1. Start a loop, but don’t actually play anything
2. Play a note with the guitar’s volume all the way down
3. Slowly fade the volume back up
4. Repeat steps 2–3 as necessary
5. ????
6. SPACE ROCK!

At some point I should really make a video of this process, so I can put it on youtube and have everyone say that it’s FAKE. Yeah, about that: see below!

Examples

1. almost three minutes of building a chord
2. about one minute of a different chord (already in progress)

Needs work

• So far my output has been really quiet for some reason
• And I have really bad line noise coming from somewhere (shitty cables?)
• Distortion makes the bad line noise even worse, so no bowel-shaking drone metal just yet

NOTE, FROM THE FUTURE: Here is a totally FAKE video I made:

1. Buy new “long count” calendar
2. THAT’S IT

December 22

1. Wake up
2. Keep on living in a world that has not ended

• A dude crying in the shower (not me)
• A single, delicious ear of corn on a plate
• Eating at Hardee’s—delicious burgers, but:
  • the starkest decor ever
  • utter chaos behind the front counter (bonus sadness if there is one employee trying to maintain politeness amid the chaos)
• This pic (from Zeta Gundam):
  
• The Smashing Pumpkins song “Spaceboy” (not related to above pic that I know of)

This list to grow exponentially as I continue to stay off my happy-pill prescription!

SOOOOO, in no particular order (except alphabetical), and varying levels of similarity…

• The Arcade Fire / The Fiery Furnaces
• Black Dice / Black Lips / The Black Keys
• Cake / Cake-Like
• Chavez / Gomez
• Codeine / Morphine
• Deerhoof / Deerhunter
• Del Fuegos / Del Lords
• fIREHOSE / Firehouse
• Fucked Up / Holy Fuck (and they’re both from fuckin’ Toronto, fuck!)
• Garth Brooks / Brooks & Dunn
• Jawbox / Jawbreaker
• The Mars Volta / Volta Do Mar
• Mew / Muse
• Modest Mouse / Mouse on Mars
• Múm (from Iceland) / Mum (NOT from Iceland)
• OMD / OMC
• Panda Bear (from Animal Collective) / Grizzly Bear (not from Animal Collective)
• Polara / Polaris
• Stroke 9 / The Strokes
• Super Furry Animals / Animal Collective
• Supergrass / Superdrag
• Television / Telephone
• The Verve / The Verve Pipe
• The Vines / The Shins
• Wolf Eyes / Wolf Parade / Wolfmother / Wolf Balls (ok I made that last one up, but it’s only a matter of time)
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Hot Hot Heat / !!!
• Honorable mention: the seven hundred or so bands during the 80s that had all one word names that started with a C.
• BONUS ROUND: XTC album “Black Sea” / X album “Under the Big Black Sun”

It seems like there were more, but my memory is terrible—which is why I am always mixing these groups up in my head to begin with.

Stop showing me this dialog!

From experience and googling, I have noted the following possible actions that bring up this dialog:

1. opening a picture
2. closing a picture
3. saving a picture
4. looking at Photoshop
5. not looking at Photoshop
6. having an old version of OS X
7. having a new version of OS X
8. installing a brand new copy on a brand new computer and trying 1–5 for the first time ever
9. existing

This is like that facebook error you get when you try to do… anything, but that’s a free website, not an overpriced program running on an overpriced computer. Those things I kind of expect to work better.

BONUS COMPLAINS

Dear WordPress (moar like TurdPress amirite),

When I check “Remember me” on my own home personal computer, that is privately used only by me personally at home, it is because I do NOT want to have to log in 39485934875 times a week.

A-AND FINALLY

Dear people-who-should-know-better,

Stop using IE6!

(pic stolen from someone who stole it from someone who was talking about digg and ie6)

OK, LAST ONE, FOR REAL

Dear Firefox,

Why must you take so long after I “quit” you to actually go the hell away?

Because I’m using Windows, right?

NOTE, FROM THE FUTURE: A few of these have fixed themselves. I have Photoshop CS4, which doesn’t do the annoyingly vague “Program Error” thing anymore. A-and I don’t think I get the “Firefox can’t quit me” thing as much, but that may be because I’ve given up on using my home computer and go right to bed after closing the browser. WP still logs me out every other day, and people are still using IE6, so most of this post is still valid.

