vespertine mongrel aqouli

Hustler for death, no heaven for a gangsta

aqouli@gmail.com — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:16:26 GMT

I'm quite fond of Lupe Fiasco, perhaps the only rapper to come out in the past five years I've ever bothered to follow. He's got intelligence, he's a self confessed geek (name me someone else in the mainstream music who readily makes references to Street Fighter 2 and Trigun), and he honestly believes he has something to say with his music. He's even dodged the sophomore-album bullet; The Cool's as good as they come, a loose concept album that, for the five or so tracks that include the concepts and characters he's come up with, laments rap culture's glamorizing of violence and vice and its mindless march towards a dead end street. (And though it technically came out last December, this is a straight candidate for one of the best albums of 2008, easily.)

But personally, the finest track on the whole album is Little Weapon, a chilling number in which Lupe rhymes about African child soldiers, amongst other things (an entire verse is devoted to discussing the subliminal influence of violence in videogames). When popular rap music can be summarized by a massively popular ringtone, it's encouraging to hear a song that can both make you think and frighten you (and not in a 97' Bonnie & Clyde way either).

Bishop G/Lupe Fiasco/Nikki Jean - Little Weapon

~~

On a more lighthearted note, I recently discovered Skyrates. When you're done groaning over the name, you'll find a clever online experiment in sporadic gaming ("like if checking your e-mails was fun", to quote a creator) that plays like EVE Online-lite, set in a charming world that's somewhere between Tailspin and Tail Concerto.

It comes equipped with chat features, and most curiously, an entire RP channel. So if you fancy yourself a regular Don Karnage, there's your cue.

okay

aqouli@gmail.com — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:37:27 GMT

which one of you fuckers did this

DEWSHBEGS

They seem to have it together, they seem be free

aqouli@gmail.com — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:54:04 GMT

It's odd to start my first month at work with a Futureheads song and end it with one as well, but I needed a song like this, more than I need my five daily cups of coffee, more than I need podcasts while on the train, or music at my desk to make the hours race past.

I miss the MUSH, which is a decidedly roundabout way of saying that I miss the general ability to converse with folks in general - there isn't much room for socializing when you're stuck in front of a desk. I didn't know it earlier in the week, but I think this was the root of that nervous breakdown I had on Tuesday (although that song didn't help). Then I stopped listening to it and plucked myself off the ground, and that brings me to today.

A slight mix-up delayed this month's paycheck, but instead of having the thing banked into my account like the way it usually works, I get to collect it in its raw form, cheque and payslip and everything. This is the sort of thing you frame up, right? But it wasn't the cash that got me raring, I got my needs taken care of; it was the milestone. I needed a confirmation, I guess, that things are fine, and that next month will probably go by the same way.

And having this song cap off the day, sending me into a run all the way to the station, bopping my head and tapping my feet to it all the way home - is there a better way to end it?

only slightly less than I used to

aqouli@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:04:27 GMT

I've been stuck in a bit of a melancholic rut all morning that's lingered around until now, and through the course of the past seven hours I've had more than a few mood swings to add some spice to my workday. (No one was hurt, don't worry.)

I blame it all on one song that for some reason against my own will, forces me to put it on repeat over and over again; Winamp doesn't seem to record playcounts when I play it straight off my thumbdrive, but I wouldn't bet on anything below 20 times. So I get to wallow all day until internet access pops on later in the afternoon and finally figure out what this is a cover of.

And I'm not surprised in the least to find that it's originally by The Smiths. Oh Morrissey, only you could write something like:

And the pain was enough to make
A shy, bald, Buddhist reflect
And plan a mass murder

The cover gets an additional verse (from a The Supremes song) at the end, and it's all lovely strings and horns and Daniel Merriweather's wounded voice to round it all up.

Here's to another dozen repeats.

Video game nerding: fragile spacecraft edition

aqouli@gmail.com — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:48:13 GMT

So all week I've been doing nothing but playing SHMUPs - earlier in the week I got Space Invaders Extreme (who uses Extreme in a game title anymore?), which turns out to be a fairly engaging, challenging without being utterly unfair. It doesn't have a lot of content, there's no fleshy underbelly of unlockables to sink your teeth into, but a game that emulates Rez's synesthetic style of playing little blips every time you shoot or kill an enemy is after my own heart. Also, it's only 20 bucks.

