Those with ears to hear, let them hear!

Okay, so Congress decide not to make Christmas merry and continue the Patriot Act for a few more months. I guess that means it is time to start writing to Congress. Instead of focusing on the bad I should probably focus on the good. Christmas was very rewarding this year. I was happy with just about everything I got, with some crazy/confusing exceptions, this year. Thankfully, it was mostly media, yet I was very happy with most of the non-media gifts. Tammy and I both got a lot of over due cookware. It felt good to throw away all the scratched up Wal-Mart cookware we had taking up space and burning our food. I finally have a copy of Scarface to call my own so I don't have to watch the crappy TV edited version. I also got Spinal Tap which falls into the same TV edit category. I have so many new cool things it would take forever to play, watch, read, and then give reviews of all of them so I will just do them as time allows me to. On a special non-gift note I did get the new Tool DVD's for Schism and Parabola from Amazon the other day. I have yet to listen to the Lustmord remixes on the DVD's or listen to the commentaries, but I have watched the videos. While I am thrilled to have these two music videos I have longed to see again for so long, I have to say I am disappointed they are not mixed in 5.1 or 6.1 surround sound. After the DVD boxed set they released before I would expect any following DVD's to at least have 5.1 sound, but they do not. The videos are still gorgeous and like I said before, I am still very happy to have them. I guess it is time to go and indulge...

the wicker man

I have a strange love hate relationship with the USPS and UPS. These companies, being the most common sources of deliveries for mine and most other peoples packages, have a tendency to let me down quite often. I love to receive packages. It is like having Christmas year round when I receive something nice I have ordered for myself or Tammy. The problem is my mail carrier has been known to some rather negligent things with our packages if we are not home. We have found packages propped up against the door and our mailbox, which is actually one of the most considerate acts this particular carrier has performed. Stranger things happen when we are home. I have waited all day for packages, tracking them on the internet while also watching TV or something else near the front door, only to discover "delivery attempted" on the USPS web site. I look outside... all the mailbox flags are down. I check my mailbox... junk mail. No attempted delivery slip. I check my door... no slip. I was downstairs all day and I did not hear a single knock or ring on the doorbell. I go the post office and they ask to see my slip and I tell them I do not have one. I have to explain that I tracked the package on the net and could not find a slip for attempted delivery. They search and end up finding said packages. On a couple of instances they talk to me about the carrier telling me this happens with her all the time. Over time I have come to realize what happens. While lying in bed I have been awakened by a cars relentless honking outside my window only to look outside and see the carrier driving away from my apartment. I throw some clothes on quickly and run downstairs and out my door to chase the vehicle down the street. When she stops she hand me a package. I am so sleepy and groggy (and barefooted) that a just yank the package out of her hand and run back home instead of yelling at her as I would love to do. I cannot believe a carrier will sit in a car and honk a horn instead of knocking on a door or ringing a bell. I suppose that is why I missed my other packages. Instead of listening for a doorbell or a knock on my door I should have been listening for a car horn to honk in my large residential community. And that is just USPS.
There is also the ever elusive UPS delivery people. One night Tammy came home at two cases of Jolt in a cardboard box sitting outside our door soaked in the rain. She tells the story better, but needless to say there was cardboard and packing styrofoam all over the driveway and road. It is funny, which ever shift I work UPS makes sure to deliver (or attempt) my packages on the other shift. I thought when I went to night shift recently that I would be able to eliminate missing a lot of my packages. Unfortunately, UPS has decide to start delivering my packages after 5pm. I used to break my neck at work to try to be home by 1pm, the time I usually missed my packages, only to find an attempted delivery slip saying they had been there at 12:30pm. I know this all sounds bitter and exaggerated, but I have missed two packages this week. I have a collection of UPS delivery slips and no present to give my wife for Christmas. I wrote little messages on the slips and put them back on the door. They were nice polite messages asking to leave the packages with neighbors, but alas, the messages were ignored and accompanied by new slips with lovely messages like "Final attempt". Enough of the rant, I need to get ready to go to my in-laws house for Christmas, but I have many great Christmas Eve stories to relay from last night that I will get to later.

Hark, Hark, Harkened he.

