New Shtuff!
Haven't updated in a while, not that that should be a huge shock or anything. Here are some random updates.
The surgery went more or less well. There were no complications or anything, but the recovery is taking longer than I'd like. Lots of infections I guess. Also, one of the medications I'm taking, prednisone, can apparently cause your bones to become a little brittle. I found this out after finally getting an orthopedics appointment because I'd been walking around on a stress fracture on my left foot for about a week. The managers at work have been fairly accepting so far, but I'm waiting for them to fire me for having to take so much time off. I'd almost welcome it at this point as it'd force me to get a different (and almost certainly better) job. We'll see how that goes.
School is interesting this semester. It should be my last one as long as I can get a working portfolio developed in time. Here are the classes I'm taking:
Senior Seminar Writing Workshop for Fiction: This is a fun class. The professor is the same guy I took my Narrative Techniques class with, and I get along with him great. I was relieved when I saw his name attached to the course because of some of the horror stories I've heard about the other professors for this workshop. We have five, ten, and fifteen page stories due over the course of the semester. I turned in my five pager last week, and I feel pretty anxious about it because I know its crap. I had about twenty pages in notes and re-writes that I'd been working on for weeks, and I think I just blew a fuse and tried to fit too much into too little space. It just kinda sucks because I know my first review day of workshop is going to be uncomfortably silent because people often don't like to be terribly cruel during workshops, or I'll be hearing about a lot of stuff I already know is wrong with the piece. Bah.
Irish Folk Lore: This one counts as an English class for my major, and I would have taken it even if it didn't. This'll be my third class with this professor (because he literally is the entire folk lore department) and I really enjoy his classes. The last class I had with him was British folk lore. Irish will be a little more fun for me just because it'll be harder to avoid some of the faerie stories when discussing the actual folk tales with the Irish than it was with the British. The British have plenty of fairie stories (November 1st is Puca (Pooka) day, where people in rural communities leave out fresh bread from the newly harvested wheat in the field for the vaugely malevolent faeries the pooka...slightly malicious horse spirits who would take unsuspecting travelers on terrifying, but hardly ever deadly wild rides late at night) but they had more influence from the mainland and so they lost a bit more of their home brewed beliefs over the years than the Irish. I'm definitely going to get my minor in Folk Lore while I'm doing my graduate work (I'm in the process of talking that over with my advisors, yes I know I'm starting late).
Philosophy of Religion: This is taught by another professor that I've had before for World Religions. He's a smart ass, and highly enjoyable at lectures. This class, so far, is mostly just depressing me. I'm having trouble understanding how the philosophical community hasn't declared a "win" against the religious philosophers after 5000 years or so on the subject of the existence (or lack there of ) of the Christian god. Every argument in favor of Gods existence has pretty much ended with a philosophical fudge, a sort of "well, we don't have the mental capacity to understand why that is, because it's about God" or "We don't know the answer yet, but we will some day", or some other variant of "It's God, so the normal rules don't apply". None of these are logically sound arguments, and I have to imagine that philosophers arguing against these people spend a lot of their time bashing their heads against walls in frustration. I'm really interested to see if there are some decent pro-God arguments out there. Fortunately, we're only two weeks into the class so there's plenty of time for my hopes to be dashed.
Introduction to Journalism: Yeah, you know how when you first started college, and you were really, really confused about that senior in your intro classes? I absolutely understand why they were there at this point. The class offerings here at State have been sparse these last few semesters, especially considering the fact that I had two semesters to take a total of three classes for my degree. I needed four classes for full time status this semester, so I picked up the intro class for the hell of it. It's not completely depressing. The instructor is slightly annoying with her extremely slow speech patterns, like talking is too much of a physical effort for her, but she seems nice enough. The material is easy, and it'll pretty much only require that I continue to have a basic understanding of mass media, and follow the news like I do anyway. I'm having some issues with the ideas that are being taught. Like apparently its still textbook knowledge that newspapers are still the default "historical" texts for when people really need to know things. In the age of digital media where you can go to You Tube or pretty much anywhere else on the Internet and dredge up video of damn near anything you want, I find that idea to be just slightly behind the times, but who knows. The only other issue I have there is with some of the other students. We've got a few typical freshmen "I don't really want to be here, but I haven't resolved myself to getting an education yet so I'm gonna waste time in every possible way" folks, and there's one kid who describes himself as a libertarian, but seems to have enough venom only for the democratic party. He commented on how disgusted he was with the Democrats lack of support for the presidents goals at the State of the Union address. I'm more than a little confused about why a Libertarian would be HAPPY with this president. Those guys are supposed to hate Big Government with a passion; Bush and his administration have been enough Big Government for three democratic parties these last few years. I always thought the libertarians were supposed to be all about the government staying the hell out of their business, but then maybe that only counts for their personal financial business. Before he moved to a different seat last class, he would also spend the entire class muttering comments to himself (but loud enough for anyone "interested" to hear, because otherwise how would he get attention), mostly in response to something offensively democratic.