Fraxy does not cost 20 bucks, is entirely free, and may also be the first time I've seen a shooter that may quite readily be called 'open-source'. Fraxy's mechanics are fun enough - the game itself resembles a beta more than anything, but it remains an approachable multi-directional shooter (think Geometry Wars), but has its heart closer to Japanese shooters like Gradius, as well as indie boss-rush shmups like Warning Forever and rRootage. (Heck, the game comes compiled with two Vic Viper-styled enemies.)

The video has pretty loud music in it, so you might wanna turn down your speakers

Where Fraxy really shines is in its ability to let you create your own enemies or bosses, even scenarios, and it's spawned an entire community - literally dozens of contributors making content for this game, with forum topics/wikis mushrooming up. I found two wikis at last count - Bossrush The World being the older, SA-moderated one, and Fraxy Compendium which is newer and more frequently updated.

We set controls for the heart of the sun, one of the ways we show our age

aqouli@gmail.com — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:09:12 GMT

Yesterday morning I stepped onto a road only to realize with a roar from my right that a whole bunch of motorcycles and buses had floored their gas pedals, all quite intent on barreling down that stretch I was about to cross. And I remember thinking

"Maybe,

maybe I could pretend not to notice, and keep walking

and maybe one of them might hit me! Or they might not

but

at least I could say that something finally happened to me."

aqouli@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:43:17 GMT

Slapping some stringed instruments onto hip-hop or rap music is really as gimmicky as it comes, and juxtaposing the urbane and the urban isn't as novel a schtick as it used to be. Sometimes it can be done right, as one Youtube phenomenon has proved, though it can rarely ever be relied on to make a bad song any good (I don't think I've ever liked anything that Miri Ben-Ari has ever collaborated on).

It's a good thing that Hilltop Hoods' The Hard Road is already a top notch album to begin with before they got a composer and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to put some strings-heavy arrangements on top of the original tunes. Back when I was still listening to Triple J, The Hard Road was pretty much on heavy rotation, but I don't need to tell you what's in store when an indie hip-hop album debuts at #1 on the ARIA charts.

Stopping All Stations is as good a song as ever even before they set it to strings - I've always had a weakness for tunes that condense a story into what few minutes that they're alloted, and rap has always been a prime vehicle for that sort of thing. Here's a behind-the-shoulders view of an old war vet, then a callgirl, then a mugger who's just picked the wrong person to pull a knife on.

Hilltop Hoods - Stopping All Stations Restrung

Purchase The Hard Road: Restrung

Streetwind Explains It All

aqouli@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:58:13 GMT

Through the course of the week I'd been puzzling out what to do over the weekend - maybe in making my definition of a weekend-well-spent so broad (I simply have to feel content when Sunday night rolls around), I still haven't found any solutions to it. I put up the question to streetwind and promptly, she suggested an MMO or something. People have been bringing them up often as of late, and I've always had the same reaction each time WoW or EVE is mentioned, which amounts more or less to the kind of expression one gets when you find that your front yard has been transformed into a canine lavatory at least three times in a single afternoon*.

But then, zen master that Streety is, baffled me with the indisputable logic of simply sleeping the whole thing away. There is actually nothing wrong with this reasoning, but I argued anyway. Who wants to sleep, only to wake up to another week full of work? It's the equivalent of dreaming about an entire school day only to wake up and actually have to go to school. I wanted to fill my weekend with stuff, darnit! I want to RP and write stuff and listen to more music than I already do and run a marathon and work for a charity and and

She quite readily flipped my argument over with an anecdote about people who take two weeks off and come back somehow more stressed than before because they end up trying to waterski and paraglide and go disco dancing and eventually the concept of relaxation completely evaporates in favor of stuff. Zen master Streety, preaching enlightenment through sleep. I bet she could nap in the lotus position if she wanted. "Ohmmmmmmmmmmzzzz"

So she implicitly told be to chill, brutha. It's really the best advice I've been given all week.

