BrainWyrms

Over the past few years I have been tracking down some of the lost music of my life. Most of it has been from a year or two when I was listening to a local college radio station in Chattanooga, TN. They almost never said who they were playing and I wasn’t really thinking about how ephemeral life can be.

The last song that I tracked down was The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove by Dead Can Dance. The funny thing about that one was that my brother, elegiac, actually owns a bunch of DCD CDs (and probably cassettes, at that.)

On the last WanderRadio podcast, WNDRWolf (who I keep typing Worf) played a song that sounded really familiar. Almost, but not quite one of the songs I was looking for.

I didn’t help anything that I thought the lyrics had something to do with dwarves and I thought that it was Scottish.

Instead, it was “Rocky Road to Dublin“. He had played a version of this traditional Irish slip-jig by the Connemarra Stone Company.  Woot!

I ran over to Amazon and started listening to the little previews of all the different versions of “Rocky Road to Dublin” that are available for purchase as DRM-FREE downloads.  And I found it!  Dropkick Murphys!

I’ve been meaning to check them out for at least ten years.  I could have found this awesome track years ago.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I have to thank Mr. Wolf for bringing it back to me.

Now I just have to find that big band song with the overly emphasized drums and the overly repeated lyric of “INFECTED!!!”  That one is a doozy.

For some reason, after reading this article from the NY Times about an all girl band in Saudi Arabia my attitude changed. Initially, I was thinking that this was great. I was happy for the burgeoning freedoms coming to a long repressed culture. You know, the normal thoughts for an elitist bastard from the Elitist States of America.

By the time I had finished reading through the first page, my attitude was switching. I can’t quote any one thing that Dina or Dareen said, but instead of being about fighting against the man or any other boring but understandable rebellions, it felt to me that these were the same spoiled rich kids who feel entitled to whatever they want and throw a temper tantrum as soon as it is denied to them.

In other words, instead of seeing punk rock… I was seeing Paris Hilton.

Quoting some lyrics from Tilt’s Molly Coddled:

Now you’ve chosen poverty
You did it for the sake of being hip
Begging for a dollar
Never doubting for a moment
Your bohemian indigence
And you wonder why the folks
In your run down neighborhood
Don’t recognize you as a kindred soul
‘Cause they know you gotta a bed
In a sunny sub-division
Anytime you wanna run home

Muxtape was this weird little online analog (digital analog?) of the old mix tapes that we used to make with the dual decks.  But it is gone now.  At least for now.  The mafia side of the music industry is working on making them die now.  ”Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

But from the ashes, something must rise… right?  This time, it is a new opensource software program that enables practically anyone to -be- Muxtape.  It is called Opentape and pretty much all it takes to get running is a web host with PHP5 and an FTP client.  

So instead of everyone hosting their analogous mixtapes at one central location, now anyone so inclined can host their mixtape on their own site.  To see it in action, check out my BrainWyrms mix… Right at this moment, I’ve got Nine Inch Nails from Ghosts I.  I’ll probably add some other “open-source” music as I find it.

Today I started doing my comic catch-up reading. I kicked off my pile with Serenity Better Days 1 of 3. I can’t quite comment on the story yet, except that it is shaping up to have the potential for a good tale. What I can say is that the artist, the one with the pencil, is seriously good. I can see Mal and Jayne and well… everyone looks just like they should. I’ve got 2 of 3 lined up to read in the morning, and I’m looking forward to how this is going.

I finally got around to doing my WordPress upgrade AND I got the Akismet plugin going. I was getting really, no really really really really (ad nausem), annoyed with the 60+ drug-bases SPAM comments and trackbacks I’ve been getting on a daily basis.

Why does ‘basis’ look so wrong? Strange looking word, like it’s all mangled up after starting life ‘basic’… maybe merged with ’statis’?

And now, to wrap things up before I head into work, I am watching the new episode of Smallville. Which is nifty keen, but better still is that track that played during the dance scene with Jimmy and Chloe.  I don’t know who or what that was, but I quite enjoyed it and would like to at least hear it again.

I’m looking into the cost of buying a replacement screen for my Creative Zen V.  CASizemore had suggested a link to me a few weeks ago, but I’ve (shockingly) forgotten where that went to.  Right now I am checking out an eBayer with 3 for ~$30.  Maybe next week, especially if I can find a decent walk-through on cracking this case open.  My biggest concern is shattering the case itself.  That’s not something that I know how to go about fixing at all, whereas I am pretty certain I can plug and chug a new screen in.

A few months ago I, sucker that I am, picked up another pair of “gaming” headphones.  This particular pair is from Razer, the same company that makes all the gaming mice and my personal favorite pair of earbuds (m100.)  I was pretty impressed with the Barracuda HP-1 and their purported 5.1 surround sound… although my use has been practically nill.  I haven’t even had all of the wires plugged in yet.

What I did notice though, was the clean sound and clear distinction between the rear and center channels.  (Those particular channels only because those are the only ones that I plugged in.)  I thought that the odd DVI-style connector was a bit odd, but chalked that up to a failed entry into the sound card market.

Then I found the Barracuda AC-1 Gaming Audio Card at either Best Buy or CompUSA.  For just under $200!  Ack!

And today, w00t! has a new one for less than $70.  New!  Anyone want to lend me some money?  Donate?  I’ll do odd jobs!  Wanna buy a used hat?  Ummmmm, please!?

Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

On a story from CNET News.com, Trent Reznor seems upset by how few people paid $5 to get a high quality digital album.  He thought that given the oportunity to be good, people would do so.

I have two things to say to that.

1.  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha!

2.  He just lost his darksider membership.  He should put on his paisley pastels and bust out some campfire Kumbaya (sp?).  What a bloody pretender.

Source ::

Trent Reznor: Why won’t people pay $5? | Tech news blog - CNET News.com