Anglo-Audiophile

A Year in Culture 2011

2011-12-30T13:19:00.000-05:00

There is a tendency, or I should say I have a tendency, to frame a year within a typical school year. A new year starts in September (or whenever a new year of classes start) and ends around May or June (or whenever classes end). I realize that a new year starts on January 1st, but when I think about my year I'm thinking between September and June. The summer kind of acts as a stand alone thing that I didn't account when I started this entry. However when one does a year end list, it's generally accepted that one is writing about the time between January 1st and December 31st of X year.

So how was this year culturally for me? Odd. I've discovered that I listen to fewer and fewer actual albums and more and more listen to playlists that are made up of songs from every year of music I have in my collection. This means that I generally associate a song not with its year of release, or even the album it originally appeared on, but with the year I listened to it and the playlist it was a member of. That's how I end up every year marveling at the fact that what I listened to wasn't actually released in the year I associate it with but usually with the previous year or even longer ago. Also, thanks mostly to law school, I haven't read all that much this year. I've probably watched more TV than I've read books which is kind of sad but I've found that as I get older I get even more picky about what I read and with the limited amount of time I now have for just about everything, the last thing I want to do is read some more after reading upwards of a 100 really dense pages of legal jargon. Moving to Boston though has been a boon for my theater going life. I've seen more ballet productions this year than I have in probably my entire life. I got to see Yo-Yo Ma perform with the Boston Symphony and hear Handel's Messiah live after years of listening to it on CD. I also finally got to see "A Doll's House" which is probably one of my favorite plays that I was assigned to read in high school (and just generally one of my favorite plays). And of course there are the hours of television I watched, some live, some on Netflix. This year has been a hodge-podge of low and high art for me some of which is difficult to categorize as "best" or "favorite." "Follies" is not one of my favorite musicals by Stephen Sondheim, but getting to see Bernadette Peters perform live is something that one doesn't forget very soon. Finally getting to go to a comedy gig and having it be one of my favorite British comedians is also a once in a life time experience, even if I can't say it was the best thing I've ever seen. 2011 though has been a year of cultural enrichment for better and worse. So now let's categorize it and par it down, like people like to do.

Albums I Actually Listened to This Year

As I mentioned I tend to listen more to individual songs on playlists as opposed to entire albums. However there were 5 albums I listened to this year. Generally speaking if I listen to an album it means I like it. And if it's on this list it's because I liked it. So here are my top 5 albums of this year:

"The Wombats Proudly Present...This Modern Glitch" by the Wombats
"The Future is Medieval" by the Kaiser Chiefs
"Aim and Ignite" by Fun.*
"21" by Adele**
"Welcome to Condale" by Summer Camp***

The Songs of 2011

This list, with the exception of the songs by the Kaiser Chiefs, the Wombats, and Adele, was largely aquired within the last 2 months. Up until then I was doing fine just listening to what I had been listening to since 2010. However around late October my current collection began to bore me so I sought out new music. This was done largely by seeing what my friends had been listening to on Spotify and by seeing what had been released recently and was good at least according to Zune Marketplace. And of course there was some music heard during commercials and on TV shows but most of those were not released in 2011, so they don't count. Here are the top 10 songs of 2011 in no particular order:

"Cousin in the Bronx" by the Kaiser Chiefs
"Rumour Has It" by Adele
"Everybody Wants Somebody" by Patrick Stump
"Raconte-Moi Une Histoire" by M83****
"Still Life" by the Horrors
"Ahead of the Wave" by Non-Commissioned Officers
"We Are Young" by Fun.*****
"Gangsta" by tUnE-yArDs
"You and I" by Lady Gaga
"Anti-D" by the Wombats

I did go see a few movies. Of the handful I saw in theatres the two I liked the best were "Fright Night" and "The Muppets" neither of which were critical darlings, though at least "The Muppets" did really well in the box office. Of the three****** books I read this year the only one I would recommend is How The Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll the subtitle of which is "An Alternative History of American Popular Music" which goes a long way to explaining what the book is actually about. I couldn't possibly recommend what TV you should watch because much like music (which I feel I can recommend) what you spend your time watching is fairly individualized. Also, I watch the same five shows on repeat so I have a fairly narrow view of what's good and what isn't.

So that's 2011. I hope your year in culture was good and here's to next year being even better.

*Two things. The band is called "Fun." The period is part of the name. Also, this album was actually released in 2010, but since I've been listening to this and Summer Camp nearly non-stop for the past few days, I'm including it. Sue me.

**Adele is probably the only artist within my top music lists that was included by anyone else. As is typical my taste in music largely diverges from what is considered popular by other people.

***I discovered this album because a friend of mine from my time in London was listening to this album quite a lot on Spotify. thanks Jade!

****Everyone loves "Midnight City" so much. I think this song is much, much better. Besides, who wouldn't want to turn into a magical frog?

*****I first heard this song as a cover by the cast of Glee, so that's probably the only song I heard on TV that wasn't released in 2010 or earlier. However, as is typical, the original is better.

******This is a vast exageration. I don't know how many books I read this year, but it wasn't a very large number and far fewer than I would have liked.

Law School for Dummies

2011-12-05T16:35:00.001-05:00

I am by no means an expert at the game of law school. I'm currently writing this entry as a way to avoid studying for finals* which is an indication of something.** However what is you need to know to succeed at law school you learn fairly quickly. Sure I may still be confused by what the hell a bailment*** is, but I do know some basics on surviving law school. If you're considering law school, I'd take these suggestions under your wing for the future.

Don't Live AloneThere's a certain temptation, particularly if you didn't have the best roommate(s) experience in undergrad to live on your own at least for the first year of law school. This is a very bad idea. Particularly if you're moving to a new city (like I did) your roommates will be your first life line and even after you make friends will still people with whom you can bitch. If you're really lucky they'll be going to law school and even if it's a different school or they have different teachers you'll all be able to complain about how tough classes are and bounce ideas about what reasonable care**** is of each other after spending way too much time in the library. Living alone can be a death knell to your succeeding at law school because it can lead to introversion which in turn leads to insanity.***** You may not want to live with the same people once your lease is up in August or September, but having at least one other person to complain to will help immensely.

Make Friends, Even if it HurtsI am not an outgoing social person. It takes me awhile to make friends. However even the most introverted person will be able to make friends in law school for one very special reason: You're all going through mental bootcamp. It's a bonding experience that can't be underestimated. Making friends though, much like with having people to live with, will make the torture less torturous. Having buddies to moan to and drink with****** helps when the days get longer and the hours spent in the library become too much. Good friends will convince you that you're not making the biggest mistake of your life and may even help you get better grades. Humans are naturally social creatures, but law school proves just how valuable friends can be. So make some, even if socializing goes against every fiber of your being.

Don't Skip A Single Reading (or Class)Full disclosure: My freshmen year I did not have the best attendance record. I got better, but I always allowed myself to miss one or two classes in any given course in a single semester. Also, keeping up with reading was not always my forte. Just ask my Ancient Greek history professor. However if you want to have any hope of understanding the material presented in law school, let alone doing well on your exams, you have to do all of the reading. If that means sitting in the library for four+ hours so be it. First of all there is always the chance you'll be cold called on******* in class and trust me, it's not fun trying to explain a case you haven't read. Secondly, as confusing as some of the judges can be, reading the cases is vital to understanding the underlying principles at work. You can read all the chestnuts on torts you want, but if you don't at least know the basic outline of a case (which, depending on the era in which a case was written is all you're going to get) those summaries won't help you a bit. The same goes for classes. Yes sometimes it seems like the professors let students meander with no really direction into a land of slippery concrete,******** but ultimately it's to your benefit to go to every single class. You just never know when the professor is going to cut off the idiots and make sense of future interests.*********

Don't Freak Yourself OutLaw school is hard. It's intense and all consuming. However you'll only make it worse for yourself if you psych yourself out. Whether that's by buying into some garbage BarBri is trying to sell you or watching "The Paper Chase" you're doing yourself a disservice if you let the stress get to you too much. Relax every once in a while, have a beer (or five) on a occasion.********** Go see a movie with friends or go to a museum if that's your thing. Spend an entire day doing nothing. People will go on about how you have to study every day or you're going to fail everything, but that's simply not true. Relaxation is just as important as studying if you want to succeed at law school. And not relaxing ends badly. Usually the people who burn out the quickest are the ones who didn't take sometime to do nothing. Law school is a marathon, not a sprint. Take sometime to smell the flowers.

So that's my advice. If you do plan on going to law school you'll hear a lot of variations on what I've said and some real gunners telling you to hole up in the library and never leave. Ultimately you do what's best for you, otherwise you'll leave school with a massive amount of debt wondering why ever thought this was a good idea. Best of luck either way.

*Evil, evil finals

**Namely not wanting to study

***Contracts. I'm pretty sure that's from contracts.

****Reasonable care is dependent on your judge. Much like everything in negligence based torts.

*****This isn't necessarily true. But it could happen. Law school does funny things to one's brain.

******The first of many times I will mentioning drinking. There's a reason lawyers are considered alcoholics.

*******This is when a professor calls on you out of the blue (aka you didn't volunteer) and asks you to explain the facts of a case. It is hell.

********True story. Someone brought this up in torts. It will never die.

*********Property. I could go on, but it's confusing.

**********So much drinking. Also, you don't have to drink like a fish to have fun in law school. It's just most everyone else will be because that's just how stressful law school is. However a designated driver/walker is always good, so if you don't want to drink that's fine.

Brain Poking

2011-11-29T20:58:00.000-05:00

Towards the end of my freshmen seminar the teacher, Prof. Campbell, started using a more Socratic based method in discussing the novels we were reading. I found this incredibly annoying because a) I like straight forward answers to the questions I ask and b) to my mind it became more about how well I and my classmates could b.s. and less about actually knowing anything. I reported this back to my dad who sagely nodded his head and said "that's the method they use in law school. If you don't like it now you probably shouldn't go to law school." I nodded back and added that to the very long list of reasons why I wouldn't be going to law school.

Three months in and I can't say my opinion of the Socratic method has changed all that much. I still find it annoying when my classmates use the method to try and show off how smart they think they are but I can also see why it's used in law school. The point of it, at least to my mind, is to try and get you to see both sides of an argument or at least see why a case or rule has been formulated the way it has. Granted most of my classes don't use the method as the only way of teaching (because at least two my classes, contracts and civil procedure, would fall apart if they did). Particularly in torts* though it makes sense for the professor to probe your mind with open ended questions because so much of torts is speculative and opinion based.** If you can't see both sides or at least understand how the other side might think you'll be screwed as a lawyer when it will be your job to predict w hat the other side will say.

Still because I spend between 3 1/2 hours and 2 1/2 hours four days a week thinking in this manner*** I have a far lower tolerance for intellectual "discussions" than I ever did in college. Talking theory is all well and good when you haven't been doing it all day, but when you have the last thing you want to do is go home and poke at your brain some more. Because that's what it feels like. It feels like your teacher has been poking your brain for an hour and ten minutes. And that's what law school is for the first year or so. Brain poking.

*McDonald's coffee spill case. Liable. Theft. Battery and assault. Trespass. Car crashes. Falling on your butt in a restaurant. The vast majority of cases that aren't criminal cases are torts cases.

**Do you know what a reasonable person is? 'Cuz trust me when I say, that definition is not at all clear and largely dependent on the judge. That's what I mean by opinion based.

***Plus the countless hours I spend in the library. I swear I spend more time in that place than I ever did in undergrad.

Adventures in Public Transportation pt 2

2011-09-03T19:51:00.000-04:00

I am not naturally a bus person. I will use a bus when I have to, but I prefer trains to buses. There's something about not having to deal with traffic that makes traveling just so much nicer. I would say, and this really is a personal opinion, that by and large London and Washington are cities where you don't have to use the bus system unless you're feeling really lazy* because both cities are very walkable. I could pretty much avoid buses in London because I could either walk or I could get there via the Underground and the same can be said for DC by and large. Boston is something else though.

Boston as the T which is combination of light rail and subway largely depending on what line your using. I live about five minutes from a Green line T stop, but I've also been on the Red line (because that's the most convenient line out of Harvard) and I would say the T is largely on par with the Metro or the Underground. But unlike those two subway systems, which largely take care of any transportation around their respective cities, the T's main goal is to get people into downtown Boston and then out to major points of interest and/or suburbs. Unlike with the Underground or the Metro, there isn't a lot of intersecting of rail lines so if you want to get from point A to point B and you have to switch rail lines you're basically stuck going into downtown, switching lines**, and then heading out to where you actually want to go. That is if you're unwilling to use buses.

I think one of the reasons I don't like buses is that they seem more unreliable than trains. However because of the way the T works, buses and trains are basically on par for their unreliability in showing up on time.*** And because of the way the T is laid out half the time it's quicker to take a bus, even factoring in traffic, than taking the train because the bus will be more direct than the train. Since I've been here in Boston I would say I spend an equal amount of time on buses and trains where as in DC or London I spent more time on trains than I ever did on buses. The buses get more crowded more quickly than the trains, but in terms of time it makes more sense to try and find a direct route on a bus than taking a circuitous route on a train.

It's interesting though. I would say that the T is equally dysfunctional as the Underground and the Metro, so I feel right at home. The biggest difference for me is how often I take the bus when I really do prefer trains.

*Or it's a rail replacement service

**Or switching from one branch of the line to another (yay for the Green line having four different branches)

*** Because you have no idea when a train or a bus is going to show up. At least with the buses you know they're late and can reconcile that in your mind.

My First Week

2011-08-27T22:44:00.004-04:00

It's difficult to write about something your ambivalent about. When I was in undergrad the papers I procrastinated on the most were the one's I either thought I could get away with writing at the last minute or papers I didn't feel strongly about. Introductions were always annoying but topics I didn't really feel strongly about...well those always got short shrift. In a not-so-good-way that's how I feel about my first week at law school.
I had a proper melt down at the end of my first day questioning the meaning of my life etc but the rest of the week I just felt ambivalent. I don't know if I really like it and I don't know if I'm meant to be doing this. I do the work I have to do (which is in fact just a lot of reading right now) but I mostly feel like I'm drifting through the work and the classes. I like most of my teachers and I mostly like most of the classes. My fellow students are mostly alright, though some are just completely obnoxious and make me want to do some kind of bodily harm to them. Like I said, I mostly just feel undecided about this whole thing. It's only been the first week and there's every chance I'll change my mind. Right now I'm just waiting for something to spark so that this drifting ambivalent feeling will end.
I will say this though: My roommates continue to be fantastic. I'm sure the honeymoon period will be over sooner rather than later, but they're straight forward about housekeeping things, they're smart and hardworking, and best of all I know if they have a problem with the way I act they'll tell me. So that's a bright spot in an otherwise hazy life.

The Drive and Boston

2011-08-16T19:17:00.002-04:00

A quick summary of the drive up to Boston. It was semi-stressful (yay flash rainstorms on the New Jersey Turnpike!) and long. It was not interesting save for the flash rainstorm on the New Jersey Turnpike. Mom and I made it to Boston in one piece with only a minimal amount of getting lost (tricksy Boston roads are tricksy). I was more stressed out by unpacking and moving everything in than by the drive to be honest. And moving in and unpacking was incredibly stressful because I have no organizational skills or sense of space. Thankfully the major things (furniture, huge boxes) were taken care of by a moving company and Mom was there to help unpack a bit before leaving. Her leaving was incredibly difficult but was made up for in spades by the arrival of roommate from Buffalo (Melissa)'s friend arriving. This made getting to know Melissa ever so much easier in a weird way. Melissa is very cool and kind of reminds me of another friend of mine who's hung on despite my tendencies to not communicate with people since high school.
Boston. Boston has confusing roads and tiny tram cars. However I feel that by the end of this school year I'm going to like Boston at least as much as I like DC (though not as much as I love London.) There are more Dunkin' Donuts in this city than there are Starbucks in any other city which is kind of awesome. The law school is right across the way from a Dunkin' Donuts and there is one across the street from the T stop I get off of to get to school. That's how popular Dunkin' Donuts is in Boston. However they do have Trader Joe's in Boston and I have mastered the bus system well enough to get to the Trader Joe's close to me. And just past that Trader Joe's is the nearest Jewish neighborhood which means there is a fantastic bagel place I can go to for breakfast before I go grocery shopping. That and many other reasons is why I think I'm going to like Boston come the end of the year.
Both of my roommates are awesome. One actually enjoys cleaning the dishes and the other says what she thinks and doesn't give a damn (though really that's true for both of them.) They're mature and smart and don't believe in petty drama. They are, basically, the perfect antidote to last year's roommate situation. I hope everything continues to go as well as it has been for the past few days, but I have high hopes that they will. Tomorrow I find out if the rest of my section are as awesome as my roommates.
That is all for now. I have my second day of orientation tomorrow which hopefully will be less dull than the first day. Quickly though one last thing: I love how cold Boston is or at least how much colder it is here than in Virginia. Bless the North.

Doubt

2011-08-16T18:14:00.003-04:00

I have been told from a young age by my mother that I was smart. From a slightly older age I have been told by my mother that I am smarter than most people. I've never really believed her though. I didn't get the same grades as the identified smart people I knew and I just assumed that meant that while I might be smart, I wasn't necessarily "gifted." I was lazy and smart enough to get away with that. This past summer though I realized that what my mother has been telling me all these years is true. I am smart. And if you've been reading this blog long enough you know I don't like to compliment myself or give myself any credit for anything. But I am smart. I am extremely smart. And for whatever reason that scares the pants off of me.
I started orientation at law school today. It was basically the same shit you here at any orientation anywhere. Study. Do the reading and do the necessary work. Don't over tax yourself. And read. As one of the people I met afterwards said, I wouldn't be here if I didn't know that's what you have to do. I know I have to read. I know I have to study. I also know I remember the outline of a court case I read a month and a half ago, so yeah. I kept wondering while 2nd year students were talking about their experiences "what the hell have I gotten myself into? Is everyone here that thick?" I'm not trying to diss these students, but the advice they were giving is lame and doesn't apply to everyone and shouldn't be taken as gospel.
I spent a better part of the drive from my grandparents' house to Boston wondering if I made the right choice with my life. Law school costs a bundle and I can't tell if my heart is really in this. My roommates have been fantastic though, so I hadn't really been thinking about this nagging doubt until today during orientation. I know I can't guarantee that I've made the wrong choice until I've been through at least the first semester, but right now things are still up in the air for me. My number one hope is that I haven't made a terrible choice that I'll regret thirty years down the line or that I'll be too scared to abandon this bad choice (and end up regretting thirty years down the line.) But we'll see.