With the advent of work I find myself dreaming a lot more for some reason or another. It's come to a point where they don't seem as welcome anymore, especially when they end up as work dreams (I overwrote important source code in one last night). The night before last, I dreamt very vividly about my first crush (no one you know); I'm not entirely sure where that came from, though to the best of my knowledge, all we did was talk and catch up with one another.

Oh and Fever Pitch? For a book about football, I am devouring it. It's such an effortless read. I find that I've been straying towards non-fiction lately**; my previous dead-tree purchase was Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia. Since there is no overarching narrative, I'm not obliged to keep track of whatever goes in the book at any one point; it gives a new meaning to the title of Chris Baty's Nanowrimo guide 'No Plot? No Problem!'

* (This actually happened last week.)

** (Has work grounded me in sobering reality? Not really; as opposed to an actual vested interest in the workings of football obssessives and musical delusions, this is more because I don't want to be caught by my co-workers reading books with large dragons on their gaudy covers.)

lower than ground

aqouli@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:34:50 GMT

I'm not entirely familiar with Grandaddy, which are a band that makes music as delightful and saccharine as they are grating, so they've eluded me so far.

This video however, is sheer beauty.

~~

Sometime after I climbed into the car, when my folks picked me up from my commute, I asked them how grandma was. I think I've talked about her cancer before; it's flared up again, spreading to her kidneys and liver. I doubt there isn't a single one of us in the family who isn't a little frightened and concerned, but besides the pain, she hasn't been anything but her jovial self, smiles and thick glasses and everything.

While they were over at their place, my folks told mah-mah (grandma) and yeh-yeh (grandpa) about my getting a degree at last. Mom painted this picture of elaborate reaction from them as we were driving home; they were happy, of course, but more than that, they were proud. The next thing mom told me about was yeh-yeh wanting a photo of me in my graduation robe so he could put it up on the wall next to all the big moments in this family's history. (This is a man who's seen me through most of my early schooling, taking me to kindergarten when I lived at their old house, wheeling me back and forth from primary school. He is just as much a father as my real dad is.)

That hit me pretty hard. It had been a pretty long time ago since I thought about where I stood in this family, the oldest kid with the Lee surname - I'm supposed to be spearheading this generation, trailblazing the whole damn thing. I don't think I ever thought about any of that during the painful slog of my final year project and the resulting second attempt after I failed it, and it's now, after I get my crappy degree (not 1st Class Honours, not a 2nd, not even a fucking Credit) - that I think about this again, and I try to imagine the beaming looks on mah-mah and yeh-yeh's faces.

It's like the worst lie I never told.

Mom and dad, knowing more of the story than they do, were no less proud - heck, they wanted to celebrate with a dinner at a restaurant - while I pretended to be humble and say that it wasn't necessary when it was really shame that I felt. I was never scared of disappointing myself, I've never had high standards. This is the real sting, knowing that you fucked up horribly on the final stretch of your education, scrape by with a degree not worth the paper it's printed on, and literally deceive, deceive the people who raised you.

I'm too scared to tell them that my picture shouldn't be on that wall.

My hands are shaking. I'm not sure what to write anymore. I guess I'll leave it here.

tl;dr, you reap what you sow. The end.

thoughtspots

aqouli@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:53:11 GMT

Early this morning I got a confirmation from college that I have (finally) URNED MAH DEGREE. That's a load off my chest. It still threw off my Nano '07 attempt so rape it with an angry red brick.

I found a nice second-hand bookstore near here, yesterday. Is RM 23 a bit much for a used novel? I bought one anyway; it being soccer season (goooo Germany), Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch felt like a good choice. As I was browsing, though, the only thing I had running through my head the entire time was a deep-down sense of glee; like tinnitus but happier. I used to love reading-- then the internet gave me ADD, so it's a little harder to enjoy a book these days, but a musty smelling place like that full of stuff still brings out the love.

