“Now, my friends, without further ado and to permit those holding their breaths to breathe…” — Masterharper Robinton, from Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonsinger”
Here, then, is the back half of the crazy project of the week.
Nobody who knows me at all will be surprised to learn that I used to make mix tapes, the real thing, back in the 80s and early 90s. One of my favorite tricks was to use one set of artists or title elements or what-have-you in one sequence for side ‘A’ of the 90-minute cassette and then reverse the sequence for the ‘B’ side. The effect, especially in the popular players of the day which would play both sides of the tape over and over until someone pressed the Stop button (or until the tape jammed or broke), was that of a musical journey, bouncing back and forth along some theme or another.
I moved on to burning CDs when technology left cassettes behind for good, but it’s just not the same. CDs will cheerfully repeat their lone sequence and that’s all they can do. I can’t play the same thematic tricks in a simple circular form that I could with two “sides” of tape. Complexity is limited by the seventy-or-so minutes you have to work with. The one new feature, that of shuffle play, is nearly useless for my purposes.
I must admit, of course, that this little project doesn’t fit the mold of the classic mixtape either. It’s two gigantic MP3 files separated by journal post numbers, launched by two different player widgets, and so forth. All this will really do is give you an idea of the kind of things I like to do, namely playing around with themes and patterns. Oh, and many of these are among my favorite songs, so there’s that benefit as well… dubious as it may be for someone who doesn’t share my particular tastes. (That would be 99.99% of humanity.)
I tried to use one “current” and one “older” song from each artist as well as differing the tone between directions of travel. Duran Duran’s upbeat “Nice” is balanced by the somber “Winter Marches On,” while the Pet Shop Boys’ dystopian “Integral” and exuberant “Metamorphosis” neatly showcase the dark and light sides of their musical output. The plan didn’t always work, and in crafting the two mixes I ended up with imperfect pacing both directions due to the multiple restrictions and challenges I’d faced coupled with my lack of recent practice. I was also forced to cheat a little bit on one of the artist selections, as Kevin Gilbert’s limited musical output didn’t give me any choice if I wanted to keep him in.
Yet, I’m generally happy with how it turned out… all things considered.
Part One:
Toy Matinee - Last Plane Out
BT - Circles
Depeche Mode - Suffer Well
Duran Duran - Nice
Pet Shop Boys - Integral
VAST - Touched
Kotoko - Iruka
Dada - Surround
Genesis - Feeding The Fire
Yoko Kanno - The Egg and I
Midnight Oil - Return To Sender
Robert Plant - Down To The Sea
Peter Gabriel - Growing Up
Part Two:
Peter Gabriel - That Voice Again
Robert Plant - Little By Little
Midnight Oil - No Man’s Land
Yoko Kanno - Call Me Call Me
Genesis - Not About Us
Dada - Spinning My Wheels
Kotoko - Re-sublimity
VAST - I Can’t Say No (To You)
Pet Shop Boys - Metamorphosis
Duran Duran - Winter Marches On
Depeche Mode - Halo (live)
BT - Satellite
Kevin Gilbert - All Fall Down
I hope you enjoyed this little trip into both my psyche and my music library.
As promised, here’s the first installment of my brilliant idea. It’s a there-and-back-again music set using the same artists on the way back as on the way out, in suitably reversed order. I cheated in one particular case, but it was a case of “close enough” as well as “look, he just didn’t put out that many albums, okay?”
So. Enjoy, if you’re so inclined.
If the gods are kind, I’ll have the second half posted tomorrow night…
I’ve not yet left the United States to see foreign parts, but my music collection has gone far and wide. In a bit less than an hour you can visit the Congo, Amlapura, Kashmir, Beirut, London, Leipzig, Moscow, Bangkok, swing through California (domestic and yet alien), and end up in a couple of very cold places like the mountain K2 and the continent of Antarctica.
Have you packed your bags, or at least your headphones? Okay then, enjoy your trip!
This post is part challenge, part present to you, my faithful readers. (The rest of you schmucks are just getting lucky. Hah!)
Several times during the last few weeks I’ve answered the question, “What kind of music do you like?” Rattling off a list of musical artists provides a clue, perhaps, but I think the only way to make sense out of the mish-mash of names is to hear what kind of sound puts a tap in my foot and a smile on my face. And so, I’ve carefully assembled what amounts to a broadcast hour of solid music. No commercials, no chatter, just tunes I love by some of my favorite musicians.
It’s up to you to a) see if you can stand listening to every song and b) try to discern who, if not what, you’re hearing. Ready? Steady? Go!
A long, long time ago I created my own little rendition of something called “thumbnail theater,” a tongue-in-cheek parody of a popular anime series. The original, by someone calling himself “Toasty Frog” (what’s up with the animal nicknames, eh?) was based on Evangelion, and someone else made one for Cowboy Bebop. I figured that I was best suited to take on the Tenchi Muyo OAV series.
I probably figured wrong, but them’s the breaks.
When I converted from version to version to version of the various site platforms here, Thumbnail Theater kept breaking. Moving to WordPress completely broke the archive, and for a long time I figured that’s where it could stay: broken and forgotten. Then, a few weeks ago, I decided to resurrect the project in a more useful form, namely as a static page hierarchy within WordPress. The rest, as they say, is history lunacy.
At any rate, check out the TMTT revival currently in progress. I’ve reposted the six episodes’ worth of the first OAV, with the remaining episodes to follow as I get the chance.
During one of those old-school websurfing binges, you know the kind, where you click and click and click with no idea where you’re likely to end up, I came across a LiveJournal posting exhorting fanfic writers to write a letter to themselves from one of their characters. Well, I’m no fanfic writer… in fact, I’m no sort of writer at all. But there is a character in my head who refuses to go away no matter how much I insist I won’t write about him…
Dear Karel,
You really let it get away from you, didn’t you? It’s possible, I suppose, that you just plain ran out of ideas. This seems less likely than the possibility that you got tired and gave up. There are ideas out there, ripe for the picking. You used to derive plot elements and scenes and locales from the oddest sources. What went wrong?
Hell, do you know where you’ve left me? Do you? You parked me inside of a mountain. With Jon, of all people. It’s not that he’s bad company, mind you, or a lousy business partner. No, it’s just that he’s not a very good bartender. Guess who that leaves minding the storefront more often than not? You only get one guess, the next two don’t count. I’m trying to hire on additional help, but you try finding reliable employees who don’t mind a crossdimensional commute at least four days out of seven. So far all of my prospects either can already travel across the facets of reality, in which case they don’t need the modest but respectable paycheck I can offer, or they are overwhelmed by the circumstances and afraid to show up for work the second day. Or, sometimes, the first.
I’m not cut out for this. Oh, it’s not that I mind being tied to one location for a while. It’s nothing like that. Hell, the very nature of the establishment means that I can come and go at will. No, it’s this whole business of… well, business! Military life was easier on my nerves, to say nothing of my sense of individualism, than this nonsensical life of customer service. You wouldn’t believe the sort of clientele I’ve had to put up with in just the few months since we opened the bar.
Remind me to tell you about the pack of sauropods that came through the other day. Surprisingly tidy they were, but rather rough on the glassware. Who knew that lizards had such a tradition of drinking songs?
Please, give me one of two things. I need either a way out of this life, or something to make my stay here more interesting. And I think you know the kind of “more interesting” I prefer. I don’t really care which, anymore.
No, wait. I want one other thing: a competent barkeep. I need some rest, damn it all.
Thanks ever so much,
Andrew K Wolfe,
Co-Owner, Chief Cook And Bottlewasher,
“Andy And Jon’s Whistle Stop”
This’ll be it for today. That’s not a guarantee that I will (or won’t) make more tomorrow, mind you.
First up we have a trio of posters inspired by City of Heroes screenshots I found on my computer. I hope that the humor is accessible for non-gaming folks:
The last entry for today has a bit of backstory. If you don’t know how I came to be “the little grey duck,” the following poster may confuse you:
When I was a teenager, one of my favorite phrases was “not this little grey duck!” It got to the point where people began calling me “ducky,” which (of course) caused me to drop that catchphrase like a hot rock. The damage, however, was done. The “ducky” has been following me around ever since. When the Internet Age began, however, after bumping up against a few all-too-popular pop-culture nickname choices, that “little grey duck” came to mind after long consideration and… the rest, as they say, is history.