Nore's Legal Series - Mashups and Remixes

2011-08-01T14:28:00.000-04:00

Music Mashups: Testing the Limits of Copyright Law as Remix culture Takes Society by Storm by Emily Harper
Mashed Up Videos and Broken Down Copyright: Changing Copyright to Promote the First Amendment Values of Transformative Videos by Andrew S. Long
Using Social Norms to Regulate Fan Fiction and Remix Culture by Steven A. Hetcher
15 Megabytes of Fame: A Fair Use Defense for Mash Ups as DJ Culture Reaches Its Postmodern Limits by Aaron Power
The Girl Talk Dilemma: Can Copyright Law Accommodate New Forms of Sample-Based Music by David Mongillo

In the case of remixes and mashups, there seems to be fine line between the two genres and both are connected by the use of sampling of other works. Remixes can be described as songs where the instrumental background of the original song has been manipulated in some fashion (whether it has been completely recomposed or simply altered in some way) while the vocal line remains largely unchanged. Mashups, whether they are video mashups or song mashups, take elements from two or more different original composition and “mash” together elements from the source material to create an entirely new work. Remixes tend to be created for clubs and originated within DJ/club culture while mashups, particularly video mashups, are an extension of fan culture and can be seen as critiques on the works from which they are borrowing.
While both remixes and particularly mashups stem from a culture of sampling, there is a distinct dearth of case law concerning these two genres. As with sampling this can largely be attributed to the fact that neither the creators of remixes and mashups nor the original artists wish to help create any kind of precedent whether it be negative or positive. While television and movie production companies have taken steps to regulate the use of their copyrighted materials (largely by pressuring websites such as YouTube to take down any potentially offending material) no actual court cases have been presented. This has left lawyers and academics to postulate how best to deal with remixes and mashups without the worry of creating precedent that would favor either side.
The overall sentiment from legal academics is that to properly deal with the issues presented by remixes and mashups, copyright law as a whole needs to be overhauled. However experts are divided as to what direction such an overhaul should head in. One option would be to lean towards a more utilitarian view of transformative works. As it stands now, it is very difficult to argue that a work, such as a mashup or remix, is in fact transformative and therefore would fall under the fair use doctrine. According to the article by Aaron Power, mashups in particular should be analyzed as “quasi” parodies and like parodies should be able to use the fair use defense if and when such a case is presented to the courts. The other option, for those scholars that believe that mashups and remixes do not fall under the fair use doctrine, would have Congress or the record companies setup some kind of compulsory licensing system. Under this system creators of remixes and mashups would use their already existing community standards to ascertain what percentage of their income would be given back to the original authors. The other option concerning compulsory licensing would see a blanket licensing system similar to that used by BMI and ASCAP where mashup and remix artists would pay an annual fee for the right to sample copyrighted material. In both cases amateur mashup and remix artists would not have to pay these fees because their creations “cause no harm” and in fact should be legalized.
While it seems that legal scholars tend to prefer a softening of the definition of transformative work to include mashups and remix, there is no clear consensus as to how the genres of mashups and remixes should be treated under copyright law. The only agreed upon fact is that copyright law must be changed to deal with the issues presented by these two genres.

Nore's Legal Series - De Minimis

2011-07-11T15:52:00.002-04:00

Somewhere in that title should be the word sporadic. But anyway here's a definition of de minimis (from Wikipedia): "a Latin expression meaning about minimal things, normally in the locutions de minimis non curat praetor ("The praetor does not concern himself with trifles") or de minimis non curat lex ("The law does not concern itself with trifles").

Newton v. Diamond (2005, 9th Circuit) and Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. UMG Recordings, Inc.

The court affirmed the lower court’s (District Court for the Central District of California) grant of summary judgment for the defendants. Both the District Court and the 9th Circuit found that the sampling in question (a 6 second clip featuring three notes) lacked sufficient originality to be protected by copyright and that the use of the clip by the defendants was de minimis. In finding that the use of the clip was de minimis the court stated that “no reasonable juror would find the three-note portion of the composition used by the [defendants] was a quantitatively or qualitatively significant portion of the composition as a whole.” While the prosecution showed evidence that the technique used in the performance was unique to the original performer (the “Newton technique”) that because the defendants had licensed the sound recording what was in question was whether they, the defendants, had infringed on the original composition. Both courts found that the defendants had not infringed on the original composition because the clip that they had used was de minimis.
Based on this case, and the case of Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. UMG Recordings, Inc. from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in deciding whether a case of infringement is de minimis or not the courts use the test that a work is de minimis “only if the average audience would not recognize the appropriation.” In the case of Newton v. Diamond the court ruled that it was de minimis use not just because the sample used was relatively short in length but because an average listener wouldn’t know that the sample had been taken from a different larger work. In the case of Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. UMG Recordings, Inc. the court found in favor of the plaintiff because the section that had been sampled, while relatively brief, is widely known to the general public and is considered one of the most sampled pieces of music within the rap genre. As such the general rule of thumb within the courts in declaring whether or not a work is de minimis is whether a general audience would be able to distinguish the work if it were copied and then incorporated into another work. “Even if the similar material is quantitatively small, if it is qualitatively important the trier of fact may properly find substantial similarity” (from Nimmer on Copyright) and the inverse is true for finding a work de minimis. Ultimately whether a work is de minimis or not is up to the specialist reviewing the work.

Nore's Legal Series - Sampling

2011-06-16T14:12:00.002-04:00

I haven't been blogging. However that doesn't mean I haven't been writing or doing things. In fact I've been writing about various legal cases having to do with various legal ideas and issues pertaining to copyright. It's hella fun and I thought some of you might enjoy it. I've only written about three topics, but they're fairly lengthy, so that makes up for the sparsity. If you get confused by a term or want more details, there's Wikipedia and dictionary.com. Enjoy!*
The practice of sampling within the rap and hip-hop music communities has been around since the late 1980s and since that point the issue of copyright and sampling has been something that has largely been avoided by the courts, at least when compared to the output of music created through the use of sampling. Since the advent of sampling those few cases that are either pursued by the original artist or manage to make it to court have been dealt with in a variety of ways by judges. Up until 2005 with the Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films case judges could take one of the two different methods or combine those methods to reach a ruling. The first method would be to use the substantial similarity test where the song that was created with the use of sampling would be compared to the original song from which the samples were taken. In comparing the two songs the judge would use the criteria of whether or not the songs were similar in message, tone, and audience to find whether or not the songs are substantially similar. The other method in trying cases of infringement through sampling would be to use a de minimis analysis. This would involve the judge looking at the particular sample and determining whether the sampled used constituted a qualitative and quantitative part of the original song. If the sample did not, and would not be recognizable to an ordinary listener, then the case would be dismissed. Normally judges would use a combination of the two methods, as can be seen in the case Newton v. Diamond where the judge used a combination of the substantial similarity test and the de minimis analysis to determine that no infringement had occurred. However Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films created a new bright-line rule which aimed to simplify the issue of whether or not sampling constituted copyright infringement.
In Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films the judge ruled that in cases where the artists admit the sampling has occurred that “no substantial similarity or de minimis [inquiries] should be undertaken.” This rule would only apply to digital sampling, which makes up the majority of sampling done within the rap and hip-hop communities. The judge also stated that simply an artist should “get a license or do not sample.” In this case the judge was implying that any kind of sampling, no matter how small or even potentially unrecognizable, goes against copyright law and should be considered infringement (“even when a small part of a sound recording is sampled, the part taken is something of value. No further proof of that is necessary…”). Again, this rule would only apply to digital sampling.
In light of this case, as well as Newton v. Diamond which was decided in the same year as Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films, a number of scholarly articles have been published discussing the merits of this bright-line rule and the way copyright law in general deals with digital sampling. While all scholars agree that the law needs to better incorporate the idea of digital sampling, the exact method of dealing with sampling is not as widely agreed upon. Some scholars support the Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films others, including Nimmer, believe that the judges were wrong in many of their conclusions namely the dismissal of the use of de minimis analysis and substantial similarity. In another article written by John Schietinger in the Fall 2005 issue of the DePaul Law review, the author vehemently disagreed with the judges dismissal of de minimis and substantial similarity analysis instead stating that a de minimis analysis should be conducted for issues of sampling. In doing so the author stated that it should be found whether the sample constitutes a trivial portion of the original song, and whether the sample is quantitatively recognizable within the context of the alleged infringing song and whether the two songs are qualitatively similar. Ultimately though, as the judges noted in their decision for Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films “where one stands [on this issue] depends on where one sits” and it is unlikely that the issue will be fully resolved any time soon.
Finally it should be noted that even with the 6th Circuit bright-line rule, most cases of sampling are settled out of court or “ignored” by artists within the community, particularly if the artist sampling isn’t well known or the song itself is not terribly popular.

*I feel I should point out that this is not legal advice, more a summary of how sampling and other ideas have been treated in court along with a little bit of analysis by yours truly. As with anything I write about the law, don't take it as authoritative more the thoughts of a pre-law student. Basically: I don't have a degree, so hire a real lawyer if you need real legal advice.

What I've Been Doing

2011-05-05T11:17:00.003-04:00

I freakin' love bullet points. They allow me to not write real paragraphs. Yay bullet points.

My friends got me hooked on Supernatural so I spent the better part of the last month watching every episode from the past seven seasons instead of doing important things like studying. And studying. I'm now entirely caught up (except for the episodes that haven't aired yet, because that would be magic and I'm not magical yet) and am a huge dorky fan of the show. Thanks Heather, Lauren, and Ana!
I have finished my last and finale semester of undergraduate studies. I have somehow passed all my classes despite the marathons of Supernatural I engaged in right up until finals and will be graduating this Saturday. It's terrifying and completely normal at the same time, largely because this is not the end of my academic career, merely the last part of one particular stage of that career. Thank god I have law school to worry about otherwise I would be imploding right about now. Moving on.
Acting as furniture for one dog and coping with the fact that my other dog is blind. I've also been cleaning house for the impending arrival of my grandparents but that takes up less of my time than being furniture for my older (and not blind) dog.
Have I mentioned law school? Yeah, I've done two entrance interviews for federal loans and am slowly building up the confidence to contact people to ask if they want to be my roommate. Speaking of which...
Cursing the names of my former roommates. I really and truly dislike them at this point. But back to law school...
Actually, not so much back to law school as related to law school. As we know I want to go into copyright law when the time comes for me to actually get a job. And now, thanks to a friend's brother's friend's mom I can say I'll be learning the inner workings of copyright this summer. Starting May 16th I'll be working at the Copyright Office and I couldn't be happier. Granted this means I won't be working at WPFW this summer (in all likelihood) which is kind of sad, but I'll be working at the freakin' Copyright Office. How awesome is that? Super awesome, that's how awesome.
I've watched the pilot and first non-pilot episode of Twin Peaks. By this time next week I'll probably be done with the first season and asking myself whether or not I should actually watch the second. Damn you Netflix, damn you to hell.

That's it. I'm graduating this Saturday and having yet another nose job a week from yesterday and then I start my unpaid internship at the Copyright Office on the 16th. I predict that this will be a good summer. Or at least an interesting summer. We shall see.

Doctor Who

2011-04-20T00:14:00.003-04:00

You might recall from my "big" graph of fandoms that one of those fandoms was Doctor Who. Based on the sites I frequent (EW.com, AV Club) this Saturday's premiere of the 6th season* of DW is pretty well known. If not, this Saturday, 9pm, BBC America. Watch and be amazed (hopefully). But today the DW fandom got some pretty sad news. We've had a rash of deaths over the past couple of months of actors who played main characters during the classic series.** It's been sad, but has left a pretty big hole in her passing, namely Sarah Jane Smith. She was a companion to the 3rd and 4th Doctor*** and came back in the new series for an episode before starting her own series "The Sarah Jane Adventures." Sadly, the actress who played Sarah Jane, Elisabeth Sladen passed away today. The only happy thing to come out of this, and it's really perversely happy, is that Sarah Jane and Elisabeth are a worldwide trend on Twitter. And here's the proof:

(click for the full picture)
Anyway, I know I'll be thinking about her this Saturday.

*If I were British I would have put series which is the same as season over here, but I didn't want to confuse people. Also there was a "season" of specials when the last Doctor (David Tennant) was starting to bow out. However that doesn't count as a real season, so this new season (and I keep wanting to say series) is the 6th one of the new run. More on that later.
**The original run of Doctor Who ran from 1963 until 1989 and is called the "classic" series. The new run of the show (which is referred to as "New Who") started in 2005 with Christoper Eccelston playing the Doctor.
***The first Doctor was played by William Hartnell who was old. So when he was like "I'm out of here because I'm old" and the series was really popular the good producers over at BBC were like "We'll just say that because the Doctor is an alien, he can 'regenerate' into a totally different person with a different face and a different personality and he can do that 13 times." And so it was that we've had 11 Doctors, some who have stayed for a really long time (David Tennant, Tom Baker) and some who only stick around for one season (Christopher Eccelston.) Trust me when I say, you really don't have to understand all of this to watch the series. But it can be helpful.****
****In case you were wondering, except for Tom Baker, I remembered all this information off the top of my head. Because I am a boss.

I Took A Photo of My Fandom(s)

2011-04-19T05:09:00.005-04:00

There was a time when I didn't know what fandom was. This doesn't mean I was a fan girl (I really was) I just didn't know what fandom was or that I was a fan girl. I just knew I really, really liked the Beatles. I've since learned (in depth) what fandom is and that various fandoms have different names for their fans. For instance, when I really, really liked the Beatles I could have described myself as an Applescruff.* Not every fandom has a name for its fans and generally lady fans are called fangirls and gentlemen fans are called fanboys. Fanboys and fangirls got to cons and if you're really obsessed you dress up as your favorite character. That's called cosplay. Of course all this is a rather extreme version of fandom and there are a great many people (myself included) who take more of a back seat when it comes to fandom. I never got around to writing about this, but I am very much a lurker. This is because I'm naturally shy and have never really thought of taking advantage of the anonymity of the internet to break out of my shell. But I'm not alone in being a lurker. So those are kind of the two extremes of fandom at least from my perspective: Cosplayers and lurkers. As with everything there are loads of people who fall in between the two extremes and they probably make up the bulk of fandom.**

As you can tell by the chart I made (which doesn't actually include everything) I consider myself a member of a whole ton of fandoms. That's the thing about being a lurker: You can sample a lot of different things without giving up too much of yourself to anyone of them. I have friends who cosplay and go to cons and I can tell you they give a lot of themselves to a select few fandoms and pretty much invest completely in those fandoms. I on the other hand can be a part of 12 different fandoms and enjoy all of them to various degrees and not be invested completely.*** In my opinion fandom can be a good thing and a really awful thing and it depends entirely on how much of yourself you invest in the fandom. Fandom is great when it introduces you to like minded people and you make friends that can last a really long time. But fandom is really awful when you've become so invested in it that you start to blur the line between the reality and fiction. I'm not saying that investing in a fandom automatically means you're going to go crazy. But there's always the chance.
So how do I intervene in my fandom? I don't. I'm a co-founder of the school's sci-fi club (for what that's worth) and I take a real interest in everything that goes in within my fandom. But I learned awhile ago that I'm not really meant to intervene, that I'm better off as a lurker. So, I took a photo of my fandom.The "Family and Friends" section got a little squished because I tend to forget how many fandoms I was introduced to because of nagging from friends/family.**** Hopefully you can read my handwriting otherwise none of this is going to make sense and quite frankly my fandoms don't make sense in list form. And if a fandom isn't underlined it means that it hasn't become inactive but I'm not currently "participating" in it either. So now I define active, inactive, and random outliers.

Active - This means that I either a) follow one of the members/entity on Facebook/Twitter, b) am actively watching/listening/reading works having to do with the fandom or c) awaiting the return of said entity be it through new shows, new albums or tour dates I can actually go to.
Inactive - This if fairly simple. I no longer give a rat's ass about what this group/entity is doing. They once meant something but now I no longer care.
Random Outliers - This group has no direct connection to any of the circled entities and generally speaking were discovered by pure chance.***** They may or may not influence participation in other fandoms, but generally speaking they just kind of exist in their own little worlds of awesomeness.

So that's it. Those are my fandoms.

*Another example: Chiefs and Chiefettes for the Kaiser Chiefs, Whovians for Doctor Who and of course the most famous Trekkies for Star Trek.
**The crazies (cosplayers) are just more well known because they are crazy. And I say this as a friend of at least 3 hardcore cosplayers. This does not make them less crazy.
***I have some not fun experience in investing way too much into a fandom :cough:Kaiser Chiefs:cough: that did not end well. I kind of couldn't listen to them for a good three months. I've since recovered and decided that being a lurker is better for my mental health.
****They don't always nag. But sometimes they do. And then they force to me to watch things when I don't pay attention to their nagging.
*****This is particularly true for the Killers who I discovered by watching VH1 on a snow day. "Mr. Brightside" is unlike anything I had ever heard before and Brandon Flowers is hella cute. A lot of my fandoms are based on the attractiveness of the members. It's shallow, but you gotta start somewhere.

Last Cuts

2011-04-15T00:45:00.000-04:00

So last night I had my second to last radio show (ever) and quite appropriately I played last tracks from albums. In introducing the theme of the show I said that part of what constitutes a last track is the conditioning you get from listening to an album over and over again. I then went on to talk about other characteristics of last tracks including the fact that some just don't know how to end and the use of fade-out by the group/artist. I've since been thinking about what I think contributes the most to what makes a last track a last track. I concluded earlish this morning that the reason a person might identify a last track as such is because they've been conditioned to thinking of it as a last track from listening to the album it finishes off over and over again. In our world of downloading what I consider to be the hallmarks of a last track (namely that sense of finality you get when listening to it) may not be as universal as it use to be. It's not like with a classical piece where you go through certain structures (exposition, development, recapitulation, coda) that lead you to a sense of finality. I identify these songs as last tracks because I've listened to the albums enough to be conditioned to identify them as such. The reason I put "Come On Home" and "40'" from Franz Ferdinand's first album together is because when I listened to the album (about a million times) I became conditioned to identify them as one big lump. So while there are things that are universal about last tracks, it's also a very personal thing. However none of this changes the fact that songs that you identify as last tracks are hard to program within a radio show. Unless you put them last in which case it works just fine.
Playlist

Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere
The Clash - Train in Vain
Cake - Tougher Than It Is
Kate Nash* - Merry Happy**
Keane - Love Is The End
Ok Go - Bye Bye Baby
The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows
The Zutons - Don't Ever (Think Too Much)
The Cribs - Things Aren't Gonna Change
Franz Ferdinand - Come On Home/40'
The Beatles - Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End***

*Nifty fact about Kate Nash: She's from Harrow, Middlesex which is where I lived when I studied abroad. Also she's dating one of the lead singers of the Cribs Ryan Jarman.
**Another nifty fact: I can play the main piano theme that you hear at the beginning and the other piano theme from the end. Knowing how to play those two things lead me to learn the following about the song: It's in the key of A major. Yay being a music major!
***The Beatles - Her Majesty

The End of an Era or My Mashup

2011-04-14T23:55:00.000-04:00

I have a lot to say about being a WMWC DJ. Most of it's very positive. But that's for another entry, probably next week. This entry is about the mashup I created for the assignment that will also be featured on my last radio show ever next week. My idea was that I would string together 15 second (or so) snippets of a variety of songs from artists who I a) played only one song of theirs, but I played it frequently, b) played often but not as frequently as others or c) played one song just once but who's style covers a range of similar artists who I played one song by once or twice. The mashup-ed artists and songs are as follows:

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - Golden Age
The Ting Tings - Great DJ
Adam Ant - Goody Two Shoes
The Rumble Strips - Not the Only Person
Spoon - The Underdog
Guillemots - Trains to Brazil
Mystery Jets - Young Love
BPA - Seattle
Music Go Music - Light of Love
The White Rabbits - Navy Wives
Eliza Doolittle - Pick Up
The Submarines - You, Me and The Bourgeoisie
Feist - 1234

Obviously if I had unlimited time I would have included more songs, but I think the 13 songs I chose are a pretty good summary of all those outliers I've included in my radio show over the past 3 and a half years. And of course I know you want to hear it, so here it is in all its glory.
Elmashup by cydwarning30
Enjoy.