Time for music.
I've been obsessively clicking the "more" button on iTunes' Just For You program. I have a love/hate relationship with that thing. On the one hand, I wouldn't have ever heard of quite a few bands if it weren't for that system, on the other, it keeps suggesting really weird things that are either only distantly related to my purchase/library information, or are so far out in left field that I can't even understad how they got there. How does buying The Open Door by Evanescence make them think that I should also be buying the next Christina Aguilera CD? That was one of the more confusing ideas they had for me. Anyway, here are a few of the new bands I'm listening to.
Metric: Apparently they've been around a while. They're a new wave/indie band that kind of reminds me of a less Riot Grrrl version of Sleater-Kinney. They have a female singer, which gives them about a bazillion bonus points in my book right away. I'm lumping them in with a new genre that I've created just for my music library that consists entirely of bands that seem to have lead singers or song writers that are really poets, but figured out that they couldn't make much money in the academic field. Like that guy from Cake. He doesn't really sing, he just sort of does that extended talking thing from The Music Man. I'm cool with that. It sounds good if you have a good band behind it. But yeah, there's Cake, The Pixies, Metric, Sleater-Kinney (I actually hate their singers voice some times, but she sounds good when she doesn't warble all over the place) and several others that I can't think of right now.
Damone: An awesome little rock band that almost borders on being power-pop because their lead singer is something like 16, and when you have a sixteen year old girl as a lead singer, things can get a little poppy sometimes. Fortunately, she has an awesome band that really rocks backing her up, and this stops them from sounding like another Avril Lavigne. Their older stuff actually seems to be worse than their newer album, which is exactly the opposite of how normal bands work. Kind of like the Foo Fighters. I've always liked their radio hits, but I once walked out on their set at Big Day Out because I hadn't heard all of the flowery, sappy stuff that was on their first couple of albums. Since then, I've been increasingly in love with anything that Dave Ghrol does (He is possibly the hardest working man in rock, I imagine him wandering around studio to studio while other bands are recording, just randomly offering to play drums with them for a song or two).
The Libertines: I have my newly musically blooming ex-girlfriend to thank for this one. This is another band that I had apparently been under a rock in a cave for for the last few years. Oddly though, I was very into one of the bands that people always say sound LIKE the Libertines (The Arctic Monkeys) first. A lot of the recordings I've found of these guys are kind of shitty; I'm chalking that up to that damnable indie DIY attitude. Other than that, they're a highly enjoyable post-punk revival band. Great lyrics, and entirely tolerable vocals so long as you ignore the lead singers random desire to scream atonally before some tracks.
Mad Sin: A psychobilly band. Apparently one of the originals. I like these guys, they're energetic, competent musicians, and I got 17 of their songs off of iTunes for six bucks. Gods bless the punk rock determination to not make any money. The lead singer sounds eerily like the guy from Necromantix, and I'm starting to suspect that this is because ALL male singers for psychobilly bands sound alike, I think it might be part of the theme (I have to say, I just did a wikipedia search to confirm that he isn't actually the Necromantix guy- I had to check after finding out that that guy is also in the Horrorpops). Now that I have a better sampling of these bands, I'm starting to understand that there is a passable reason for separating rockabilly from psychobilly. I had some trouble with this before, and I still suspect that there are some elitist reasonings behind the whole concept, but there are enough thematic differences that I can accept the re-naming.
