RKNet Blog... Thing

I do most of my dreaming in the morning. That’s just the way it is.
And this morning, I did a LOT of it. Here’s a brief overview:

• Dreamt my dad was still alive because he’d been sent on a Top Secret Mission that involved faking a serious illness, but wound up being marked down as faking his death. I had a hard time coming to grips with any of that, but was still overjoyed to see him. Mom gave him shit for still smoking.
• I dreamt about participating in naked wrastling and sloppy makeouts with some hot girl. The boyfriend was supposed to get involved but he’d wandered off to do something-or-other. A co-worker tried to hump me instead and I politely declined his offer. Still weird. Boyfriend, girl and I determined we should grab a patio lounge chair and run off into the woods since there were so many people around.
• There were several co-worker type people floating around in this unfamiliar house environment. Two of which were apparently dealing coke. I tried to make suggestions on how they could improve their business - but it felt really wrong.
• Meanwhile, my pink nail on my left hand had duplicated itself, and the original nail underneath was all loose, like a tooth, and connected to the underside of the new one by what seemed like really thin clear fibers and pus only. GROSS. I pulled it out, and the finger immediately seemed mostly normal. Still kinda infected looking though.

I know there was more than that but I gotta run and it’s all I remember!

Although Guided By Voices were around between 1983 and 2004, there is a good chance you’ve never heard of this band. I know I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for the combined efforts of a cover by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and Ian’s prodigious musical knowledge.

The song I’m sharing with you is the one I’m desperately, madly in love with these days. Clocking in at a meager 1:45 (2:14 on the Trail of Dead cover), it’s hard to believe it could be so moving. This brief sampling off of 1994’s Bee Thousand is slow and delicate like an aged alley cat and just like that old cat it still resonates like the graceful killer living at its core. That, and you know, there is all that rusty yowling.

The lo-fi buzz permates the latter half, sending the song from a quiet mystery into a trip into the past, when records were cut in one take or bust, all the instruments in one room, and you’d better hope the drums were properly muffled because we aren’t doing this again, dammit.

I highly recommend giving the rest of Bee Thousand a listen. If you have an interest in early R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, or perhaps some of these newer lo-fi and indie darlings like The White Stripes or Trail of Dead, then you should really be listening to Guided By Voices. For those less interested in the actual audio aspect, you can stun all your hipster friends with your new found, old school indie cred, you trend whore.

For musicians, the Guided By Voices website has the chords available for a bunch of their songs (Caution: Frames! T_T). In that same section are MP3s and Real Audio files of live performances, as well as a couple videos.

Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory (lyrics by Guided By Voices)

Cold hands touching my face
Don’t hide… the snake can see you
Old friends you might not remember
Fading away from you
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory

And we looked
And we passed
Through the hallways of shatterproof glass

She runs through the night as if nobody cares
She screams and she cries and ignores all the stares
She wants me to come, but I’m never going there
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory
The Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory

Just to keep things brief:
I dreamt I had a fish tank with a few kinds of viscious, snappy fish in it, and a small octopus and some other kind of shellfish or something. I accidentally screwed up the whole aquairum by collapsing one of the sides leaving only a tiny bit of water at the bottom, and nearly crushing the fish. I set everything back up and added in the appropriate salt water for this collection of pirhana like fish. (One looked like one of those clap-trap deals from Donkey Kong Jr.)
Next time I looked into the fish tank, it was full of irridescent octopi. They would look like small, but relatively normal, bluish and reddish octopi, then they would contract and glow in neon colors with cartoon faces. I watched this in fascination, as more were arrising, born out of the dead bodies of the fish that did in fact die because I had broken the tank.
That’s all I remember now. There was so much more. There has been so much more lately but I unfortunately haven’t had time to record the overall details. I have been told I need to watch Until the End of the World. …I can’t imagine why.

http://www.shelfari.com/giania
I was tipped off by someone on my LJ friends list yesterday that there was indeed a social site based around books! Thank goodness. I’d been saying for ages I wish I had some place to collect a list of everything I’d read. At one point I tried to keep a .txt file of all my comics and that proved to be an extremely daunting task indeed.
This, however, is like Last.FM, or wishlist specifically for books, for lack of a better comparison. For those who prefer audiobooks, neverfear, you are welcome here, as searches do turn up audiobook versions of pretty much every author or title I searched for thus far.
I have to say that other than the quirky behavior of the searches after I add books in Opera I really find going through and adding everything I own and have read (not necessarily one and the same!) to be a really addictive process. It’s so fun, just seeing everything I’ve read laid out like that, and knowing I’ve still got a lot more to look up. You can really tell a lot about a person by what they read, it seems.
It is rather nice to be able to see what your friends have read and ask them about it, rather than having to pry them for information on what they’ve read or hope they remember a book they read several years ago just to tell you.
Even though I already have a stack of items to read that is quite probably taller than I am, I’m always looking for suggestions on more things to read. So do go ahead and friend me if you decide to sign up for Shelfari, and be sure to tell them I sent you!
Happy reading!