Last Week's Radio Show

2011-04-12T22:41:00.000-04:00

This entry has nothing to do with copyright. I promise.
So I haven't written about last week's radio show. I apologize for this, it's just been one of those weeks. I'm doing it now though.
As I mentioned on my show I have had some trouble in the past programming female (or lady) artists. We all have blind spots when it comes to what we listen to and for whatever reason, lady singer/songwriters or just female artists in general is a major blind spot for me along with rap and hip-hop. So this past week's show was an opportunity to try and explore a group of artists I'm not particularly familiar with. In putting together the playlist for the show I knew I absolutely had to include the following artists: Patti Smith and Blondie. While the song I chose for Patti Smith doesn't really show it, Patti Smith had a huge impact on popular music in the US and really is considered the first punk artist in the US. Again, the song I chose didn't really show that side, I was really pleased that I finally got to tie in something I did in high school to a part of my college life that means a whole hell of a lot to me. As for Blondie, much like Patti Smith, they were a major influence in the New York post-punk music scene and unlike the Talking Heads, have no connection to an art school. I knew I wanted to include those two because of their importance to musical movements that still influence what I listen to on a regular basis. Everything else, particularly Rickie Lee Jones, were artists I either knew because of my parents or are artists that I listen to all the time. I'm still kind of surprised at how few female artists (who write their own material anyway) I have in my music collection, but as I said, we all have our blind spots. And now for the actual playlist.

Rumour Has It - Adele
Paris - Kate Nash
Oh My God - Ida Maria
Frederick - Patti Smith
French Navy - Camera Obscura
Waltz (Better Than Fine) - Fiona Apple
Chuck E's in Love - Rickie Lee Jones
Kiss With a Fist - Florence + the Machine
A Smokey Room - Eliza Doolittle
Rocket - Goldfrapp
Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics
Call Me - Blondie
Born Secular - Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins

As heads up this week's show will consist entirely of last tracks from a variety of albums. And I will write about it before this time next week.

Sharing Isn't Bad Unless It's Not Yours and Then It's Stealing

2011-04-08T05:48:00.000-04:00

*DISCLAIMER: For the last time, I'm not actually an expert on copyright law. I have opinions on it, but then again I have opinions on lots of things including music, literature, and film. So while it's nice that I keep getting my opinion asked on matters concerning copyright law, I don't know what I'm talking about. These are just opinions. And a very sparse smattering of facts.

This is probably going to hurt me in some way later on in life but I have illegally downloaded music. To anyone crying foul I would say this: I don't anymore and everyone's a hypocrite. The reason I use to illegally download music was because I use to be so obsessed with certain British bands* that I had to have everything they ever recorded in my collection or I would be sad. I'm no longer at that level of obsession and I have a better understanding of how royalties work so I can no longer argue that I make up for my nefarious ways by purchasing merch and going to their concerts. I "get" illegal downloading. Honestly I do. But just because you understand why someone does something doesn't make their illegal action any less illegal. I've said before that copyright law isn't perfect and that they way record companies handle enforcing copyright law (amongst other things) isn't perfect either. But as any elementary teacher can tell you two wrongs does not equal a right. Illegal is still illegal even if it doesn't conform with how you think the world should work.
So what's so wrong with sharing? Nothing. If you choose to share an original work, for instance a photograph, and decide to forgo normal copyright protections for Creative Commons then sharing is just jimdandy. Or let's say you take a photograph and decide that you're just going to forgo any kind of legal protection for the work. You put it the work into the ether and let whatever happens happen. That's fine and completely your choice. The problem occurs when you share something that isn't, legally speaking, yours to share. I own a copy of Lily Allen's most recent album.** That one copy is mine and mine alone. According to copyright law I don't have the right to provide copies of Lily Allen's album to the ether. It doesn't matter if I don't make a single penny, it's not my right to share my copy of Lily Allen's album with anyone. The fact that Lily Allen (and Lily Allen's manager and producer and the people who wrote the songs with her and her record labels) lose money is almost beside the point. The only person who has the right to make copies of Lily Allen's album is Lily Allen.*** Hence copyright. It's the right to make copies. I don't have that right. You don't have that right. My blind dog Rosie doesn't have that right. Only Lily Allen. So when you share a copy of your favorite artist's album with someone else over the internet you are, in a very general way, depriving that artist of some money. And that small amount of money amounts to a shit ton of money when millions of people all around the world do it. And that's when sharing becomes a problem.
Tempestuous Sea (Erin) made a really good point after class about filing sharing, particularly dealing with music but which really applies to all kinds of file sharing. If you really love an artist you should be willing to fund their career by actually purchasing their music. And I think that's part of the reason I don't illegally download anything anymore: If I really like something I should be willing to take the time to watch it or spend the money to own it legally. You can say what you want about the big bad record companies and how copyright only benefits the fat cat corporations (and you wouldn't be entirely wrong) but as I've said time and time again copyright came into existence to benefit creators. And for the most part copyright still does what it's suppose to do. Now please stop asking me to write the same thing over and over again.

*Okay, one British band that will be discussed at length when we get to fanfiction. You guys have no idea what you're getting into when we get to that section. It's going to be insane.
**Why Lily Allen? Because I'm listening to her right now. That's why.
***This is probably not technically true. Based on my class last year, her record label probably actually holds the copyright to the sound recordings and her music publisher probably holds the copyright to the songs. But we're going to pretend that it's Lily and only Lily.

TUSK!

2011-04-07T23:04:00.000-04:00

This is my favourite* mashup ever. It was introduced to me by a friend in 8th grade and every time I hear one of the songs used in the mashup I almost immediately say "TUSK!" in my head. I feel I should point out that I haven't heard full length versions of most of the songs used, but if you don't know the context or haven't heard every song used (and therefore don't necessarily get all the references) it's fine. And still very, very hilarious.

*You might have noticed this, but I've recently gone back to using British spellings for a lot of things. I used to do this more regularly, but the sour aftertaste immediately after I returned to the US after my stay in London meant that I forced myself to use American spellings for words I had used British spellings for before my stay in London. I've since gotten over all of that have gone back to spelling things the British way.

Mashup Solution

2011-04-07T01:38:00.000-04:00

Here's a conundrum: You've been a diligent and dedicated DJ at your local college radio station for three and a half years. However because you have managed to graduate on time (fingers crossed) your tenure is coming to an end and you're having to put together your last show. This makes you sad because there's no way you can feature all of the artists you've ever played on your show (which varied between 14 to 27 songs a week) and it's your last show so you want it to be awesome. Obviously there are some artists you featured more than others, so those guys will definitely get a song on your last show. But what about all the outliers? What about the awesome songs that you played just once or maybe twice but were awesome nonetheless? And the killer part is you only have 45 minutes. What do you do?
If you're me you realize that you have a mashup project due in your digital storytelling class that will solve this problem quite elegantly. Despite my initial wariness of going anywhere near Audacity again doing an audio mashup of about 3 minutes and 30 seconds (with each song getting somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds each) will allow me to fix the conundrum I'm in. I get to feature my favourite artists and get in most of the outliers as well. Rather an elegant solution, no?
I will say one thing about this mashup though: It will not be anywhere near as lovely as the mashups created by professionals like, for example, Girl Talk. Then again I don't have the same amount of time or the kind of equipment Girl Talk has, so I don't even know why I'm bringing them up other than to say that what I'm going to be doing is somewhere along the same lines as what Girl Talk does. Kind of not really. I still like this idea though and I think it will work. I don't know how well, but it will work.

Mashup Conundrum

2011-04-05T01:19:00.000-04:00

I don't know what to do for my mashup. My original idea was to string together a bunch of clips of Stephen Fry being awesome* and calling it a day. But after thinking about it long and hard I've decided that even my idea of taking various clips from all the various projects Mr. Fry has been a part of and having him declare himself god would a) not really work as a mashup b) wouldn't be very long at all (I'm sure there's some sort of time component for video mashups) and c) would be far more complicated than I have time for. So now I'm not entirely sure what I should do for this project. I do know one thing: I'm not bloody well doing an audio mashup. It may seem simple to do an audio mashup, but I know deep in my soul that it really, really isn't and I don't want to mess with Audacity ever again (or at least for the rest of this semester.) I shall have to think on this now.**

*If you don't know who Stephen Fry is go to YouTube and search "qi." Watch whatever clip you like and you'll begin to understand how awesome Stephen Fry is.
**I have a cold. That's the excuse I'm using this week for any poor grammar that occur in this blog.

Copyright, Mashups/Remixes, and Film Majors

2011-03-31T23:53:00.000-04:00

A Warning: I'm excessively tired today. I will do my best to work through my tiredness, but if something doesn't quite make sense, that is why. Also I'm cramming a lot into one entry, so this is going to be kind of lengthy. I apologize.

Copyright
*Disclaimer: I am not a legal expert. I am not a copyright expert. I do not know the details of any given copyright act. If you are reading this looking for legal advice, leave now and ask a real lawyer or a real 3rd year law student.*
Copyright is a complicated and misunderstood beast. People in official positions tend to be hesitant around copyright and people who live their lives or make their livelihoods off of the internet tend to be disdainful of copyright.* People under a certain age or who hold certain political/ideological beliefs tend either to believe that copyright was created for "The Man" to better "The Man" and to screw everyone else (especially creators, whatever their ilk) or think that copyright is one of the last defenses against the world being ruled by hooligans. Obviously there are people who reside in the middle, but their voices tend not to be heard because the people on the extremes are absurdly loud. I'm not going to claim that copyright is perfect. It's not. There are aspects of copyright law that need to be improved to line up with how the world works now as opposed to twenty or even ten years ago. But because of the way a few government-backed commercial entities choose to enforce copyright, the entirety of copyright gets a bad name. But it's not all bad. I recently argued in my thesis, and had previously argued in a paper for the music law class I took in London, that ultimately copyright was created and to a certain still benefits creators of creative works. The issue, at least in my mind, is that people expect to get everything for free or that just by creating something they will earn money. When those things don't happen, they blame copyright because it's a little behind the times (which is the fault of politicians and lobbyists for groups who refuse to catch up with the present) and a fairly easy target. All of this frustrates me because I know that at the heart of copyright is a really good principle namely that a person can make money from something they create and can protect that work from being stolen by someone else (and if they do there will be consequences.) I think that nowadays people forget that because of jerks and idiots. So the next time you curse the name of copyright, think about what copyright helped to create and maybe invest some time in actually learning a bit about copyright outside of what your teachers tell you. You might just surprise yourself.

Mashups/Remixes
Some things are best discovered on your own. Some of my favourite pieces of literature, music, film, and television were discovered by mere coincidence and stumbling onto things. To me, mashups and remixes are things you should discover on your own. When placed in a class format, these mediums have a tendency to lose something in translation, something that can't be defined and can't be reattained once they are lost. I understand why some educators might want to incorporate mashups and/or remixes in their class, or at the very least discuss them, but to me there are more important things to talk about, to discuss, to learn. If I've learned anything in the past four years, I've learned that there really does have to be a certain amount of distance between what you're learning and when it happened for you to really understand the implications of that thing. I was trying to say that in class and I may not have gotten my point across as well as I would have liked, but there has to be a certain amount of distance for the true implications of an event to be understood. I love discovering new and exciting things, but I know I can't really analyze them until there's been some time between when I discovered it and when I analyze it. Others may not agree, but to me it's more important to have a solid foundation in what's come before than to spend all your time focusing only on the present. Perspective is an incredibly important thing and it's something that may be taken for granted when you spend all your time online (a medium that lives entirely in the present and never looks back.) So while I understand the arguments presented by Ms. McBride and Mr. Lamb, I don't agree with them.**

Film Majors
Here's a definition of what film studies is from Wikipedia***: Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies. Film studies is less concerned with advancing proficiency in film production than it is with exploring the narrative, artistic, cultural, economic, and political implications of the cinema.
Here is a list of schools outside of New York and LA who have film majors:

George Mason University****
Virginia Commonwealth University
Wesleyan University
University of Chicago
University of Pittsburgh
Temple University
Boston University
Cornell University
Yale University
American University
University of North Carolina School of the Arts

It's unfortunate (but not all that surprising) that UMW doesn't have a film major. The chances of UMW having a film major within the next five to ten years is slim to none. This is sad.***** But that doesn't mean film majors don't exist. They just don't exist here.

*I may or may not be anthropomorphizing copyright right now. And so what if I am? You try writing a 10 page paper and spending countless hours thinking about something and not become a little attached to it.
**I should hasten to add that part of the reason I don't agree with them is that I have very old fashioned views on how education should work. Like 19th century ideas. I blame having to teach myself throughout most of K-12.
***The foremost repository of all knowledge, besides The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy obviously.
****This is where my sister goes. She's a Film and Video major. She got very upset when I told her what Prof. Groom said. This last part of the entry is mostly for her. And a little bit for me.
*****I'm not actually that sad that we don't have a film major. A) The last thing this school needs is more pretentious white people and b) I grew up with three cinephiles, I don't need my campus to be invaded by them.

The Kinks or Tonight's Radio Show

2011-03-31T04:56:00.000-04:00

I've written a number of entries in my other academic blog about the Kinks so instead of writing those entries again (in essences) I would suggest you just read those. And now the songs that were (and one that wasn't) played:
Playlist

You Really Got Me - Kinks*
A Rockin' Roll Fantasy - Misfits
Give The People What They Want - Give The People What They Want
Starstruck - The Village Green Preservation Society
The Village Green Preservation Society - The Village Green Preservation Society
Come Dancing - State of Confusion
A Well Respected Man - Kwyet Kinks EP
David Watts - Something Else By the Kinks
Celluloid Heroes - Everybody's in Showbiz
Victoria - Arthur (Or the Decline of the British Empire)
Picture Book - The Village Green Preservation Society
Shangri-La - Arthur (Or the Decline of the British Empire)
Better Things - Give the People What They Want

That's it until next week where I will be focusing on post-1976 female singer/songwriters.

*Instead of saying who the artist is (because obviously it's the Kinks) I'm giving you the album name which will be handy if you decide to obtain a legal copy of any of these songs. Which I really think you should.

Project Complete

2011-03-30T23:24:00.000-04:00

At the moment I'm currently exporting a medium sized movie from iMovies having finished my brief but appropriately summarized argument about the inherent darkness of Bright Young Things. I'm hoping my audience is smart and that the dialogue kind of speaks for itself (which is a large part of why I chose the clips I did.) I would like to thank Prof. Groom for letting me borrow the snowball, I really should get that back to him now. I will update this entry once I have the video uploaded to Vimeo (because YouTube doesn't like things that are longer than 10 minutes) and give some more details and possibly spoil the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
Update: The "video" will be available to watch in about a half hour as of 4:40pm. I have a class at the point and will provide a link and/or embed the video after that class. I'll also be writing the spoilery bits after my radio show, so expect that update around 9pm (because a girl's gotta eat.)
Here is the actual video essay. It has fairly good picture quality, don't know about audio but I assume it's good. Enjoy!

A video essay on the inherent darkness of Stephen Fry's film "Bright Young Things"

Obviously you can go to the actual website to see a slightly larger version

Progress Continues

2011-03-29T23:28:00.000-04:00

I have managed to cut my video down to 11 minutes and 57 seconds, but part of me is worried that I won't have enough time to actually talk. The thing about Vile Bodies and Bright Young Things is that they're very wordy and the dialogue is the most important thing, especially with my argument. Hopefully I'll be able to completely frame my argument in the few short moments where the scenes aren't focused on dialogue in a coherent manner, which if you've ever read this blog or listened to my radio show can be difficult at times. Also, once I post the video and you've watched it, you might notice I included a couple of "cheesy" wipes. The movie actually uses similar wipes, so I feel justified in using them as well. And finally Handbrake will convert .wmv into .mp4 and .mp4 do work in iMovies so I will be able to do my voice over that way. Actually getting in to do that might be tricky, but on the other hand the Pollard media lab does have iMovies and, quite coincidentally, I work and have a key to the Pollard media lab. Very hand, no?

The First Edit or Why Can't My Segment Be 25 Minutes Long?

2011-03-29T00:34:00.000-04:00

In an effort to whittle my video segment down to the requisite 10 minutes my argument has changed slightly and I've had to cut out huge swaths of material that I consider vital. If you haven't seen Bright Young Things or read Vile Bodies I suggest you read this entry no further and immediately either read the book or see the movie. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Things I've Had to Cut Because the Segment Can't Be 25 Minutes Long

Several party scenes
Any explanation as to why Adam doesn't seem to have any money
Any and everything having to do with Michael Sheen's character and his story line
Most of the Evangelist party including the bit where the title of the book comes from
Simon's suicide after being thrown out of the Evangelist party
Agatha's day at the motor race aka why she ends up at a mental institution
The bartering of Nina between Adam and Ginger at the very end of the movie
The Drunken Major and anything having to do with the Drunken Major
Adam's short lived reign as Mr. Chatterbox and basically anything having to do with Dan Aykroyd's character
World War II (which plays into Adam getting Nina back at the end of the movie)

The worst part of it is, is that even with that amount of cutting I'm still at 12 minutes and 5 seconds. If I have to cut anymore I'm not entirely sure what I'll do. Hence why I'm really hoping Prof. Groom will allow me to be 2 minutes over. For some reason I doubt he will, but I'm really, really, really hoping. Edit: I just got an answer back from Prof. Groom and it's all good. However I still think I'm going to make a director's cut that includes everything.

Copyright Law History in 10 Pages

2011-03-28T01:17:00.000-04:00

This entry has little to nothing to do with this class. However I like marking mile stones and some of you might be interested in what I've been doing this weekend. That I can't seem to connect to UMW Blogs, so this will just have to do.
It may have taken two weeks of procrastination and two days of sporadic writing, but by tonight at 11pm I will have written a very brief synopsis of the last 300 years of copyright history. I was ambivalent at the beginning of the project largely because I didn't want to retread history, I wanted to focus on the present, but now that I'm nearly done I'm kind of glad I did it this way. This paper has also reaffirmed over and over again my passion for copyright law and that this whole law school thing is a good idea. This entry has to be short because I have to get back to work, but I just want to say that I'm almost glad Prof. Fickett was so narrow minded about my idea. I have an excellent foundation for when I start taking classes in copyright and intellectual property and can give very bad advice to any friends who might have questions about current copyright practices. I still wish I could have written a magnum opus on the Kinks, but this will do very nicely.

Second Hiccup

2011-03-27T06:52:00.000-04:00

I have clipped Bright Young Things. It is, as I remembered it, an absolutely brilliant movie and I will forever love Stephen Fry for a) directing it and b) adding a happy ending for the hero and heroine (the movie is based on a book that had a rather ambiguous ending, but more on that later.) VLC worked a charm and I even managed to cut down a clip on it just by using the record button so I didn't even need to touch the MPEG program Prof. Groom mentioned. However there was and still is one minor problem. Even after cutting down the one 10 minute segment I had to about 4 minutes and then getting rid of quite a lot of other smaller clips that weren't quite as necessary (but are still somewhat important) according to my calculations (which aren't very good) I currently have 15 minutes and 25 seconds of video. The assignment is for 5 to 10 minutes. And I couldn't possibly cut anymore without cutting out vitally important scenes. As you can see, a bit of a bind. However I still need to finish my thesis paper (I know it never goes away) so I'm going to worry about that fact a little later, like Monday afternoon for instance. Still, if you haven't seen Bright Young Things or read Vile Bodies (the book the movie is based on) you really, really should. They are both quite brilliant.