What really surprised me is not that there's a whole section full of comics old and new, it's that in one corner on the second floor, there's a whole bunch of old vinyls in boxes. 70s and 80s pop records, mostly. I don't even have a record player for these things and already the sum of my parts are beginning to coalesce into a pale mockery of Rob Gordon. I don't even know how much they -cost-.

If you had a time machine, what would you do with it?

I'd use it to kill R. Kelly imo

or Mike Myers

Thirty-five commandments

aqouli@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:27:31 GMT

Remember 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)'? Initially charming but soon chanted everywhere in high schools like a pledge or an oath to the point of utter banality?

I think they made a song like that just for people like me.

Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals no matter how great they are or were.
The Beatles? Were just a band.
Led Zeppelin? Just a band.
The Beach Boys? Just a band.
The Sex Pistols? Just a band.
The Clash? Just a band.
Crass? Just a band.
Minor Threat? Just a band.
The Cure? Were just a band.
The Smiths? Just a band.
Nirvana? Just a band.
The Pixies? Just a band.
Oasis? Just a band.
Radiohead? Just a band.
Bloc Party? Just a band.
The Arctic Monkeys? Just a band.
The Next Big Thing... JUST A BAND.

~~

And just so this post isn't completely irrelevant, remember that cute little Korean flash animation so many years back about a cat and a rabbit falling in love? This one?

They're baaaaack and it's as heartwarming as ever.

HAHAHA

aqouli@gmail.com — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:17:32 GMT

The Romans were totally geeks.

Karaoke okee, didn't get to sing any Beatles, made everyone cross their arms and go quiet when I belted out When You Were Young (without the words onscreen, no less), but I don't think it was because they were impressed. Probably the complete opposite. Still, best part of the whole thing is that it didn't cost an arm and a leg like that one time.

There's a reason I only do that once a year though.

aqouli@gmail.com — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:06:03 GMT

My great-grandmother passed away this Tuesday morning. She went quietly, and was calm all through her final hours. The memorial service, with its prayers and chants and incense, was a momentous occasion, if a solemn one. She lived to be a hundred and two years old; to live to be a hundred and beyond is a good thing, I think, regardless of whether you're Chinese or otherwise.

Does this warrant a Deep Thought? Maybe. My brother stood a long while at the casket, looking soberly into the open casket into tai poh's serene face. Age had weathered her features; death, not so much. But soon. I think this is our first brush with a death that is beginning to edge toward our immediate family. I don't know great-grandma very well, but I'm very fond of my paternal grandfather/grandmother, and they're literally one step away, generation-wise.

You have to wonder, "who's next?"

~~

Onto happier(?) notions, going to karaoke with my workmates tomorrow. I risk looking the social outcast as I'm quite happily out of touch with popular music. Unless it's popular music from 40 years ago. (I'm thinking Beatles. "Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not to sing out of key~")

I might dig into the Simon & Garfunkel tonight and risk my voice cracking when I try to imitate Paul's high notes. For all my attempts to evade embarrassment, I think I'll end up falling face-first into it anyway. All in the name of howling good fun.

What should I sing, guys?

Interrobang!

aqouli@gmail.com — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:04:06 GMT

Been procrastinating about writing about the first week, I mean really, it wasn't that all exciting. (Compared to Oblivion. It was pretty nerve-wracking at the time, though!)

I took pictures with my phone but I highly doubt I'll be able to upload them 'cause the cable that hooks up to it was pretty finicky in the past and I highly doubt it'll do me good now. So let loose the flood of three-letter word reactions!

1st Day
Employer: Welcome! By the way you're in a team that has to drive to a location that isn't this one, the one you had to learn to drive to and wasted a day last week, THE LAST WEEK OF YOUR UNEMPLOYED LIFE, learning how.
Me: wat

2nd Day
Employer #2: Hokay! Welcome again! By the way you're gonna have to take the monorail down to this part of town to your office!
Me: kay
Me: *goes there*
Mentor-type person (who is awesome): Hello! let me show you my pokeym- workplace.
Workplace: *turns out to be the top floor of a building straight out of a dystopian, Terminator-esque future*
Me: ...
Me: . o O (I work for Cyberdyne?)

