What? I hear you laugh? You say, "After all that fuss about doing something important, you waste all day on teh interblags?
To which I say, "Oh yeah?" and you say "Oh yeah" and that goes on for a while and then at the end I'm all "I bet you couldn't do it!" And you can't, can you? Think you can click that link?
...
Hooray I made through a whole post without using a period! It's like in comic boox!
A year ago today I graduated from high school. I don't know if it really means anything, or what it would mean if anything, but I don't know, it feels important for some reason.It feels like I should have got more done in the last year. Secretly I always figured I'd be rich and famous by now.
Oh well. I'm taking a moment, is all. And using my Blog-given powers, compelling you to do the same.
If nothing else, I saw a lot of great movies this year, and I managed to keep blogging for eight months, which is probably three times the average blogger. And I do feel like I've learned a lot*.
*Most important thing I've learned: don't try and blog everything you watched on TV. It makes watching TV less fun, and you always feel guilty not doing it.
Anyway, partly as a tribute, partly to figure out how to use Embedr, and partly so I could link to the Turk Dance, I made a playlist of the best Scrubs moments I could find on such short notice. I wanted this up a little earlier, but my computer was running slow. Maybe you can watch it during commercials? Or after... but Lost is after. Oh well, it's up to you.
I tried to keep it to musical stuff, but one Space Invaders-shaped video snuck in. I couldn't not use it.
PS. I thought I lost this and had to start over, only to find out it had not only worked, but it made it onto the front page. This is the closest to good luck I've had in a while. Now I'm gonna go watch TV.
OK, I'm watching that Ralph Nader movie right now, and between that and Who Killed the Electric Car?, I'm actively rooting for General Motors to fail. Fuck 'em. They've earned it.
(Full disclosure: I drive a Jeep. Not sure why that's significant, but whatever.)
First of all, I won! ABC.com is dead! I should demand things on the internet more, if it works this well!
Let's try it: Suggested donation, $1,000.
Also I broke and bought some drums. Song of the Week time!
[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]
"Baby's First Drum Solo":
I think I'm pretty good for someone who started six days ago. Otherwise not much to say here. If I can I'll get a song up tomorrow.
Postscript: How weird is it that I haven't posted in a whole week? I mean serious, weird. Not sure what happened. Apparently nothing blogworthy.
Post-postscript: That noise that sounds like someone breathing is just feedback. The cough, however, is real, and I did it on purpose. Not sure why.
Usually I like to write about stuff I like. Not today.
Justified Text: So it's bad enough I have to read these boring-ass textbooks. Why do they use the worst possible format? Justified text a) Wastes paper and b) is hard to read, for three reasons: b1) the identical-length lines are indistinguishable from each other, making it easy to confuse them, meaning it's easy to lose your place; b2) the words are different spaces apart, which is visually distracting and can cause headaches and eye strain (probably. I have no proof of either); b3) so-called "rivers" of white space, which are also distracting. So you get distracted, and then it's harder to find your place when you go back to reading. And you have a headache. This is serious issue. Hours of my life, and probably other people's as well, have been lost because of justified text. And...why?
ABC.com: not enough episodes, loud, annoying (and automatic) video ads, proprietary install, confusing interface, and low video quality. And you have to restart it after commercials. Imagine if you had to get up and press a button on your TV after every commercial so you could keep watching your show. No would watch TV, we'd all still listen to the radio. ABC, just give up and jump on the Hulu boat with everyone else. Or at least fix that commercial thing.
And on a related note, Firefox on Macs. Make me lose my twenty some-odd open tabs because I didn't notice a popup ad? Or because some website (cough*ABC.com*cough) needed to install some update?
Oh, and I just found this out, ABC.com doesn't let you pause if you're watching fullscreened. It's like they want this to fail. And it auto re-sizes your browser window, wich is a cardinal sin of internet-anything.
Canker Sores. I have two. Not fun.