The First Hiccup

2011-03-26T02:50:00.000-04:00

So I download VLC player. I pressed the record and I unpressed the record button. Turns out VLC files go directly to the video folder, but there they were. I had recorded three clips from the last episode of the first season of Supernatural. I look at the various sources given to us yesterday trying to figure out what I needed to do next. I download Microsoft Expressions (which is the new version of Windows Encoder) trying to get the video ready to be used in Windows Live Movie Maker. It doesn't work. I download Handbrake and do the same thing, putting it to the setting suggested by Galago. I encode the clip. I try and open it in Window Movie Maker. It doesn't work. I try multiple variations on that, panicking that while I would be able to record the clips I wouldn't be able to string them together. After about twenty minutes of panicking I try something very simple. I put Handbrake back to it's original settings (which is regular), encode the clip and open it Windows Movie Maker. And it works. I stop panicking and realize that despite the scare mongering done by Mr. Rush and Prof. Groom this assignment isn't going to be quite as evil as it could be. Tomorrow I write half of my senior thesis and record clips from Bright Young Things. Now to figure out how to do a voice over on my computer so I don't have to try and fit going to the DuPont lab and do the voice over there into my schedule. And if I can't do the VO on Windows Movie Maker I know what I'm doing between 4 and 5pm and then 6 and 6:30pm on Wednesday.

Web Story Final Draft

2011-03-24T23:41:00.000-04:00

So I've parred down the number of erroneous entries and changed the color of the links I edited to make it more obvious what is and isn't part of the story. There is one last thing I'd like to add: All of the locations are places I've been or have heard about enough to know approximately where they are. Once again I couldn't get the screen grab to work so here's the link to the actual page. Enjoy!

Technology and "Friday"

2011-03-23T06:09:00.000-04:00

I'm a pop culture junkie. In another life I would have been a history major and would currently be getting ready to go to grad school in cultural studies with an eye to teaching course on popular music.* I read the AV Club religiously and trust them slightly more than I trust anyone else when it comes to what is good and what is not good in the worlds of music, TV, and film.** I treasure the junk of pop culture as much as I treasure the great stuff (like Led Zepplin*** or the Kinks) because I know they both matter and are equally reflective of our current society. It may have seemed like I was focusing inordinately on Rebecca Black's video in class, but to me the phenomenon of "Friday" is no different than any other one hit wonder that has come before. The ease with which such a phenomenon can be created is new and interesting but junk pop culture isn't new. It's always been around, even in the 1800s they had "junk" pop culture. Advances in technology are fascinating and shouldn't be removed from the argument but they, and the culture that surround them, need to be put into historical context before we go ape shit, otherwise we'll get so wrapped up in how amazing we are and forget such gems as I'm Henry the 8th or anything created for the Eurovision Song Contest.
I think what's important to remember isn't that "Friday" was created. It's really not that surprising that a song like that should come into existence, especially now that everything and anything can be auto-tuned to sound semi-decent. I think what's important about "Friday" is the technology behind it. The fact that a song or a music video or an article or anything can be digested by one person and passed along to several dozen people in the blink of an eye is what's important. If we focus too much on the single entity and ignore the broader idea because we're so stunned that someone like Rebecca Black could become a sensation overnight we do ourselves and the technology a disservice. The reason I've refused (until tonight obviously) to listen to "Friday" is because ultimately it's not the song that's important. What's important is that something like that, with anything not just with a song, can happen. Dissemination is the key, not what's being disseminated.
Trashy pop culture is important. 80's hair metal lead to a return to a more basic form of rock music.**** I love trashy pop culture. But sometimes the trash can disguise what's really important and so it's best to remember that trash has been around forever and isn't always what's most important about a particular phenomenon.
This argument isn't fully formed by the way. Unfortunately I would need to do actual research to back up some of what I'm saying and that's simply not going to happen. Again in another lifetime I would be working toward a Ph.D in cultural studies and if you disagree or feel I haven't quite gotten something I welcome your comments. Midway between the first and second paragraph my argument changed so constructive criticism would be welcomed.

*And who knows, that could still happen. Life is weird like that.
**Not so much books because I'm very picky when it comes to books. Even more picky than I am about music and I'm hella picky about music.
***Led Zepplin are awesome, but unless the internet and several genres of music are destroyed permanently a phenomenon like Led Zep or the Beatles will never happen again. But let's not get Nora started on her theory of popular musical division.
****This is currently the only example I can think of. Feel free to come up with your own.

Bitch Session

2011-03-21T14:44:00.001-04:00

Everyone, or perhaps more accurately a large percentage of people, have a great many complaints about Mary Washington. They complain about the lack of school spirit and convenient parking. They moan about Seaco and the lack of things to do on the weekend. A small number within the larger percentage complain about rising tuition and how the schools wastes said money on frivolous things (which isn't entirely untrue.) They moan and they bitch and nothing really changes (except for when it comes to old buildings which I'm not at all against.) Some people transfer but an equal number of people stay and complain. I don't really understand it though. Boys complain about the lack of attractive girls and girls complain about the lack of available men. We moan, which is almost our equivalent to school spirit, and stay. And I don't understand.
I'm not saying that I'm absolutely and completely happy with our school. There are things I would change, but most of the them are inconsequential and heavily biased (and so really shouldn't be implemented.) I can't say I'm happy with the direction the school is going in especially when it comes to the kind of students being admitted. On the other hand the things that the student body at large complain about seem so superficial to me that I don't really see the point. It's almost as if we complain about our school because it doesn't exactly resemble what the media portrays as a typical college. But really the things we bitch about are things we knew ahead of time when applying to Mary Wash. Alright, maybe not the parking regulations, but the food, the lack of stuff to do on the weekend, the gender ratios, they were all known factors when we applied here. There's no point in complaining about things we knew ahead of time were going to be part of the experience. It's like when you start dating someone and you want to change who they are and then moan when they refuse to. You knew what you were getting into, so what's the point? That's what I don't understand and that's why I don't complain. I applied and decided to go to Mary Washington knowing what its warts were and accepting those warts for what they are. If you're so unhappy, then don't go here because quite frankly you're ruining it for the rest of us.
I've been trying to put this entry into a coherent argument for a while because it really does bother me the amount of complaining my fellow students do. I understand some of the arguments (tuition hikes) even though I don't necessarily agree with them, but moaning about the lack of school spirit just seems pointless, especially since the school is, sadly enough, known for not having school spirit on the same level as say JMU or Fake College From TV. It's the frivolous complaints that annoy me, not the meaningful ones. The reason it's taken me so long is that I had to weed out my own superficial complaints that no one really wants to read about (and largely would just confirm that I am old and crotchety well before my time). If you don't agree, fine. That's what the first amendment is for.

First Draft Web Story

2011-03-19T03:20:00.000-04:00

I'm considering this my first draft largely because there are things I want to add, but this was my original idea and I like it. I just want to flesh it out slightly. I did a screen grab of the whole page (which is kind of crucial for the story to be understood) but you can't read it so I'm just going to give you guys the link. I'd like to add that this is kind of subtle* so here's my hint: chunky green sweaters.
Craig's List DC Missed Connections
I plan on having the second draft up by Thursday (obviously) that will fill in some of the details I have in my mind. Right now though you can fill out our own details. As I said in my original post about this, simple is best and additionally allows you to use your own imagination. And it doesn't involve zombies.

*In a good way, not in a "I'm lazy" way

What I Know I Know

2011-03-18T00:06:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you don't always realize how much music you actually know until it's shoved in your face. For instance, I knew Blur's "Song 2" well before I officially got into Blur. I didn't know the song was called "Song 2" but when I heard it all the way through for the first time there was a moment of recognition when the chorus started and I realized "hey I actually do know this song, neat." I've had multiple moments like that and I'm fairly certain all of you have had moments like that as well. In putting together the radio shows for my final project I've realized that while I may consider myself to be very knowledgeable about a small number of genres and basically clueless about everything else I'm actually more knowledgeable about more musical genres than I thought. While I usually turn to my family for a certain amount of input, I've basically been able to cull together the past two themed radio shows on my own. I needed more input for the 70s one, but that was largely because I didn't want to rely heavily on James Taylor and his ilk for the entirety of the show and my parents know a lot about 70s singer/songwriters. But really, I only needed my parents for the names* of artists and then I could pick songs I already knew. As I pointed out on the show last night, I grew up with most if not all of these artists, so I know my stuff. I just don't always know I know.

Playlist**

Lawyers, Guns, and Money - Warren Zevon
Kodachrome - Paul Simon
Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
Tell Me Why - Neil Young
Your Song - Elton John
A Case of You - Joni Mitchell
These Days - Jackson Browne
(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman - Carole King
I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever) - Stevie Wonder
We Gotta Get You a Woman - Todd Rundgren
Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
Political Science - Randy Newman

*Except for Bruce Springsteen where I needed both the name and a song. I don't really like Bruce Springsteen.
**You might be noticing a distinct lack of videos. This because a) I'm trying to get these up as quickly as possible and finding videos isn't a fast process and b) a large percentage of these songs probably don't have proper videos anyway, so why bother.

Web-Based Romanticism

2011-03-17T23:17:00.000-04:00

Point of fact: I'm a big soppy romantic. I may come across as a satirical female dog, but in my heart of hearts I'm as romantic as they come.* Another point of fact: I'm not particularly good with visuals. So with our web-based story I'm going to play to my strengths and edit the craig's list page and more specifically I'm going to "write" a big soppy romantic story about missed connections using craig's list.** It's not particularly fancy and not particularly original, but in my opinion when something not original is done really, really well it can still be great. And my goal is by focusing on a simple design with a simple story I'll hopefully be able to create something really great. Or at least very good. :Says something baiting and semi-pointless:
Anywho, that's my web-based story. I have a rough outline in my head based on years of making up little romantic stories in my head and watching way too many rom-coms, but the exacts aren't there and probably won't exist until I sit down and start doing it. That's generally how I work, save for my radio show but that's special. I have nothing else to say...

*I blame Disney, fairytales, and the Beatles. Also, quick thanks to Prof. Groom for giving us so much time on this assignment, though for those people who are actually doing complicated stuff they are probably slightly less grateful.
**Does anyone know if that name is actually capitalized (eg Craig's List)? I'm going with lower case, but I'm really not sure. Suggestions would be helpful (and prove if anyone reads these.)

Senior Thesis/Radio Show Playlist

2011-03-15T05:23:00.000-04:00

I swear, I write more blog entries in my head than I actually write on my blog. I come up with great ideas and then stuff happens. Like other homework that's slightly more important (like say a thesis presentation) or relaxing (after said presentation.) This is slightly (but only slightly) more relevant for my other RL* blog where I can go a whole month without updating, but I find it interesting how I do that. I actually had a blog entry made up in my head about my senior thesis/presentation but...stuff. I will say that I starting next week (after the paper part is done) I can devote way more time to all my classes including this one** which is a good thing, especially considering what Prof. Groom is likely to lay on us. I will say this though: My senior presentation went really well and once this paper is done I will*** be completely free to not stress out about how much work I have to do.****
Anyway, while I have written about last week's radio show, I have yet to post a playlist and so will be doing that right now. And a reminder: If you want to listen to this week's show (70's singer/songwriters) be sure to tune into wmcw.umwblogs.org at 7pm on Wednesday. Should be a good show.

Hot Blooded - Foreigner
We're Not Gonna Take It - Twisted Sister
Rock and Roll All Nite - Kiss
Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
The Final Countdown - Europe
Africa - Toto
Livin' on a Prayer - Bon Jovi
Tom Sawyer - Rush
More Than a Feeling - Boston
Don't Stop Believin' - Journey

*Real life or more appropriately non-school blog
**Especially this one. That radio assignment was brutal
***Have four more papers to write and an opera to perform
****This is a lie. See above footnote for why

Random Comments and a Radio Show

2011-03-13T07:03:00.000-04:00

I was a ballerina for nine years. Ballerinas have a very specific hairstyle and really any deviation from that hairstyle can cause problems. Ones hair is long, not layered, and does not involve bangs.* The first thing I did when I stopped being a ballerina was cut my hair incredibly short and get bangs. Since then my hairstyle has been a variation on long/short, bangs or no bangs. Usually the no bangs phases are fairly short and I haven't cut my hair nearly as short as I did when I first quite ballet. The wildest thing I've done to my hair is dye it and I'm currently working on backing out of that style decision.** So it should come as no surprise that I've decided to grow out my hair and I got bangs today. And with that I would like to give a warm welcome to the return of my fringe.***
I recently finished reading Neil Gaiman's biography of Douglas Adams and I noticed while reading that the way Mr. Gaiman (and the other authors') formatted their footnotes was the same way I formatted my footnotes in my blog(s). I figured this wasn't a coincidence and that the common source had to be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well, I've only found one example of similar footnote formatting but it confirms my suspicions that the way I format my footnotes in my blog(s) is based on the way Douglas Adams formatted footnotes in HHGG. However, I doubt Mr. Adams somehow fitted in six footnotes into one page.
Today was a marathon of student created radio shows on DS106. One of those shows was created by myself, Erin, Alex and Grace. It was a long and ardous process that at times was incredibly hilarious. I will forever remember this class as the class that introduced me to the concept of a manshed and the sisters Cheddar. Those are good things.

Velociraptor's Variety Show

The list is long as to who we need to thank, so I'll start by thanking Prof. Groom for being the first outsider we interviewed and for giving us such great material. I would also like to thank the following people for being interviewed by us and generally being used for our own amusement: Emily (MauveShirt), Matt, Meredith, Adriane, Titus, Grace's friend, Alex's Mom and high school dance teacher, Erin's brother and his friend, and a number of other people who's names I can't remember. We would also like to thank freesound.org and all its users for supplying most of the sounds we used as background as well as a number of YouTube users who's sounds we also used. As with most things in life this was a group effort in more than one way. I hope you guys enjoyed it, god knows some of it was a helluva lot of fun.

*I usually substitute bang for fringe in my head which just shows how insane I am.
**Not that I didn't enjoy having red hair, it's just hard to coordinate red hair with a largely green wardrobe without it looking like I celebrate Christmas all year. Next time I think I'll go for something slightly more neutral.
***This entire paragraph was written for the sole purpose of writing that sentence. Sorry.

Cheesy 80's Rock is Not in My Wheel House

2011-03-11T05:48:00.000-05:00

Last night in a rather confused conversation with Prof. Groom (at least from my perspective), he basically ended up dissing me for playing into the stereotype of the kind of music that existed in the 1980s on my radio show this past week. When people think of the 80s, they think of the music my sister associates with the 80s* unless they are specifically tuned into other less popular genres of music. But for me, I don't necessarily associate the 80s with White Snake or Journey. I'm more likely to think of the Talking Heads or Duran Duran, really loud clothing and John Hughes. This is because I grew up not with Toto but with the Talking Heads and the Tom Tom Club.
The point of my themed shows is not only to expand my listeners knowledge of music, but also to a certain extent to expand my own knowledge of music**. Because I grew up with two parents very much attuned to the alternative music scene of the eras in which they lived, some of the more mainstream stuff got pushed to the side or completely ignored and derided. Really, if this were all about me, I should be doing disco instead of singer/songwriters for the 70s because I know about ABBA and not much else when it comes to disco. But for better or worse this isn't all about me, so I'm doing singer/songwriters next week.
I have come up with a new idea though for one of my themed shows. I've always had problems programming female artists into my regular shows, a fact that's bothered me almost from day one, and so for my fourth themed show I'm going to be devoting an entire hour to female singer/songwriters. So while I might play into certain stereotypes, I'd much rather go for an alternative than low hanging fruit most days of the week. Even if that means playing hair metal.

*This is not meant to be a diss to my sister, but fact is she really likes hair metal. And she knows it.
**Except for the Kinks. That show's entirely because I don't get to write about them this semester and I freakin' love them.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

2011-03-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

There are shows from one's childhood that, because of the wonders of the internet and DVDs, you can rewatch now. When a person does that, they usually notice things in those shows they didn't notice when they were 6 or 7. I'm not much for nostalgia when it comes to the cartoons I watched on Saturday mornings. I'm more prone to be nostalgic about music from well before I was born and books that I read in elementary school. I've really only recently gotten into television as an artistic medium and even then I'm less likely to look back longingly at what I watched when I was a kid because there so much good TV happening right now that to me there isn't a point to going back and rewatching "Rocko's Modern Life" or "The Adventures of Pete and Pete." I almost prefer keeping those shows as they are in my memory because I feel like rewatching them will somehow ruin them in a weird way.
My sister has no such worries and so recently purchased the little known TV series "ReBoot." ReBoot was a computer generated cartoon that aired on ABC from 1994 to 1996 and was about characters who lived inside a computer. Before last night, when my dad, myself, and my sister watched the first episode, I only had a vague memory of what the show was about. I didn't remember the character's names for the most part (though they came back to me the minute we started watching) I didn't even really remember what the show was about to be honest. All I knew was that the technology the show used to create its animation was way ahead in terms of computer animation at the time and that it was something I watched along with "Animaniacs" and a plethora of other Saturday morning cartoons. The first thing that hit me watching the show last night was how very corny it is, but that's almost to be expected with a kid's cartoon show. But what really stuck out to me, 15 years or so after the fact, were all the computer references. The main villain of the first episode is Megabyte an evil virus who's trying to get into the Super Computer. The non-"sprite" characters, the one's without names basically, are 1's and 0's. Literally, they are in the shape of 1's and 0's. There was a reference to readme files and Main Frame, the city where the show is set, looks like the inside of a computer. I get those references now, but there's no way as a six or seven year old that I would have gotten any of them. The show is as much for kids as it is for computer geeks (at least at a very basic level). And watching that first episode for the first time in fifteen years...it was just kind of strange. Not necessarily a bad kind of strange, but just strange. I don't have a real hankering to now watch all the shows I watched as a kid and watching that one episode didn't really change my perception of the show as a whole, but it also wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. Just kind of strange.

Project Update

2011-03-01T22:18:00.000-05:00

Here is a quick update on my semester project. Very quick actually. Moving on. In bullet points*:

Not all cheesy 80's rock comes from the 80's. Some of it comes from the late 70's and might more accurately be categorized under glam rock that happened to influence cheesy 80's rock.
The reason I'm referring to this show as cheesy 80's rock is because what I consider to be cheesy 80's rock actually falls into multiple pop/rock/ categories including hair metal, album rock, and stadium rock. Since they all sound the same it's easy to lump them into "cheesy 80's rock" but the fact is that Journey does not equal Twisted Sister no matter how hard you try. And I've tried, trust me.
Cheesy 80's rock tends to be longer in terms of song length than music that came before it and music that came after it. Which means that my original idea of asking for song suggestions will not be happening because I already have enough music. This makes me a little sad, but we shall persevere.

More information will be imparted during next week's show. Until then enjoy AV Club user's interpretations of Charlie Sheen as a tiger-blooded warlock. Some of them are really good.

*Bullet points are actually my favourite way of dealing with the fact that I can't always come up with complete sentences/paragraphs. It's a wonder I haven't used these more often to be honest.

