Dancing with myself

Fist pumping is so cool, especially if you’re doing it in an 80s music video for mtv, but not at all if you are doing it on the show jersey shore. I’m just assuming there’s some fist pumping going on there; I’ve never actually seen a second of that show.

I just recently quit drinking. Well, laid off the booze would be a better way to put it. After 3.5 weeks of getting shit faced every day I figured it was time to either chill out or change my super important professional title to alcoholic.

A grand opportunity presented itself to me today. I may be moving downtown with one of my closest friends on february 1st! I’m really excited – so much so that I’d be willing let this plan affect my plans to buy a new car in the coming months.

Hey! I’m tired!

pabst niggaz

fl studio beetz, dis 1 b calld pabst niggaz yeeee

Record Players

I just purchased a 1960s cabinet record player. It needs some work but it plays my records through its tubes of awesome, and they sound rich. I’ll edit this post with some pictures once I get my hands on a camera.

I found the player on Craigslist, sold by a man from north St. Paul. He was very kind and gave me a price break due to the repairs it needs, allowing me to walk out of his place with the record player for 50 bones. Now I need to look into buying one new speaker and a new needle. I’m also planning on taking apart the turntable mechanism, cleaning it, and rebuilding it (it runs a little loud).

Regardless, Herb Alpert is filling my room with sweet melodies, and the Beach Boys are next! :)

Hard Work

It’s been a while since I’ve let readers know of my going-ons, so I want to start this post with a quick recommendation. I’ve been giving The Band a serious listen these past two days and I suggest you do the same. They were good enough for Bob Dylan to tour and do a bunch of recording with, so they damn well better be worth a few minutes of your time. I suggest you begin with the self-titled album. For specific songs, go with Rag Mama Rag, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up On Cripple Creek, The Shape I’m In, and The Weight, though you should really just explore the sound yourself.

This post was originally a draft from over a month ago entitled “Degradation of Hard Work”. I wanted to blog about something but was fresh out of ideas, so I started doing some house-cleaning of the various drafts lying around here (the second part of my EVE Online article is still intact), leading to this discovery. I read what I wrote and promptly decided it all had to go so I deleted it.

What is this disorder of the mind that enables us to shirk our self-worth?

drink

I recorded a bunch of junk just now. This was the first thing I laid down; I like it the most.

Google Chrome Extension – Zemanta

I opened up Chrome today and read a notice on my tab page about a new addition to the browser – extensions.

Extensions are a big deal. They provide versatility only an open source option can provide to the web browsing experience. Extensions are the reason for my advocacy of Firefox over Internet Explorer. Now IE has extensions, but the implementation is far weaker; the older business approach coupled with the massive size of the corporation, making it less agile, is evident here.

Naturally, I’m excited when I hear Google is rolling out their attempt at extensions. Google is huge and relatively new for their size. They provide a much more expandable and open business model than the old guards of the interwebs.

The one extension I found that was really striking to me (so far) is Zemanta. It integrates into several popular blogging platforms, including that of yours truly – WordPress, and enables a context sensitive display of media and related articles, able to be directly inserted wherever the user chooses in their blog post.

It does this by periodically scanning the text you’ve already typed and then searching for relevant media and articles. In addition, it will suggest in-text links for key words in your blog post. Right now it has suggested I link to the Zemanta home page, Internet Explorer in Wikipedia, the WordPress home page, and now that I’ve said home page twice, the Wikipedia entry for ‘home page’ just popped up!

It will also suggest tags for your post, perhaps helping you with SEO if you are the type of person who needs it. Personally, I haven’t used tags – mostly due to an accidental decision to use categories like tags instead. I’ve grown fond of the approach I take, offering a few broad categories instead of every possible tag under the sun. It allows me to look at this personal blog and consider the direction I’m going with it.

Anyway, there’s a write up for you. I felt the extension deserved a plug from blarg fish??!!?!.

Word of the Night

sab⋅o⋅tage

[sab-uh-tahzh, sab-uh-tahzh]

–noun

1.	any underhand interference with production, work, etc., in a plant, factory, etc., as by enemy agents during wartime or by employees during a trade dispute.

2.	any undermining of a cause.

Word of the Week – Jan 4th

rep⋅er⋅toire : the entire stock of skills, techniques, or devices used in a particular field or occupation: a magician’s repertoire.

reads

I recommend Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski. First of all, Bukowski is the man. While this is the only book of his I’ve read, I plan on reading more. He recounts his life growing up in the Great Depression and tackles the issues he faced as a poor guy living in a broken home. He falls in love with women, drinking and fighting. It left an impression on me.

As I got farther along in the book, I found an urge within myself to… get into a fight. He really expresses the value of having nothing to lose, and the excitement of beating the shit out of someone in situations where reasons don’t matter.

Anyway, I don’t have much else to say about the book. If you like good reads you should definitely pick it up.

freed from dumb

Groove like a shark.