There are plenty of other new bands, but damn this entry is getting long. Ok, I'm done.
The surgery went more or less well. There were no complications or anything, but the recovery is taking longer than I'd like. Lots of infections I guess. Also, one of the medications I'm taking, prednisone, can apparently cause your bones to become a little brittle. I found this out after finally getting an orthopedics appointment because I'd been walking around on a stress fracture on my left foot for about a week. The managers at work have been fairly accepting so far, but I'm waiting for them to fire me for having to take so much time off. I'd almost welcome it at this point as it'd force me to get a different (and almost certainly better) job. We'll see how that goes.
School is interesting this semester. It should be my last one as long as I can get a working portfolio developed in time. Here are the classes I'm taking:
Senior Seminar Writing Workshop for Fiction: This is a fun class. The professor is the same guy I took my Narrative Techniques class with, and I get along with him great. I was relieved when I saw his name attached to the course because of some of the horror stories I've heard about the other professors for this workshop. We have five, ten, and fifteen page stories due over the course of the semester. I turned in my five pager last week, and I feel pretty anxious about it because I know its crap. I had about twenty pages in notes and re-writes that I'd been working on for weeks, and I think I just blew a fuse and tried to fit too much into too little space. It just kinda sucks because I know my first review day of workshop is going to be uncomfortably silent because people often don't like to be terribly cruel during workshops, or I'll be hearing about a lot of stuff I already know is wrong with the piece. Bah.
Irish Folk Lore: This one counts as an English class for my major, and I would have taken it even if it didn't. This'll be my third class with this professor (because he literally is the entire folk lore department) and I really enjoy his classes. The last class I had with him was British folk lore. Irish will be a little more fun for me just because it'll be harder to avoid some of the faerie stories when discussing the actual folk tales with the Irish than it was with the British. The British have plenty of fairie stories (November 1st is Puca (Pooka) day, where people in rural communities leave out fresh bread from the newly harvested wheat in the field for the vaugely malevolent faeries the pooka...slightly malicious horse spirits who would take unsuspecting travelers on terrifying, but hardly ever deadly wild rides late at night) but they had more influence from the mainland and so they lost a bit more of their home brewed beliefs over the years than the Irish. I'm definitely going to get my minor in Folk Lore while I'm doing my graduate work (I'm in the process of talking that over with my advisors, yes I know I'm starting late).
Philosophy of Religion: This is taught by another professor that I've had before for World Religions. He's a smart ass, and highly enjoyable at lectures. This class, so far, is mostly just depressing me. I'm having trouble understanding how the philosophical community hasn't declared a "win" against the religious philosophers after 5000 years or so on the subject of the existence (or lack there of ) of the Christian god. Every argument in favor of Gods existence has pretty much ended with a philosophical fudge, a sort of "well, we don't have the mental capacity to understand why that is, because it's about God" or "We don't know the answer yet, but we will some day", or some other variant of "It's God, so the normal rules don't apply". None of these are logically sound arguments, and I have to imagine that philosophers arguing against these people spend a lot of their time bashing their heads against walls in frustration. I'm really interested to see if there are some decent pro-God arguments out there. Fortunately, we're only two weeks into the class so there's plenty of time for my hopes to be dashed.
Introduction to Journalism: Yeah, you know how when you first started college, and you were really, really confused about that senior in your intro classes? I absolutely understand why they were there at this point. The class offerings here at State have been sparse these last few semesters, especially considering the fact that I had two semesters to take a total of three classes for my degree. I needed four classes for full time status this semester, so I picked up the intro class for the hell of it. It's not completely depressing. The instructor is slightly annoying with her extremely slow speech patterns, like talking is too much of a physical effort for her, but she seems nice enough. The material is easy, and it'll pretty much only require that I continue to have a basic understanding of mass media, and follow the news like I do anyway. I'm having some issues with the ideas that are being taught. Like apparently its still textbook knowledge that newspapers are still the default "historical" texts for when people really need to know things. In the age of digital media where you can go to You Tube or pretty much anywhere else on the Internet and dredge up video of damn near anything you want, I find that idea to be just slightly behind the times, but who knows. The only other issue I have there is with some of the other students. We've got a few typical freshmen "I don't really want to be here, but I haven't resolved myself to getting an education yet so I'm gonna waste time in every possible way" folks, and there's one kid who describes himself as a libertarian, but seems to have enough venom only for the democratic party. He commented on how disgusted he was with the Democrats lack of support for the presidents goals at the State of the Union address. I'm more than a little confused about why a Libertarian would be HAPPY with this president. Those guys are supposed to hate Big Government with a passion; Bush and his administration have been enough Big Government for three democratic parties these last few years. I always thought the libertarians were supposed to be all about the government staying the hell out of their business, but then maybe that only counts for their personal financial business. Before he moved to a different seat last class, he would also spend the entire class muttering comments to himself (but loud enough for anyone "interested" to hear, because otherwise how would he get attention), mostly in response to something offensively democratic.
