i'm going to have to come in soon and not buy anything.

actually, i need a chair with wheels on it. i somehow doubt you deliver. well, maybe you have a truck for delivery that doesn't work. so you "deliver", but only if we push the truck back and forth.

you're close enough that i can wheel it home. any with wheels?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLwOeNn_4sw

unexpected early crash.

i'm hitting a sort of neo riot grrl thing in windsor tonight and need to put a third coat of caulking on my window, but i'm hoping i can get at least one thing uploaded by the afternoon.

must have picked up a virus. it's weird though because it's only three symptoms: sore throat, sore muscles and tiredness. no coughing, fever, stuffinesss, anything like that. but it means i've been sleeping quite heavily since thursday. i wasn't sure at first that it was a virus, but i'm sure now...

so, it's going to get put back another day or two.

there's a yearly event in detroit tonight called the noise camp that i was going to check out, but the virus/rain/sunday combination is going to keep me in. the hope was that it would be done completely before i left; it's not even close. i may actually even crash (again) within minutes...

i'm at least more awake than i've been in a few days and think i can get some work done tonight....

experiencing some manchester in detroit

"you're in the wrong washroom, sweetheart."

as incredibly complex and slightly patronizing as that statement is, it actually means i'm in a cool place. i've been over this a few times, but allow me to reiterate why i usually (not always.) use the dude's room.

1) the primary reason is that i can use the urinals and will choose to in most circumstances. i find something disrespectful about forcing women to listen to it fall in the toilet, cause it's just obvious. the reality is that public washrooms are gross. if you did a random survey of women, you'd learn that something like 98% of them would urinate while standing if they could, because it avoids the ickiness of squatting. it would be irrational of me to not take advantage of my biology in this sense, considering virtually any woman would do the same thing if given the opportunity.

2) i transitioned late. it's generally clear that i'm trans, but few people are going to confuse me for a cis. i completely grasp why the idea of me walking into the women's washroom would be a little unsettling. if i were cis, would i want the actual me waltzing in there? the truth is that i probably wouldn't. i know there's going to be a spectrum of reactions, but i feel obligated to be respectful of this concern and aware of how other people feel about it. the converse is that the worst that's going to happen from using the men's room is a funny stare or a concerned reaction. in the end, it's not really important enough of a concern to me to start pissing people off.

i mean, i support the whole bathroom rights thing. but, personally? i don't really care if the bathroom door has an M or an F on it and i'm willing to compromise pretty dramatically to keep the peace on the issue.

it's not absolute. if i'm wearing a dress, or some other particularly effeminate clothing, and i feel safe in doing so, then i'll probably use the women's washroom. it's pretty rare, though. i really default to standing when i pee....

i actually had a good time tonight at the detroit museum of contemporary art. the drinks were exceedingly strong, it got me a little drunker than i planned to be and i ended up dancing a little. i actually kind of needed that, it'd been a while. reviews in the comments...

got distracted there...

so, the opening dj was actually mildly interesting. he was playing with max or audiomulch or something in real-time, which, yes, tends to unfold somewhat predictably. but it's not clear to me why people will knock some software for this, while not bothering with others. any software system is going to colour the output in a roughly equal manner.

he had some syncing going on with the background films. as one example - bucephalus or not - he had some kids bouncing balls synced to some beats bouncing.

http://shop.overlap.org/album/chris-mcnamara-vague-cities

this is what i pulled myself out to see, and it was quite enjoyable. there's a lot of process in their approach to deep bass music, which tends be very dark ambient and integrate a lot of glitchy noise. you can't dance to this, but it's nice to get as a blast of sound. it was plenty loud, but i do kind of wish it was just a bit louder.

there's an improv inherent in the design, but they did something quite similar to this.

here's a full set:

so, reading up a little on the show, it became apparent that what was driving it was an attempt to pull a little manchester into detroit house. true or not, detroit gets a lot of credit as being an epicentre of electronic music that has sort of lost it's way. so, from detroit's perspective, the idea is to try and bring a little bit of that british artistic genius in (a british invasion, if you will) to kickstart a more interesting electronic music scene in detroit.