Those TLC shows about the families with too many kids. At what point does television stop being entertainment? If you have ever enjoyed any of these shows (I think there are two of them, and they just added a third one), congratulations, you are officially old.
OK, one of the ABC commercials was for the show I was watching. Listen, ABC: The whole point of putting shows on the Internet is promotional: the show itself is the commercial. If all you can get to advertise during your shows is yourself, your business model is flawed f'd up the a'.
The Phillips-head Screw(driver): better screw(driver)s exist. It's an old idea we just can't get rid of, like the QWERTY keyboard or the system that's not the metric system. Or justified text.
Negative Internet Articles and Blog Posts. Find something nicer to say, douchebag.
And one thing I like: Lists. Excellent way to organize information. I was just going to write about justified text and then I thought, no, no one will read that. So I made a list and now its like I don't have to remember to hate those things anymore. It's very therapeutic, those of you with blogs should try it.
[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]
...But don't get your hopes up. No, just kidding, go ahead. Wait, don't. I don't know. "One":
"One" gets it's name because it is played entirely with the right hand. This is a revolution. finally are we free from the tyranny of two-handed guitar-playing! Just think of all the things you can do with your left hand now! Now stop thinking such things, pervert. There's still a whole post to read.
Actually, I wrote a whole song this way. Ironically, it was my singing that was was the problem, and the whole thing was scrapped. Probably. Maybe. If that song ever happens, I never said any of this. Also if you want to hear part of it, it's buried far back in the mix here (named as track 6, 7, 8).
Also, the other thing here is, of course, the fuzz. There is no way to avoid the fuzz. I tried recording in a different place, I tried mixing it out, but the problem remains: my guitar isn't loud enough on its own and to record it at all I have to overcrank the mikes. Microphones and I have a long history of animosity.
"Testify (Acoustic)":
As promised. I actually had something much more ambitious planned, but if I had started it this morning, I'd probably still be working on it. Which wouldn't work, since I was asleep this morning. Plus I heard the original on the radio yesterday and it sort of reëntered* my brainstream.
This song is worth hearing for the first thirty seconds alone, but I'm worried maybe it goes on too long. There's a lot of noodling, which I would have cut, but on the other hand, I like to have things kind of loose and extemporized. I'm a big fan & supporter of improvisation, but I don't know, maybe I went too far here.
On to lighter things. I've been thinking about the subtext of this cover and it's twin (linked to above). When I first did "Sleep Now In the Fire", I wrote it off as a joke, a parody of the slow, "serious" acoustic covers we've all heard before. But while I was doing it, and after I finished, I got sort of soured on Rage Against the Machine for a while. It was almost like, without really meaning to**, I had sent out my attacked in both directions. For a while, I couldn't help but think of the whole thing as a bunch of posturing-- a lot of words but no meaning.
Eventually I stopped caring. Bad lyrics never killed any bands before, and "Testify" is a great song even if its actual politics are murky at best. Tom Morello*** is still pretty good at that whole guitar thing, and those guys no one can name in the rhythm section do what they do pretty good. And even if he can't write lyrics (and his side project sucked, you know it and I know it), Zach Hardtospelllastname can shout (it's not really rapping-- you know it and I know it) with the best of them. So no hard feelings.
So with all that on my mind****, I can't decide if this cover is more serious or less serious than that one. I wasn't thinking as hard about that one as this one, but I was trying not to overthink it as I did it, and just concentrate on the music and the emotion and all that other gay shit.
*Alt+137 **Maybe a little, but not all the way. ***And on a completely unrelated note, did anyone else know that Tom Morello is black? I just found that out a couple weeks ago. ****Kids, feel free to use that transition in your little homework papers about George Washington and mathematics and To Kill A Mockingbird.
[Man is this post long.]
DOWNLOADABLE VERSION: Rerelease Notes: "One" is remixed for hopefully better quality. "Testify" is unchanged.
...when I see something like this. Observe: