(no subject)

cool sites of the day:

Voice Yourself (Woody Harrelson's agit site)
Science Tunnel kinda trippy
Asia News Network news from Asia (duh)
Creative Time NYC urban art

direction poll

[Poll #68712]

(no subject)

got a buncha cassettes out of storage yesterday, along with my old trusty four-track. i'm gonna take it to Indiana next week for repairs, as a sort of present to myself. i hope it won't cost too much, but god dammit, i have GOT to lay some of this shit down on tape before i go insane!

in related news, i taped "Let It Be" on my crappy dictaphone, to see how well i'm actually pulling it off (outside my bloated head). it sounds noisy and hissy, but i think i pulled it off alright. i kinda started doing a little Nick Cave thing a bit. for those who don't know, i was working on a sort of imitation of Nick Cave doing "Let It Be" about two years ago, long before that spooky bastard went and actually recorded it hisself for the I Am Sam soundtrack. weird as fuck, huh? (i haven't even heard it, although i'm dying to, especially considering it was my goddamned idea in the first place!) anyway, i damn near hit that high note at the end, and my timing wasn't too bad, so i guess it worked out ok. i play the piano part in a sort of pseudo-gospel way for it, too, so it's gonna sound kinda neat when i get around to putting it in stereo with overdubs. i'm not sure if i'll lay down that beautiful guitar solo (from the dirty version) or not. and for once, my vibrato was actually good. too bad you can barely hear it over the noise on the tape.

of course, this stuff will NEVER be released, since the royalties for recording a Beatles cover and selling it are far too great for the likes of me! but i've got a few cool covers in the can (from back in the day), and it's always really fun to do those. someday i'll be the next Todd Rundgren and record really super spot-on covers, with just a little twist.

(no subject)

whee hoo! my paid account is finally active!

i was fooling around a bit to see all the cool new things i can now do... looks like they've got the RSS feeds going pretty well now, so i added memepool, slashdot, bbcnews, wilwheaton, and salon on. (anybody can add that stuff... see http://www.livejournal.com/syn/ for details.) i'll look around some more. i don't think i want to bother with a lot of the REALLY coolio stuff just yet.

new icons! whee!!

scan	drooplock	black silhouette	fuzzed
interzone agent	driven	tan silhouette	Meat-Thing
	Pootie Tang	fuck-face

rat mitochondria and SNL namesakes: the joys of living hard

the local pharmacy, where i had to drop a ton of cash for refills on my "fountain of rat youth" (200mg alpha lipoic acid + 500mg acetyl L-carnitine*, twice a day... according to Dr. Bruce Ames (i think that's his name), that's the dosage they're trying on humans; in rats it has raised metabolism and energy levels, making them behave as if they were younger, in their prime... this according to last month's Discover)... anyway, they had Black Sabbath's Paranoid on CD for $6.99.

cruising down main street in my V-8 Dart SE, arm on the door, steering with my wrist, bangin my head to "Iron Man" at 120 decibels ...i rule.

---

tomorrow i'm meeting some old pals in Yellow Springs, hippie capital of the midwest and generally rockin' burgh (RAW hung out there for a long while; Rod Serling taught at Antioch). either at Peaches or The Gulch. come one, come all. confirmed attendees are Jason Styer & his awesome, kickass fiancee Krissy, Jessie Grisso, Tricia Addeo. e-mailed Bill "Einstein o' the Apes" Davenport. Richie Eldridge might show, and Trish will probably bring one or more of her pals... hopefully Tracie. i was supposed to hook up with her last year, but things kinda never got off the ground, mainly because i was more interested in someone else.
*cough*Padrona*cough*
<kicks Nancianna in the shin under the table... hard>



* anybody know if the "acetyl" part makes any diff? i can only find "L-carnitine", not "acetyl L-carnitine"

awesome link of the day

woodstock hostel

this is the place Ria and i stayed at for our first ten days in Paris. we met a TON of great people there. the site sucks ass for content, and there's almost NO pictures of the place. in fact, i think they may have moved since '96, unless the "music room" and "internet room" (et cetera) they're talking about is actually just an old Tandy laptop in the lobby (which is also the lounge, and the bar) where a busted ukalele might now hang on the wall.

the place we stayed at was much more rustic than this place sounds. a microscopic kitchen no bigger than 5 feet by 3 feet, but a nice courtyard in the center (in between the neighborhood buildings), like a big square hole where all we round pegs used to congregate when it wasn't raining too hard, eating and drinking and carrying on like caterpillars on our way to a metamorphing (the Great Bris of the Soul, as it were). but dirty and cheap and friendly, with crazy communal everything and little hot water and oddly strict rules and checkout times.

of all the hostels we stayed at, i liked that one perhaps the best. although the last one, The Three Ducks ("Les Trois Canards"), also in Paris, woulda been great if they'd-a had that single (room) Ria wanted to get on our last night, rawr-pft!

(no subject)

ok, i remembered that i also dug up my Euro pics last time i was out at storage... here's the first few scans. someday i'll get the rest scanned in. i picked out about 50 or so that are interesting enough, and i'll post them on my site one-a these days. i'll post some here, too.


here it is... the famed Woodstock Hostel! ah...

the view from our window

the street we lived on (i think)

Ria (ain't she purty?), dead person, and my ol' pal Krista, at Krista and Travis's apartment in Atlantic Beach, FL. i think the dead guy is our friend Deadhead Ed, who looks exactly like a 7-foot, burned-out hippie version of Chris Cornell. this was a party to celebrate me not bein around for a while.

me & Paola (from Sweden). in case there would ever be any doubt, i love this woman dearly. she's so sweet and wise and amazing and brave. the night Ria and i got drunk and almost threw each other off the train (Vienna to Prague) in drunken Irish fisticuffs, she came to console me and even told me that she loved me. awwwwww! i love her too. i hope she's doing okay, wherever she is. someday i'll find her again, if it's the last thing i do. this pic was taken in the lobby of the Flying Pig, a cool hostel in Amsterdam. yes, that's a joint. damn straight.

Paola, Ria, & Emily (from Boston). Emily is the funniest woman alive who is not Janeane Garofalo. she really is that funny. kept me in stitches for weeks. i really missed her when i got stuck behind by myself in Prague. i hope she's doing okay, too. i have no idea where this photo was taken, but from the date, it had to be somewhere in Prague.

weird news

Sean Penn Lashes Bush over Iraq War Drums
you go Spiccoli!

Bird the Size of a Plane Spotted in Alaska?
wtf?!!

for your consideration:

alcohol + webcam = trouble