Category: current events

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self aware blog writingness

i’m still trying to get a handle on what this blog thing is about. what should i put in here. i feel hesitant to put too much in here cuz i don’t want to overlap too much with the zine. i’m okay with putting up outtakes, deleted sections, fragments, alternate versions, etc, of published things. but i’m worried about putting stuff up here that i might want to put in a future issue of flotation device. although maybe i shouldn’t worry about that so much. cuz regardless i’d rewrite/rework whatever i put up on the blog. but still i feel a little weird about double dipping like that.

right now i guess i’m feeling like this will be good for my little more like journaly things that i write but never publish anymore. shit that i used to throw into zines when i made little shorty zines. shit about pirates and stuff. shit that for whatever reason i don’t feel like putting in published flotation device. published. unpublished.

also. i just need to be writing again. just a little bit. i’ve taken the past few months off cuz i was starting to feel massive anxiety. like apprehension nervous tension in my stomach and part of it seemed to be coming from pressure i was putting on myself about writing and the zine and all. so i stopped. stopped writing in the morning before work. stopped writing on the weekends. stopped trying to squeeze an hour in after work.

i haven’t quit. but i’ve taken a break. and i need to just kind of write to write for a bit. a little at a time. then i can attack the next zine. the next issue.

i haven’t been feeling so intensely anxious these days. i don’t know if it’s the not writing. the backing off from band responsibilities. learning to relax or what. it still arises occasionally but not so frequently. less sick lately.

i’ll work on the next issue of the zine when it feels right. when i’m up for it. when it doesn’t seem so massive. so daunting. in the meantime there’s these little shits to write. little by little.

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yesterday

for yr enjoyment…

untitled haiku #1

water under the vending machine
the bathroom smells of shit and aftershave
my eyes a fog of computer and boredom

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january 2009

holy shit was it cold last week! like 30 below 0. i call that cold. i know if you live up in minneapolis or winnipeg it gets colder. but 30 below is pretty cold. winter came on fierce right before we left for new jersey for christmas. and then when we got back it was 60 degrees for a day. no shit. but then winter came back even more! it’s a bit more normal this week – teens, 20’s etc. i can ride my bike again. that’s something. here are some winter pics taken from inside our apartment. where it was warm. i sure wasn’t going outside to take pictures.

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thirty. wisconsin.

i turned 30 back in october. for the occasion h and i went up to the middle of nowhere wisconsin for a few days. we stayed in a little cottage thing on a pond. it was righteous. it was nice and fallish. sunny on the first day. rainy on the second. and on the third. snow. hooray! these are a few pics of the great outdoors of mid wisconsin. i’ve been 30 for a month now. it’s not bad. kinda nice.

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this is in the yard of the cabin. h took this one.

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the cabin.

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the pond.

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the pond (photo by h)

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the woods. flying saucer attack stylee photo by h.

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from the car.

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around the cabin.

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from the car.

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on the way home.

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on the way home.

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also from the car on the way home.

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and so’s this one.

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radio loways twofer

yes. that’s right. there are actually two new radio loways shows up right now. my own show, nerdsville, is up. and so is the Radio Loways Halloween Spectacular of Terror! awesome! just thought i’d let you know.

radio loways

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i done been tagged!

hello friends. i got tagged by missy kulik so i have to follow the rules. or else she’ll kick my ass. i best get on this.

here are the rules, if yr someone i tagged:

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Mention the rules.
• Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.
• Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.(sorry in advance!)
• Go to each person’s blog and leave a comment that lets them know they’ve been tagged.

and now here’s some boring shit about me

1. pretty much the only records i buy anymore are jazz or jazzish experimental records. this also extends to cds. very few cd purchases these days. cds are so 90’s. as a matter of fact our cd collection is quite the snapshot of when we first got into music. lots of 90s indyish alt stuff, big runs of bands we were way into. and that’s about it. a few patches of newer stuff we’re into but can’t get on record. that’s boring, right?

