Posts from April 2009

It’s always remarkable when you stumble upon a work of some sort, be it a book, movie, television show, or in this case a series of YouTube videos, that almost entirely encapsulates conclusions you’ve independently reached in your own thinking on the subject(s). To call these discoveries “life-changing” would be inaccurate; I’m only talking about when someone else presents conclusions that you previously and independently came to on your own.

This happens to me periodically. It happened in my late teens when I found that a book written in the early 1960s had come to almost the exact same conclusions as I had about the nature of jealousy, cultural relativism, personal responsibility, and (though it amusingly undermines itself with pantheism) agnosticism (this book being, of course, Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, which is a wonderful book even though I do not entirely agree with everything in it).

I find it very handy when this happens, as it saves me the trouble of being redundant and having to explain things myself in language that would doubtlessly be entirely inadequate. It is also of course nice to discover there are other people out there who think the same way you do.

So if you want to know my thoughts on the nature of science, open-mindedness, critical-thinking, communication, and religion, then I suggest you watch this excellent series of videos by “Qualia Soup” that say what I’d like to say much better than I could ever say it:

Last night I headed up to Seattle to meet up with @gendlec and my brother to see a performance by a whole bunch of 8-Bit chiptune musicians.

The show was at the Vera Project on the back side corner of the Seattle Center. It is a strange little place—a youth center for and run by youth (of all people). It has a rather large-ish room with a stage in it. Strangely, this is not where the show happened. The musicians set up on tables out in the lobby area. The sound system in there was less than stellar, and the sound board looked to be run by a 15- or 16-year-old, so there were often problems with the volume levels and sound mixing.

1st up: FIGHTER X (MySpace)

Fighter X is an instrumentalist – no singing. Good stuff, though his live set tended to be a bit more dance-oriented than his recorded stuff, or maybe that’s just the way it came off on big speakers. He had a couple of Gameboys and a handful of other electronics equipment. He got really into the performance. He reminded me of a younger, red-headed “Piz” from Veronica Mars.

2nd up: LEENI (Website, MySpace)

Leeni is the real reason why I went to this show. I’ve been a fan of her music for about a year but had never gotten to see her live. She played a good set that was unfortunately plagued by technical difficulties—her vocal mic kept on getting feedback, a cable started dying, and the sound mix was less than stellar. She seemed pretty frustrated with it by the end, which was too bad. I still enjoyed her performance, though, and so did @gendlec. Plus she’s adorable! Like a tiny version of Missy Peregrym (from Reaper and Stick It) with pink hair. I bought her new CD, Labyrinth, which I like quite a lot. It’s creepier than her previous album.

3rd up: KGHB (KIDS GET HIT BY BUSES) (MySpace)

These guys were frikkin’ hilarious. They dressed in matching red/white/silver, skin-tight outfits. They were all bravado and fearless energy. Their core was chiptune music, but they also had a vocoder synth, and the 2nd guy had two strap-on synthesizers that he kept on switching between, sometimes several times per song. He would often spend more time switching synths than he would playing them, which was very funny. They also had props! The lead singer put on goggles for no reason at one point. They had print-outs of some dude’s face that they wore on their hands and heads and performed a dance routine with. The crowd seemed most familiar with their songs and got into it. @gendlec recorded video of a couple of songs, so I’m gonna see about getting them from her and posting them here sometime soon. After their set they didn’t have a CD for sale, so we asked them what their MySpace was and they gave us some free buttons!

4th up: CIRCLES (MySpace)

Circles was one guy with a chiptune setup but also with an electric guitar. He impressed me least of all of them, though there was nothing at all bad about his performance or music. He did end the night with a Blink 182 cover, which was… an unfortunate thing to do. He seemed the most “mainstream” of them all. Plus we were pretty tired by this time.

Then we went to our separate homes.

Anyway, all of these artists are part of CrunchyCo, specifically Crunchy Records, which is a local group of chiptune musicians.

Some notes about the Youth of American as seen from our vantage point during the show: all boys are now wearing super-skinny, tapered jeans and their haircuts cover their ears. I don’t think I saw a single pair of ears on any of the men at this show. Their haircuts were either like Zac Efron or like Ryan Hansen (Dick Casablancas from Veronica Mars).