The rest of the week was pretty... work-y. The office is actually pretty nice and well lit, not far at all from where I'm staying (a vast difference compared to the 90 minute commute from that first day), there's plenty of food places nearby, and my co-workers are friendly folks! (Even though they're primarily Chinese speakers, a lot of it all flies over my head.) I will also reiterate my mentor-type's awesomeness; around the second day when all the shuffling here and there was making me jittery, he actually sat me down and gave me a pretty reassuring talk, answered my questions, and generally helped me breathe a little easier.

I also learnt how easily the weekends pass. =/ Monday tomorrow ahhhhh

But that's all there is to it and being any more verbose about it is pointless.

Oh and Kung-Fu Panda is okay. It's definitely a hammy, over-the-top martial arts film first (with cartoon animals!), and a kid's cartoon second. When you see baby Tai Lung and baby Tigress though, you will brit shicks, they are that freaking cute. Someone also put up some character design sheets for the film by a notoriously shy artist, so that's worth checking out too.

If anyone needs to reeeeeeally get in touch with me when I'm at work

aqouli@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:47:44 GMT

Or just to say hi or something (I'm looking at you internet people), Google Talk seems to be the only thing that works in the office, so you can poke me on that.

Address is the same as my e-mail, aqouli@gmail.com

EDIT (June 13, 08): And AIM and MSN too if I remember to sign on, all contact info can be found on my profile. TALK TO ME AT WORK, PEOPLE

SO ZETTA SLOW

aqouli@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:35:32 GMT

YOU'RE OUT OF YOUR VECTOR

~~

Man it's so late already. Anyway, first day at work wasn't the biblical catastrophe I'd thought it'd be, I'll prolly write something with more substance at the end of the week.

yoo are so looky on your first deh

aqouli@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 10:06:14 GMT

I finally got around to watching Once yesterday. It's less of a film, more a 90-minute music video with some not-bad acting on the part of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. The real meat and potatoes of the whole thing is the songs, really, set against a backdrop of romantic tension and the starkness of Irish middle/lower class living. And the second you see Glen just let-'er-rip with his vocal range, it'll make you sink into the back of your seat.

The video I'm linking here though focuses more on the female half of the songwriter duo. You can't see it in the video because it's so terribly dark but she's walking in her nightrobe with the most adorable plush sheep slippers singing this haunting tune going by the name of 'If You Want Me'.

~~

Job starts tomorrow, so yeah panic and pandemonium. ~~Though Cass is dropping by for the week while her new apartment gets prepped so it ain't all doom and gloom this week.~~ nvm change of plans

And they say "like it or not,
you have to do what they say"
And it is something that you would like to talk about
But it is only your first day

aqouli@gmail.com — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:41:36 GMT

Miyabi and Kittiah's Harddrive is a weekly 4 hour show with two guys bantering on in their quiet voices, occasionally drunk, while spinning some pretty class tunes from a good spread of genres. Stream it straight off the tap or grab a podcast of any of their episodes.

You don't even have to be a Brit to enjoy it.

~~

So how the bloody hell did Pendulum's second release slip under my radar completely? Reviews seem mixed, the DnB purists hate it, and throwing in rock samples seems to alienate a helluva lot of people. (It sounds like they've dipped into a bunch of Commodore 64 samples too.) But the real question here is - does it have a track on it that can hold a candle to *Girl In The Fire?

I don't know yet but I can't help but feel that it shows promise.

The mariachi horn section at the start is there to fool you into thinking that you're getting less awesome than promised.

* I know everyone likes Hold Your Colour more but GitF was always a fave of mine

Hey, this ain't so hard and it's kind of cool

aqouli@gmail.com — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:03:12 GMT

Looking for a job has me thinking of Overqualified (go read their comic, A Softer World as well). I guess everyone needs to be comforted in the sense that your talents aren't a complete waste when it comes to the world of employment, or that you're not alone when you force that grin every time someone asks "what would you say is your weakness?" And you hope that your weaknesses (not the made-up ones you use to answer the previous questions) aren't as crippling as you think they are.