but, i can only assume that the opposite perspective is of a sort of a pilgrimage to mecca - detroit being where it all came from. these are a bunch of lanky brits that have never been near to the city, remember.

so, you have to think that andy stott was maybe a bit nervous about playing detroit, and that the overly minimalist start to his set had something to do with playing to the audience - who was visibly a little restless, apparently looking for a drop. whether by design or reaction, he seemed to become very british all of a sudden and morphed into some solid danceable idm - we're talking amen breaks, autechre melodies and rdj basslines. in fact, it seemed like it was just about to break into some kind of totally mental squarepusher chiptune freakout before the clock turned to midnight and we all turned into pumpkins on the floor.

it really wasn't what i was expecting. andy stott is known for morphing minimalist house beats into these sort of impressionist soundscapes, which is something he leaned towards in the first half of the set but didn't really give enough time to develop as it's meant to. i've never heard of him being associated with that warp sound the way that demdike stare is often compared to autechre. unexpected or not, it sure was a lot of fun, though.....

i doubt i'll find much like what i heard out there. this is more the kind of thing he's known for - and did play around with a bit at the beginning of the set, although it was more stripped down.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/09/17.html

cymbals eating stale, mouldy guitars in detroit

so, i've come to the conclusion that it's going to be a while before i get used to the fact that the magic stick really shakes when a band gets going. it's on the second level of a structure that looks like it was built a very long time ago and has been redone repeatedly since the 30s. the additions are quite obvious, and there's been a lot of them. there's this nagging fear that somebody fixed something with duct tape and it's just waiting to give...

on the one hand, an upper floor structure built to handle large standing audiences (that may get a little rowdy) and loud bass music should either be solid concrete or built to give a little in response. it's clearly not concrete. so that little bit of elasticity is hopefully actually a safety mechanism. a rigid structure is going to develop cracks and fall apart.

i don't know that it was engineered that way, though. nor would i have much faith in the architecture if i knew that it was, to be honest. all i know is it sways a little and it's unnerving and that i'm not likely to get over it quickly.

the show tonight was a little lacklustre. allow me to explain...

i knew it was an early show, likely to make space for a long set by bob mould, but i slept in a little late and missed the first few songs. so i need to be careful in the review of cymbals eat guitars' new disc, which i have yet to hear in it's entirety. i didn't hear the opening tracks...

...but this video is a decent representation of what i did see, and what you'll notice is that it's a little bit unadventurous relative to past efforts. the edges have been smoothed over a little, the excesses have been pared down, etc. now, the band seems to be being praised for this by the indie press, but that's what the indie press wants - predictability. what attracted me to the band was that they were a little different, a little rough, kind of coming apart at the seams...

it's not that it seemed dramatically different, it just seemed as though they cast out the parts that made them different and interesting and all that was left was the now ubiquitous generic indie formula. that's not something i'm going to be interested in or connect to.

so, i'm not going to comment on the disc, yet. i'm giving it a first listen right now. and i'm willing to accept that the kinds of things that make their records interesting may be difficult to transfer to a live setting. but i found the set underwhelming in it's move towards a more predictable sound.

this is a full set from a few days later:

i wouldn't have gone just to see bob mould, but i'd hardly skip out on him without giving him a few songs, either. i planned to give him a beer to win me over.

that may seem a little disrespectful, given his status in rock music history, but the truth is he's never really clicked with me and i'm really not familiar with or all that interested in exploring anything he's released as a solo artist. as for husker du itself, i put them on the fence in terms of holding up. i've spoken before of the 80s rock canon and the need to pare it down. i'm not going to forcefully argue against husker du's inclusion, but they're far from a lock within it the way that sonic youth or rem are. there's that one album, and not much else, really.

so, i wasn't sure what i was going to get or how i'd react. the bulk of the set was in the power pop variety, with minimal gazey excursions and really nothing approaching any kind of noise. it was a bit of a nice groove at first, but something became very apparent a few songs in: all his songs sound the same. a few more songs in and it just started getting monotonous. i got bored about an hour in and went downstairs to try the magic stick pizza.

i know his output is more varied than what he provided, and i'm not sure what kind of age-related crisis has got him playing power pop at this stage in his life, but i'd advise avoiding him until he goes back to acting his age.

here's an older tune...

