Subculture Shock

joecarnahan @ 1:03am:

Turns out the Capital One online account setup worked fine, except that they send a superfluous email as they process each application.

eilonwy @ 9:05pm: THURSDAY NIGHT TV (SPN 5.09)
VD: In which Rob Low-Rent's (which is to say Damon's) plan goes awry thanks to Bonnie's possession by someone named Emily, Stephan walks away (are you going to just walk away? don't walk away!) and then there is epic man pain.

NOW: The fourth wall gets broken, shattered, destroyed, and murdered.
( The Real Ghostbusters )

Callie is cuddling with ami!Sam and I am waiting for Greek food delivery and drinking plum wine. Mmmmmm, plum wine. Flurry is playing WoW. She appears to be trying to beat up a pair of twin robots, but what do I know? Fud fud fud, I want fuds.

( It's only 35 after... )

Where are my fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuds?

Callie is asleep, ami!Sam is beside her. It's very cute.

I've noticed that there is already wank online about this episode and claims of jumping the shark. I'll hold my opinion for another 15 minutes.

My cable is now freezing. Fortunately it's a commercial, but it better fix itself before SPN returns.

Hey Melrose Place, you can't fire Ruby version 1.0!

( 15 more minutes and I am just slightly tipsy )

Smallville Commercia: The blur has an imposter?
Flurry & Eilonwy: THE BLUR?!?!

Fuds have arrived and Jack (my cat) is trying to steal Flurry's.

( So, y'know, thanks. )

So. There you go. I'ma go eat my fries and drink my wine now.

krasota @ 6:51pm: Bus trip!
Today was awesome. Ronan asked to go out. It was pouring off and on and windy (remnants of Ida, no doubt), so I really didn't want to go to a park and get soaked. Instead, we went on a bus adventure. We set off slightly late and got to the bus stop. I called Tom and asked if the bus was listed on the online locator and the 4 to Fry Spring was running *really* late, so we were perfect. Got on the bus and bought a day pass.

Took the bus over to the hospital, got off. Went up to the new parking garage bridge (which is heated!) and admired the construction (UVA hospital, new cancer center) and the railroad tracks. Then we walked over to the Corner, where Mommy obtained coffee at our favorite shop. Then it was down to the bus stop by the train overpass.

The number seven showed up a few minutes later and we rode it for about 45 minutes to get to Fashion Square Mall. Ronan was in heaven the whole time, talking about everything we were passing, people, cars, busses, you name it. At the mall, he played in the play zone for a bit, then we walked back to the bus stop and he once again talked nonstop for the bus ride back downtown. From there, we caught the 4 back to our house and walked home. The whole day took us about four-five hours. It was pretty awesome. Yes, all of the destinations are 2-15 minutes away by car, but this was more fun.

I started dinner while he talked to Tom about his adventures. One pot meal. Onion, celery, garlic, prunes, chopped boneless skinless chicken thighs, wine, water, broth, brown basmati rice, some herbs. The rice took forever to cook--I ended up needing to add water and broth.

It's finally done and oh so tasty with a bit of parmesan on top. Yum.

eilonwy @ 12:58pm: Not every day is all good or all bad
I had a very difficult time getting out of bed today because last night I stayed up waaaay to late rereading a favorite novel. Oops. Upon getting ready I came to the realization that it's been a really long time since I'd bought any clothes, especially "basic" type clothes and that many of the shirts I have are falling apart. I'd already decided to drive to campus today because I want to get groceries on the way home (as there is a very real chance of a grocery strike starting tomorrow) so I decided to stop at Target on the way in the hopes of finding some basic short-sleeve fitted v-necks or scoop-neck shirts. I was quite surprised to not, in fact, find any-- you'd think that since this is AZ they wouldn't be trotting out mostly long-sleeved stuff even though much of the rest of the country is chilly. But I did find a three-quarter length v-neck that I liked (in green) and a white tank top to wear under it. After purchasing these two items (and some lip-stain and a few other oddments) I changed into the new clothes (annoyed by the shirt I'd been wearing which had started off this entire enterprise by having a small hole in, potentially acquired via cat claw.)

Sadly, the cheap parking lot near my office seemed full, so I parked in the nearby (more expensive) garage. Two douches in suits were walking in the middle of the driving area, which was irritating, but fortunately I wasn't running late for anything. Then an undergrad in a sports car nearly crashed into me because she took the corner too fast and too tight, but we avoided a collision and I finally parked up on the fourth floor. I decided to stop in the coffee shop as I'd not had breakfast (being out of food at my house) and ordered a breakfast sandwich and a hot tea.