You're elevated for a moment when they get back and say "hey, the job's yours", but that's another can of worms that I'll open later.

I just don't want to die like a fool
I'm not lost
I'm somewhat off the way
I'm gonna do what I said I'd do at school
And be the one that says "Hey,
this ain't so hard and it's kind of cool."

aqouli@gmail.com — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:19:22 GMT

    "Bring me the head of a love song," the prince told him, and then turned and walked back between the grand doors. They rumbled like great beasts as they turned on their hinges, and the light of the prince's ballroom was soon muted by the two monoliths. Not a trace of light could be seen from beyond as the doors closed, the sound echoing through the halls like a great drumbeat, like gunfire in the belly of a whale.
    Terry climbed back up to the surface, to civilization, blanketed in questions. The prince's idea of a love song - perhaps, even their idea of what love is - could be completely different. For a moment, Terry thought of the prince mistaking a love song for some great, wild creature, to be hunted and stuffed and mounted on a wall somewhere, mouth caught agape as it extrapolated the duration of a finite, fleeting emotion. Love stretching on into event horizon.
    And how do you behead something like that?
    He did not dwell too long on that question; already he was planning to look it up on Rolling Stone, do some research on the subject. He was in the middle of thanking the media's innate desire to put everything in a numerated array of ascending or descending order when something immensely catastrophic happened.
    He fell in love.

    He was on the train.It took two seconds for his chest to tighten, for his heart to sit at the base of his throat and attempt to strangulate him. He snatched glances at her, and every time she looked up, he pretended the scrolling scenery was of the greatest interest to him, and for a moment he was rapturous student of power lines and cloud formations.
    He looked up again and met her eyes. He held the gaze too long, leaving the realm of and accidental glance and into something more. Having noted his attention, she waved meekly. Eyes like gun barrels, his heart leaping as if staring at the business end of a 12 gauge.
    When he got home, it didn't matter what songs he looked up, or whether they were on top or at the bottom of the damn lists, they all sounded the same and they all made him think of her. On the radio, they assaulted him, mauling him with talons formed from adjectives - everlasting, unforgettable, forever - and each one sat on his chest, and invisible monster pinning him against an invisible rock.
    A week later, on the day that he was to deliver the head of a love song, he saw her again. He went through the motions tenfold, his breath catching as the love songs (they were everywhere) twined a scorpion's tail around his throat, pumping a venom into him that left him gasping and paralyzed. His MP3 player blared, voices pouring out of it in chimeric union, manticores swearing loyalty, devotion. i'll follow you into the dark, one crooned, and it remains till this day, one of Terry's most frightening memories.
    In his mind's eye, he saw a similar creature seated next to the girl, an owlfaced lizard, bone spikes rising like octaves from its back, hissing staccato. It sounded like the bastard child of Aretha Franklin and the lead singer from The Cure scatting. Beady owl eyes blinked slowly as it coiled around the girl of his dreams, threatening to crush her. Threatening silence, to divide them with a gulf that could not be bridged. The chasm yawned.
    Bravery pushed Terry off his seat, without whim or reason or worse, without an idea of what to say. His own creature babbled at him, stabbed its scorpion stinger into him but without any venom to deliver. He could breathe again. As he walked forth, his creature's bright, crested face dulled to moth's wings, and then into brown dust. The dead husk of the tail clattered on the plastic seats, muffled by the ka-chnk ka-chnk of the train's wheels running over gaps in the track. Forever stopped meaning anything if he didn't do anything now.
    As he stepped up to the girl, she looked up and smiles, contrasted against Aretha/Robert Smith's shrieks of horror. Confidence had startled it, now Terry's approach has made its wits flee. It shrank away from him, literally shrank, till it was the size of a centipede, and no less evil. It attempted to scuttle away, and only made it halfway across the seat next to the girl before Terry sat on it.
    "Hi", he said to the girl.
    They talked until she reached her stop, and then Terry got up and picked the creatures' heads up, prying the owlfaced head off the seat, and sweeping the brown dust of his own creature into a pencil box. He presented them later that day to the prince, and he saw it was good, and gave him one wish.

