soulcrushingjob

Oh, hello there.

2008-06-11T07:07:16Z

Hi. I’ve been gone. This is basically what I’ve been up to.

shampoo

2005-04-15T00:10:07Z

the revolution will involve your friends

2005-04-05T02:50:58Z

Most anybody who would bother to read this knows that I work at imeem. For more content authored by yours truly, check this out: http://blog.imeem.com/allan/

If you wan an imeem invite, just get in contact with me.

mmmm. tastes like dolor.

2005-03-30T03:42:14Z

My allergies have been going nuts lately and my sleep has been really weird. I'm pretty sure that I dreamt of this last night:

I was visiting the band Sleater-Kinney while they were on tour (apparently, I'm incredibly cool in some of my dreams). I don't think Janet Weiss was around, but I was hanging out with Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker and they were showing me this hand-bound book they had made.

Apparently, in a previous dream, we had invented a new snack food, called "Doloritos". They're tasty corn-based chips that taste like mental anguish and sorrow. The band was pretty into these fictional chips and the book they were showing me was full of all these drawings and stories they had written about Doloritos while on tour. They had several of these hand-bound books with them.

Man, I really have no idea.

Zoom-Zoom

2005-02-25T22:26:14Z

Taken from the owner's manual for the 2004 Mazda6:

Zoom-Zoom

All children instinctively know it.

A few adults still remember it.

One unique car company refuses to outgrow it.

In grown-up language, it means the exhilaration and

liberation that come from experiencing sheer motion.

But as usual, children put it much better and simply call it " Go Zoom-Zoom."

We practice it every day.

It's why we build the kind of cars we do.

Zoom-Zoom.

Can we re-awaken it in you today?

Hell Yes

2005-02-18T23:53:00Z

97X has been playing "E-Pro" off of Guero, the forthcoming Beck album. It's become that sort of "single of the moment" for me (ie: I can't stop myself from playing this song over and over).

From what I've heard so far, it's a departure from Sea Change, which I like to call "Beck Gets Sad". I like Sea Change, but if E-Pro is any indication, Beck has decided to Bring The Rock this time around.

I've also been listening to the Hell Yes EP. It sounds like Beck remixed with a Gameboy (and it very well might be). The songs BIT RATE VARIATIONS IN B-FLAT (Girl) and BAD CARTRIDGE (E-Pro) sound like the lost Beck score to Super Mario Brothers. This is not a bad thing.

I got all this stuff via iTMS. Damn you, one-click, damn you.

But what does it mean?

2005-02-11T22:59:20Z

I had a very strange dream last night:

I was living somewhere in Western Europe, working at some sort of musical instrument shop owned by Mrs. Atkinson, my high school ASL (yes, American Sign Language) teacher. Mrs. Atkinson had left earlier in the day for Germany with some sort of youth orchestra that she managed/conducted/whatever, so I'm running the shop alone. I'm supposed to drive to Germany after I close up to help her out with the orchestra thing.

Just as I'm about to close the store, this man and his daughter come in, wanting to buy a green oboe we have in the corner of the store. I think to myself that I should probably dust off the oboe and check it out before giving it to the daughter to try. As I pick up the oboe, I'm a little amazed that it's a) made of metal b) lacking a large number of levers I tend to associate with woodwinds c) got a mouthpiece like a flute. I have no idea how to play the oboe (in the dream, or in real life), so I blow into it, press some levers, and then hand it over to the daughter.

After a few minutes, the father comes to me and tells me that the oboe is playing a little flat. I look over at the daughter and the oboe; the reed she's using is made from cork and shaped like a styrofoam cup. "Well, yeah," I think. I can't get a hold of Mrs. Atkinson on the phone, so I tell the man to come back another day. Then I drive to Germany.

Of Blueberries and Boats

2005-02-11T01:02:31Z

I picked up some new new music yesterday. Initial impressions:

1. The Fiery Furnaces - EP
Despite the name, this is more of an album than an EP (10 tracks).Whatever it is, it's fucking awesome. I thought Gallowsbird's Bark was a good album, but I was turned off by what I had heard of Blueberry Boat. "Well then," I thought, "that's that." EP is so good, it makes me want to go out and buy 5 copies of Blueberry Boat and give each of them a second chance (actually, this is an exaggeration, but I'll probably go down to Borders and buy *one* copy after I finish this journal entry).

2. The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes single
Eh. Nothing particularly fantastic on this. Probably worth exactly the $5 it cost.

3. Flunk - Morning Star
I've recently rekindled my torrid love affair with 97X, the Oxford, Ohio radio station that started me down the path to music obsession. They've gone internet-only recently, and the move has only made them better. They've been been playing some tracks off this album recently and I've liked what I've heard. It tickles the part of the brain dedicated to processing sexy European music (Bj�rk, Portishead, Hooverphonic, etc). You can listen to 97X at woxy.com or by looking them up in the iTunes radio listing.

4. Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
I basically picked this up because of the Emily Haines connection to Stars and Broken Social Scene. I haven't really played this much (been listening too much to EP), but I have high hopes. Is it just me, or does it seem like everything from Canada just rocks lately?

Beyond Belief

2004-11-01T13:20:38Z

Can you believe that I just realized this week that hot and sour soup gives me the hiccups?

Where did I go?

2004-10-21T21:54:12Z

Music added to my iTunes library in the last 5 months, in chronological order:

Juliana Hatfield - In Exile Deo
Morrissey - You Are The Quarry
Ben Gibbard - Ben Gibbard on KEXP
Dntel - Life is Full of Possibilities
Juliana Hatfield - Please Do Not Disturb
A.C. Newman - The Slow Wonder
Sleater-Kinney - Sleater-Kinney
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots EP
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance
Guided By Voices - Earthquake Glue
Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
DJ Shadow - In Tune and On Time - Live!
Modest Mouse - Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks EP
Matt Pond PA - Emblems
Wilco - A Ghost is Born
U.N.K.L.E. - Psyence Fiction
The Fiery Furnaces - Gallowsbird's Bark
The Divine Comedy - Absent Friends
Death Cab For Cutie - Studio X Sessions
Various Artists - Future Soundtrack for America
Blur - Blur
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
Liz Phair - Whip-Smart
Tanya Donelly - Whiskey Tango Ghosts
Stars - Heart
Matt Sharp - Matt Sharp
Her Space Holiday - The Young Machines
Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
Bobbie Gentry - Chickasaw County Child: The Artistry of Bobbie Gentry
Ben Folds - Super D EP
Bjork - Medulla
Guided By Voices - Half Smiles of the Decomposed
The Secret Machines - Now Here is Nowhere
Brian Wilson - Smile
Aberfeldy - Young Forever
The Rasmus - Dead Letters
Air - Premiers Symptomes
Elvis Costello & The Imposters - The Delivery Man
The Decemberists - Billy Liar EP
Carina Round - The Disconnection
Elliott Smith - From A Basement on the Hill
William Shatner - Has Been
Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
Rilo Kiley - The Execution of All Things

and this I know

2004-04-14T10:57:44Z

I just got home from the first show of the Pixies reunion. I was somewhat surprised by just how well they played together and how good it all sounded, given the whole "Reunion!" aspect. My feeling was that it was either going to be pretty good or a tremendous letdown; it ended up being some sort of awesome. The show was very good and those people who may have paid more than $200 per ticket probably feel like it was money well spent. I thank those people for effectively paying for my ticket (and then some). I recommend seeing this tour when it comes near. I bought the double-disc recording available within minutes of the end of the show. I have ambiguous feelings about the phenomenon, but if I were 12 years older, it would probably be pretty depressing. The tour t-shirts don't say "Sellout Tour" for nothing.

Good night folks.

the atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how

2004-04-11T11:24:15Z

I spend a lot of time talking to Jon and various other characters on IRC when I should probably be working. During the course of the day, there tends to be a lot of URLs passed back and forth. Often it's a pain in the ass to cut and paste them from putty into a web browser, due to the prevalence of ludicrously long URLs and absolutely gratuitous hostnames on the modern internet. It's the ones that get broken across multiple lines that suck the most.

In the tried and true tradition of doing-work-now-so-you-can-be-lazy-later, Jon wrote a bot called curmudgeon that sucks URLs (and sometimes URL-like text) out of IRC and puts them on a web page. I convinced him to add some code so that the URLs get thrown into a database. Today, motivated by profound boredom, I wrote a front-end for that database. Here it is.

Four albums that I've been listening to quite a bit this week:
John Vanderslice - Cellar Door
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Jem - Finally Woken
Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism

James just put up his proto-blog. It looks awesome.

The T'ain B'o Cuailnge

2004-02-24T10:27:36Z

Have you ordered your copy of The Tain? I have.

an experiment

2004-02-20T21:32:05Z

Today I'm conducting an experiment at work. I've been describing it to people like this:

"I'm trying to see how much of "69 Love Songs" I can listen to before my eardrums bleed."

I'm currently on "You're My Only Home" on the second disc. I have a headache and I want to take a nap. I guess this is a reminder why, of all the albums I own, I listen to this one just a little more frequently than Zaireeka.

startling revelations

2004-02-18T07:13:25Z

There's a data session on the Oh, Inverted World CD. It's got a kind of weird video for New Slang on it.

Chipotle plays Wilco and Cat Power on a regular basis over their muzak system.

The shredded tires they use to pad the floors at rock climbing gyms turn your snot black.