Zombies and Other Things

2011-03-01T21:38:00.000-05:00

Now that I've given myself a few days to relax and gotten through my mid terms largely intact I'm going to do an entry on my radio group's five minute clip.
Our clip, as you heard in class last Thursday, is about zombies. I would like to point out that our entire show is not about zombies, but instead we are using zombies as kind of a back drop to a more... ordinary (?) talk radio show.* The reason we went for the zombie interviews first was because of all the segment ideas we came up with, the zombie interviews would be the quickest and easiest to do. Initially we wanted the zombie aspect of our show to be more surprising, but since you've all heard it, we're going to embrace the "campy" aspect of zombies and just go for it.**
Ds106 velociraptorsvarietyshow by cydwarning30
The format for the zombie interviews, by the way, will be I ask a question and then a bunch of people answer that question, hence why Prof. Groom's answers/stories just seem to come from nowhere. Right now we have over 10 minutes of zombie interviews and then over the break everyone will be doing other non-zombie interviews and when we get back we'll be putting together probably the most complicated segment. After that it will all be mashed together into one crazy show that is not entirely about zombies.

*I say ordinary, but if someone from my group can come up with a better adjective, that would be good. Because our show isn't really that ordinary to be honest. We just have some less insane segments in it.
**I keep imagining our show as this strange combination of "This American Life," "Monty Python's Flying Circus," and the epilogue of Shaun of the Dead. Also, there's nothing wrong with camp or being campy. At least with camp you don't have to take what you're doing too seriously and can laugh when your teacher talks about his manshed. Because that shits just funny.

Nora's Awesome Vintage Radio Show - 2/23/11

2011-02-25T00:26:00.000-05:00

A word of warning before I begin: My brain is currently dribbling out my ears from mid terms. Therefore coherancy is not going to be a strong point for this entry. And now we commence...
Last night was the last "regular" show I'll be hosting until March 22 and it went pretty well. The fact that I was physically and mentally exhausted didn't impede things too much and I actually ran under when I was worried I would end up running over. All in all a good way to leave things until the 22nd. For those of you who regularly read this blog the playlist for this week is going to look very familiar largely because I just couldn't be bothered to come up with a new playlist from whole cloth. So here's this week's run down:
Playlist

Jump Into the Fog - The Wombats
Grenade - Bruno Mars
Rolling in the Deep - Adele
Howlin' For You - The Black Keys
Under Cover of Darkness - The Strokes
Glad Girls - Guided By Voices
My Body - Young the Giant
I Can Talk - Two Door Cinema Club
Hard Times - Patrick Wolf
Born This Way - Lady Gaga
Long Time - Cake
Time Honoured Tradition - Kaiser Chiefs
Sway - Matthew Morrison

Releases

Adele - 21
Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX - We're New Here
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Bright Eyes - The People's Key
Drive By Truckers - Go-Go Boots

News

Twin Peaks, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone among shows coming to Netflix streaming aka Nora's Summer Plans
Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark hires some musical help or how not to spend $65 billion.

Next time I write it will be about cheesy 80's rock.

Project Manifesto

2011-02-21T00:14:00.000-05:00

I'm still a bit hazy on this whole final project thing we have to do for this class (I should really write down the stuff Prof. Groom says) but I'm writing out this manifesto outlining what my project is going to be. And it's going to involve Radio DS106 and my own show.
As I told Prof. Groom on Friday I'm of two minds when it comes to this project. On the one side I want to do something amazing that forces me to expand outside my comfort zone. On the other side I'm taking 20 credits and there are only so many hours in the day. So here's my compromise: Theme shows. For the rest of the semester I will be hosting my normal hour long show but each week I'll devote the show to a new topic. I'll also air the show my group puts together in conjunction with a normal half of my show. This ambitious project will start the week after spring break so I can give my regular listeners a head's up on what's going on. After that I'll start with hair metal and who know's maybe I'll even do a week on rap.
I will say this though: I'm not going to devote a show to a genre or topic I absolutely hate. And I'm not going to do this every week. This is my last semester as WMWC DJ and probably the last time I'll ever host a radio show. I want to go out on a bang not on a "Nora completely went off the rails." Every two weeks I'll do my regular show and I'm going to continue to announce the week's releases and if there's a news story of utter awesomeness that will be included, even during a theme show. Granted this does mean that my listeners will be subjected to at least one week of the Kinks and one week of Glee. The point though is to learn and to inform which I think is the whole point of this project in the long run. Whether people will enjoy is kind of beside the point.
So that's my manifesto. I don't know whether my show will air on Radio DS106, but if you're at all interested in listening to my show it airs weekly on Wednesdays at 7pm over at WMWC Blog. As I said this week will be normal but the week of March 7th will be hair metal and I guarantee I will play the original version of "Don't Stop Believin'" because I'm awesome. Check it out.

Sound Story

2011-02-20T01:02:00.000-05:00

My first experience with Audacity was during my senior year of high school when I was preparing my IB Music portfolio. Part of the portfolio was twenty minutes (more or less) of performing. My private clarinet teacher introduced me to Audacity as a means of recording my performances of two pieces for the portfolio. While my teacher had a pretty nice set up for recording I had a less than nice set up so I got to spend a lot of time figuring out to my the solo piece I had to record sound as good as the accompanied piece I had recorded at my teacher's house. I can't remember whether I managed to do that, but I did explore Audacity quite a bit during that period. Since then I've used Audacity on and off for various projects including something I did for my freshman seminar and then during my junior year putting together a portfolio for my application to the University of Westminster. I wouldn't say I'm an expert at Audacity, I even learned something while putting together this 90 second sound story, but I know my way around the program okay. Anyway, this is a really long introduction to my group's sound story which I cleaned up this afternoon.* I'll explain the story after the "jump."

Ds106soundstory by cydwarning30

A group of jolly kids are walking in the woods having fun and whatnot. A magic tinkling is heard in the air along with the creepy** cicadas come out in the summer. The kids head toward the sounds, intrigued my what they hear. And again, the creepy cicadas. Soon they hear the magic tinkling and the sound of music box coming from the creepy cave. Curious they head into the cave despite it being creepy. As the trapped wind roars around them they find the music box and laugh one. Last. Time.***
Sounds courtesy of the following FreeSound users: Royal, DJ Cronos, Timbre, Hazure,Shades, EuroBlues.

*Or more accuratly put, put the thing together for the first time in one track. If you ever need to convert a stereo track to a mono track in Audacity, for whatever reason, simply click on the "Track" menu on the main menu bar the click "Stereo track to Mono track." So simple a baby could do it.
**I find cicadas super creepy. They just sit there making their creepy noise and you know that if you piss them off they'll attack you in your sleep. I really don't like cicadas.
***Trying to impart the creepiness of this story. It may or may not work.

What I Like About You/What I Like About Me

2011-02-19T02:35:00.000-05:00

I'm going to say right off the bat I'm in desperate need of a nap. This whole going to sleep at midnight waking up at 8am just isn't working for me. Anyway, if this entry comes across slightly incoherent blame it on the sleep deprivation.
My immediate impression of this class after the first week was "Damn these guys are creative." And over the past two weeks everyone has proven me right. The output for both the Daily Shoot and the design/visual assignments have been just amazing. Trying to pick favourites, which is a hard task no matter the format, is nearly impossible because I like so much of what everyone did. As for what I did, well that's a lot easier. But I'll start with which assignments I liked the best and then tell you what I liked the best from what I did. Short and sweet.
I've said this before, but I will say it again, I'm not a big visual/design person. I'm a music major and to you can divide music majors into four major camps: those who want to perform, those who want to teach, those who want to do research, and those who want to compose. From these we can break it down even further to two bigger categories: those who create and those who don't. I'm in the don't camp. However despite not being someone who creates I appreciate those who do and I admire the work that they do create. So while I can't (at the moment) create a .gif file or do anything in Photoshop (except destroy) I appreciate and value those who do. So from the assignments outside of Daily Shoot, here are the ones I wish I could have done and the three that I did do to some success.

The Big Caption/The Big Hip Hop - I like the idea and loved what some of fellow classmates made based on this assignment. It's simplistic but perfectly encapsulates internet fandom as I know it, so seeing it translated into something not fandom based is pretty damn cool. Go Tim Owens.
Four Icon Challenge: I love the premise behind this. Distill your favourite movie or tv show into four basic elements. So simple, yet so difficult. I thought about doing this one and even knew what icons I wanted to use, but...I didn't. However I love the idea and some of the icon challenges you guys made were awesome. Go Kyle Tezak and Tim Owens (again).
Minimalist Travel/Movie/TV Posters: Before this class I had seen minimalist movie posters before and had always been impressed with their ingenuity. Expanding that to travel/tv posters just made sense and the designs that I saw were just as if not more impressive than the minimalist movie posters I had seen before. Go Martha Burtis/Tom Woodward.
Buddy Photo: I did this one largely because it's a fairly simple if really fun idea. Bring along a little "buddy" and take pictures of it wherever you go. I brought it along with me on a Tuesday or Thursday and it was fun, probably more fun than the Daily Shoot (in my opinion.) And it was student created so kudos to anagahama for that spot of genius.
Stories Written in Windows Media Player: Another one I did because it was simple and fun. I had seen memes involving creating things based on music collections before, but I liked trying to create my own poem based on songs in my music collection. And the poems other people created made more sense than mine and were awesome. Go callean.

So those are my favourites. As for what I did what I liked the best was my Buddy Photo series. Explaining Cthulhu to my music history teacher was fun as was finding places to take little Cthulhu's picture. And there endeth my ramble on the past two weeks. If you can get something out of that you are a smarter person than me.

The Playlist That Would Have Been My Radio Show This Week

2011-02-16T04:59:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately I won't be having my regular radio show this week.* However every once in awhile I put together random playlists, largely composed of songs I recently download** and while I was listening to it today I realized "hey, this group of three songs would be great on my radio show." So, since I haven't been blogging as consistently as I would like*** I'm going to create a radio show and put on here. It will only be the playlist, but youtube videos will be involved, so that's nice. Here we go:
Playlist

Love Song - Sara Bareilles
Grenade - Bruno Mars
Rolling in the Deep - Adele
Howlin' For You - The Black Keys
Glad Girls - Guided By Voices
Fluorescent Adolescent - Arctic Monkeys
My Body - Young the Giant
I Can Talk - Two Door Cinema Club
Under My Thumb - La Roux
Hard Times - Patrick Wolf
Long Time - Cake
I've Got a Feeling - The Beatles
Sway - Matthew Morrison

Enjoy and if anyone wishes to use this on Radio DS106 I give you permission to do so, you don't even have to say it's from me (though that would be nice). Expect more blogging about the Daily Shoot and other things tomorrow.

*This falls under "Crap you guys don't get to know because it's from personal life and I'm not that touchy feely with the internet." Sorry guys, there's got to be a line and this is it.
**Legally. From Microsoft.
***You'll find this if you ever talk to me about school or my radio show or how well I play the clarinet: I hold impossibly high standards for myself. Standards I'll probably never reach but keep me going.

Waiting for the Audio Assignments...

2011-02-15T05:41:00.000-05:00

Last design assignment before we start what I think will be my favourite section of the class: audio.* It's a mix of Tim Owen's "The Big Caption" assignment and "The Big Hip Hop." See, I did what I thought was "The Big Hip Hop" without reading through all the instructions. Instead of picking a song from the Top 100, I picked a song from my collection that I thought fit the photo.** So I've put this under both assignments because technically what I created doesn't really fit either but is in the spirit of both. This was created at Picnik using a photo from the Big Picture. The song is "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai from the Center Stage soundtrack.*** Enjoy!

*Three and a half years on the radio, 11 years playing the clarinet, singing since forever, and I'm a music major. There's a reason I consider myself an audiophile.
**Though I'm sure I could find a Top 100 song that would fit the photo just as well if not better. In fact, from the Top 10, Katy Perry's "Firework" would work (and I only know that song because of Glee don't take my hipster accreditation away from me.)
***Before I realized I like chocolate and am always going to be 5'10" I wanted to be a ballerina. Nine years of ballet classes prove that fact. And I still like that movie and I still really like the soundtrack.

It's All Very Small Really

2011-02-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

From the following tweet my our prof: "What's behnd the 106 in #ds106? Check out this article http://bit.ly/g0GVkh thank you @procsilas You are a maniac http://bit.ly/etQlWA"
I went to the first website: 106 (number)
I looked for any references to 42* and didn't find any.
Preceded to scroll to the bottom of the article and found this:
Smiled profusely at the cleverness of however stuck that reference in there and went "ctrl + print screen."
Copied the image into MS Paint, cropped the image down to the bare essentials and saved it to the desktop.
Went back to twitter and copied the tweet from Prof. Groom and wrote this entry.

*The answer to life the universe and everything. I look for it almost every where.

Five Card Story

2011-02-14T05:24:00.000-05:00

I did this a few days ago, but have been away from my computer so here it is. My five card story. Fill in the details with your imagination (and by the way I imagine it's set in Italy, but any country will do.)

Five Card Story: A Day in the City

a Five Card Flickr story created by imnora

flickr photo by krutscjo

flickr photo by bionicteaching

flickr photo by kairós

flickr photo by bionicteaching

flickr photo by DavidDMuir

It was a day in a city they'd never been to, enjoying the sites, sounds, and food of this utterly foreign place.

Photo of a Poster

2011-02-14T04:52:00.000-05:00

Parts of the walls the define my room(s) have, for the past nine years have been lined with tickets and postcards documenting my life as I've made my way from high schooler to nearly post-collegiate.* Right now I have about 35 tickets, one bumper sticker, 8 postcards, one clay figurine of Ricky Wilson, 4 iron patches, three keychains, one candy bar wrapper, 1 bat, and one lecture leaflet that constitute what I call "The Ticket Wall." There's also a photo of a poster on a telephone booth in London. While I could tell a story about every piece of paper that are on my walls, this photo holds a special place in my heart because of what it depicts and the timing of the photo itself.
My grandparents decided on something of a whim to take my sister and I to London over spring break. I was a freshmen in high school at a boarding school in Staunton, VA while my sister was a senior at the local public school. So it was decided that trip would be over my sister's spring instead of over mine (which totally makes sense by the way.) I had been a hardcore anglophile for about a year at this point and so the idea of visiting London, even if only for a week, was absolutely thrilling. And London held up its end. Even when walking around in 2 inch heels to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral was awesome. One of the things I remember most clearly though are the posters that lined the Underground and dotted the streets for a movie called Shaun of the Dead. I didn't recognize the actor on the poster** but I loved the tag lines on the posters and given their ubiquity in the city I was deeply interested in seeing this movie. I figured there would zombies***, but what else was this movie about? While I lost track of the movie after leaving London, my sister didn't and when it eventually came out on DVD she pounced on it. Shaun of the Dead remains one my favourite movies and I've since seen everything produced by writing/acting team behind the movie. And the great thing is, I will always have that picture of that poster. When DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are over taken my brain implants**** I'll still have that photo and I'll still remember the story behind that photo. And I can say the same thing for every ticket, postcard, iron patch, candy bar wrapper, key chain, bumper sticker, and lecture leaflet in my collection. Which is incredibly sentimental and I'll just leave it with this: You've got red on you.

*A fact which scares the crap out of me in a way I can't even describe. That and 8th grade just doesn't seem that long ago to be perfectly honest.
**Simon Pegg for the unintiated. And if you haven't seen this movie yet go see it. NOW!
***Because, well, duh.
****This will happen. All the sci-fi movies tell me so.

Creativity Conundrum

2011-02-11T05:08:00.000-05:00

Creativity is kind of a funny thing*. I had a choir director way back in the day say to my mom that anyone who can talk can sing. This isn't true. My mother, bless her heart, can't sing on pitch to save her life, try as she might. But while my mother can't sing on pitch I can't draw anything beyond stick figures despite the fact that my mom majored in studio art.** I also can't compose music*** despite the fact that my dad majored in music composition. But what I can do (besides sing) is write. In spite of the fact that I shouldn't be able to write as well as I do, I write quite a lot. For me, my writing is the only original creative outlet I have. I might not be able to write a piece of creative fiction, but I can sure as hell tell you about my day in an interesting way.****
What interests me about creativity is the way people define. Society almost automatically ascribes creativity to people who are some how involved in the performing or fine arts (and somewhere in there people who write books, poems, and short stories). The person who created the internet wasn't creative, he was very skilled at his job and was quite possibly a genius. But not creative. The men who figured out DNA weren't creative, nor was whoever actually invented the telephone.***** They were just really smart and very, very talented. Einstein has never been described as creative, just as a genius. And this divide intrigues me. Why can't scientists or mathematicians be described as creative? Because let's be honest, they are creative, very creative. Yes, artists are creative, but so are biologists and geologists.
So that's my deal. I think anyone who expands human knowledge is creative and that creativity should not be limited to the fine and performing arts (and writers.) There will those who disagree (or think I'm making a really lame point.) But I stand by my idea because it means that the people who major in computer science and biology are equally creative as people who major in theatre or studio art. And I like that principle.

*I literally had this conversation in my Intro to Theatre class two weeks ago. Most of what you'll read is based on that discussion.**Therefore I should have natural skill at drawing things beyond stick figures.
***See previous footnote.
****But not today. Today was really boring.
*****I've watched way too many episodes of QI and therefore know too many random facts. I'm pretty sure Alexander Graham Bell didn't actually invent the telephone though. Pretty sure.

Nora's Awesome Vintage Radio Show - 2/9/11

2011-02-10T05:24:00.000-05:00

So this week's show was interesting on many levels, at least for me. The first level was just doing my show (which is always interesting). The second level was incorporating an assignment from this class to make the playlist for this week's show. And the third level of interestingness was the fact that while I was broadcasting over WMWC waves I was also broadcasting over Radio DS106* waves. And there was no fourth level of interestingness.** And now for the run down.
Playlist

Glad Girls - Guided By Voices***
Sail - Awolnation
We Are Golden - Mika
Heads Will Roll - Yeah Yeah Yeahs****
Rolling in the Deep - Adele
Cecilia - Simon and Garfunkel
The Underdog - Spoon
All My Friends (London Session) - LCD Soundsystem
40 Day Dream - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
She's Not There - The Zombies
Twist and Shout - The Beatles
The Authority Song - Jimmy Eat World

News

Cake tops the charts and helps the record industry reach an all time low. Go Cake!
The Strokes have a new album and a new single. Go Strokes!
Goodbye Guitar Hero. You will be missed in dorm rooms throughout the country.

As mentioned there were no releases this week, but I expect there will be next week. And until then have a good weekend and don't let the overwhelming stress of school get to you. Two more weeks and it will be spring break! And then you can catch up on the sleep you've been missing.

*Others may call it DS106 radio, but I will ever follow the tradition of the BBC and call it Radio DS106. Besides, it makes the whole thing sound more stately and less insane (which it actually is.)
**Interestingness is a word and failed Inception reference is awesome on some level.
***No videos this week since I'm trying to get this out before I go to bed. And save for maybe a handful, most of these songs wouldn't have videos anyway so no real loss.
****What are Yeah Yeah Yeahs? :end veiled reference to Glee:

Adventures with Little Cthulhu

2011-02-09T05:34:00.000-05:00

My days, by and large a pretty busy. But today, as part of anagahama visual assignment, I brought a little "buddy" around with me to document my day. anagahama may have been thinking of something else, but I had fun taking pictures of Little Cthulhu* in the various places I live and work. And, as compromise of sorts this will count for a "design" assignment** because I don't do design.*** So here's the adventures of Little Cthulhu.