I don't know if you drink tea, but when you order it in a typical coffee shop, it is really freakin' hot. I'm used to this, and tend to put a few extra napkins around the cup, on top of the piece of cardboard that is supposed to keep your hands from burns. So, no trouble there. Unfortunately, Mr Coffee Shop Owner didn't put the lid on the cup right, and there I am, going for the door, and the lid pops off and hot tea/water pours all over my right hand/arm. I probably should have shrieked or something so that someone would have noticed and I'd have at least gotten a free drink out of the deal. But no, my usual modus operandi is to avoid conflict or notice of any kind, so I mopped up the spill (on myself, not the floor) and went about my business with my new first-degree burns and tea stains on my brand-new less-than-hour old shirt Grr. Okay, so it's less than an hour later and you already can't see the bright red skin that had originally shown up. It now feels a bit like a light sunburn, so all in all, not a big deal. But still, it made me cranky. And my shirt has drops on it. And I have a bit of a crush on someone that I see on Thursdays and I'd wanted to look like, I dunno, not-a-slob. :P

I'm especially cranky since the last time I was heading for my office (Tuesday, since campus was closed yesterday) I got run into by a skateboard. (I'm crossing the street and this guy quite clearly can't control his skateboard and steps off it-- leaving the freakin' heavy board to slam into the top of my foot/ankle. I shrieked "Fuck!" he apologized vaguely and skated off, I limped out of the crosswalk and assessed the damage. A kind woman who'd been in front of me at Subway just moments before, randomly enough, asked if I was okay. I blinked back tears and said yes. And I was. Until a few hours later, after I'd been sitting to grade for a long while, when I tried to walk to Flurije's car (as she was being kind enough to give me a ride) when I realized I was in achey agony. Grrr. I went to a friend to complain about the situation, but it had turned out that just hours before, in front of the same building, he'd seen a skateboarder slam into a blind man's cane and keep going. The poor man, clearly not knowing what had happened, was left to fluster his apologies. Freakin' skateboarders, man. Ouch.

ANYWAY, I and my new burns headed on into the office. I stopped at the Writing Programs Office to check my mail, however, because I've been waiting for a week now to hear if I'd passed my portfolio.

The portfolio, for those who aren't slaving away in academia, or who might have a different set of rules compared to ASU, is essentially the first part of the PhD examination process. It's kind of both the capstone to your coursework and the doorway into the dissertation work. You have to turn in two polished essays-- ones which have received more work than simply for a course, as if you were thinking about publishing them-- and your preliminary bibliography, which is to say 50+ works on which you "want" to be tested on. I'd been told that this whole process was just a hoop to jump through, and not to worry about it, just get it done. I had assumed it was pass/fail, and fail just meant that you had to fix some things. I turned in the article that was published in Shakespeare Bulletin and the paper on The Fatal Dowry that I'd originally written for a class, then revised for Renaissance Colloquium. I did not revise it again, however. (This is the same subject as the paper I gave at the Blackfriars, but a longer version.)

I had run into my adviser twice between handing in the portfolio and receiving the letter about it today. She had given me comments about how she thought I'd be pleased. I assumed this meant I passed. I honestly never thought about the potential for not passing-- remember everyone had told me that this was just a hoop needing jumping through.

So it turns out, I learned today, that there are, apparently, levels of passing one's portfolio. Had I known this, I undoubtedly would have given that second paper at least one more going over, probably many. And indeed, upon receiving my letter from both my committee and the department chair and the supervisor of graduate studies, there was a lot of commentary on how I should try to publish this second paper, but that it would need significant work before that could happen. Regardless, that paper did what it needed to do in a portfolio, which is to say it showed that I could research, write in an academic style, etc.

But it seems that I continue to owe my success to the paper for Shakespeare Bulletin. On the strength of that paper, my committee suggested (and the department awarded) a "pass with distinction."

Woo?

