Something for grammarians and liberals.

This gives me endless enjoyment.

http://www.slate.com/id/2201158/

Hoarding it for Home.

I am a music addict, no doubt. At times I am curious about what drives me to seek out music like I do. While I don't know if I'll ever really get to the heart of this obsession. I suppose it just has something to do with the thrill I get from discovering new music, and liek to re-create that sensation as often as possible.

Fortunately, I exist in a time where most music is digitized and therefore easy to store. I have almost thirty five days of music, and it's all stored in an external hard drive which I can fit into a messenger bag. While I have a giant tower of CDs as well, it's fairly well contained (and organized as obsessively as I organize all my music). The following video is about the man who has the largest record collection - and I do mean record collection. I'll warn you, the video is slightly heartbreaking (I got a little misty the first time) but it's an interesting commentary on what is happening with the music industry and consumers in general.


The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo

This also connects with an interesting discussion I had this evening about how the lack of physical media from bands will play into their legacy. All the bands who were putting out records (or CDs, maaaaybe even tapes) have a lasting legacy of their music. For instance, not to toot my own horn, but if in twenty years from now, people want to hear what The Lava Rats used to sound like, I will have CDs to prove it. With the number of bands releasing songs as download only, in a handful of years, when links expire or sites go down, they will have next to nothing to show for it.

Thoughts?

Also - if anyone has music to recommend, I'd be excited to find something new...

A long time coming.

Oh, now that I'm here I don't even know where to begin. I'll just throw out a few sporadic ideas as they pop into my head...

1) Al Davis is the new Howard Hughes. He's weird, he's dictatorial, and I bet he must be storing his urine somewhere in his basement too. Did anyone see him in his press conference today? It was like watching Skeletor. I give him until next season before he has creepy long fingernails, a full beard, and a bunch of Mormons running around doing his bidding.

2) I came surprisingly close to witnessing a fight on MUNI today. That was fun -- apparently it was just some manner of one-sided shoving match. Either way, this woman was screaming bloody murder at like 8:45 this morning.

3) If you don't see me on a very regular basis, I am thinking of undertaking a bit of a change: I think I'm going to give up the wallet chain. This may not seem like much to most, but allow me to explain: I had the same wallet from the seventh grade until a few months back. It outlasted two other chains, probably two dozen pairs of pants or more, and had gotten to the point where I could hardly in good conscience call it "leather" anymore. So now I'm faced with a new and interesting quandary: I need to figure out what wallet best defines me as a person. Plus, my butt will have to adjust to something other than the "old school tri-fold with two snaps" pushed into the ol' bumcakes. I know it's a little ridiculous to worry about these kinds of things, but hey, it's a big change. Some of you might call this change "maturity" or "adulthood" but I don't see it that way. I don't know if I buy into all that growing up stuff.

4) These few days between chapters on my thesis have been a lot of fun. I haven't had to worry about writing, research, or devoting spare time to a specific focused task. Having done this, though, I am curious to see what in the hell I'm going to do with myself once I finish school. I'm not talking on the work front or anything like that, I mean more that I might need some new hobby or something that I can use to occupy my time when I get home from work in the evenings. After two hours of reading every day on the bus, and seemingly infinite amounts of time spent reading/scanning whatever happens to cross my monitor at work, I don't know that going to the coffee shop and reading might not always float my boat. Anyone got suggestions? Wii? Anyone?

5) I give you: witchdog. Look good and deep into those eyes. It expresses my innermost being.

Rest Assured

I know I shouldn't do this, but I am giving you all a heads up that there will be wonderful amounts of new content tonight. For the first time in quite a while, I will be home in the evening with no drinks, a chapter of my thesis turned in, and little else to do.

Also - I've added a new item on the right hand side of the page with links to other parts of my life on the 'net including (but not limited to) the blog I write for work, my twitter, facebook, myspace, etc. It's lame, but there are some of you out there who love me that much, and I love ya right back.

PSA

I want you all to know, gentle readers, that I am not abandoning the blog, nor am I being lame and forgetting to write blogs. Unfortunately, at the moment, my life is being consumed by work on my thesis. Ideally, once I finish this chapter, I will be wary enough to pace myself a bit more the rest of the way so I don't feel like I'm constantly working from behind and being much more of an anti-social hermit than usual.

Your patience is appreciated.

That's gross, MUNI rider. Volume 1

Roughly 5:45. Outbound L going towards West Portal. I am standing in the aisle because my usual mid-bus safe haven was already spoken for. I notice a woman a few feet from me, seated, but her head is moving around in a weird way.

At first I think "Hm, she must be cracking her neck or something."

I look a little closer, and what's going on?

She's flossing.

On the bus.

I can't say how gross this is and at how many levels of gross this hits on.

Number one: no one should ever, EVER floss in public.

Number two: I hesitate to even touch my face after being on MUNI for long, and I sure as hell never eat without washing my hands first, so putting your bus-soiled hands directly into your mouth is disgusting and unsanitary.

Finally, number three: have you seen many people's bathroom mirrors after they floss? There's all sorts of tartar and food chunks and saliva that has popped from the floss onto the mirror. There was no mirror to catch this woman's mouth-generated trash, just the pantleg of whomever happened to have the misfortune of standing up in front of her.

Just thinking about this makes me want to throw my clothes in the wash and hop into a giant tub filled with Purell.

Unfortunately, I'm sure if I peek up from my book frequently enough, I'll have plenty of these to post as the days go on. Therefore I'll end this as plan to end all of these stomach-churning episodes; by saying "That's gross, MUNI rider!"

Ouch.

Costume SuperCenter can kiss my ass.

http://www.costumesupercenter.com/csc/product/popupLargeImage.web?imageUrl=61910.jpg&productCategory=NaN&productName=CostumeSuperCenter.com

I demand satisfaction.