Fighting sickness... hearing news of firings at work... The Christmas season, what a great time of year! I have to say one of the greatest things I have heard over the past few days is the failure to extend the Patriot Act. The House is going to try to get it passed by December 31st (when it expires), but Congress seems to be standing firmly against it. Please Congress, make our holiday season bright. Bring back Civil Liberties. In the mean time I have music to make, CD covers to design, a website to build, and oh, look at the time.... off to work I go.

Motoring

Endlessly frustrating... Bad work week, still haven't got my copy of Ape of Naples from Coil, having a hard time with CSS, waiting for ordered Christmas gifts from an unreliable postal carrier... uhh! On the positive side I have figured out how to host my website and my mp3s for easy linking with my .mac account. So now I can put up my first little podcast on this blog and continue to podcast using blogger. That is good. I will be so happy when the next few weeks are over. This week we are bombarded with large Christmas and graduation parties at work. Next week is Christmas and I really dread all the transporting of gifts and adjusting schedules and all that nonsense. I hate to be such a Scrooge, but I am just very frustrated at the moment. Hopefully, I will find some time in the next week to get some more stuff done. I am working on some more Informational Terrorism Transmissions promo material, but it is a long, hard journey.

Achingly Antagonistic

As my vacation slowly begins to dissolve into light melancholy dread I cannot seem to find any inspiration. Laziness is my guide and it's moving me steadily backwards. I have had days to write on here and to create sounds and images, but I cannot decide what to do. I feel blank and apathetic. Maybe it is the Christmas shopping... Maybe it is the exhaustion that comes from work. I just can't put my finger on it. I have been rejected this week by a couple little record companies, but I haven't really applied myself. First, I was considered to noisy and percussion heavy. I understand. My first release, Isolationist Soundscapes, is noisy, irritating, and primitively percussive. I do understand how that could be seen as to much for a mainly dark ambient company. What I do not like is being denied a chance by a dark noise company that did not even listen to my material. I sent a nice polite e-mail asking what format they would like a submission sent as. They asked what the music sounded like and I told them. They denied me without even listening. Am I trying to be denied? Is this a sign to myself to self publish? I am beginning to think so. I could easily put together a nice little press kit based on my 11 years of work and send it out to a multitude of diverse indy labels, but I haven't. I am thinking that my true intentions are out of reach and to demanding for most companies to deal with. I am wanting a very limited special art edition release of Isolationist Soundscapes. It is a primitive catalog of a very difficult time in my life. I feel to move forward I am almost obligated to release this album. I think my newer work would be more marketable and would fall into a category that would be less risky for a 'dark ambient' label to release, but without Soundscapes being out there (at least a little) I just can't progress. I think there is to much of me in it. I am thinking of just hand making and pressing an art edition and then just sending out my second release as a demo. If I do make a little record company I think I will just use my blog name. It would be nice and simple. I have been learning html so I could make my own little nifty website and everything. All that is really left to do is to get back to work and make it happen. I have pressing contacts I can use so I can make a fairly inexpensive art release. The only question now is how elaborate does one make an 11 year old work in progress? Next post: Informational Terrorism Transmissions vs. Intangible Spectrum

Over the past few days I haven't had much of a chance to post. I have discovered a wonderful band, though. Broadcast is one of the best sounding bands I have heard in a while. Creepy yet soothing.
I found an old CD of music Tammy and I made using MTV Music Generator. I loaded it into my computer and was pretty happy with what I heard. It was made from a tape that had almost no treble levels so when it was transferred to CD it sounded like dance music that was buried underground. When I loaded it in Live it took on a whole new life. I can already see the bass is going to be absurdly sub-sonic, but I was surprised to see that I could pull out a little treble from it with the right tweaking. I am going to be on vacation next week so hopefully I will be able to work with the material. I also hope to develop a podcast or two. I just need to learn a good way to broadcast it with Blogger.
I have also found a lot of photographs and Xerox manipulations that I created during the inception of Informational Terrorism Transmissions. The project was initially supposed to be a vast multimedia project based on music and a magazine. I released one issue (that really sucked) and gathered a second issue together, but most of the second, better, issue has become displaced. I had a finalized version that I ended up giving to a friend that moved to Europe, but unfortunately was stupid enough not to have a finished backup. It was to much for a budding young writer to handle. A 100 page magazine is a lot to deal with when you are doing it by yourself with little to no income. Hmm... Maybe if I can dig up... Well, really, who wants to read a 10 year old Namanax interview? Well someone might like the Brighter Death Now material. Time to start digging.