Oh, look what has been leaked to the intar-web!

So my friend Joe has a band with the bassist from Steps and some other people. Maybe it's a band. The proper term should be 'recording project' because like all good 'recording projects,' the group's prevailing mode of operation is the performing of very, very stoned improvised rock music in one take, at a home recording studio on Duff Avenue. I think they call it 'Monsignor Royal Penis Flan the Third' or something like that.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do this, but here is one of the more lucid recordings from their most recent album, Cozmic Duder:

Big Ol' Bus Ate the New Baby Cow (mp3 compressed audio, 4'44" at 192kbps, 6 MB total)

Careful, this was taken from the pre-master and is VERY LOUD.

Apropos my previous entry:

I have a time machine.

It's not a very sophisticated time machine. I built it out of sticks, mud, and a flux capacitor I found in a cornfield north of town over break, and it works all right, but only in one direction: forwards. I was hoping to use it after by birthday in March to hurl my then-21 year-old self into the past to catch any one of these fantastic shows at the Triple Rock in Minneapolis:

• The Winter Blanket, Head of Femur and Latchhook on the 6th


• Notwist, Themselves, and Cepia on the 9th


• Three acts, plus Ssion, St. Germain AND the Numbers on the 11th

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to coax the gizmo to induce a negative-polarized temporal field, so all of these fantastic shows are completely off-limits to me. Goddammit.

Having a time machine that only sends things into the future isn't all that useful, to tell you the truth. I know what you're thinking: "just take the time machine to the year 3000! By then, they'll have time machines that go both ways at every pawn shop!"

Well, I ask you: how do you know other things won't have changed between now and then, fancy-pants? Fr'instance, suppose I set up my time machine in my house, point it to 2020, and step inside. What do you suppose will, in 2020, be where my house is in 2004? What if it's a big landfill? I would materialize inside a big pile of garbage sixteen years in the future and die a rancid death, with someone's week-old pizza crusts sticking out of my brain.

That doesn't mean I can't settle a few bets with it, though. I got up early today and sent a bowl of oatmeal from my kitchen table this morning to my kitchen table next Tuesday. Monday night, I'm going to set some soup out and see if, in the morning, it really does make porridge.

A couple of one-liners:

1. The Iowa caucuses were last week. I hope that is the end of the topic, you fricken hippies.


2. "They fight crime!" has moved, it seems:


3. He's a time-tossed moralistic farmboy living undercover at Ringling Bros. Circus. She's a time-travelling belly-dancing Valkyrie trying to make a difference in a man's world. They fight crime!


4. I've been getting about a gajillion MyDoom emails that trace back to Midcontinent IP addresses. If this describes you, you might want to go do a quick virus scan or something. Otherwise, your computer could freak out on Sunday.

Apparently someone got the idea of throwing all of their digital music files into a media player, randomizing the list, and then putting the first twenty on his/her blog. Maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Continue reading "Music Meme"

CNN came to campus today. The Iowa presidential caucuses are, of course, on Monday, and a couple of the talking head programs were looking for a pretty place near Des Moines and its airport to talk to Real Iowans about Their Feelings, or something. Apparently, when they couldn't find any such place, the producers just threw up their hands and booked an afternoon at Iowa State. I got out of my Manufacturing lab early--all we did was watch a film about 18th-century gunsmithing--and the crowd was still milling about when I arrived.

Television is very important to the lives of most Americans today. Other forms of recreation have declined in importance next to the box, a comfortable diversion that is always ready and eager to pander to our every desire, even those we weren't aware of. Blah blah blah. Y'know, I had enough polemics today from the guy at the deli who kept going on about gun control, so I'll cut to the chase:

The filming of two brief--but live--remote segments of obscure cable politics shows drew a pretty big crowd! All sorts of kids stopped by to watch television being made, even though it was television most of them would never bother to watch, and even though the production of a television show--even a live one--is in reality a very slow and unexciting business. But people gathered around, quietly straining to hear the hushed tones of the host, who sat in a wooden director's chair and spoke just loud enough to be picked up by the wireless microphone pinned to her vest. Off to the side, behind a wooden police barrier, a group of fifteen or so Students for Kerry stood, bearing six-foot tall visages of their champion pol on posterboard attached to wooden stakes. They were mostly ignored, as were the giant carrot and ear of corn protesting something outside the opposite corner of the student union building.

