bridge), Jeff did put Ringo and George on there. He was playing the guest artist game too, except no one really is crazy for those two at the moment. - Stick to mid-size venues, where bands like Yes are touring. Yes is using an orchestra, to sold-out shows. It works. The problem is ELO should have been booked in 5,000-seat venues rather than 20,000-seat stadiums. The Forum? Come on, it's been 15 years. - ELO should have been promoted. The only place I saw an ELO ad was in the LA Weekly, about an 1/8th of the page, and a music store paid for it. That and two radio shows. *sarcastic, very slow clapping* - ELO should have shared the tour bill with other acts, like BTO or REO Speedwagon, or even '70s acts without acronyms. There was a rumor they'd be opening for U2. Fans cried "boo!" Apparently no tour at all is preferable. - Oh yeah, "logistically" impossible. Lose the spaceship, lose the flashing lights. Let them play with an orchestra, and that's it. - Give Rosie some instruments to play. I hear she's very talented, but in the concerts she was relegated to dancing around and doing backup vocals. Meanwhile, Orchestra (ne Part II) continues to tour in the UK with an orchestra to sold-out venues. I'm not saying ELO could POSSIBLY comeback and be huge again like Aerosmith, but come on, only fifty-odd-thousand units so far in the US?? Sony wanted to lose money on this one for some reason. Guitar strings buzzing! It's because they're too light, I think. You can't hear it through the amp, but I used to like to play without the amp for practice. On the plus side, it may even sound better through the amp with these strings, but that damn buzz. The action is just where I want it. If I had 11s on before, I'd like to go to 10s. These are 9s. If I had 10s on before, they were a little too stiff. Grr. Do they make 9.5s? http://www.nightmareproject.com/ Got this off of Penny Arcade. They always have such interesting links. Dreams (nightmares in particular) were always one of my favorite topics... so here's a place where you can submit awful dreams you've had. Some of them I find hard to read, because I immediately imagine what it would be like to have a dream like that. Worst of all, my scariest nightmares are weak compared to some of them. Note to subconscious: DO NOT try to compensate. Give me my standard "robot in the house and I can't move" and "pleasant chats with a smug Satan" nightmares any day. I had the strings on my guitar lowered, and lighter strings put on. It's like a new guitar. It's strange to play, I don't have to push down very hard anymore. All the same, it'll take me a while to get back to where I was, but I can play F a little easier now. Wheeeeee... |