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/09/16.html

so,i've been spending a large amount of time mixing the section between 3:30-4:00. i've got over a dozen string parts (two contrabass, two cellos, electric bass, electric guitar, several violas, several violins) ranging across seven octaves, all distorted and compressed slightly differently, and running three countermelodies simultaneously. finding that sweet spot where i'm able to get the overtones to blur just a little, particularly on the bottom, but can still hear all the different parts at the right proportion, has been challenging. that's a complex problem. every time i alter one channel, it puts something else out of balance. but i'm almost there.

i wanted this done this morning, but i'm hitting cymbals eat guitars tonight and don't want to be falling over so i need to get a few hours of rest.

it's very close...

so, the grocery store is getting propertarian about it's shopping carts. it's kind of hard to blame them, because people in the neighbourhood aren't being good anarchists.

i was thinking about it on the way home, and it's actually a great topic to use in an introductory discourse. there might be this misperception that it's unruly hooligan anarchists stealing the shopping carts. the actual reality is that it's the anarchists that bring them back, because they understand them as socially owned property. but, the fact that people take them in the first place indicates a level of intuition towards the idea of social ownership.

and isn't it obvious that people ought to be able to take the carts home? i'm just not quite sure why it isn't so obvious that they should bring them back. laziness only gets you so far, here. i mean, i've walked by houses with four or five on their yard, indicating they're not even bringing them back when they get more food.

i might suggest it lies in the perception of property. that intuition towards social ownership may be overpowered by the enforced hierarchical guilt that keeps propertarianism in place. that is, they may be "stealing" the carts because they figure they ought to be able to use them, but then they can't rationalize it, and figure once they've stolen it it becomes theirs. then they just "steal" more. there could even be fear of consequence regarding being caught "stealing" them when they bring them back. but i'm just making wild guesses, and i'd really like to get a better understanding of this.

me? i'm a good anarchist, so i always return the public property as soon as i'm done using it, so other people can use it. that's the basis of a system of social ownership.

there's been a few times where i've been halfway home, realized my neck was sore, pulled a cart off somebody's lawn and then brought it back to their lawn when i was done. that's taking temporary control of a public good and returning it how i found it.

there's also been a few times where somebody has asked me for the cart on the way back to the store and i've given it to them - although i make sure they promise to bring it back to the store. it wasn't even for groceries a few times. one woman had a broken stroller and used it to get her kid home. another guy had a bag of soil. that's the way this ought to work.

the thing is that the level of social responsibility to make it work doesn't seem to be absent. people are taking the carts home, indicating they get it. but what's suppressing the responsibility to bring them back?

the answer to this isn't locking carts down or whatever other silly approach the store might come up with, it's talking to people and trying to understand why they're not being good anarchists.

"young lady", huh?

well, you're half right.

i guess i DO look like a teenager....

i think "young lady" applies to roughly 13-19.

i'm 33.

why can't people fucking keep appointments?

no, i'm not going to sit there in a room full of contagious sick people and let you tell me i'm an hour early when i have a fucking piece of paper that you wrote with the appointment time on it - because then you're going to tell me you're backed up past my altered appointment time. i set an appointment because i didn't want to sit around for three hours and catch pneumonia while i'm there. in fact, you pressured me into setting an appointment in the first place - i was just wondering if you had my correct phone number, and would have been happy to wait for a phone call.

i get that they're understaffed, but don't fucking tell me that's my fault and that i'm early when i'm waving the card in front of your face. i don't care who you are, i won't be lied to like that. take responsibility for your bad planning, apologize and tell me you're backed up. i'll go sit outside. but you lie to me, and i'm going to storm out the door.

i got my $1 guitar fix and put it all together and got nothing but hum out of it.

strangely, there's no ground on the input. so, the circuit isn't completing. but, it completed in the store.

