Chicago MMXII

Its gorgeous out, glad I had to walk around the UIC campus this afternoon.

Onion headline from a couple weeks ago:
"The Cartoon Network Celebrates Brak History Month"

this is awesome, especially the last owl pic

http://chicagoist.com/2012/03/01/the_snowy_owl_is_a_badass_against_a.php#photo-1

<3 snowy owls

Cool. The last one is great ;)

I'm partial to the first one, where he seems disturbed and indignant.

Good owl.

I posted this elsewhere a little while ago but it's pretty important so I'm posting it here too.

Just saw a guy and girl walking down Clark St. near Diversey. Guy had one arm over the girl's shoulder and the other in his jacket pocket, pulling it over his belly. As he went by I saw what he thought he was hiding. Proud bobbling tent led the way, plainly visible to everyone on his right side.

?

Boner?

Yes, boner. At literally a 90° angle.

I don't even know her! xp damn it

good thing you carry a protractor for such emergencies

That guy had clearly already bought his compass, so together they were ready for geometry class.

lol protractor

also totally unrelated I am 1. glad the anti-eavesdropping law that was used to make recording cops in public spaces illegal has been ruled unconstitutional and 2. amazed that the comments on the trib article on the subject are pretty much wholly in favor of the ruling -- fully expected some major insanity there

i feel like i need some kind of new, focused creative project but i don't know what it should be.

Sandwich artist.

make a record using only 1 - 3 instruments/sounds

make a sandwich using only 1 ingredient

i've been trying to do music stuff but i do think i need some kind of focus/constraint because i have trouble figuring out exactly what i want to do. also i don't really have much time at home to do music stuff, and really only after evie goes to sleep so i can't be too loud.

but maybe i need to do something totally new and different, challenge myself.

focus all of my energy and creativity on my tweets

you should do a record where each track only uses one sample for everything, like pitched around/stretched/cut. like a minimal thing with voice + that, and each track is based around a different single sample. i always wanted to do something like that.

I encourage the tweet thing because I find your twittering amusing.

Alternatively, take up a life of crime: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-cta-red-line-delays-police-activity-near-chicago-avenue-20120302,0,288532.story

that's an idea. i don't really know much about samples/sampling though. here are other restriction ideas i had:
1. no recording for a year, only writing - i feel like i tend to start working on recording stuff before songs are totally done because i enjoy the recording part, so maybe i should focus just on writing for a while
2. do a bunch of instrumentals, because i'm really lazy about lyrics and not a great singer - problem is i'm personally usually bored by instrumental music, especially rock/pop instrumentals - but maybe that would be the challenge

instrumentals are not boring!

i like the instrumentals on the new lambchop album a lot, but they have a big string section going. generally i just have trouble latching onto songs with no vocals at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOpRGGcHW5w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQvObik_cHI

those are the two instrumental tracks on the lambchop album. so good.

Should I listen to that album? IIRC I have never heard Lambchop.

(Obv. I have no issue w/instrumentals.)

i think it's really good. it's very very mellow but also very warm. if you like those two i posted, you'd probably like the rest of it, the vocals are very low-key

i love stuff that doesn't have lyrics but still involves the voice in some way

guys, i used the word "very" four times in my last post

i'm having my third cup of coffee for the day

nick I'm always up for playing if you wanna

cool, thanks. i like playing music with friends. i need stuff i can work on at home though too.

Scoobie doovie be ba ba ba bum

btw that reminds me -- my parents visited recently and brought a load of my "crap from the attic" with them, including a full set of drum shells and some random hardware. it's not high-end stuff (Tama Rockstar) but it's in good shape. if anyone knows anyone interested I'd be into making a deal on it...

Take an upholstery class.
And blog about it.

i wanna make music that sounds like this
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7066/6799445772_34daa8447f.jpg

amanda do you have a way to record stuff? if you record keyboard drones/noises i'll play trash guitar and bleep bloops over it. we can discuss via email if you prefer.

ok!!

that's skin with sun damage btw

Some shit is freshly fucked up on the Red Line. Purple Line conductor is telling everyone not to transfer to the Red because of a "1072." Whatever that is.

Ugh somebody said a 1072 is someone got hit by a train.

Why would a conductor use code when talking to passengers FFS.

also totally unrelated I am 1. glad the anti-eavesdropping law that was used to make recording cops in public spaces illegal has been ruled unconstitutional and 2. amazed that the comments on the trib article on the subject are pretty much wholly in favor of the ruling -- fully expected some major insanity there

This is great. I don't know how I missed the news. Great news for Occupy this May.

To reiterate: Great great great.

Happy 175th birthday, Chicago!

Yay!

so for the week around the g8/nato summits, my office building is:
closing the front entrance completely
requiring everyone to show their building id to get in the building
requiring everyone to show their building id again to use the elevator
setting the elevator to only take you to the floor indicated on your building id
requiring all guests to sign in and be escorted upstairs by someone from the office
having a "shelter in place" drill

we are right next to the federal reserve building and apparently some "foreign dignitaries" are staying in our building. i'm betting we'll close the office completely or work from home some days

R's office is telling everyone to work from home. They're afraid of "looters".

<3 this fucking fearful police state we live in.

My students are all talking about it too -- h8 on the G8 brings Chicago together on this marvelous Pulaski Day

http://www.benmeadows.com/images/xl/Pulaski-Axe-BEN-_i_9Y903_AS01.jpg