Mix Cds

Listening to new music makes me happy. And one goal I try to follow in life is to spread happiness. I try to do this with the music I get, giving Cds to friends who I think would like the band or sitting with someone while I review. This is always fun and makes my job easier by giving me another perspective on music. So, instead of having my (drunken) roommate and his girlfriend reviewing metal Cd's and then putting them in the station, I want to spread the music on those Cd's to people not in a close proximity to me. Example: I got the new deerhoof album, which isn't released until October something. So I could share it with my friends that love deerhoof (Jacob). but that's a large task to rip/burn/mail any Cd that I think someone will want. So I came up with the idea of a sort of new music mix Cd that could take the best or most defining song from a new Cd and let people have a sample of it. This could be accomplished if everyone listened to their local modern radio station (the current, KUMM) because there are rules in place to make sure new music gets played. But that isn't always reliable and the new music can be spread out and maybe isn't the best example of an album.
The more I think about this, the more I think this will be illegal.
But anyways, the next limitation is sending my friends Cd's isn't cheap. So I was thinking about some sort of digital distribution, like make a playlist that links to last.fm or myspace pages. I dunno, we'll see.

Friday night, part duex....yay!

So I wrote that horribly depressing blog post and then went bike riding. It's always a weird thing biking on the weekends during the night here in Morris. There are a lot more people and bikers on every street. Anyways, I biked for 45 minutes all around town and campus. I got back and watched brotherhood of the wolf, or as bob later called it, sisterhood of the traveling wolf. After I watched the movie, bob and ryan showed up and were dicking around so I joined them in that. Had some late night food and chatted. Then I played guitar until Elise finally called me at 1:40. So I went there and hung out for about a half hour or so. Ina made meatloaf and it was delicious. There was also this beer their roommate bought that was Budweiser, and the flavor was clamato. In English this means really nothing, in Spanish it apparently means clams and tomato flavored. It was the single most disgusting beer I've ever tasted. Then there were some troubles and I left and got home.

Oh and in biking around, I took a massive fall and broke my bikes gear shifter. So now I have a one gear bike. Guess what gear? The highest possible gear ever. It sucks. So I have to use it till I can take it to the cities one week end. But damn it was so unfortunate. But now my legs will grow like 3 times as big for going around as much as I do. Maybe I'll see if Ryan has an extra bike. Eh. Anyways, just thought I'd let whoever reads this know that I don't lead the saddest life ever.

Friday night....yay!

To think, this time last week I was driving to the cities for the night. And next week I'll be there again for a Building Better Bombs show. I guess last week doesn't count as I drove and came right back after hanging out for an hour or two. But here I am, Morris MN. Listening to KUMM, which I do a lot more than I used to. Infact, I think I made a post about how I don't listen to the radio. But now I do. I got a small 2gb mp3 player and it has a radio in it. It's a small feature, but something apple never added for some reason. I really don't get that. Zune has it, wouldn't they want to add it for the lineup? That bothers me somewhat.
Anyways, I listen to the radio a huge ammount now, like, from 2-now I've been listening to KUMM. It's pretty good radio too. Like, I did listen to 2 hours of house and trance music by my friend will, but that was even good. I feel so much more attached to the station than last year. It's awesome.
But it isn't what I thought I'd be doing tonight. I was supposed to be at some friends house, but I guess that fell through. Hmph. But here I am anyways. I've already watched the magnificent seven, a great western. I also have the brotherhood of the wolf rented from the library, a great french film. I watched it with my brother a long time ago and wanted to enjoy it again. Man, I'm depressing myself just writing all this. I'm off to go bike and find something to do.
Blarg.

New shirt/stencil idea

So I was sketching in class and trying to find a cool stencil idea and I found that leaves can be done with stencils if you take the vein and make it negative space. I did a few leaves and liked it, Then started doing stems and vines. I dunno if I could do a flower too well, So a vine would be cool. Then I drew a vine and added thorns. I liked it, but it's not doable with stencils i think. Anyways, time to do a cleaner sketch and some photoshopping (or editing I should say so adobe doesn't kill me.) But yeah.
We got an amazing mac in the KUMM station and I can't wait to mess with CS3 on it. It's so shiny.