I should be quite happy, I know. And I am! But it's weird because ... I didn't know that existed! I didn't know there were levels. Are there other levels, higher ones, that I just missed? Are there lower levels (besides pass and fail) that I leapt over? I know I should just be happy, but it's a really weird feeling to not really understand the good thing that I have apparently achieved! I can't find any information on this question on the ASU site, so... Y'know what? I choose to believe Heather when she guessed that Pass with Distinction is the highest. I feel like I and my first-degree burn might deserve the celebration. :)

Besides, the award for passing your portfolio is to study for the comprehensive exams, so... :)

And I'm off. Much to do. Gotta get a chapter of German done for class at 3 (the subjunctive-- bloody hell, more freakin' verb forms). I also have 30-some papers to grade for 221 (would have liked to have turned them back tomorrow, but so not going to happen it seems), classes to plan (tomorrow's 101 and 221), and a play to read (Massacre at Paris by Marlowe for tomorrow's Renaissance Colloquium.) Whee.

Tonight is Supernatural. And Project Runway, even if the latter is on ridiculously late at night now.

mattoongasser @ 1:08pm: Working on a cover that we can play live. Our first! (if it winds up working out)

mirvana @ 1:02pm: Photos from Wasteland
Wasteland: A Mindgame Productions event, airsoft LARP based on Fallout 3

mirvana @ 10:19am: The dental saga continues...
Verizon is here to install FiOS, but I still have Internets yet...

While I was off on my sojourn, the molar that recently had a root canal broke, and a good bit of it came off. It looked rather alarming, and I was worried that I was going to lose the tooth, but yesterday, the dentist was able to put a temporary crown on it, and I go back in three weeks for the permanent crown. The temporary crown feels really weird, and is highly distracting. I also have to be careful not to chew crunchy foods on that side. I will surely go mad.

This incident made me realize my mortality. One loses teeth as one gets older, and eventually you need dentures. Ick. I don't want that. I am inspired to become even more obsessive about my dental care, and start a regimen of calcium supplements.

In other news, we tried something new on the drive home from Florida. I downloaded an audio book to the iPod and we listened to that for most of the trip between Raleigh and Pittsburgh. Nothings Sacred, by Lewis Black, read by the author. It was like listening to 5+ hours of his comic act, or his segments on The Daily Show, and it was quite enjoyable and made the time pass more effectively than just listening to music, which is what we normally do. It had me LOL several times. I think this will become a tradition on our road trips now.

Otherwise, the trip was a huge success and well worth it. Dark Threads and Mindgame Productions made enough money to justify doing it again, and the feedback from the players was unprecedentedly positive.

mirvana @ 8:01am: What has she been going on about...
Yesterday's Tweets:

09:33 at the dentist. Again. :-( #

14:43 this Thurs. Rock Bottom is tapping a Belgian triple. Its also trivia night. Join us? #

16:42 ...nobody loves me. Its true...not like you do. #

16:53 Temp crown in mouth feels weird. Trying to pretend is not there. #

16:54 Whatever happened to peace, love, and understanding? #

16:55 @gwenix Yay! #

19:43 @WineTwits - Um...yeah. Grab a Super Big Gulp of 7-Eleven's New $3.99 Vino for the Masses | Diane | Fast Company ow.ly/BuHH #

Loudtwitter. Because sometimes, I'm just too busy to blog about it.

joecarnahan @ 1:02am:

ING Direct, you get the thumbs down for lower interest rates and not letting me access you via Mint nor Quicken. Time to switch banks.

Ally Bank, your rates and service are great, but I feel bad working with you when I know you're entirely propped up with my tax dollars.

Capital One Direct, your online account setup didn't work last night and you're not answering the phone today. You're not helping here.

krasota @ 11:43pm: Ronan's loot bag
I was pretty happy with this. It was simple to make. I didn't like any of the loot bags at Target. I did, however, love a couple microsuede placemats I found in the seasonal section.

I stitched some double-fold bias tape closed for the handles, then sewed the loops on. Stitched the bags most of the way around three sides (left a couple inches at the top). I'd have used webbing or ribbon, but the tape is the first thing I found, so that's what I used.

If he ever decides he wants a bigger loot bag, I can either make another or add sides and a bottom. Right now, though, it's about 2/3 of his size, so he definitely has room to grow with it. He's not sure he likes candy enough to beg strangers for it.

Well, he likes candy enough, it's the strangers he's not so sure about.