It’s all about turning lemons into lemonade, right?
Y’all should know better than to encourage me, you know.
Rehabilitation is anime-themed, but I don’t think you don’t need to be an “otaku” to get a laugh out of it.
Mementos is based, oddly enough, on a serious bit of rumination.
Obsession may go over some folks’ heads. Suffice to say that I used to take my music collecting very seriously.
I have the sick, sad feeling that I’m not done yet. I should also get off my lazy kiester and put these into the gallery where they belong… if I do, I’ll redact this and the other entry accordingly. (Edit: Done! Thumbnails! Woo-hoo!)
Take one down-and-out computer geek, add one good-quality image from one of his current favorite anime series, mix using an all-too-cool online tool, and what do you get?
I don’t know about you, but I’m enthusiastic about the results.
Okay. It’s your turn now… you know you wanna.
(Edited to add: One more before bedtime.)
(Probably more to follow during the next few days. You’ve been warned.)
Here we go again with the random creative-writing vignettes… this one’s not quite as dark as the last, though.
“That? You must be joking.”
“I assure you, Sir Andrew, what you see here is a wholly faithful representation of the beast that has plagued our lands for the better part of two months now.”
The country squire didn’t know I wasn’t really a proper knight and thus didn’t really rate the Sir, but if you’re going to put on armor and go playing in someone else’s medieval back yard, you have to expect certain things and learn to just roll with them.
This doesn’t mean I trusted the sketchy… er, sketch that this portly gentleman had laid out on the table before me. “What is it supposed to be? A dragon? A hydra? Some sort of mutant griffon?”
“Mutant, Sir?”
“Nevermind. Where did you say I could find this… thing?”
Clad in armor not precisely made of steel, armed with a sword, a set of directions and some supposedly terrifying anecdotes, and unsure what I would discover, I trekked into the outlying farmlands in search of danger. This is the sort of activity you engage in when you’re between assignments and not yet bored of silly exercises in derring-do.
Eventually, of course, I found my quarry. I think it safe to say that “it” found me, of course. In a world not wholly devoid of what is often called magic, I wasn’t hard to miss if you happened to be sensitive to such things. Mind you, I was deliberately radiating energy in an effort to get the beast’s attention. And what a creature! Thirty feet tall at the shoulder, three heads on long writhing necks, a leathery mane where the necks met, a long spiked tail, wings of dubious utility and spikes everywhere made the poor thing look like a melange of bad ideas.
Of course it wasn’t real. I mean, even by the standards of non-reality you usually have to deal with in these situations, this critter wasn’t particularly grounded in sense, fact, or the physical plane for that matter.
The damned thing was a big, ugly, silly, noisy illusion. No fun at all.
“Alright, now you’ve gone and ruined my vacation. Come out, whoever you are, wherever you are.”
In reply, one of the creature’s heads tried to sideswipe me out of the saddle. I didn’t even dignify the proceedings by drawing my sword. I just shielded and watched as the head bounced away. Whoever was behind the illusion was moderately talented; the creature did appear to impact solidly. My horse, of course, didn’t so much as flinch. I paid top credits for the AI in its electronic brain, after all.
“Yes, yes, that’s very nice. I’m quite impressed. Now cut it out.”
Have you ever seen a three-headed beast breathe fire? It’s a neat effect, I suppose, but even for a man like myself for whom the word “overkill” has little meaning, I thought it a trifle overdone. It was real fire, which actually is harder to create out of thin air than you might expect without giving yourself away.
That is why I was able to pinpoint my true opponent’s location. What I discovered was, at first, terribly disappointing.
“Xian? What in the name of the Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo are you doing here? And… what in the hell is this supposed to be?”
“You,” she replied as the illusory beast vanished from around her, “never call anymore. A girl must resort to extraordinary means, at times.”
“Er. Hmm. Oh.” For the record, I’m not always the most glib and fluent human to travel the universe. “Can I offer you dinner, perhaps?”
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