Here is a fascinating coincidence: The guy who animated one of Leeni’s videos (the one I posted here last week) and drew the album cover for one of Fighter X’s albums? Turns out that he’s none other than @GoshaDole , my good pal @elgaladwen’s boyfriend! I never knew that! Pretty awexeome, if you ask me.

Last night I had a very vivid and awesome dream. It had a very specific, steampunk-style aesthetic.

I was in a big, castle-like fortress that was many stories tall and butted directly up against the ocean. It was made of dark brown stones and iron braces with glass windows. It was staffed by a rag-tag militia that was decked out in classic steampunk trappings: big goggles, oversized trenchcoats, long beards, enormous gloves, and long, skinny rifles. I wasn’t one of them, though; I was somehow an outsider, but an important outsider who they were trying to protect.

A massive pirate ship showed up in the water and demanded that the fortress surrender me to them. They refused, and the leader of the militia told me to get to the “safe room,” which was a big room with foot-thick steel walls just back of the command post about halfway up the fortress. The leader sent one of his underlings to make sure I was safe, but I didn’t trust the guy at all—I knew that he was secretly working for the pirates and was going to betray me to them and probably stab the militia leader in the back with a big knife. I don’t know exactly how I knew all of that, but I was certain of it, so I decided I would be safer by myself.

So instead of going to the safe room I ditched the traitor and ran off down a corridor in the fortress. Unfortunately it was a corridor lined with big windows, and someone on the pirate ship apparently spotted me because they opened fire directly at me. I was shocked at how accurate the cannons were even though I was way up the side of the building (probably ten stories or more). The cannons were busting holes in the windows and walls just inches away from me and I repeatedly had to dodge the flying debris.

By this time, though, the militia had rallied and began fighting back—with flying ships. There were two varieties. There were some big warships that looked like they came straight out of Howl’s Moving Castle (except they were live-action instead of animated). And there were dozens of little two-man airships that had rapidly-flapping wings like the airships in Castle in the Sky, but they were divided into a front section that had the wings and the pilot, and the rear section that had a cannon and a gunner. The rear section was gyroscope-stabilized so that no matter what crazy angle the ship was flying at, the cannon would be level.

The pirate ship launched some of its own airships and a couple of big flying warships of its own came in as reinforcements. A huge air-to-air and air-to-sea battle erupted. The gunners on the pirate ship seemed like they had an almost supernatural ability to lead their targets. They would fire huge bursts of 6 or 7 cannonballs at a seemingly empty area of the sky. But then, sure enough, a militia warship would just happen to move into that area just in time to get hit. The little ships were a little too agile to get hit by the pirate ship, though.

The ongoing battle distracted the pirates from shooting at me, at least. At this point I came upon another valuable outsider like myself who the militia were trying to protect. This guy was played by Josh Hird the Maroon Fool. He was one of those very foolishly Hero types; he was getting into flying gear so he could go out and fight off the pirates himself, even though his (and my) survival was somehow drastically important. I realized that the reason he was going to risk himself like that was because the weasely little Traitor had convinced him to do so. I knew that the Traitor was going to do something bad to the Hero, sabotage him in some way or plant a bomb on him or something like that, so I decided I’d better stick with him and protect him.

Before he headed out to battle, though, he said he needed to pee. This seemed reasonable, so I quickly said that I would go with him ’cause I needed to pee, too, and that way I could make sure that nothing bad happened. We made our way to a bathroom where he took the stall and I took a urinal. These were steampunk urinals, though: brass bowls with overly complicated plumbing. They were set in the middle of the room about two or three feet off the floor, with thin metal walls in between them. I took the one on the far end and started peeing in it, only to notice too late that it was broken.

I should point out at this point that, yes, I did need to pee in real life. So I went and took care of that then went back to bed for some more dreamin’

During the course of this break I had apparently convinced the Hero not to get himself killed, and we’d escaped the battle and made our way to a research facility of some sort, and that’s where the dream started up again.