*Purchased at a comic bookstore in York, England about a year ago.
**Or at least I'm hoping Over Lord Jim will allow for this compromise.
***And at this point Over Lord Jim says "No! You must stretch yourself in uncomfortable ways!" and I mumble something and do a real design assignment.

Playlist Poetry

2011-02-08T23:13:00.000-05:00

[caption id="attachment_95" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="This is what happens when Nora makes a playlist"][/caption]Here is my playlist poem. There are some words that probably need to be inserted to have the poem actually make sense and admittely those last four songs don't actually make sense in the morning light* but the neat thing is, is that because of this assignment I now have the playlist for this weeks show. So here's the breakdown:

Glad Girl - featured on How I Met Your Mother
Sail - number 18 on Alt-Nation's weekly top 18
Rolling in the Deep - realized Adele was coming out with a new album and had a new single
Cecilia - featured as part of chart on HIMYM
The Underdog - featured on HIMYM
She's Not There - featured on Sunday night's episode of Glee
All My Friends (London Session) - mentioned in last week's show
We Are Golden - because it's awesome
New Low - featured on the Alt-Nation's weekly top 18 (I forget which number and probably won't be played on the show)
Heads Will Roll - featured as part of a mashup on Sunday night's episode of Glee
Twist and Shout - my friends mentioned it at their birthday party.
The Authority Song - Jimmy Eat World are playing on Wednesday.

And for those of you wondering, yes that is really how I make my playlist every week. Two parts what I've seen on TV, 1 part what's been recently released and 1 part whatever the hell I feel like. The fact that this week's playlist makes a kind of poem is just kind of icing on the cake. And I don't have to worry about making a playlist this week. Up next: Little Cthulu takes part in my Tuesday/Thursday schedule.

Pomegrante Martinis

2011-02-08T03:58:00.000-05:00

So this story isn't strictly all ages, but I figure I'm 22 and the lovely ladies in the pictures just celebrated their 23rd birthdays* so it's all good. The background: Feb. 1st were the twins' birthday and so they both came back to Fredericksburg** to celebrate with all their not-graduate friends (and some who have graduated but haven't left yet). The party was held in the private room at Capital Ale House and, because we're all of age, we ordered alcoholic beverages. Lauren (the one on the left) ordered a pomegranate martini. And the a friend ordered her and her sister Heather (the one on the right) pomegranate martinis. And now the story (conceived and performed by Lauren Greider. Pickles eaten by Heather.) [gallery] Panel 1: Mmmm pomegranate martini. Panel 2: But soon I won't have anymore :( Panel 3: I have another at the ready! Yay!

*Yes, they're twins.
**Lauren is currently in Charlotte, SC and Heather is in Pittsburgh, PA.

Bye Bye For Now

2011-02-07T22:08:00.003-05:00

We all know I deal with depressive episodes. We all know I've been in counseling/therapy. These are just facts. However, for reasons that should be fairly obvious based on what I've been writing about lately, I'm back in a place where I need to go back into counseling. I've also gotten to the point where the things I think about and the things I want to write about just can't be discussed here. A long time ago I decided that writing about every time I get depressed and describing those emotions don't necessarily help and are definitely not things I want to broadcast to the whole wide world. And so we've gotten to a point where because of where I'm at emotionally and the amount of work I'm currently doing this blog will pretty much be dead until...whenever I'm ready to start blogging here again. I suspect that even if I don't blog too much this summer, once I start law school I'm going to start blogging again. It's kind of a long way off, but given how quickly time flies it'll be here before I (and we) know it. So until whenever I next update, go to Anglo-Audiophile 2.0 where I'll probably be updating at least a bit more than here.

Daily Shoot #6

2011-02-06T04:39:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow 30+ people are going to go down to Capital Ale House bedecked in their best and favouritest costumes and celebrating two of our graduated friends' birthday. Granted the friends are twins, but the point remains the same: I needed a costume. A couple of years ago I was in a similar situation at Halloween when my initial idea of being King of the Mods fell through.* So I decided I would go for another Mighty Boosh character namely Old Gregg. Granted, while getting a whole mod outfit could have been expensive, Old Gregg wasn't exactly inexpensive. I ended up having to get a bright pink tutu amongst other things, but those other things could be reworn in more practical circumstances. A bright pink tutu on the other hand can't be worn every day.** I haven't worn that bright pink tutu since that Halloween, but when I was told I needed a costume for this birthday shindig I knew what at least one part of that costume was going to be. My bright pink tutu. I came up with the rest of it based on what I already owned or could get easily and relatively inexpensively. And so tomorrow when 30+ people are walking down to Capital Ale House I will be the one dressed as a retired ballerina.
Of course all of this conviently fit into today's Daily Shoot prompt which was to focus on color rather than detail. Granted the photo isn't particularly abstract, but as my caption says, it is colour-ific.

*You'd be surprised how difficult it can be to buy mod-esque clothing when you're not trying particularly hard and want it to fit into your regular wardrobe. That it would probably be impossible to redo Noel Fielding's hair from that episode.
**Unless your into that kind of thing. In which case go forth and wear the bright pink tutu every day.

Pollard Sky

2011-02-04T05:15:00.000-05:00

So yesterday's daily shoot didn't happen because well...crap.* But today's shoot did happen, largely because I remembered to put my camera in purse, and while the shot was a bit blurrier than I would have liked it does accurately portray something I see almost every day. Namely the sky between DuPont and Pollard (as you exit DuPont taking the covered walk to Pollard.) So once again we have a convenient shot that works out for the best. Yay convenience!

*Crap that I'm not going to get into here because I believe in a separation between my personal life blog and my academic life blog. Let's just say it's personal and leave it at that. It will never be spoken of again.

Nora's Awesome Vintage Radio Show 2/2/11

2011-02-03T04:47:00.000-05:00

So this week's show was basically last week's show. Played and talked this week. And man was it fun. And a lot shorter than I was expecting, but I guess that's the difference between one hour and two hours, eh?

Playlist*
Moneygrabber - Fitz and the Tantrums
My Body - Young the Giant
Internet Killed the Video Star - The Limosines
Howlin' For You - The Black Keys
Shake Me Down - Cage the Elephant
Elenore - The Turtles
Video Killed the Radio Star - The Buggles
Get Myself Together - Robyn
Bad Reputation - Joan Jett
When You Walk in the Room - Fyfe Dangerfield
Louder Than Ever - Cold War Kids
Moneybox - Eliza Doolittle
What to Do - OK Go

Releases
Deerhoof - Doorhood vs. Evil
Iron and Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean
Cold War Kids - Mine is Yours
Amos Lee - Mission Bell
LCD Soundsystem - London Session

News Items
2010 was the worst year for rock since 1960. And anyone who's been forced to listen to mainstream radio is not surprised.Limewire will fight the system until it can't anymore. And then it will play the music industry a billion dollars. Because that's how the music industry rolls.
Neil Diamond and a bunch of other people will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yay them.

So that's it until next week. Same bat time, same bat place.

*As mentioned on the show this week's playlist was put on shuffle and whatever happens, happens. However I didn't bother to write down what happened. Sue me.

Daily Shoot #1: Forks

2011-01-31T16:59:00.000-05:00

My original idea for today's shoot was to take an artsy photo of band stands. However I couldn't get into the band room so, being the lazy person that I am, decided instead to grab a handful of forks and take a picture of them. I have a lot of forks so this was pretty easy to do. For those of you wondering, the policeman holds tea bags. Yummy, yummy tea bags.

London Redux

2011-01-30T21:29:00.003-05:00

I hate crying in public. I hate crying in front of one person who isn't my mother to be perfectly honest. I generally dislike crying because it's a major sign of weakness and you never know who might overhear. But on Thursday, and indeed for the past few days, I've been crying quite a lot. As Dr. Fillerup rightly pointed out, I'm under quite a lot of stress and it seems crying is the only remedy at the moment.
A situation that has been brewing since last semester is close to boiling. My roommates and I are no longer speaking and they actively ignore me when it's possible. I've tried my best to ignore and live with the current setup, but when you dread going back to your own room because of the hostility that lives there you know there's something wrong. I've been through this before (though it was rather more distressing as those with long memories will remember) and I hate the idea of going through it again. I've spoken to my RA and I hope that by making a roommate agreement things won't get worse will possibly get better, but given the knots in my stomach, I wouldn't say I have a lot of hope. I'm more worried about retaliation to be honest but that's largely because I'm just paranoid like that. I want a calm life. I'm that a roommate agreement will bring that, at least to a certain extent. As I kept saying last year, I just need to get through till the end of April and then I'll be away from all this. I'm just not sure how well I'll make it.
Otherwise things are going well. I'm tired of being an undergraduate and I'm looking towards my future more and more. Nonetheless classes are going well and I'm actually enjoying some of them. I'll try to post again when something good happens. For the meantime be sure to check out my other far more active blog Anglo-Audiophile 2.0 for interesting musings on various things. The next two weeks will be filled with photos, so that's cheery. And we all need cheery things in our lives.

Why Can't I Just Blog Like A Normal Person?

2011-01-27T16:56:00.000-05:00

(So the thing I was going to post last night has been moved to next week. Blame the snow.)

The second part of this week's assignment has proved difficult for me to finish. I've looked through all of Cog Dog Roo's list of fifty and I've tried out several of them trying to create a "Web 2.0"* story. I've tried and failed several times. My stories, as I tell them, are incredibly wordy and round about and have a tendency to go off on random tangents. I don't tell straight up stories. My stories need background information and footnotes to be complete. Trying to cram one of my stories into a comic or a slide show or even on a map (which I tried several times) just doesn't work very well. There are some straight forward stories in my repertoire but then I become impatient with the tools at my disposal and even my more straightforward stories tend to be lengthy.** Largely though, I'm just rather impatient and don't really see the point*** of trying to use fancy tools to tell a story when I can just write it and be done with it. So this whole assignment is troublesome to me but because I want to do well in this class and so I want to be able to finish this assignment.
What I would really like to do is create a straight up podcast. I host a weekly radio show and having blogged for nearly ten years**** so I suspect I would be good at podcasting. But I don't know how to with just my computer and Audacity. The tools provided by Cog Dog Roo don't really help either and again, I don't have a proper microphone (which I feel I need for some reason.) So that's what I would have liked to have done for this assignment. And I would have talked about something. I had a number of ideas floating around in my head including last year's spring break, why I can't have blank walls in my room, the origin of my love of the Kaiser Chiefs, etc., etc. I don't want to say I'm giving up on this assignment (largely because I'm sure Prof. Groom wouldn't approve) but I think it's one that I might have to come back to later. When I get a proper microphone or someone tells me why I don't need a proper microphone. Which ever comes first.

*If one of the leaders of Web 2.0 is blogging, why can't a Web 2.0 story just be a blog entry? Hmmm??
**I should clarify: When I say lengthy I mean more than a hundred words. I'm actually a very concise person which has gotten me into a lot of trouble when I write papers. This is why I believe that humans should evolve to be telepathic. It would make my life a lot easier.
***I do see the point. Refer to footnote 1 for clarification on why I "don't" see the point.
****I was going to write about this fact (and my have actually already mentioned it) at length but found a more streamlined way to get my point across. Often what I "write" in my head never sees the light of day because I've forgotten what I "wrote."

My Pride and Joy

2011-01-26T14:22:00.000-05:00

(This is going to act as a preface for something that will be posted later tonight, but which I'm actually working on right now because I like entering in the html myself and the thing that will be posted tonight is html intensive. Enjoy.)

I didn't originally want to go to Mary Washington. It took a lot of convincing to get me here*, but once I was convinced (and admitted) I made it my mission to do the following things: Brainwash the campus into loving the Kaiser Chiefs as much as I did and study abroad in London. My first mission would be done by being a member of the newspaper, Giant Productions, and the radio station (WMWC, what what.) Two of those things didn't happen. The radio station did. Still didn't brainwash the campus into falling for the Kaiser Chiefs, but I did get the opportunity to introduce obscure** British artists to the handful of people who listen to WMWC and my show. For an hour or two a week I got to play music I love*** and talk about things I find interesting.****
I've done a lot in my time here at Mdub. I've written an 18 page paper, worked two jobs,***** helped to found the school's sci-fi club, and studied abroad in London. But when all is said and done, I'll be most proud of my contribution to the radio station. I never acted as an officer, but I was there week in and week out no matter who was in charge, just doing my thing and promoting the radio station to the best of my ability. My show and the radio station are my pride and joy****** from the past four years.

*Basically it took meeting someone who knew someone named Trillian. I'm actually really easy.
**Or not so obscure if you're cool like that (or I play Lily Allen/Mika/Keane etc.)
***Or not love, though that's gone by the wayside now that I primarily use my Zune for each show.
****Or mercilessly mock people who I really shouldn't be mocking because they might crush me. It's still fun though.
*****On campus, so nothing taxing or particularly exciting.
******I promise to never do that again. And how did I get to six footnotes? Can't promise that won't happen again.

My Web 2.0

2011-01-23T20:40:00.000-05:00

I don't have the best memory. I don't remember when I first started using Google or Wikipedia. The only reason I remember why I started watching certain shows is because of my personal blog, where I can retrace the steps that got me to a certain point. When you're 15 you don't blog about using Wikipedia or Google. They just become a part of what you do on a day to day basis. I know that there was a time before Wikipedia and Google, but I don't remember them. They've always been there and they will always be there, at least in my memory.
For me, in my poor memory, the web has always been 2.0. Based on the article by Tim O'Reilly and cursory look at the Web 2.0 article on Wikipedia, this makes sense. My family had a dial-up service fairly early on and I remember logging on to AOL and then Netscape to access the internet. I don't really remember what I did on the internet at that age, though I suspect it probably had something to do with PBS (I've been a history nerd since I was at least 6, so you can see the appeal there.) But the web, as I know it and can remember it didn't really start until I signed up for my first real email account with Yahoo!* I was in my early teens at that point which would have been around 2001. So based on sources already stated, I really started interacting with the web right when web 2.0 was starting. 2001 was the year that Wikipedia started and Google had already been around for about five years. Based on my memory Web 2.0 is the only kind of web that has ever existed.
But what is Web 2.0? Both articles go some way to explaining what it is but to someone who's only really known Web 2.0 their explanations don't really help that much. So here's my definition. Web 2.0 is interactive and collaborative. Web 2.0 allows people to interface with each other and the web in a way that isn't confusing and can be done by someone who didn't major in comp. sci. To me Web 2.0 is blogging, Google, wikis, Twitter, and Facebook all wrapped together in one big happy family. And the reasoning behind my definition is that because I've only known Web 2.0, everything associated with what I know as the internet must be Web 2.0.
But** that doesn't really answer the question either. That's the problem with the web. It's constantly evolving so the web doesn't stand still for observation. We can try and categorize it, but what's the point? I say, let the web happen and when something new comes along to take over the web we can try and define it then. The internet, as easily accessible by ordinary people, has only been around for twenty or so years. Give it some time to grow.

*This account was setup in 2003, so while I can remember why I chose "cyd" to be part of it (I was a dancer and adored Cyd Charisse) I can't explain the rest. So please don't ask me to explain that particular address, I can't explain it.
**I hate it when I start two paragraphs the same way. So this is my apology for things like that. And any sentences with missing connective words. I type fast and have a tendency to only check for spelling. You'll get use to it.

Adventures in Public Transportation

2011-01-22T18:58:00.000-05:00

As a resident of suburbia, I'm used to getting around by car. However for the past three summer that I have been volunteering/interning at WPFW I have to love the Metro. One of the things I miss the most about London is the Underground. And while I have a driver's license I have never owned a car. All this means is that while the majority of my fellow upperclassmen have control over how they get around Fredericksburg I am at the mercy of the FRED bus system for better and worse.
Generally speaking I have a love/hate relationship with public transport systems. I love them when they work and when they're on time and get me where I need to go in a timely fashion. I hate them one when they fail to do any one of the above. This is why my love for the Underground is so odd. Most of the time I was in London it worked like a charm but on the other hand most weekends I was stranded in the semi-suburb where I was staying (though it's more complicated than that.) I also understand that my admiration of the metro is odd because most residents of DC are more likely to moan about it than embrace it. But for me, with only a few exceptions, the Metro has worked.
On the other hand FRED and I seem to have a mutual disdain for each other. We're like ex's who broke up amicably - we put with each other but only to a point. While I have seen parts of Fredericksburg that I wouldn't have seen otherwise I do wish sometimes that I could have just driven from Central Park back to my apartment without having to wait an hour for a bus. While all of the public transport systems I have ridden on have been dysfunctional* in one way or another, Fredericksburg's system is perhaps the most dysfunctional of all of them. But who knows, maybe Boston** will prove even more dysfunctional.

*Really this all breaks down to my love of things what are dysfunctional. I don't know love them all the time, but I do identify with inanimate but dysfunctional systems. It's why I love WMWC so much - it's incredibly dysfunctional but it does the job well enough that no one knows just how dysfunctional it is. The same can be said for all of the above examples. I just have a thing for dysfunction.
**Boston aka the place I'll probably end up going to law school, unless Loyola LA surprises me and actually says yes instead of no or waitlist. But we shall see.

The Infinite Terror of Blogging Pt 3

2011-01-19T22:27:00.000-05:00

(I promise I will start using a different title eventually. But trust me, using this title one more time will make sense. Honest.)

I am, by my very nature, a lurker.* I'm the consummate wallflower, a constant observer absorbing everything I can about the world around me. But while I comment in my own head about what I observe, I don't really feel the need to comment out loud. I read articles, I follow blogs, I read Twitter posts, but I don't say anything because a) website comment sections are truly scary and b) why? For much the same reason that Prof. Groom doesn't feel the need to get a cellphone, I don't feel the need to comment. Who am I to say anything about what anyone else says? So I lurk, learning and retaining mountains of largely useless information.**
Which is directly contradicted by the fact that I've been blogging for nearly 10 years. I started on deadjournal.com and slowly made my way to Blogger in February of 2005. I can search within that blog for nearly ever major landmark event in my life and can give an approximate date to when those things happen. I lay bare for anyone who wants to read it, my entire life in that blog. While I'm embarrassed by four or so years of what I wrote about, anyone*** can read about my avid fangirliness for a number of topics during that time simply by googling the right terms. But how does this effect anything outside my personal life? It doesn't. I blog to keep a record of my life so that when I get older I can look back and remember what I was like when I was fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. Alzheimer's runs in my family, so I would like to know that for better or worse there's a record of my doings for people to remember me by. Because as much as I lurk, I still want to be remembered.
So what of academia? In as much as I blog about anything, I blog about my classes. I don't blog about each of my classes to the extent that I suspect Prof. Groom will be wanting us to blog about this class, but I do talk about what I'm doing in school. Of all the things we'll be expected to do, I suspect for me that blogging about every step I take in this class will be the hardest thing to do.
I don't blog as much as I use to for many reasons. The biggest hope I have for this class is that I will start blogging more because I'll be inspired to blog more, instead of because I feel bad or whatever. And now, just to prove a point, here's a bunch of media stuff. Enjoy.
(one of my favourite videos of all time)
[caption id="attachment_28" align="alignnone" width="202" caption="Provided by thefilmstage.com"][/caption] (one my favourite movies that I saw last year)

*In classic internet parlance. Other synonyms include leech, which is probably accurate to a certain extent.
**Or useless at this point in time. Perhaps sometime in the future the useless things I know will be handy. I doubt it, but you never know.
***I've actually thought this through, at least in certain aspects and I just hope that no one looking to hire me figures out that the crazy blog they're looking is written my yours truly. Because if they ever did, there's a good chance no one would hire me.