2. i’ve been a vegetarian for seven years now. i’m pretty strict about it. but i can admit when things i can’t eat smell good. like this barbecue place a little ways from our place. that place smelled pretty awesome. what did i eat? mac and cheese, fries and a salad. all delicious. i even got to try the barbecue sauce. success!

3. if i stay up much past midnight, i get sick. i blame the 9 – 5 schedule, and my general wuss stomach fortitude.

4. the first music i actually paid for with my own cash was the second living colour album. time’s up. it was a casette. it was that or faith no more’s “epic.” one of those two. but either way, casette.

5. one of my biggest regrets in life is that i stopped skating early in high school. all my friends who skated switched to basketball for some reason. boring! i was not up for the lonely world of skating by myself as a 13-14 year old in woodstock, il.

6. i used to be intimidated by taking the cta by myself when i first moved to chicago. i was 20. for some reason i view the bus as being more of a pain than the train. why is that? it’s really not more of a drag, but it is in my head before i go somewhere. weird. and boring! total success!

i am gonna tag these poor suckas. prolly just these three. cuz i don’t know too many people that are rocking blogs.

onsmith
anders
olivia

maybe they’ll play, maybe they won’t. we’ll see.

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reading watching listening

let’s do it!

reading

el reino de este mundo by alejo carpentier. i am on a mission to read more books in spanish by people who wrote in spanish. this is the first of a new bunch group of authors for me to try. so far so good. i don’t always get all the vocab, but i get enough out of it that i can see it in my mind. which is good. and i can tell you what it’s about. haiti and revolution back in the 19th century. this is the guy who coined the term “magical realism” or in spanish “lo real maravilloso.”

lee miller’s war  edited by antony penrose. lee miller pretty much rules. awesome photographer and apparently a solid writer. this is a collection of her war correspondence from world war 2 when she was writing for vogue and a couple other magazines it seems like. she was travelling with the army as it made its way across france and into germany. writing and taking pictures as she went. it’s a little rough to read her german hate, but she lived through the blitz. i’d prolly not be stoked on germans at the time either.

when baghdad ruled the muslim world: the rise and fall of islam’s greatest dynasty by hugh kennedy. the title pretty much says it all. about the abbasids reign of a few hundred years. started out solid, but i’m kinda bored with it at this point. i think i’m not gonna finish it. i’m not sure where it goes wrong. the info is good. i think part of the problem must be the writing style. and there’s nothing really wrong with it, but i thin it doesn’t grab me. but points for modernizing the translation of historical texts so that i know that in some cases what they really meant was “motherfucker” or “shit.”

roxy music: both ends burning by jonathan rigby. roxy music biography! what? fucking awesome!!! unfortunately not so awesome. i had to stop around country living. too bad. there’s some good info, but not enough. and it’s just kinda dull. the eno parts are all good. but there’s way too much focus on ferry. not enough on the rest of the band. and come on, brian ferry is no lyrical genius. nor an awesome songwriter. so what the fuck. if it weren’t for the rest of the band, they wouldn’t’ve been awesome. oh well.

watching

taste of tea by katsuhito ishii. this movie ruled. calm. beautiful. righteous. totally made me feel good. watch it.

spring, summer, fall, winter and spring by kim ki-duk. also calm. also beautiful. also made me feel good. couldn’t figure out why. but it did.

pan’s labyrinth by guillermo del toro. amazing. gorgeous. totally brutal. never want to see it again. i said that the first time i saw it, but i watched it again with h who hadn’t seen it yet.

the dark knight by christopher nolan. yay batman! solid solid.

space is the place by john coney. but come on it’s all about fucking sun ra! this movie might be one of the dumbest thing i’ve ever seen. but it’s awesome in its ridiculousness. and its fucking sun ra! although the best part was the ten minutes of sun ra and arkestra walking around in egypt set to the song watusi. that ruled! hooray!

listening

the ex and getachew mekuria  at the logan square auditorium and at pritzker pavilion. these two shows totally blew me away and made me feel awesome. so did…

phil cohran at the pritzker pavilion doing a tribute to sun ra. although it was more of a tribute to phil cohran. but it was truly truly amazing. got choked up a couple of times i did.