The point--which I was getting to! I swear--is that with the exception of the annual VEISHEA parade, I have not in three years seen students at this school gather, outside, and mill around as I did at this mundane CNN broadcast today. ... Or I thought I hadn't, but just now I remembered that time in June the swans wandered up Union Drive to the bus stop and hung out, waiting for the bus, and the campus polics--who had nothing better to do, because it was just before sunset and there were no rowdy parties to breal up--came out in obscene force to stand with the sizable crowd of students that had gathered and watch the rookie on the staff prod Lancelot and Elaine back to the lake with a big stick. And I'm sure there were other times I have forgotten--every Thursday night, when the Medieval Combat Society gathers to fight with foam-covered sticks, for instance.

So I suppose my point is just that I have a horrible memory, which is why I need to write things down in my crappy internet gizmo more often. Drat. I had a good rant worked up about recreation "as in olden days," too, and I was going to work in this old picture from this neat website chronicling the university's ill-fated Lake LaVerne and how back "in olden days" prodigal engineers didn't have television, or video games, or the internet, or even their own personal telephones, so for fun they had to read books and play bridge and blow up the dam. Technology has given us so much, but how much more has it taken away? I ask you.

~

Here is a list of what I listen to, sometimes. For this technological advance, the button fly and strike-anywhere matches were lost forever.

Programmers don't know a damned thing about haggling.

Today's list: Things I didn't know I needed.

• KVM switch and $20 worth of computer cables, from newegg.com.
• One new fuel pump, from a man named Kermit in Chamberlain, South Dakota.
• A rubber tire that is not on fire.
• The new Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD, from someplace in Des Moines, Iowa.
• The largest bottle of wine known to man, from one friend to a different friend, to go with the big box of Kleenexes vanishing before my eyes.

The moral of this story is: Never go anywhere, ever again.

I'm leaving for home in about twelve hours, having achieved my three primary goals for my stay in Rapid City: to play a lot of video games, to read everything and everything, and to get out of the house often. That third one didn't go as smoothly as I had planned, but then, I didn't know this week was going to be the cold week.

While driving around town Monday night, I drove up Skyline Drive, the road cresting a sharp, sudden ridge of hills that--along with Cowboy Hill(s) to their north--neatly bisect the city from north to south, dividing the affluent, newer west side of the city and the dignified, older east. At night, I like to drive the slopes and curves of Skyline and look out at the fantastic view of the city it provides, tens of thousands of tiny lights carpeting the expanses of the plains just beyond the Black Hills. Monday night, though, the road was covered with hard-packed snow. To further my campaign of not dying a fiery death in an exploding car suddenly pitched into some jagged, hillside rocks, I decided to stop at Dinosaur Park to drink in the breathtaking view. So I parked my car, and stepped out to survey the old city, from Lakota Homes in the north all the way to Echo Ridge at the southen edge of the city. Just then, the mucus in my noze hardened, snot freezing instantly on contact with the -20° air and immediately I knew: I will still miss this place when I leave.

But I'm going back to the Grand Duchy* of Iowa tomorrow, for my sixth and perhaps last stint as a student there. It's hard to say what will happen, but it doesn't really matter. Looking at the long run, at some point I'll stop going to school and start my "real" life as an "honest" taxpayer, and I'll be able to live a grand life surrounded by beautiful women and swimming pools, just like the Grand Leader. In the long run, the particulars of what happens between now and then--college--is immaterial. I'll get out some day, with one degree, many degrees, or none, and in the long run it probably won't make much difference.

My thanks go to the economy for making my new life philosophy feasible. I hope it's not nihilism.

~

For now, I'm off to go wish one Mr. Jesse Jund a happy 21st birthday, and I would advise you to do the same. Kippis!

* I know, until now I've always said the Kingdom of Iowa, but it turns out that some time ago, Duke Vilsack had to give up absolute sovereignty to His Highness King George III in order to keep the nukes. Go figure.