    "And I take it you wished that I would love you or something."
    Terriander only grinned, an idiot grin if there was one.
    Lorelei (for that was the dream girl's name) laughed like a siren cackling. "You are so full of shit, Terry. But tell me something, how come he only gave you one wish, if you had two heads?"
    "Just give me a sec", Terry said, and he reached into a pocket. From it, he pulled out a chain, silvery links that pooled like mercury into his open hand. Staring out from the tangled weave of silver, an owl's face stared out, eyes hollowed and beak parted as if caught in mid-song.

~~

More sappiness. Written lord-knows-how-many months back.

The story is actually inspired by a David Bowie song called "Bring Me The Disco King" and the idea mostly vaulted off one of the lyrics. The title and one line in the story are from a Death Cab For Cutie song.

Ey ey ey ey!

aqouli@gmail.com — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:35:13 GMT

Right there at the start? I could watch those two people on the drums, all day.

I have a job interview scheduled like next Tuesday or so and everytime I remind myself of it, my brain ends up breaking off at the medulla and running around the room going "ohshitohshit" before it gets tired and I stuff it back into my brain pan. Yeah.

Oh boy.

aqouli@gmail.com — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:11:47 GMT

last post today i swear

Advice

aqouli@gmail.com — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:41:11 GMT

Good grief, reading one of Snow Crash's chapters (the one with YT's mom's job and the 3 page long memo about toilet paper pooling) is not very motivating to the pursuit of employment at all. Very shiver inducing in the way the rest of the book is - simultaneously ludicrous and yet, you can completely imagine it happening.

And sometimes, you don't even have to imagine too hard.

"They have a right to do a cavity search if they want. She got cavity-searched every day for a month once, right after she had spoken up at a meeting and suggested that her supervisor might be on the wrong track with a major programming project. It was punitive and vicious, she knew it was, but she always wanted to give something back to her country, and whenever you work for the Feds you just accept the fact that there's going to be some politicking. And as a low level person you're going to bear the brunt. And later on, you climb the GS ladder, don't have to put up with as much shit. Far be it from her to quarrel with her supervisor. Her supervisor, Marietta, doesn't have an especially stellar GS level, but she does have access. She has connections. Marietta knows people who know people. Marietta has attended cocktail parties that were also attended by some people who, well, your eyes would bug out."

Things like these are the kinds of things my father has been warning me about my entire life.

~~

Alamis is here by the way. GO TO foxdiamond AND READ HIS POETRY

Don't be fooled by him, he's a hypocrite

aqouli@gmail.com — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:05:16 GMT

It's like they tapped into the strange part of my brain that was so highly apparent when I was seven years old and wandering blindly into toy stores begging my mom for something or other, that was repressed so long ago but is always there, drifting just slightly beneath the surface of the lake, waiting to be fished out.

And apparently that need applies very much to pins made out of pictures of cassette tapes.

They're really quite handsome. Click on the pic for more of these beauties.

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A sepia-toned Aesop's fable in sharp suits set to easy-on-the-ears Canadian pop. What's not to like?

aqouli@gmail.com — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:12:08 GMT

More of these sharpie'd-out newspaper poems can be found here.

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I've been listening to Beyond The Beat Generation for most of the day ever since I saw it on Boingboing, and it's pretty much undiscovered and forgotten relics from the sixties. Maybe it's a hipster thing to do, to listen to vintage stuff that no one knows about, but there's a simplicity and harmony to these tunes that makes them instantly likeable.

I'm a big fan of unpretentious, catchy things. I can listen to Sigur Ros or a rock concept-album with tracks that go on for 10 minutes or more as easily as I can listen to a bombardment of Ash singles or whatever's big in indie these days (it's been a while since I checked). Make me choose between the two though, and it's obvious who I'll dive for in a heartbeat.

In a little way it's reassuring to know that the base components of a song have endured for so long, and for all the attempts to stray away from those cliches and formulas, it's never hard to get back into a a simple melody or the often chided verse-chorus structure. The only things standing between that and enjoyment are often things completely separate to the music itself.

Now if they could only bring back the electric jug.

wibblewibblewibble