Time for music.
I've been obsessively clicking the "more" button on iTunes' Just For You program. I have a love/hate relationship with that thing. On the one hand, I wouldn't have ever heard of quite a few bands if it weren't for that system, on the other, it keeps suggesting really weird things that are either only distantly related to my purchase/library information, or are so far out in left field that I can't even understad how they got there. How does buying The Open Door by Evanescence make them think that I should also be buying the next Christina Aguilera CD? That was one of the more confusing ideas they had for me. Anyway, here are a few of the new bands I'm listening to.
Metric: Apparently they've been around a while. They're a new wave/indie band that kind of reminds me of a less Riot Grrrl version of Sleater-Kinney. They have a female singer, which gives them about a bazillion bonus points in my book right away. I'm lumping them in with a new genre that I've created just for my music library that consists entirely of bands that seem to have lead singers or song writers that are really poets, but figured out that they couldn't make much money in the academic field. Like that guy from Cake. He doesn't really sing, he just sort of does that extended talking thing from The Music Man. I'm cool with that. It sounds good if you have a good band behind it. But yeah, there's Cake, The Pixies, Metric, Sleater-Kinney (I actually hate their singers voice some times, but she sounds good when she doesn't warble all over the place) and several others that I can't think of right now.
Damone: An awesome little rock band that almost borders on being power-pop because their lead singer is something like 16, and when you have a sixteen year old girl as a lead singer, things can get a little poppy sometimes. Fortunately, she has an awesome band that really rocks backing her up, and this stops them from sounding like another Avril Lavigne. Their older stuff actually seems to be worse than their newer album, which is exactly the opposite of how normal bands work. Kind of like the Foo Fighters. I've always liked their radio hits, but I once walked out on their set at Big Day Out because I hadn't heard all of the flowery, sappy stuff that was on their first couple of albums. Since then, I've been increasingly in love with anything that Dave Ghrol does (He is possibly the hardest working man in rock, I imagine him wandering around studio to studio while other bands are recording, just randomly offering to play drums with them for a song or two).
The Libertines: I have my newly musically blooming ex-girlfriend to thank for this one. This is another band that I had apparently been under a rock in a cave for for the last few years. Oddly though, I was very into one of the bands that people always say sound LIKE the Libertines (The Arctic Monkeys) first. A lot of the recordings I've found of these guys are kind of shitty; I'm chalking that up to that damnable indie DIY attitude. Other than that, they're a highly enjoyable post-punk revival band. Great lyrics, and entirely tolerable vocals so long as you ignore the lead singers random desire to scream atonally before some tracks.
Mad Sin: A psychobilly band. Apparently one of the originals. I like these guys, they're energetic, competent musicians, and I got 17 of their songs off of iTunes for six bucks. Gods bless the punk rock determination to not make any money. The lead singer sounds eerily like the guy from Necromantix, and I'm starting to suspect that this is because ALL male singers for psychobilly bands sound alike, I think it might be part of the theme (I have to say, I just did a wikipedia search to confirm that he isn't actually the Necromantix guy- I had to check after finding out that that guy is also in the Horrorpops). Now that I have a better sampling of these bands, I'm starting to understand that there is a passable reason for separating rockabilly from psychobilly. I had some trouble with this before, and I still suspect that there are some elitist reasonings behind the whole concept, but there are enough thematic differences that I can accept the re-naming.
There are plenty of other new bands, but damn this entry is getting long. Ok, I'm done.