Do you long for the days of ‘zines? Running off to follow loud bands who were either extremely concerned or extremely unconcerned with the way of the world? Dressing however you felt like, and sometimes with the express goal of freaking out the normals? Well I more-or-less don’t because I missed the whole thing. I was either too young or too oblivious to know what was up. I was also one of those irritating “good kids” who never really did anything they wanted if it seemed like it might be trouble. …I’ve come a long way, baby, but I digress.

My beloved ToM tipped me off to Operation Phoenix Records, with their already bold “fuck you” attitude towards concise domain names and more up-to-date web design have provided a stunning collection of punk ‘zines. Most of them are donated from kind collectors, and the folks at OPR seem to have dilligently gotten permission to reprint all of them. Whole magazines have been provided as PDFs, and band interviews are provided as regular pages, with acts ranging from GG Alin and Millions of Dead Cops to Black Flag and Nirvana. For your reading pleasure I give you a sneak peek at the GG Alin interview (as it was originally featured in Maximumrocknroll):

MRR: What are your feelings on the bands in NH and Massachusetts?

GG: I don’t fucking know. I’m not in tune to what’s going on at all. I’m not accepted in the scene. I just go about my fuckin’ life and my thing so I don’t really know what’s going on. I can’t even keep track of myself, so how can I know about that?

What’s funny about that is I don’t really know much about the New Hampshire and Massachusetts music scene either, except of course for Turbosloth.

P.S. You should definitely also check out the podcast! Episodes 5-11 of the CDRs Are for Communists Punk Radio Show are available right at the site.

I couldn’t tell you why but I take such a perverse amount of pleasure in the Xs that keep cropping up in place of where my actual “friends” used to be. It’s almost enough to let this account sit here until this site officially implodes in on itself. Unfortunately it’s become such a haven for melodramatic teenagers (Gaia without the cute avatars?), that it is highly unlikely it will ever go away. While it is true some people do seem to use this for what could be claimed is its “original purpose”, based on my experience I think the vast majority are composed of about five types.

1 - Whores - This is a very broad category. This includes spam accounts to generate pay-per-click revenue for any number of ridiculous products, as well as people whose extreme attention seeking behavior earn them the more generic label of Ho. Just to clarify, this category includes:
~ jailbait who put up pictures of themselves in their underwear
~ “scene kids” nee “emo kids”
~ businesses who put up some manner of profile front (I’m looking at you Carlo Rossi),
~ And of course, actual whores and/or sluts (one expects cash and advertises as such, the other just makes you pay for everything then dumps you), etc.

2 - Drama Students - While I applaud the philosophy of “never stop learning”, this does not apply to the kind of overly melodramatic and destructive behavior that one is likely to pick up during the Junior High and High School years of one’s life. Quite frankly I never wanted to use the internet to find out who hates who and why, and it’s largely because I usually don’t give a flying fuck. I disrespect drama in all forms, but internet drama… Stupid to the nth degree. Whatever happened to the good old fist fight? The screaming match in public? People are getting awfully passive aggressive. I blame all that “self-esteem” crap they taught us when we were all little.

3 - Angst (omigod awesome link lol)- It comes from all sides. I’m guilty of a bit myself. It’s that bizzare ritual of self-deprication in public, seeking sympathy, understanding, and/or open communication from any source even if it includes a bunch of people you don’t really like all that much. Angst, drama, and whoring are usually daisy chained together 4lyfe, but this gets its own category because there are career angst-and-woe types out there who absolutely must insist that they are miserable (or perhaps really are miserable) at all times, in the most public ways possible. How many people really give half a thought to you? Probably not as many as you would hope. Learn to bottle and die early of heart disease, if it was good enough for your grandparents and great-grandparents, it’s good enough for you. (Then give me all your meds, maybe there will be something good in that pile of rubbish doctors prescribe for behavioral modification.)

4 - Fledgling Media Breakouts - Before the recent rash of whores through my approval box, the only time I would bother to check this thing is when some manner of small or local band wanted me to rally to their flag. Sure thing guys, more power to you I guess. Someday I might even stop being such a workaholic and find the time to go catch a show. Who knows?

5 - /B/tards and Related - These people of indeterminiate race, religion, quanitity, and quality want you to be a retard who will fill in your password at the drop of a hat, without paying attention as to whether or not you really are still on the myspace servers. Then they’re going to take your brilliantly crafted profile and probably replace it with something involving memes, cuss words, and/or penises. Anonymous is legion, and they really don’t give a shit about you or your friends, so if defiling your profile is going to be funny to anybody, it will be done if you’re stupid enough to give up your information blindly. Quite frankly if you can’t be bothered to monitor your login information, you deserve it. (Besides, I think it’s kind of funny, too. …desu)

I hope I have made both my disgust and my amusement with this Borg-like hive of ridiculousness that is myspace. Please do let me know if I’ve forgotten any key points.