Question Answered

2011-01-18T20:24:00.000-05:00

This has next to nothing to do with this class or what I'm suppose to be doing in this blog, but I'm too excited to care. Besides, it's important to how I view the rest of this semester and the rest of my life really. So, yeah. Deal with it ;)

I've spent the past couple of months wondering if I would ever get into law school. Well my friends I have the answer: Yes. I have been accepted at New England Law School in Boston, so I do have it within me to get into law school. And as my mom said, even if I don't get in anywhere else, I'll have gotten into one school and that's all that's needed to go to law school. So to reiterate what my Facebook status says: I got into law school!!!! Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

I got into law school!!!! Whee...

2011-01-18T20:15:00.000-05:00

I got into law school!!!! Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

A Year Ago (One Last Reminiscence)

2011-01-18T18:20:00.004-05:00

It's been a year. Actually it's been a year and two days, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to actually write about this before right now. So it's been a year and two days since I landed in London. A year and two days since I spent five hours freezing my ass off in Paddington station wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. A year and two days since my life began to change quite dramatically.
A year ago and two days I didn't know just how dramatically my life would be changing. I thought London would reaffirm everything I already believed not change it. I thought I would come back from London craving to go back immediately and never leave again. I thought it would make becoming a DJ so much easier. I never thought it would change my career goals or my understanding of how much my family means to me. London changed everything, but not in the way I thought it would. Which is probably for the best.
I do miss London. I miss being able to go to the theatre easily, I miss the Comedy Store, I miss the Tube, and I miss living in a city. No, I don't miss the people I was forced to live with, but as the immediacy of those memories recede, the good things, the things I loved about London remain. But because of London I know myself better than I did a year ago, so I know that while I love London. Living there would be unbearably hard. I couldn't go it alone like I did last year, I would absolutely need to have someone with me.
So it's been a year and two days. It doesn't seem like that long ago, but time doesn't lie (mostly.) I do know this - it's been a hell of a year.

The Infinite Terror of Blogging Pt. 2

2011-01-17T21:45:00.000-05:00

As hinted at in my last entry, I am very slow to adapt. It took a few months after getting into college to actually get a facebook account and it took my sister wittering on about the funny things being said on Twitter for a few months to actually convince me that Twitter wasn't completely worthless.* In fact the only way in which I'm truly progressive is in what I listen to and what I watch.** As I discovered when I was studying in London, I am actually a forty year old in a twenty-two year old's body (which can be very inconvenient, the forty year old can get quite grumpy about those youngins). Which leads me to my next point...
Last semester I had the opportunity to take a number of upper level history classes. I'm a music major who thought she wanted to be a history major, so getting to take three history classes was a revelation to me. In all three of those classes, at one point or another, each of the professors made the point that while the curriculum and ideas taught by academia can be quite progressive the actual professors are perhaps the least progressive people in the country, especially in their unwillingness to adapt to new things. Which leads me to my next point...
I have mixed feelings about "A Personal Cyberinfrastructure." One part of me, the part that probably convinced me that blogging was and continues to be a good idea and who got me to finally join Twitter, completely agrees with what Gardner Campbell has to say in both the lecture and the article. But the pragmatist, the part of me that knows that there are people in their mid to late 20s who don't know how to work a power point presentation, thinks that his ideas are nice and yes it would be great if we could implement them, but it would never really work. The majority of professors, heck even the majority of middle and high school teachers, would be unwilling to adapt to the new technology. The same professors who rail against Wikipedia as completely untrustworthy and incapable of providing accurate information would be same professors railing against Prof. Campbell's ideas as unnecessary and incompatible with higher education. They're wrong on both points, but they aren't going anywhere and so Prof. Campbell's ideas will, in all likelihood, go unfulfilled until my generation comes into power.*** That is, if people not like me become tenured professors at universities. Because I'm still not sure about this whole website thing. I like my templates.

*Hello! Welcome to my version of footnotes, wherein I make tangential comments that wouldn't make sense in the body of the entry. Tangential comment: This is a true story. I didn't get on the Twitter bandwagon until February of '09 but almost immediately started following Stephen Fry and rash of British comedians no one has heard of. It was a good day.
**Mwhahahahaha. The footnotes are not always mature.

The Infinite Terror of Blogging

2011-01-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

At some point in my pre-teen/adolescent past I had a website. It was actually a geocity site, but what I remember is that it was complicated. Very complicated. I don't remember how old I was or why I decided to register for a geocity site, but when I did I realized what I had gotten myself into and didn't like it. It required learning a new language and at whatever age I was I didn't want to do that. I also discovered blogging (wherein I learned very, very basic html) which was so much easier, so my geocity site when down the drain. Ever since I've been incredibly intimidated by the idea of owning or maintaining a website. And it turns out I was wrong.

For this class we were asked to buy a domain and rent server space to host said domain. I, admittedly, freaked a bit. Websites, according to my own philosophy, are a) expensive and b) complicated. But I wanted to be in this class, I love the ideas behind this class, so I did it. And man almighty was it easy. Which of course means I messed it up a little bit (imnora.us, not imnore.us), but if you're reading this, you are seeing how easy it is to actually. The weird thing is, is that I'm still ambivalent about owning a website. This is possibly because I fear turning into an all out geek instead of just being a cultural geek (which is what I am now and will admit to freely.) However I guess I will just have to overcome that fear in this class.

Edit: If you ever have an issue with having to delete root files (wp-admin, etc) here's a really simple solution thanks to a fellow blogger: http://nickriebe.com/cant-delete-wordpress-folders-to-re-install/

Last Semester (Until Law School)

2011-01-11T22:12:00.001-05:00

I'm going to start with a story about my day. The reason for this is because it will indicate the kind of mood I'm in which in turn will indicate how the rest of the entry will go. It's like a warning I suppose. So here's the story about my day.
It started with my alarm not going off. As I have mentioned numerous times (depending on where you're reading this) I am taking 20 credits this semester so the amount of time I have for anything (especially work) is limited to say the least.* So my plan for this morning was to wake up at 8:30am do morning stuff and be in the band room to set up by 10am. I woke up at 10:13. I have a class at 11am and then band immediately after, so waking up at 10:13am meant that band setup was out of the question. A real breakfast was also out of the question unfortunately. And lunch. So after music history (which ended at 3:15ish) I said hello to the library vending machine and settled in for a so-so afternoon. And discovered that the soda I had managed to get in between band and music history was leaking in my bag. Nothing important was damaged but my bag was wet and my soda was a lost cause. Thankfully I had a book and my Zune so the day that had gone all wrong ended up not so bad.
The first day of classes went much smoother. I woke up on time and I got to eat lunch. My swim class** is going to be way relaxed which is exactly what I was looking for. Oceanography is going to be a bit more intense than I was expecting, but Tibert seems pumped which will hopefully get me pumped. Intro to Theatre*** is going to be amazing and instead of writing about the Kinks I'll be writing about copyright, because that's just how I roll (and Fickett actually kind of approved that topic.) Monday/Wednesday/Fridays aren't going to be so bad I think, though I'm currently really biased against Tuesday/Thursdays.
Final topic I want to talk about (and kinda sorta have to): Digital Storytelling. I will admit after today's experiences I'm kind of ambivalent**** about this class. It seems a lot more intense (which is a word I need to stop using now) than I was expecting, but then again what we're going to be doing in this class is what I'm passionate about (from a law perspective in any event) and so part of me really doesn't want to leave this class. And of course there's the fact that anything I can get into is either going to be a) something I really don't want to take or b) equally time consuming. So the real question is whether to take the class pass/fail which has its own set of questions. In any event here's the big news: I have a domain name. It was really easy and really quick. Now I just need to get a webserver/host/thing and set up the blog aspect and I'll have myself a for real website. Which, as I sarcastically said to Mr. Groom tonight, is another thing I get to manage online. Yay.

*I require a certain amount of downtime/sleep time during my day, so while I could probably fit in more if I woke up at say 7am, I'm just not that kind of person, so why kid myself.
**I noticed that swimming met at the same time as weight training so I switched to the method of exercise I prefer. Sorry weight lifters.
***The only art history class I could fit in my schedule closed so I decided to not try and get into a closed class and take an equally interesting class that was open. I get to see "An Ideal Husband" so it all works out really.
****And my ex is in the class which makes me even more ambivalent, which if you've been reading this long enough, you will understand.

The Round Up

2010-12-31T13:12:00.003-05:00

I was going to go to a club to ring in the new year. But I'm not really the club kind of person, so now I have a stomach bug. No need to dwell on that though, let's sum up the year in a pithy fashion. As one does you know.

Favourite Album: Mark Ronson, Record Collection. Possibly one of the best albums I've heard in a long time, Mr. Ronson proves with Record Collection that he can in fact write and produce original music without it sounding crap. Save for a couple of tracks I'm not particularly fond of Record Collection really is a brilliant album.
What I Actually Listened to For Most of the Year: Glee. The thing about Glee is that they pick songs that are basically comfort food for ears. They aren't terribly adventurous and for the most part very well known. So when you want something simply to listen to Glee is an excellent option because the artists are talented and songs are comfortable. So that's mostly what I've actually been listening to.
Favourite Film: Tie between The Social Network and Inception. The odd thing about this years is that I've seen a lot of great movies. It started in London when going to see a movie was a cheaper way to spend a couple of hours in central London than say, seeing a play or something of that sort. And while I could go to a museum might seem even cheaper, a movie is far more entertaining. In any event I became accustomed to going to a movie by myself, so I decided to do that. Multiple times. So I got to see a number of really great movies. But of all the movies I saw, my favourites were definitely Inception and The Social Network. Both were brilliantly devised, directed, and acted. However I can't really pick just one, so I suggest you go see both. Or you know, rent them when they come out on DVD.
Best Book I Read This Year (That Really Wasn't Published This Year): Amongst the Thugs. Not only did it cover a topic I'm interested in (football hooligans) it also held within its covers the most disgusting scene I've ever read (which I won't commit to electronic paper for my more sensitive readers.) Thugs is an elegantly written book about a very inelegant topic that gives the reader an insiders prospective on a culture that is very hard to get involved in. Do yourself a favor and read it. And look out for descriptions of eyes.
Thing I Hope Will Happen in 2011: That I get into law school. I may not be sure that I actually want to practice law, but I do know that I want to at least get into law school. Everything else is just frosting on the cake. Though I would like one of the following bands to start working on an album: Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, or Arctic Monkeys. That would be very nice.

So that's the round up. I haven't done the best job of writing this year, but I think making resolutions is stupid so I won't do that. However I can promise that I'll be updating more, simply because I'm going to be taking a class that involves blogging. So whatever I write for that class will be posted in this blog (as well as the one I keep for school which gets update even less than this one.) So here's to 2011, may it go more smoothly than this year.

The Bi-Monthly Update

2010-12-04T21:45:00.002-05:00

All bullet points. Such is life.

I miss London. I suspect that I will say that from now until I get back there, when I will immediately stop missing London and start missing DC. Right now though I miss London and I miss it with every fibre of my being.
The situation with my roommates is just below civil. There haven't been any out right confrontations, largely because I hate confrontations but also because it's a week until we all go home. My hope remains to be that when we get back things will settle into a civil living arrangement that I'll be able to stand and that the ill-will which currently exists will have dissipated. A month away from each other should help, or at least I hope it will help. And if not then I'll do what I did second semester freshmen year which is stay away from the apartment as much as humanely possible. Which will be made easier by the fact that...
I'm going to be doing a credit overload next semester. My adviser (and the school really) have failed me again and so I will be taking 20 credits next semester. One of these credits (quite literally 1) will be weight lifting. And here I thought I had finished with PE junior year of high school. Still I'm only taking 3 upper level classes and none of them are history. So it shouldn't be too bad right? Right. Optimism, always optimism.

Did I mention it's finals? Yes, I've got exams Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I leave on Saturday in the morning and then a month off. So until next time, don't panic.

True Facts

2010-11-17T20:11:00.002-05:00

I don't like flutes. Or, more specifically, I don't like flutes outside of the orchestra or orchestral pieces. I find their sound far to airy to be taken seriously and it's incredibly easy to play a flute out of tune which is equally troubling. The people who play flutes tend to annoy me as well as they're either far too perky or far too self absorbed for their own good. Generally speaking there is nothing I like about the flute or the people who play flutes that I like. And yet I room with a flutist. Ironic, no?
I want to be acknowledged for the things I do. I don't do spectacular things, in fact most of the time I do my best to stay below the radar. But that doesn't mean I don't do things. I do important things, behind the scene things that if they weren't done people would suddenly notice. For those things I wish to be acknowledged, those things that I do behind the scenes. It's an utterly selfish motive, but I'm tired of people who don't deserve to acknowledged (at least in my opinion) being acknowledged before me. I'm tired of standing in the shadows waiting for a round of applause that will never come. I'm not asking to applauded every time I do band set-up or make it through the day without screaming at the top of my lungs, but just once I would like my efforts to be appreciated. Just once.
I want a job. I'm tired of school, I want a job. I don't care if it's menial, I don't care if I have to work as a temp, I just want a job. I want to make money, my own money just for me. That's all, I just want a job. I want to live on my own, in a city and work. Unfortunately I probably have another three years of putting off the inevitable before I can do that. Hopefully having those three years will mean that when I do face the inevitable I'll be able to make more money. Because what I really want is a job.

Piecemeal

2010-11-11T21:49:00.005-05:00

11/12/10: So I'm writing this paper. I've been dreading it since the beginning of the semester because I pulled the prospectus out of my ass and I was sure that there was no way I could write anywhere close to 15 pages on anything. I finished page nine tonight and by the end of business on Saturday I'll probably have another nine written.
11/13/10: Or not. More like 2 and half. But I'll have it done by Monday which is the point right? Anyway, I'm currently having flashbacks to London. And not the warm fuzzy kind I get when I think about tea and the tube. The unfuzzy kind when I think about my flatmates and having to move apartments. At least I'm two floors up and therefore can't tell what song it is they're playing down in the basement, but my instinct to knock loudly on their doors and call security is screaming quite loudly at the moment. However it's Saturday night so as much as I would like to go to sleep right now (so I can wake up early so I can't work on this damn paper), I probably won't get to. Of course I could always open my window and let the sound of traffic lull me to sleep. But then there are the drunken revelers returning home at odd times, so opening my window isn't really an option. Where are my earplugs when I need them?
11/15/10: The paper turned into a nearly 6,000 word opus on a topic that has been flitting around my head for ages. What annoys me more than anything though is that I still have ideas about that paper flitting around my head. Ideas about songs or bands or artists that I could have looked at. I thought that by writing this paper I would finally be done with this topic and would be able to move on with my life. But no, now I'm thinking about former British colonials and the music they brought with them when they immigrated to Britain. Taking a more in depth look at the punk/post-punk movements in the 80's in relation to the politics. And on and on. I need a new obsession because this one is getting annoying.

Quickie

2010-11-08T19:06:00.002-05:00

I got my LSAT score by and I've applied to all the schools I'm planning applying to. Pace is being a buttface (I know, mature) and not realizing that I have 12 transfer credits and won't process my application until I have at least 90 credits. 12 plus 79 from fall last year equals 91. Hence my frustration. However, I'm supposedly going to be hearing from DePaul in about two weeks, which is terrifying. Otherwise I probably won't hear anything until the end of the semester. Which is one of the many reasons I can't wait for this semester to be over.
My other reason for wanting this semester to be over is that I won't have to write any papers for a month. Right now I'm working on my British history term paper which, while fascinating, is 15 to 20 pages long. As I've mentioned before I've never written that much in my life and I'm not a history major. I should never have to write that much in a non-major class. Still, I will slog through it this week and will hopefully come out the other side with most of my sanity still in place. But we shall see.
That's it really. I just wanted to prove I'm alive and haven't gone off the deep end entirely.

The Question of Living With People

2010-10-26T22:31:00.003-04:00

I can say in all I honesty, I don't know whether I'm a good roommate or not. Given the myriad living situations I've had over the last four years, it's difficult to gauge. I'd like to think that overall I'm okay to live with. Sure, I'm not very socially, but on the flip side I make a huge effort not to bother the people I live with. I keep my things fairly clean and I make an effort to keep my room organized and not looking like a disaster zone (though that can be difficult at times let me tell you.) I'm conscientious about cleaning my dishes and I take out the garbage and the recycling a fair deal. I pretty much believe that as long as you can't see it, why bother, which can bother people who are a bit more anal, but the method works well for me. From that view point I'd say the first three years (even including the disastrous second semester of junior year*) have been a success. This year though, I'm starting to wonder.
They leave their dishes in the sink for days on end. Even if I don't clean my dishes the night I use them, I always take care of them before the end of business the next day**. As I said, I take out the garbage in the kitchen and I do the recycling nine times out of ten. No, I don't vacuum the living room, but on the other hand I don't spend any time in the living. I make sure my room looks mostly presentable most of the time and I close the door when it's not. I don't clean the bathroom that often, but when it needs to be cleaned, I will (if only to avoid doing homework). I keep myself to myself and while that may mean I come off as a bit of hermit, well...I am. Does this make me a bad roommate? Does wishing my fellow flatmates take care of their dishes in a timely manner make me a bad flatmate? Does not putting away their dishes for them when I empty the dishwasher (which I run nine times out of ten) make me a bad roommate? I don't know to be honest. But it's really starting to bug me.
Beyond that, things are going as they always do. I registered for classes yesterday and I got all of the classes I wanted/needed for next semester. I find out on Monday what my LSAT score is and if it's really good, I'll tell you lot. If it's not, you'll find out whenever I decide to next update.

*Disastrous when it came to the people I was living with. Overall the semester wasn't that bad at all.
**11pm for those of you wondering. Yes, I am an old woman.

It's Been A Long Time Hasn't It

2010-10-20T22:31:00.002-04:00

I've been blogging for nine years across four different platforms (though two of those overlap starting seven/eight years ago). The first two years I updated fairly consistently and then lagged around the time I switched from private to public school. I started up again once I had settled in to my groove again and for the next five years I blogged fairly consistently. In an odd way my blogging patterns mimic my mood. The more I update the better I'm feeling and the less I blog the more depressed (or overwhelmed) I am. I started blogging less and less after the ex* broke up with me and never really got my momentum back. There was a brief period where I was updating more, when I first got to London, but then the roommates from hell came to life thus ending what little momentum I had. I never got that back. Now I'm dealing with more work than I've ever dealt with before (in my entire life) and am just feeling incredibly overwhelmed. One of the books I'm reading has chapters than can reach 100 pages. I have a 200 page book to read by Monday. Then of course there are the Ancient Greeks who've never heard of brevity. And of course the only way I know how to handle all of this is by watching more TV than I can afford and cramming in as much reading as I can. I'm just glad that I've mostly curbed by other "Good God I don't know what I'm doing anymore" tendencies for the most part. Anyway.
I haven't given up on blogging. I get ideas about things that I want to write about, but by the time I get to my computer I've forgotten the idea or have lost enthusiasm for writing about it. I don't really like doing the whole bullet point thing, but given how much has been missed, it seems like the only choice. Writing out complete paragraphs covering the last two weeks seems far too time consuming and to be perfectly honest not that much happened and what did happened wasn't memorable to stick in my poor over taxed brain. So I'm left with doing bullet points and feeling like I've cheated a non-existent audience out of a proper update. However I don't really see things changing. I haven't given up on blogging, at least not yet, but I'm not going to apologize for not updating often anymore. Eventually I will give up, but for now, whoever reads this just be pleased that I haven't. I figure I've been writing in this thing for seven years, might as well make it to ten right? By then I'll be most of the way through law school and if I'm still doing this then...well then I don't know. I'll be even more insane than I am now? Anyway.

