All posts by Mush

About Mush

I want to be a veterinarian because I love children.

Buying Food: My New Social Life

I went to 2nd Street this morning for a latte, mostly because I was starving because I hadn’t eaten any breakfast due to oversleeping, and because I can always convince myself I need more milk in my diet. You know, for the calcium.

Anyway. While I was there, Jonas (Magram) asked me if I’d be interested in singing on an album of “spiritual music, like bhajans but Western” that he and Greg (Wadsworth) are working on. And then Chris asked me if he could keep me in mind if ever his company began hiring for IT positions.

It was fucking great, I felt like a rock star! People want me! (Of course, I had to tell Jonas my chops are trash and Chris that I’ve never been too terribly intense about web standards and that I’d taught myself CSS. But still. They’d thought of me.)

For lunch I went to Los Portales, because I can eat there for less than $4. (It might be the cheapest place in town to eat, if you know how to order, and since I’ve only got about $30 in my checking account it seemed like the prudent thing to do.)

I ended up eating with Matt (Mazza) and a friend of his (who gave me his name and which I promptly forgot because I’m a sieve-brain for names); we discussed music and actors. Matt told me I’d like a band called Maroon 5 (so when I got back to LISCO I promptly downloaded a dozen tunes and stuck ’em on my iPod for later). “They’re pop rock, but tasty. Like, R&B tasty. You’ll recognize ’em, probably.”

The friend (Dave? Todd?) proclaimed he thought Meryl Streep “overacts too much.” (At which point Matt leaned over and stage-whispered to me, “Did he just say that Meryl Streep overacts?!”) I laughed a bunch and was glad I hadn’t ordered carry-out. Matt’s considering joining Mr. Brett and I in Chicago this May for the Joe Jackson/Todd Rundren show because he loves Joe Jackson.

Later, Irene (Archer) called me to ask me to come to a meeting tonight because it’ll have to do with the satsang’s website (which I maintain). Plus I think I need to meet Christina tomorrow (is tomorrow Good Friday?) about seva stuff and possibly Reni too (because I told her I wanted to hang out with her). Not to mention meeting Jonas and Greg for a jam. Essentially, I think I’ll spend the next 24 hours in “meetings”. How cool is that!

Pod 'phones

podphone.jpgSo far I’ve been pretty hard on my Apple/Sony iPod earphones. I drop them, smack them into doors, sit on them while they’re in my bag… they’d begun to develop a bit of a buzz that I had to squeeze them to fix.

But then, a couple of days ago, I stepped on one of them and cracked it open. (They look really cool inside, btw.) I Superglued it back together, and it still works, but the ‘phones themselves are not long for this world.

I surfed all the obvious places – Amazon.com, the Apple Store – and I’ll be damned if you just can’t find a set of replacement ‘phones! It would be easier in Asia or the UK, but in the States you can only get those in-ear thingies. Anyway, finally I pulled my head out and tried eBay. And that’s where they all are, the replacement ‘phones.

List-o-rama

1. I had lunch at La Hacienda today. I have to admit it: their food sucks.

2. I went to the chiropractor again today. I think I’m addicted.

3. We’re totally out of firewood again, which would be fine except that it snowed this morning.

4. I love my iPod so much that if it wasn’t bad for it, I’d probably lick it.

5. All I want is more Buca Di Beppo food. I have no idea what I’m going to make for dinner.

Gallery Is Grumpy

Gallery is pissing me off. There’s only so much you can do to the layout using CSS – some of the stuff’s done with HTML and I can’t figure out how to edit it. There aren’t any obvious templates in the app’s files, and all I can find are fairly gay skins that I don’t like.

But it does work well, I have to give it that. Gallery does rock in terms of functionality. I’ll just have to find some layout hacks.

Rudy, Don't Take Your Love to Town

I just walked over to the 2nd Street Coffee Shop to buy a decaf latte because it’s ten in the morning and because I’m off caffeine.

I saw Rudy there, and he told me I looked good (I said, “Aw, thanks!”) and we talked about how stupid it is that there’s no manual way of rolling up an electric car window when its motor fails.

The most interesting thing about this exchange was not that we were in a coffee shop, nor that we were discussing the irritation of failed electrics, but that Rudy had a three-inch high scab on his forehead in the shape of an X.

Wow, that’s so Rudy.

Sans Miles

I downloaded this track off the Internet.

It’s a bootleg.

It says it’s “Prince with Miles Davis – Live at Paisley Park.”

Now, it’s definitely Prince. And it’s definitely live. But where’s Miles Davis? The hook in the beginning of the track is probably a keyboard, and the horn scat at the end is a tenor sax, not a trumpet.

I complained here once about downloading Al Green songs, only to discover that out of three tracks, not one of them was the Reverend Al Green. Two were Bill Withers, and one was some horrid community college choir covering a Gladys Knight & The Pips tune (which really freaked me out when it came up on my iPod one evening)!

We’re all familiar with memes – and how they grow. I just can’t help wondering what the impact of badly tagged MP3s will have on people’s understanding of music in general. Imagine: what if you had an MP3 on your computer that you thought was Miles Davis playing with Prince, and you believed that it was exactly that for years? I mean, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter, but the idea of people walking around thinking Bill Withers is Al Green drives me nuts. Seriously. It’s just… wrong.

Believe you me: my freakin’ ID3 tags are CORRECT. ALL THE TIME.
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