A Lower Profile

Playing with Flock

2005-10-21T01:12:00.000-07:00

Flock is new a Gecko based geared at blogging. And you know what it is? Neat-o! Talk about an ingenious way to inspire one to start blogging again. But not tonight. I have to sleep.

Technorati Tags: Flock

Twenty Songs I've Been Diggin'

2005-10-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

I could never say that I have one favourite song or even twenty, but it's not too much work to list off twenty songs that lately have been tickling my fancy. There's been a lot of them and it shows pretty well what my taste in music is at the moment.

Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
With God on Our Side - Bob Dylan
I'm Looking Through You - Beatles
Death of Emmett Till - Bob Dylan
Knock Yourself Out - Jon Brion
I Have Forgiven You Jesus - Morrissey
April She Will Come - Simon and Garfunkel
Shake the Sheets - Ted Leo and the pharmacists
Hummingbird - Wiclo
16 Military Wives - The Decemberists
All My Trials - Joan Baez
Jezebel - Iron and Wine
Mother Mary - Eel
Brand New Colony - Postal Service
Breathe Me - Sia
What a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong
Tomorrow is a Highway - Pete Seeger
Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan
Do Re Mi - Woody Guthry
Come on! Feel the Illinoise - Sufjan Stevens
Jenny Wren - Paul McCartney

In other news, as of yesterday, I am now a loud to go to the store and buy packs of cigarettes. But smoking isn't really my thing. Nor is chew or porn or strip clubs but cigars, voting, and Google adsense are. Now just three more years until I'm insured all the rights a citizen of the US can have (well, sort of).

On quoting without analysis

2005-09-23T02:07:00.000-07:00

Scrivs and Bryan have put a vendetta out for rebloggers. Reblogging as copying full post is unethical. But people need to make sure not to confuse this with solely quoting. Anyone who's taken a ninth grade English course knows that quoting is different from copying. I'm sure Bryan and Scrivs would agree with that premise. But there are always nay-sayers so I'll explain further.

The other day I found a spiffy Jon Brion interview so I copied one of my favourite quotes from it and then published it. Why? It was something my readers would be interested in. I didn't take the whole article; I just took enough so that people would want a little more. And there was a definitive reason I didn't comment on it: right now, with my lackluster knowledge of music history, theory, philosophy and psychology, any further elaboration would've sounded sophomoric. In more practical terms, nothing I could've said would've furthered the discourse on that subject. But just because I didn't have anything worth while to say about the quote, doesn't mean that I shouldn't point the quote out to other people.

There is a danger in going over board on quotes. Reading a blog that solely tells me what other people are saying is boring. But worse than that is those bloggers who rephrases the whole concept in his own words in a way that doesn't add extra substance, but people choose not to ostracize them. It is done all the time. I understand it is what you're supposed to do in journalism class but come on! If it is necessary, re-explain an issue: use more clever analogies, clearer diction and hell throw a chart or diagram in there. But don't just change the verbs, adjectives, sentence structure and then say, "This is original content." You're just wasting your time doing that, and it takes just as little talent as quoting and often time is less useful.

If someone has summarized an issue better than you can, don't screw it up by needlessly affirming your agreement. Sometimes the best way of agreeing is to say what's already been said and nothing more. Give the quotes a chance to have life of their own. It's just another way of keeping writing simple.

They were together

2005-09-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

Two of my idols were together tonight, and it was wonderful. On the Daily Show, Jon ~~Stuart~~ Stewart [did I actually do that] just interviewed (is that what you call his mocking of celebrities?) George Clooney. It was absolutely orgasmic (the non-sexual orgasm). Apparently Clooney has a movie named Good Night, and Good Luck coming out mid-October which looks quite excellent. If you care to view Jon sexually harassing George Clooney, it will be on The Daily Show’s website in a couple days.

Not so random, unidentified quote: "We'd all be hero's if we stopped using petroleum."

Jon Brion on Music

2005-09-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

At the Huckabees premier I met a guy whose been one of the main conspirators on The Simpsons since its inception. And he was sort of saying to me 'Oh, it's so intimidating what you do just musically.' And he was talking about musicians in general and sort of saying 'I always wanted to be a musician, but you guys just have these crazy brains to be able to do that.' And I was just trying to explain to him 'No, music is easy. It's got 12 characters. That's about half of what we deal with in the English language. The English language is a hundred times harder than music. And there's so many absolutely genius musicians who are incredibly stupid people that will back my theory up.' We went our separate ways at the party and I realized that I was finally able to relate it for him. So I said 'Hey, you know how you turn on the TV and you see these 5-year old kids who can play violin like a virtuoso? You might complain that they could be a little more seasoned or emotional, but they're doing it, right? How many 5-year old comedians have you seen that can knock it out of the park? None.' And he looked at me and said 'Wow, that's really reassuring.' And I said 'Man, I'm not being self-deprecating. It's just the truth.' Music looks very formidable to people outside of it and it looks like it's this realm of spooky genius. And it's not. It's this very, very simple language that is capable of creating very complex human response and abstract thought and emotion and in terms of architectural thought, it does really cool things.