i made an error: i took a walk down the street, and then didn't plug it back in when i came back. who knows what they did. i think they may have ripped the ground out. it would have taken two seconds.

see, the thing is that it shouldn't have worked in the store without the ground - the ground was there when i plugged it in, and it wasn't when i took it home.

it's not expensive to fix, i need a soldering iron anyways, but why do that? it's just upsetting that some people can be that disrespectful.

like, it's not that the ground is loose.

the ground is gone. no guitar can work without a ground. but, it did work.

somebody ripped it out....

either way, that's that for the day, let me take a look at those headphones.

it sounds crazy to think somebody would do that.

but the only other explanation is that somebody was sitting around the corner mimicking my open strings, tricking me into thinking it worked. that's even crazier.

it's just impossible that it could have worked without the ground. but it did. and it was entirely gone when i went back.

ripping a cord off a board like that could create other problems, as well.

but i have a circuit diagram, and it will be very east to fix if there's further damage.

so, you'll have to add $1 worth of solder and $1 worth of wires to the fix price. a soldering iron is going to be around $20, but it's not fair to work it into the price because it's something i need to get anyways.

well, i lost the day, but i gained a guitar and a vacuum. there's still a touch of rust on the pickups, but i'm going to leave it there. i'll get the spring, nut and strings on tomorrow - for around $10 total. but i'm going to lose most of the day tomorrow, too. for the moment, i'm hungry and sleepy....

haven't vacuumed the phones yet, will wait until tomorrow.

so, i went searching through the streets of windsor for an affordable vacuum, and came back with a beat to shit strat.

i couldn't resist. i've been meaning to pick up something with single coils (this is an h-s-s "fat strat") for a long time, but haven't run into the opportunity. it's a lower end ibanez copy, but it's solidly constructed. i focus almost entirely on necks and body shapes when i'm evaluating guitars. the rest can be modified. but, the truth is i never do, because the main sound source for what i do is the computer. i'm going to plug a $3000 strat through the same effects loop, and it's not going to be all that easy to tell the difference in sound. it's honestly not worth the cash. if i was more interested in gigging and i wanted a better connection to the amp, maybe....but i don't....

what's important is playability. ibanez are known for their "fast necks", which work well with the strat design.

but it's the single coils i wanted, and that i will put to good use in open chord passages.

it needs some work. it's full of rust. while i was able to verify that all of the pickups work, one of them is very loose and the jack needs a washer. but i honestly think it's a ten minute job.

for the price ($40, including a case), i can't complain much - even if i end up ripping the pickups out altogether. the neck is good enough to build up with.

i did get a vacuum, as well. the first shop i went to had a nice little unit for $25, but it was missing the carpet head. after taking a look around, it's the best choice immediately available. i can probably pick up a head one day on ebay or something.

gah.....

buzz is in the phones. in the back of my mind i knew it all along. i've been fighting with dirt in there for months, and i know there's a hair deep in the drivers because i can see it and can't reach it. i've been putting it off because the rattle was so much weaker on the other tracks and i was just mentally compensating...i couldn't imagine it was really the dirt....

but my cheaper phones aren't rattling. here's the thing: i'm not 100% certain it's rattling due to the dirt, it could be rattling because the studio phones are reproducing it properly and the non-studio phones are squishing the fuck out of it.

at least i know now that the track actually sounds good through consumer grade equipment.

the thing is i need the deep compression, and it's rattling it to the point that i can't mix it because i can't tell if the compression is actually distorting or the speaker is rattling.

so, i need to find a vacuum as a top priority this morning. i tossed the one i brought down here - it was older than my mother is, and just wasn't working.i can't mix with the other phones, it sounds like i'm wearing earplugs...but if i can't get the hair out, i may have to mix the bass separately through them...

see, the phone is sealed. it's probably why the phones have lasted 30 years. but it means i can't get the hair out with tweezers because i can't reach it...

you just can't overstate the value of high end phones like this. it would cost upwards of $500 to replace them with something comparable, and i don't have that. and i WILL tell, because i've been using them so long that my ears just won't accept anything less.

so, these basically have to last forever, sort of thing. the vacuum worked last time.