I was standing outside in the back parking lot of my apartment building with some people, talking about I don’t even remember what. It was night time approaching early morning and rather cloudy. All of a sudden there was a noise in the air like dozens of planes. Flood lights popped on to periodically illuminate green (like the old copper on Lady Liberty) planes of a sort I don’t even suspect could really fly. Rather than having a wing perpendicular to the body, or two as with a bi-plane, there was one wing suspended away from the body in a parallel that extended slightly beyond the body of the plane on all sides. While I was busy being confused-bordering-on-fearful about it all, one of the planes swooped low and banked hard over our building once or twice before dropping a bomb that rocked the very air around. Everyone outside was knocked down, including myself, but I looked up to discover the damage was mostly to the third floor, but there was a fire. I pushed myself off the ground in a rush. I nearly went right back down to the ground from the immediate dizzy spell, so I half-ran and half-crawled to the badk door, struggling to get the key in the sticky lock and charge up the stairs. The next thing I remembered I was waking up next to my beau. It was early in the morning, the apartment was a mess, and it took me a moment to realize what had happened. I’d gotten to the apartment and passed right out. Why he was there, seemingly undisturbed, I don’t know. I can’t remember if I woke up on the floor or in bed. At this point, a frantic search for the people outside occured, turning up everyone who had been there, plus extra. Rushing up the stairs, the damage was awful but no fire was raging. Heading back down to the lot showed everyone was either up or getting up. There was some outside source who didn’t believe in the bombing, at which I nearly lost it. The planes had been there! Everyone else saw it, too! It was a short lived argument for whatever reason, and next I was looking to help one of my neighbors who was mysteriously also one of my co-workers. He’d lost a lot in the explosion and I was going to offer to store some of his stuff while he tried to rebuild/relocate. The beau wasn’t too happy about that and was probably less happy when neighbor/co-worker started making up the couch as if to stay there.
Before, during, or after all that, I was somewhere public with a little watch on a chain attached to my collar. Just a little clip on thing, and it also had a pink teddy bear charm. I found out during the course of the speech I was listening to that there was a culture of dominance and subserviance which relied on such indicators to show who was who. Sure enough I look across the room just in time to spot the short haired girl with the animal collar riddled with charms just like my little pink bear. I didn’t get my watch out of sight fast enough and she came over to me. Subserviant though she was, she was clearly a leader in her circle. I tried to explain that I didn’t know, and it was a mistake. The girl only smiled at me knowingly and proceeded to evaluate the quality of the bauble hanging from my shirt collar (or did I have on an animal collar as well…). I remember a couple arguments between some same sex couples where I hyperfocused on their faces, as well as the start of another event/scene/thing, but not clearly enough to make the transition.
that’s all.

Recently I have been playing around with Twitter. I signed up months and months ago as part of some contest and only recently started using it to assist a friend in figuring out what the big deal was. (Besides, it’s always nice to get your initial awkward moves in a new social tool accomplished under the radar, ne?)

So far I’m finding it entertaining, or at the very least amusingly distracting. One of my recent acquaintences, a writer for zombieattack (congratulations on the Wired mentions guys!), posted this extremely short, sweet, and intelligent set of guidelines for Twitter neonates.

Give it a once over. If you’re new, these are good guidelines utilize. If you’ve been at it for a while, read it and make sure you aren’t guilty of any social service faux paux.

Do you know what’s awesome? Selling out.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of having a radio show. I loved radio. Every Christmas I would spend the entire day just listening to old episodes of This American Life. It was my tradition. With the advent of podcasting, I felt that there was finally a medium better than radio. For a short time I even did my own podcast, which was considered awesome, but was actually terrible. But I believed in the medium, I saw that there were a lot of things people were doing with podcasting that people did not do with radio.

So when I decided to try and get a radio show, I thought I would try to create a radio show with all the virtues of podcasting. And that was my plan. Until today. Because my show was greenlighted today. The station I will be on thought my demo was good, but they have a popular show that mixes Japanese and English, and they want me to throw out appropriate Japanese expressions at random times. And they want me to talk about plamo, action figures, and figurines.

Random Japanese expressions. Really. I feel like a whore. But, that’s showbusiness!

- Kento Ikeda, sexy bourgeois.

	Remember the illegal number? Well, I converted the hexadecimal number into a set of five different colors (using hex-color codes) and made this lovely GIF to illustrate. Don’t use these colors together. If you do, you’re breaking the law. Or, at least, you’re breaking it enough to get sued for it.

Thanks T3knomanser!
I’d like to also add that this is a primary example of how color could be used to carry information.