The steampunk researchers here were working on a new, super airship, and they needed our outsider help to finish it. This is when it became clear that the Hero and I weren’t just outsiders; we were from an alternate future and therefore had all sorts of knowledge that these guys didn’t have access to. They needed our help to defeat the pirates. They showed off the prototype of their airship, which was an awesome, segmented airship that reminded me of a winged caterpillar. It was very fortified but not very fast.

The Hero and I rolled up our sleeves. We had a lot to teach about rocketry, jet engines, and aerodynamics.

Stuff got kinda muddled after that and the dream rapidly lost focus. I remember a couple women with big hoop skirts and parasols, like people out of Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte. I also remember a model of the caterpillar airship flying through Christine & Lawrence’s house. So by that time the dream was effectively over.

(Thanks, tNin)

So on Friday Carrie & I got our taxes done. We stumbled haphazardly onto a completely awesome accountant who not only cost only $87, but for the first time since we got Married we’re going to get a refund. Suh-weet! Anyway, apologies to all of my clients for not getting much work done last week, but tax prep took a lot of time.

Then over the course of the rest of the weekend I made the most awexomest thing EVAR. I can’t show it to you until it debuts at Fools Play this weekend. But after that you’ll never hear the end of its awexomeness.

SPEAKING of Fools Play, this up-coming weekend is our new Easter format, Fools Play Egg Hunt. And what happens every Easter show? That’s right—my annual Peep Show.

You KNOW you don’t wanna miss that.

The last night (Sunday) we went out for Masa happy hour to celebrate a birfday (not either of ours). Masa has good happy hour stuffs, although if you’re gonna get nachos I recommend getting the regular (huge) nachos.

Link of the Month:
165 Bots With Stuff
Cartoonist/Illustrator Chris Grine has committed himself to drawing three robots every week until he’s drawn 165 total robots. But not just any robots; these are robots “with” stuff. He’s already up to #26, and he’s already getting a little desperate, but some of his more imaginative inventions are quite a hoot, like his robot with a really cool jetpack but no friends to show it to, and the robot with a delicious groundhog. I always like it when artists commit to projects like this, so I’m planning on keeping up with his progress. I suggest you do the same, buster!

Album of the Month:
Three Ninjas: Welcome to Boy Zone
Self-described as Nerdcore “Hip Hop” (quotes included), Welcome to Boy Zone is a wonderfully weird album, ranging from songs about evolution and taxonomy like “The Premise of Dogs” through melancholy religious musings like “Not Devoted” and back out again to a song about House M.D., the delightful “Going Gay for House” (which eventually evolves into a cover of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” except that Three Ninjas sings, “Sweet Dreams are House M.D.”). The music is an equally eclectic mix of beats, electronica, samples, and acoustic guitars, and styles vary wildly from song to song. The whole affair has a definitely endearing lo-fi quality to it, making the album as a whole nearly impossible to categorize… in a good way.

Game of the Month:
BIT.TRIP BEAT
Only $6 on the Wii Virtual Console, this Wiiware game is an absolute hoot. It’s basically a one-player Pong variant (or multi-player cooperative). You control a paddle on the left side of the screen and you try to deflect the dots coming from the right side of the screen. But as you hit each dot you’re actually contributing to a steadily-building song in each of three massive levels. The better you do, the better the graphics and sound become, ranging from at worst a 2-bit, monochrome and monotone netherworld up through a mid-level with 8-bit-style graphics and sound, and culminating in 16-bit-style graphics and sound. Each level has multiple zones to complete, and the dots begin moving in more and more complicated patterns. There are even boss fights at the end of each level. And the game is hard. Really, really frikkin’ difficult. But its simplicity of play and damnably catchy music make it difficult to put down. You keep thinking, “This time I know I can do it!”

Carrie & I are getting our taxes done this Friday. Ugh. I miss the days when doing taxes took about 37 seconds. Now I’m married, filing jointly, homeowner, W-2 wage earner, with side-business income and expenses, plus Carrie has her own W-2 and her own side business income and expenses. It gets a li’l complicated. I have a bucket (not literally) full of receipts to go through.

Anyhoo, no April Fools Day joke on this site for me. I’ll post the April “Of the Month” stuff later this afternoon.