• Handy
• A pain in the ass to do after the fact

I’m working on it. Not really, but kind of.

NOTE, FROM THE FUTURE: I’m probably about as caught up on tags as I’m going to be. That still amounts to “not very”, but that’s all you get.

• 20 Red South: downtown to campus, for pizza and witnessing whimsical conveyances
  
• 100 Yellow South: campus to Savoy, for the viewing of latest “talkie” film involving masked adventurers
• 100 Yellow North: Savoy to Target (this is practically the entire length of this route, from the southernmost to northernmost and took about an hour)
• 20 Red South (again): back to downtown
• 50 Green East: downtown to easternmost edge of Urbana, ostensibly for more grocery shopping but mainly I was engrossed in my reading material and kind of aimless
• 50 Green West: back home (downtown)
• NEVER DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS AGAIN

Actually, I had an idea once, when I was driving all up and down the Olympic Peninsula. I’d be out in the middle of nowhere, and there’d be a bus stop sign there. Western Washington has a whole mess of different local, county, and community bus systems, so I wanted to see how far I could get, starting in downtown Seattle. I could get pretty far into the Peninsula, for sure, and heading north and east I could probably get close to the Cascades.

• Burn After Reading (2008)
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)
• Friends with Money (2006)
• Æon Flux (2005)
• North Country (2005)
• Something’s Gotta Give (2003)
• City by the Sea (2002)
• Laurel Canyon (2002)
• The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
• Almost Famous (2000)
• Wonder Boys (2000)
• Talk of Angels (1998)
• Madeline (1998)
• Johnny Skidmarks (1998)
• Paradise Road (1997)
• Lone Star (1996)
• Primal Fear (1996)
• Fargo (1996)
• Palookaville (1995)
• Beyond Rangoon (1995)
• Bleeding Hearts (1994)
• Short Cuts (1993)
• Passed Away (1992)
• The Butcher’s Wife (1991)
• Barton Fink (1991,voice/uncredited)
• Hidden Agenda (1990)
• Miller’s Crossing (1990,uncredited)
• Darkman (1990)
• Chattahoochee (1989)
• Mississippi Burning (1988)
• Raising Arizona (1987)
• Crimewave (1985)
• Blood Simple (1984)

(source, dogg)

I have seen Fargo and Raising Arizona about a hundred times total, though, so it kind of evens out.

To summarize: shit ain’t worth shit anymore!

1972: Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street
1973: Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
1974: King Crimson – Red
1975: Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
1976: Joni Mitchell – Hejira
1977: Television – Marquee Moon
1978: The Jam – All Mod Cons
1979: Talking Heads – Fear of Music
1980: The Pretenders – s/t
1981: The Cure – Faith
1982: X – Under the Big Black Sun
1983: U2 – War
1984: The Replacements – Let it Be
1985: R.E.M. – Fables of the Reconstruction
1986: Metallica – Master of Puppets
1987: Guadalcanal Diary – 2×4
1988: The Church – Starfish
1989: Pixies – Doolittle
1990: Uncle Tupelo – No Depression
1991: Slint – Spiderland
1992: Beastie Boys – Check Your Head
1993: Girls Against Boys – Venus Luxure No.1 Baby
1994: Rodan – Rusty
1995: Hum – You’d Prefer an Astronaut
1996: Failure – Fantastic Planet
1997: Yo La Tengo – I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
1998: Don Caballero – What Burns Never Returns
1999: Trans Am – Futureworld
2000: Sleater-Kinney – All Hands on the Bad One
2001: Les Savy Fav – Go Forth
2002: Ms. John Soda – No P or D
2003: The Sea and Cake – One Bedroom
2004: Laura Veirs – Carbon Glacier
2005: Kylesa – To Walk a Middle Course
2006: Mastodon – Blood Mountain
2007: Baroness – Red Album
2008: Boris – SMILE
2009: Baroness – Blue Record / Polvo – In Prism (I CAN’T DECIDE)
2010: ????

NOTES:

1. 1977 and 1984 (and even 2009) were banner years for good rock, which made it hard to pick just one.
2. 1991 was no contest, but there were a few trying for “close second”.
3. If I were even older, 1966 would have been another such year.
4. I recycled this post from my el-jay, just because.