And that's fine.

mattoongasser @ 12:54pm: The mix is done, I think. Just got back from a run. Considering putting off writing emails by working on rewriting another song. Hmm...

mirvana @ 8:02am: What has she been going on about...
Yesterday's Tweets:

09:20 the event was a huge success! Ready to hit the road for home. #

14:16 we're headed home. Stopping in Fredericksburg for lunch before battling the beltway. #

14:40 watching the memorial to the fallen of the Fort Hood tragedy, on the monitors where we stopped for lunch. #

Loudtwitter. Because sometimes, I'm just too busy to blog about it.

virul3nt @ 7:29am: In case you haven't seen it yet, the latest news from me is that I'll be supporting Aesthetic Perfection as Shiv-r in Sydney on 29 January 2010!!

Share your love in the Facebook event.

jdavyd @ 8:34am: Now Booking - East Coast Tour 2010
Greetings everyone. I'm quite excited to announce the decision to take this show on the road next summer! We've had a lot of fun playing in and around our back yard these last few months, and we've met a ton of new people, and I know that this is only going to get bigger and better as we go to new places.

As with the release of the album, Waves, this tour will truly be a labor of love. I have no booking agent, no promotional staff, no manager, and no street team. What I do have is a strong desire to get out there and bring this love and music to as many people as possible. I also have google, the help of some good friends and fellow musicians, and most importantly: you!

That's why I'm writing now, to ask for your help. If you're on the east coast and want me to come visit, send an email to tour@jdavydwilliams.com. What I'm looking for are specific venues that can host us for a night, and help us out with a little money, a place to stay, some (vegan) food and a certified way to get the word out about the show.

Good examples are yoga studios, open minded nightclubs, coffee shops, book stores, and churches... but basically, if it's got a sound system and enough room for a chunk of people to sing kirtan in, it's worth mentioning. Even the sound system isn't totally required under the right circumstances!

The first date is already booked for June 4th, at the Integral Yoga Institute in NYC.

Expect to hear a lot about this from me in the coming months!

Om shanthi,

Jdavyd

mattoongasser @ 1:44pm: Today: more mixing. I took this week off, and I think I'm going to use the time to grow a neckbeard.

spellbound_dc, posting in cvillegoth @ 12:37pm:

jdavyd @ 10:27am: Twitter, a change of heart.
So, here’s the short (but longer than 140 characters) explanation about my change of heart regarding twitter.

Social networking has been on a climb for years. When I first go into the internet, we had to walk 10 miles backwards uphill in the snow naked just to update our diaryland pages.

After a while, livejournal was the cool thing… and get this, you had to be *invited* to join LJ, so it wasn’t just for everyone, only the *cool* people. Eventually that changed, and anyone could join, but by then we had all gone to myspace. Then came facebook (which you could only use if you were at college… sound familiar?) and then twitter.

(I know there’s a million others in their as well. Friendster, I still love ya baby.)

Now we can have a CMS on our own domains that updates all of our other various web projects. One blog update to rule them all!

Anyway, twitter always bugged me. The concept – updates limited to only 140 characters – seemed to be the perfect example of our culture’s short attention span. We aren’t going to write any more than 140 characters because no one wants to read more than 140 characters anyway, so why bother pushing our friends/family/strangers to do more? There were some exceptions, like the use of twitter in Iran earlier this year, but the majority of what I coming out of twitter was: Keep it short, make it shorter!

So this week I was at an AA meeting, and the topic was Slogans. There are a shitload of them in AA.
One day at a time.
Easy does it.
Meeting makers make it.
Keep coming back.

I mean there are literally pages of these things. One person said their sponsor hated the slogans, and described them as, “Like being stoned to death with refrigerator magnets.” Another said it made them feel like they were in preschool.

Sound like twitter to you?

I hadn’t though much about them one way or the other, but it was an interesting thing to listen to people talk about, because most people saw these slogans as tools, and not unlike the memory aids we learned in school. One small phrase to connect you to a larger, greater lesson. Please excuse my dear aunt sally, anyone?

This sort of got me thinking about Mantras, as well, and how if you develop a practice around saying a mantra, it can act as a rope to pull you back towards your center in any given situation. It’s not unlike Kirtan, either, right? A simple word or phrase, and we instill it with power. The phrase isn’t the important thing, it’s the power we put behind it.

All of this sort of made me rethink my disdain for twitter, and the culture surrounding it. I can’t deny that there are people who are and will use it to shorten their already dwindling attention spans… but that doesn’t meant that I can’t choose to use it for something larger.