Ultimate Keychain, redux

So I've had this idea brewing in the back of my mind since last year. I want to make the ultimate keychain. I usually keep my keys in my pocket, but especcially now that I ride my bike and use my pockets more and even use my keys more (kumm and library card) I want to get back to the planning of this thing.
Essentials:
KUMM key
House Key (morris)
House key (st. paul)
Car Key
Library card thing

That sums up what I "need". But this ain't no bare essentials keychain.

Additives:
4 or 8 GB flash drive
2 or 4 GB flash with bootable linux
bottle opener
carabiner for attaching to belt loops
Mp3 player (small)

i know what your thinking. how fucking sweet is that. but in all seriousness, i don't need a mp3 player, and might be able to consolidate the two flash drives into one 8gB that can be bootable or just storage, I mean it's 8 goddamn gigabytes, it should be able to do that.

Starting process is to get a carabiner, since I lack one. then I can start using it on my belt loops and look super trendy. I hate when practical things become trendy and hip so I feel like a dick when I do it out of convenience. I'm a motive anti conformist.

Anyways, I looked at salvation army and they didn't have any I could find, but I'm going there again tomorrow to get shirts for 1.50 and to try and find shelving for kumm. So I'll look again. Quick side note about the shirts: they're usually $3 but on weds its half off things above $1 so they're #1.5. I'm going to get a few and test stencils on them, I want to try out multiple stencils to make one cool design. And add the gangster penguin and hello blacksmith logo as well,just cause they're so awesome. But I've had some ideas for simple stencils.

choo! choo! Back on track.
If anyone reading this has any more amazing ideas for a key chain, let me know. I'm trying to keep it compact and practical, whilst being an outstanding achievement of human engineering, so work with that in mind.

While my guitar gentley weeps (acid)

Today I was writing lyrics in class, I came up with one "good" set of lines:
Our freedom, our privacy, we don't want to feel watched when we goto sleep.
Our vote, our right to see, our voice counts in this police state of need.

And I realized, that's a rap line. At least the way I say it in my head. I think I have been listening to so much doomtree that I write for hip hop beats and spoken word feel. I like that, but that's not me. I like catchy guitar riffs and cheesy alliteration. I like puns and fist pumping. I like quick sudden silence, followed by a release of anticipated tension. But how do I write for that?
That's my goal. It's like no music week, but for a genre. I'm not going to listen to hip hop. I have enough new music that I will be alright, and I realize that I don't listen to TPC enough. Like, crusades is amazing and I need to hear that like once a day. That alone might cure me.

But that's lyrics. I do love P.O.S.'s bass lines and guitar riffs. I would love to write stuff like that, and so I plan on it. I've talked with cdub about it and he would totally do spoken word over some sweet bass lines. So, I plan on doing that too. Cause this summer we will do some acoustic things around and I would lay the line and he could do his stuff. That would be so cool.
Main goal for guitar/bass is to get better. i ordered a new set of strings, three actually, and as soon as they get here, I'm planning on pracicing an hour a day. I think that if I practice scales twice for 15 minutes a day and do some writing/jamming the rest of the time, I'll see improvement in at least a month. And then I can feel good when I get a telecaster and take lessons again.

Just a place for notes

Aside from being a blog, this is also a place for my mental notes, so this will mostly be ideas and shit about music directing. My dad always writes things down, he does is in sloppy handwriting, and I asked him once why he doesn't write neater. He replied that it doesn't matter if he can read it or not, the simple fact that he wrote it down will help commit it to memory and if he sees it, he can remember the memory of writing it and all that it was about.

Anyways:
So today I got over 10 cds in the mail, yay for weekend build up. But I need to start pumping these reviews out or something, it is my job. So I need a way to do it, so far I have a 5 cd changer that I was swapping cds out every once in a while. that way I could get 5 cds in a row without getting up. But that means that it;s the whole cd playing and I'm probably not paying attention. I can also take the boatload of cds to a place with my lappy and listen to one, review it, and do it like that. Or I could try and rip every cd and listen where ever i am with my laptop. I dunno which I want to do. But since Im in greta's room with a pile of cds next to me i guess i'll start ripping them. That way I'll get about 15 cds a week. if each cd takes 7 minutes to copy, thats 105min, an hour and 45 minutes of straight copying Cds. Holy fishsticks. If each Cd is 60 Mb, then thats 900Mbs a week. A gig of music a week.