 jarvis cocker at the dumbass pitchfork music festival. we went to pitchfork and all we saw was jarvis. we spent 30 dollars a piece to see him. and boy was he worth it. lots of man love for that guy. from the dudes a few yards away from us. i expected underwear and glasses to be thrown on stage in uncontrolled outbursts of nerd love. we were pretty close and pretty much in swoon the whole time. hopefully he’ll come back when his new album comes out next year.

piss piss piss moan moan moan at enemy. alex (of the rories, the band i’m in) and nicole play some amazing noise drone electronics. this was a righteous show. i’m usually not a fan of total noise, but i guess this wasn’t total noise. is it power electronics? who knows. but it was loud. and it was good.

all the new jazz records we got on our trip to san francisco. i can’t really pick just one. but just for the sake of it i’ll say arthur doyle and sunny murray live at the glen miller cafe. hooray!

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san francisco

sorry for the delay in updating. h and i were off in san francisco for an archives conference. and more importantly for food and record shopping. got to try indonesian food and burmese food which both ruled. there was also an awesome japanese restaurant that i’m sworn to secrecy about. we got to go to three record stores – amoeba of course, as well as rasputin – which was down the street from our hotel, and aquarius – which might possibly be the world’s nerdiest record store. tons of music and h and i had hardly heard of any of them. nerdy experimental psych noise action. which is definitely music that’s outside of my sphere of knowledge, although h knows more about it than i do. but aquarius schooled us. awesome!

i also got to see an exhibit of joan miro prints at a gallery that was on my way back to the hotel. it was a fancy pants richy rich gallery, but they were open to the public for free, which was nice. the prints were way awesome. etchings and lithographs. the colors were amazing. i tend to be drawn to artists that use a lot of strong color. i think it’s because of my color blindness. that my eyes and brain appreciate strong strong color.

we also got to go to giant robot and an awesome art store/gallery called parklife. they had this way righteous exhibition of paintings of jazz musicians called other rooms/other songs by ian johnson. we were stoked and wished we could afford some of the paintings. but we settled on the exhibition catalog and a print by deth p sun. the store was a surprise. we had no idea it existed but wandered over there while waiting for burma super star to open up for dinner. we were way glad we went there though.

other than that we were busy with conference sessions. and i went on walks. anyways. here’s some pictures i took with my new polaroid – my dumb phone. hooray! san francisco is a cool place. but i could never afford to live there. drag. now i gotta run to work.

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reading, watching, listening

let’s get caught up. nerd stylee.

what i’ve been reading –

iggy pop: open up and bleed by paul trynka. if you ever think you’ve made some bad decisions in yr life. read this. other people have made worse. every time you think, good god can it get worse for iggy? yes. yes it can.

uptight: the velvet underground story by victor bockris.

bowie in berlin: a new career in a new town by thomas jerome seabrook. nerdy revelations revealed!

handwriting; and the cinnamon peeler both by michael ondaatje.

what i’ve been watching –

my winnipeg by guy maddin. i love guy even more now that he’s revealed himself to be a labor loving, for the worker type. also, dude loves hockey. loves it. and aside from being an amazing director. he’s a genius with title cards.

solaris by andrei tarkovsky. slow and awesome. as opposed to aranofsky’s the fountain which was slow and fucking boring! i’m still waiting for that plot to start.

some awesome kraut rock performances on dvd. why did kraftwerk ever become robots? they ruled with a flute. seriously.

buffy again.

fishing with john.

and listening to –

pauline oliveros and joe mcphee – unquenchable fire.

tubeway army – replicas.

the ex – instant.

plastic crimewave sound – live at subterranean on june 21 2008. nick’s last show, which is sad. but it was a righteous show!

killer whales – live at pritzker pavillion on june 30 2008. a good lunch hour.

the partydowners – live at the empty bottle. fucking rock and roll party down! you call that a sport!