via Ign

A Relaxation/Depression Mix

2005-09-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Leohnard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is one of the all-time greatest songs as is "Creep" by Radiohead. Last night the two songs met in their similar forms (Jeff Buckley's rendition of "Hallelujah" and Radiohead's acoustic version of "Creep") thanks to iTunes' shuffle. I must say it was a beautiful thing. It was a meeting so compelling that it forced (my self-control was completely lost) me to construct a mix revolving around the two songs. After a short while of sorting through my currently abridged music library, the mix came to life and it was more than stellar. In fact it was so good that I though I'd share the track listing with you:

"Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley
"Svo Hljott" by Sigur Ros
"Tremoloa Debut" by Broken Social Scene (off their upcoming CD)
"Creep (acoustic)" by Radio Head
"To the Workers of Rockford" by Sufjan Stevens
"Wheels on Fire"by The Magic Numbers
"Dreamng of . . ." by Earlimart
"Man is the Baby" by Antony and the Johnsons
"Exta Ordinary Thin" by Aqualung
"BWV 244 - Erbarme Dich" by Yo-Yo Ma
"Lilac Wine" by Jeff Buckley
"Andvari" by Sigur Ros
"Soft Black Stars " by Antony and the Johnsons
"Reservations" by Wilco
"Corpus Christi Carol (For Roy)" by Jeff Buckley
"A Glow" by Okkervil River
"Stable Song" by Death Cab for Cutie

As I said, it was made with an abridge version of my music library so there is an unhealthy amount of artists with multiple songs, but they all end up working nicely together. At some point I'd like to go through and refine and add to the mix so I'd love to hear your relaxation/depression song recommendations. Or maybe you're more inclined to complain about certain songs that don't fit in the mix, please do.

Gap Favourites

2005-09-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Go to Gap right now, spend sixty dollar, and get the Gap Favourites CD. Or you could just download it from TorrentSpy. It's worth at least one listen. Who can resist the most talented people in pop music on one CD? Even the Keith Urban song is good!

Alanis Morissette - "Crazy" (Seal)
Brandon Boyd - "Alison" (Elvis Costello)
Jason Mraz - "One Love" (Bob Marley)
John Legend - "Hello, It's Me" (The Isley Brothers)
Joss Stone - "God Only Knows" (The Beach Boys)
Keith Urban - "Most People I Know Think I'm Crazy" (Billy Thorpe)
Michelle Branch - "Life on Mars" (David Bowie)
Michelle Williams - "Let's Stay Together" (Al Green)

Can it be? Microsoft is becoming cool again

2005-09-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

An unexpected whirl wind of excitement has followed the Office preview (and here’s a Channel 9 video). In no way did I (or most other sane people) think it could be as cool as it is. I heard that there would be big changes but couldn't fathom the changes being as big as they are. The UI is a completely overhauled. Text based pull down menus are a thing of the past, replaced by an icon based, tab-divided menu. Gone are the days of fumbling through each menu category, clicking on everything in sight each time you want to use a certain function. Now you can just elegantly fumble through once and then you'll quickly associate that function with its respective icon. It is a genius system and one that if Apple had developed would be praised but since it's Microsoft, people hate (e.g. 37 signals commenters).

Also, let me quickly note that Vista is going to awesome. I really encourage you to watch the PDC Keynote to learn more of what I'm talking about. The interface looks sexy yet familiar. Oh glass, how can you be so Mac like yet so unique? And some of Vista's new features (i.e. Sideshow, an expose competitor, instant searching, etc) are absolutely orgasmic. I really hate Microsoft for making my decision between Mac and PC more difficult.

But more exciting than Office or Vista themselves, Microsoft has brought in a genius to blog about Office: Joe Friend. Joe Friend! You may have heard myths of his greatness, and I'm here to tell you, they are true. Except for the one about the seven virgins, that one was just ridiculous. . .

Me on Huricane Katrina

2005-09-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

(23:05:31) Andrew: the bush administration doesn't know how to handle this hurricane
(23:07:05) Brendan: its not bush's fault, i dont think though
(23:07:23) Andrew: it's not
(23:07:23) Brendan: i know he could have been influential in getting the levels built, but. . .
(23:07:31) Andrew: but they won't admit something went wrong
(23:07:40) Brendan: everybody in the government handled it wrong
(23:07:52) Brendan: nobody's admitting guilt
(23:08:26) Brendan: it was just a shortsighted mistake
(23:08:45) Brendan: the only people to blame is everybody, and thats pointless
(23:09:14) Andrew: i know that. but i just want them to admit something is wrong
(23:09:25) Andrew: i just want bush to say: we fucked up.
(23:11:16) Brendan: yeah
(23:11:25) Brendan: that would be nice
(23:11:47) Andrew: i think it would've been good politics to say so
(23:12:27) Brendan: i disagree?
(23:12:53) Brendan: theres too many hard core liberals who would jump on him even harder and cite that
(23:13:21) Andrew: you'd have to word the statement properly
(23:13:55) Andrew: but i think it would go over better than pretending that new orleans has been blessed by a hurricane