So, here it is: http://www.twitter.com/jdavyd

I promise if you don’t like twitter, you won’t like this either.

eilonwy @ 11:14pm: Project Runway
Wow. I thought I posted this on, y'know, Thursday when it was relevant. But I opened up Semagic to post an update about my weekend and found it. So, um, here?

( Make it work )

krasota @ 7:50pm: My family of musicians.
Tom is playing a jingle-stick and a bell-rattle. Ronan is alternately playing a kazoo, three note flute, and a harmonica while jumping up and down and singing "I DON'T WANT A BANANA".

Apparently things are dire. He's putting on his bike helmet.

mirvana @ 8:01am: What has she been going on about...
Yesterday's Tweets:

16:30 Weather is super-nice here in Florida! Setting up for the (airsoft) event tomorrow at Waynes World of Paintball. #

Loudtwitter. Because sometimes, I'm just too busy to blog about it.

choronzon333 @ 12:45pm: the smallWorld: Back in a BIG way!

Hello! I’m back!

Yep, after nearly two years the Small World is back in action.

We just heard an excerpt from The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast (http://www.hppodcraft.com), which is actually an excerpt from H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, The Picture in the House.

Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer are the host of the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast and we’ll talk with them shortly. But before we talk with Chris and Chad I’m going to very quickly bring you up to speed with what I’ve been up to.

Back in late 2007 the Small World website was hacked. Hacked so badly that I had to nuke the entire database and start from scratch. That really took the wind out of my sails because starting from scratch meant updating the site with 496 shows.

And to be completely honest, I was more than a little burnt out. I had produced nearly 500 shows and the workload was taking it’s tole on me. I had to arrange the interview. do the interviews and then produce three shows a week. And remember, this is a labor of love, not a paying gig.

So when my site was hacked it was the final straw.

Since then I’ve been producing a show called Solipsistic Nation, where I play the best of all genres of electronic music. Along with playing great music I also interview people from the electronic music community: musicians, record labels, festival organizers, etc.

If NPR produced had an electronic music show then it would sound a lot like Solipsistic Nation.

Producing Solipsistic Nation is a lot of fun but I’ve always had that itch ti interview people about things that fascinate me that have nothing to do with electronic music. When Joe Matheny suggested that I archive the Small World on Alterati I thought it would be a perfect time to re-launch the Small World on a twice a month basis, which is a workload I can handle.

You’re probably asking yourself: what the hell is Alterati?

Alterati is like a word that you don’t know the exact definition of but you know what it means. Rather than try to explain Alterati to you right now, we’ll talk to Joseph Matheny, Alterati’s founder, on the next show and have him explain it.

So… let’s get to today’s show.

As I mentioned, our guests are Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer. Chris and Chad produce the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast and H.P. Lovecraft was a science fiction slash horror writer who died in 1937.

You may or may not know Lovecraft but his writings have had an amazing impact on popular culture: from movies and comics like Hellboy to bands like Metallica and Black Sabbath. He’s also had a profound impact on writers like Stephen King, Jorge Luis Borges  and Neil Gaiman.

The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast treats the work of Lovecraft with a deft touch. Each week features excerpts from one of Lovecraft’s stories accompanied with insightful and often hilarious commentary from Chris and Chad.

Today’s incidental music was provided by Veil of Thorns with the track “The Reflection” from their album, Necrofuturist. You can hear more of their Necrofuturistic music at http://www.veilofthorns.com

We’re going to keep with the funnier side of H.P. Lovecraft and close the show with a bit from Smart Bomb Radio with “Cthulhu Is My Co-pilot” and Tom Smith’s “Cthulhu Fthagn.”

Smart Bomb Radio can be found at http://www.myspace.com/smartbombradio and Tom Smith can be found at http://www.tomsmithonline.com

You can reach me at smallworldpodcast@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/smallworld

Listen @ Alterati.com

mattoongasser @ 9:29am: Had an awesome time last night. Thanks so much to everyone who came to our show. I'll have some pictures and news later on today, I think.

jdavyd @ 10:09am: ummwut?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/squeez-bacon.html

"Each serving is as healthy as real bacon..."

mirvana @ 8:01am: What has she been going on about...
Yesterday's Tweets:

22:45 Nice stay in Raleigh last night. Made it to Orlando. Tomorrow we go to Ocala. #

Loudtwitter. Because sometimes, I'm just too busy to blog about it.

eilonwy @ 9:23pm: SPN Thoughts
( Post Recap Thoughts )