Glee. That's all
The LSAT went surprisingly well. In two weeks I will find out if those good feelings translate into a good score. I hope to god they do or I'll be going to Tulsa University.
I saw The Social Network. I don't care if its accurate, all I know is that you should see it and all your friends should see it. It's just that awesome.
Oh God won't the reading ever stop? Why???
Wegmann's is a god among grocery stores. I still wish we had a Trader Joe's though. A girl can dream right?
I did my first study abroad panel and the best memory I could come up with on the spot was seeing The 39 Steps. Next time it will be the Comedy Store and seeing Phill Jupitus in the flesh.
At that same panel I described my living experience as "a unique British experience." Hopefully the audience didn't get the wrong idea.
Terry Pratchett and Psych are extremely addicting. Avoid when you have many assignments due.
Mark Ronson's new album is incredibly ace. I actually kind of wrote a review of it.
Registration starts next week and I have one class left to decide on. Digital Storytelling or Art History II? That is the question that will be answered next week.

So that's all for now. Enjoy the length and I will update when I feel guilty again.

*Yes, I've gone back to calling him the ex. I blame his current happiness. I'm a very bitter person and hate it when he's happy. I'm only happy when he's miserable. This is why I'm going to become a cat lady in my later life.

A New Beatles/Kinks Theory

2010-10-04T16:26:00.003-04:00

I've become kind of sort of obsessed with the AV Club over the past six months or so. And when I say kind of sort of obsessed what I mean is that I use as way to put off doing the shit ton of reading I need to do. One of the features of the AV Club is a section called "Coming Distractions" which is a bunch of trailers for TV shows and upcoming films. I only ever watch the trailers for films which is why I know the Smurfs movie is real and not just a gigantic ploy by the internet to make me sad. Today, while I was suppose to be working the media lab, I watched the trailer for a movie about John Lennon (before the Beatles) called Nowhere Boy. While I have many nitpicky problems with the trailer (which I will get into in the footnotes*) after not noticing anything about Cynthia Lennon, John's put upon first wife, and mentions of Hamburg, I went to the film's page and discovered that there was no entry for Cynthia. This irks me to a considerable degree and is probably the biggest problem I could have with the film. It also made me think about why the Beatles are so damn popular** while the Kinks are left to rot in obscurity (in the US.)*** And, after putting a selection of each band's music on shuffle I came up with a hypothesis (which is heavily influenced by the works of others, but whom I can't credit because I can't really point to who exactly was the influence. This however is probably not wholly original.) The songs the Beatles produced were a) highly generalizable (anyone in the Western world can relate to these songs) and fairly sexualized (which is always appealing no matter where you live.) The Kinks on the other hand are culture specific (most of their songs are only relatable if you are of working/middle class background [or have an affinity for that class] and have lived in England) and largely asexual (with a few minor exceptions including "Lola" for obvious reasons.) Add that to the mythos that surrounds the Beatles and the outgoingness of the lead singer/songwriters of the Beatles (especially compared to Ray Davies) and you have a pretty good explanation for why the Beatles will still be mostly popular fifty years from now and why only anglophiles will even know of the Kinks fifty years from now.****
In another piece of news I didn't mention yesterday, I saw a live performance of the famous Beethoven's famous ninth symphony. It was sufficiently awesome.
And now, back to not updating. I've got a book of Thucydides to read.

*The actor portraying John Lennon is way too good looking to be John Lennon. The accents aren't accurate (and I'm an American who shouldn't be able to tell that). The actor portraying Paul McCartney doesn't have enough fat on his face and his face is the wrong shape. Also his accent is an incredibly bland version of the Liverpudlian accent (which makes sense since he's from London, but still.) However it seems to have been filmed on location which makes me happy. Also, welcome back to footnotes!
**Not that I begrudge them their popularity (too much.) I'm a huge fan of the Beatles, I just think the Kinks need to be properly acknowledged by the world at large.
***The Kinks are only slightly less obscure in the UK where they are at least kind of acknowledged for their importance in British rock. The Who seem to get more credit for creating a distinctly British rock which is bullshit, but I won't go there.
****This is an exaggeration. But it's my blog so suck it.

Lyrics to Fill the Gap

2010-10-03T00:04:00.003-04:00

Okay, so it's been a long time since I've updated. I'm not going to even pretend to catch up with what's been going on because that would be insane. For the most part I've been swamped with reading and other things, so this blog has dropped to fiftieth in my list of priorities (right after shaving and keeping my room tidy). However, thanks to repeated watchings of Glee I've found a new anthem for when I have to deal with my ex. It's not in any way accurate, but it makes me feel shiny so I don't give a damn. I will continue to not update, though I will try to inform this blog as to how my LSAT went (six days >_<) and other things that might come up. Just imagine me being a hermit reading and watching Law and Order: SVU. That really is my life at the moment. So here are the lyrics to tide you over.

I wake up every evening
With a big smile on my face
And it never feels out of place
And you're still probably working
At a nine to five pace
I wonder how bad that tastes

When you see my face
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you walk my way
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell

Now where's your picket fence love
And where's that shiny car
And did it ever get you far
You never seemed so tense love
I've never seen you fall so hard
Do you know where you are

And truth be told I miss you
And truth be told I'm lying

When you see my face
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you walk my way
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
If you find a man that's worth a damn and treats you well
Then he's a fool you're just as well
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell

Tomorrow you'll be thinking to yourself
Where'd it all go wrong?
But the list goes on and on

And truth be told I miss you
And truth be told I'm lying

When you see my face
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you walk my way
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you find a man that's worth a damn and treats you well
Then he's a fool, you're just as well
Hope it gives you hell

Now you'll never see
What you've done to me
You can take back your memories
They're no good to me
And here's all your lies
You can't look me in the eyes
With the sad, sad look
That you wear so well

When you see my face
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you walk my way
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you find a man that's worth a damn and treats you well
Then he's a fool you're just as well
Hope it gives you hell

When you see my face
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you walk my way
Hope it gives you hell
Hope it gives you hell
When you hear this song and you sing along but you never tell
Then you're the fool, I'm just as well
Hope it gives you hell

When you hear this song
I hope that it will give you hell

You can sing along
I hope that it puts you through hell

This is My Life at the Moment

2010-09-13T21:10:00.004-04:00

There's a blog I follow, a fellow student, though she's in law school and lives in Singapore. She almost never updates I've always wondered what the point of having a blog if you never update. Now I understand. School has literally swamped me in reading. I had my first paper due today, but mostly I've been reading. And cursing my computer for being pooey. But mostly I've been reading and procrastinating on reading. Also cooking, but we'll get to that.
I always thought it would be fun to be a history major. I love history (a well documented fact) and so assumed that as with music, history would be easy. I was wrong. Once you hit a certain level (300) there's more reading than you shack a stick at and most of it is due all on the same day. I'm going to end up reading six books for British history, three books (plus a shit ton of articles) for French history, and about four books for ancient Greek history (also plus a shit ton of articles). That's in addition to papers for each class, eating, sleeping, and geology reading and labs. I'm only taking 15 credits, but it feels like 18. God only knows what 18 credits would feel like. I've never worked this hard in my life. Sure I've had to wait 22 years to get to this point, but a fact remains a fact. However I will get through this and come out the other side sane. I've been through worse right?
Now cooking. Having a real kitchen and being a grown up and all I decided this would be the year I would finally cook for myself. I have three cookbooks and CD of receipes that aren't in cook books. I've made mac and cheese, pork, and chicken risotto. Tonight I made pancetta and pasta. And set of the smoke detector in my building. After today (presentation, paper, class, radio station training, grocery shopping) the last thing I needed was being singled out for cooking. The dish, however, turned out beautifully, though I do miss high quality ingredients. No metallicy after taste with high quality ingredients. Still I'm very pleased with myself that I can cook this well and haven't actually burned down any houses (or apartment buildings.)
There's more reading in my future. A hell of a lot more reading. Which means infrequent updating. I will leave you with this last tidbit though, something to ponder while I'm away: The ex has a new beau and I made it patently clear that while I can be civil with him, I don't have to be nice. Also, rum makes awkward social situations slightly better.

Things I Did This Week

2010-09-02T21:17:00.004-04:00

Here is not at all comprehensive list of things I have done thus far this week. Enjoy.

Went home and wrote most of a personal statement with my sister's tutor. Enjoyed not having to cook for myself.
Cut the side of my feet by walking 48,000 inches.* This is quite painful and will be the reason for another item on this list.
Filled out law school applications. I also passed out letter of recommendation forms and transcript request forms to the correct people.
Spelled Dr. Bartam's name incorrectly. There two A's.
Cooked pork.
Was highly amused by my fellow radio DJs.
Learned how to "read" a topographic map. Kind of. Not really.
Filled out more law school applications.
Bought a dry erase board calendar and plotted out everything I have to read over the next month. It's quite a lot.
Put up all of my tickets. They take up quite a lot of wall space.
Avoided doing homework. Which is what I'm doing right now.
Gave myself massive blisters on the bottom of my feet by walking on extremely hot pavement barefoot. This is seemed like a good idea before the massive blisters appeared.
Went to the clinic and dumbfounded both the nurse and the doctor.

I'm going to study geology now. Tomorrow is the first sci-fi club meeting where I will get to give Ana a huge hug and moan a bit more about how much my feet hurt. There's a lesson to be learned in this small children: Do not walk barefoot on pavement when it's 96 degrees outside. Blisters will happen.

*48,000 inches = 4,000 feet = 0.768 miles = walking the length of my campus

Sheep

2010-08-26T20:50:00.002-04:00

I'm currently trying to minimize the amount of battery I use because I don't want to move back to my desk. Yes, I am that lazy.
In other news it's almost the end of my first week and, as always, my first week has been insane. Picking up disability letters, trying to decide whether to take 18 credits or drop a class, passing out disability letters, talking to various offices, filling out paper work, and finding out that my old job as band aid was back on the market and I was the number one candidate for it. Per usual, this has left me feeling like a chicken with no head. And tomorrow is not going to be any better. I have more letter to pass out, pick up one last book, work the media lab (because that job never went away), and meet up with Mom so she can give me a rug and various kitchen utensils. This weekend I will be working with a tutor (my sister's tutor to be exact) on my personal statement. The only upside to all of this is that next week won't be insane and this weekend I get to consult with my Mom about cooking. That's the one nice thing about living in the apartments is that I can really cook for myself, which is much better than frozen diet meals.
So let's talk classes. I started out with Ancient Greek history, French history, anthropology, and geology. I will end the week with Ancient Greek history, French history, British history, and geology. Why the change? A) I don't tolerate egotists very well and b) as much as I don't love the working class people of Britain, I do love Britain and I would really like to know what happened after William the Orange landed with Mary. So instead of taking the relatively easy A (anthro) I went with the 15-20 page paper class (British history.) Thankfully my other two classes aren't requiring papers that long and I already have a topic in mind for said paper (the Kinks and depictions of the working class in the late 1960's.) My other non-science classes are equally interesting. Dr. O'Brien (Greek history) has a quirky sense of humor but is really enthusiastic about the topic so the fact that he went on a minor tangent about name origins, it works well. Dr. Harris, who I had for Western Civ. II, is his same dorky, enthusiastic self so I'm not worried about French history. I also have a friend in French history and that always helps. Actually, I have friends in each of my history classes, which is a plus since I feel really strange being in all of these upper level history class (300, 331, and 354, just for reference) and not being a history major. I keep having to remind myself that I do in fact belong in these classes and am capable of doing well in them. As I told a friend, if the school had history minors available to me, I would be one.
Of course what I'm not mentioning are my music classes. I'm only taking two this semester, chorus and band, and...nothing has changed. Prof. Tavenier has lost a lot of weight (kind of scary amount actually) and Dr. Bartrum hasn't changed an iota (except for losing a non-scary amount of weight.) The one change I dislike the most though is I had to audition for my position as first of the third clarinets. I dislike this greatly because I hate auditioning, especially for things where I already know the outcome. However, as I mentioned, I got my band aid job back, which is nice in it's own annoying way. I was kind of hoping to not have to deal with that particular stress this semester, but I'm good at setting up chairs, what can I say? While some things change a whole hell of a lot, some things never change.
Other updates:

I had a civil conversation with Hunter without giving death glare the whole time. Trust me, this is an improvement.
I will most likely be having my radio shows on Thursday nights because that is the most convenient time for me. And as much as I could plan my life around what's on TV, some things are more important.
Yogurt and chocolate chips is the best dessert that won't make me feel guilty about having dessert. Actual best desserts include pie, cake, and ice cream.

That's it my friends. There's a slim hope that I will have most of a first draft of my personal statement done by the time I get back to school from sojourn home. And now that I'm down to 15% battery power remaining, I think I'll call it a night. Don't panic.

Have a Great Senior Year

2010-08-19T18:23:00.002-04:00

Alright, so it's been a while. Longer than a week in fact. But I'll have you know that I was on vacation last week and therefore I didn't have time to update. This was largely because it was the best beach vacation I've ever been on and therefore was spending my time having a great time. So yeah, that's my excuse for not updating for two week. But I'm updating now and that's what's important.
It's my senior year. Of college. Unsurprisingly I'm freaking the frak out. And then I miss the reason I was suppose to move back early and then I see Hunter. So right now I want a TARDIS so I can go back home and be there for a little while longer. I'm very ambivalent about this whole situation and I'm tired from moving today. So as much as I would like to write more about this situation, I'm just going to say this: I wish I didn't have to be a responsible adult anymore. And I would like to stay in my room and watch TV forever.
I will try and have a more coherent entry after my first week of classes. If not then...well yeah. Stuff.

Something Over Nothing/LSAT Is Dead Long Live LSAT

2010-08-05T10:11:00.004-04:00

August already? Really? Good lord...
In other news I've gotten my third comment on an entry I wrote 3 years ago. First of all, the people who've commented on this entry (and yes I deleted one of the comments because it was just beyond dumb) obviously have only ever read that one entry and so don't realize that I've moved beyond high school. Second of all, it was 3 years ago. Who gives a fuck what I wrote three years ago when I was in a really bad mood. Which leads to my third point: I was in a horrible mood when I wrote that entry. I had actually written an entry two days previously apologizing for any behaviour that offended. If these people had actually read more than one entry of my blog, they'd probably realize that, that really old entry is not typical. I've gained control of my faculties and no longer write that kind of thing in this or any other blog. So now that I've gotten that off my chest, shall we move on? Yes, let us move on.
My LSAT class is over, but the agony and stress of applying to law school and taking the real LSAT have not gone away. I'm in my last week at WPFW and then the fam and I are off to the beach for what will hopefully be a fun vacation. My dad's older brother, wife, daughter and possibly her boyfriend will be joining us this year which means that the normal crazy that occurs when will be less. It won't go away, but it won't be prominent. And I've got LSAT studying to do, so there's always that excuse. After the beach I have three days at home which will involve all of the following things: packing, getting my hair dyed, packing, getting my eyes checked, my last clarinet lesson, packing, packing, and more packing. Then, after those three days, I'll be going back to school. It's kind of freaky to think about, especially given how close I am to graduating, but I'm more focused on the whole LSAT/law school thing, so the fact that I'm a senior is less in focus. I can focus on being a senior once my life after UMW is figured out.
One last thing. I have a new ultra shiny green computer. My Mom has inherited my old computer and is working on making it not suck to which I say, bully for you crazy lady. I'm happy with my new lovely computer and hopefully it will last a little bit longer than my last one. Until next time, don't panic.

It's the Little Things

2010-07-21T12:50:00.002-04:00

It's been ten days. I guess an update is in order.
After some minor/major stresses over the past ten days, I'm reaching a calm place within myself which is a welcome change from being stressed all the time (damn you LSAT!). That doesn't mean the stress has exited entirely (damn you LSAT!), but at least some of the more minor stresses have been taken care of. Which leads me to my small list of nice things that have happened to me over the past 24 hours that have helped me to reach this calm space.

Getting through an entire logic game without going "how the frak do the expect me to answer this?" Granted that was followed by a game that I couldn't figure out to save my life, but at least I got one without any problems. That's a huge improvement for me.
Getting complemented on my new haircut by two different guys (one possibly gay, one old as the hills).

Yes, it's a very short list, but at least it's something.
Otherwise my life has been pretty much the same. LSAT, trying to get some clarinet practice in, LSAT, volunteering at WPFW, and LSAT. One other highlight from the past 48 hours is that I will get to move in early at school, thus completing my four year streak of getting to move in early. Which is always nice. And now that I've completely lost the thread of this entry I'll end it here. Until next time.

I Never Wanted to be a Lawyer

2010-07-10T14:30:00.004-04:00

Now that it's officially been a "long time" since I last updated (which I warned all of you would happen) I suppose I should give some kind of update. I'm continuing to update my list of unspoken commuter rules (which includes walking up and down the correct side of the escalator and generally not being an idiot) and worrying constantly that I'm not going to get into law school and will be forced to become a hobo (or something along those lines). Mostly I'm worried about my personal statement because what do I say? I'm a music major who's decided to become a lawyer because...because? Yeah, that's really part of the problem. I have no idea what I want to do as a lawyer. I know I want to work in intellectual property and that I want to deal with entertainment (which means trademark and copyright, not patents really). I also I know I'm a music major which makes the whole process of writing this personal statement more complicated because I somehow have to explain how my major relates to being a lawyer. So, I want to be a lawyer because...and I'm a music major and that will help me be a lawyer because...
And then there's the gunner in my prep class. Who's constantly worried which makes me more worried because how am I (the music major) suppose to remain calm when the gunner (a pre-law student) isn't?
Mostly though I'm just trying to fit everything into 24 hours. Homework, class, WPFW, sleeping, eating, and practicing. It might not seem like a lot, but it is really. Especially the sleeping part. That takes up many, many hours. In any event I probably won't update again for awhile. You know how it is.

Whatever Let's You Sleep

2010-07-01T22:15:00.002-04:00

There's is a thing I have learned about my mother, a thing that drives me insane, that makes me hate myself and makes me hate her even more. When she's gotten on her high horse, when she is just absolutely certain that she's right and everyone else is wrong, it's best not to argue or show any kind of emotion that might make her think you're arguing with her. It's pointless because the minute you try to disprove her, to point out the blindingly obvious flaws in her argument, she starts yelling even louder than before (and this is a woman who's inside voice is the same as most people's outside voice) and it will just make what is already a painful experience that much worse. Sure, I lie awake in bed not able to get to sleep because I want so badly to argue my point, or at least get the opportunity to argue my point. And yes, this aggravating habit makes me want to run away and never come back and never talk to her ever again. But this is how she has been my entire life. She won't change and I argued most of my childhood and it got me absolutely nowhere. I just have to get this final thing off my chest though: There is a difference between turning on a personal computer without any kind of permission and turning on a computer widely available to the entire family having been given blanket permission to use it. It's a huge difference and cannot be ignored because of the location of said personal computer. So fuck you bitch, it's my goddamn computer and I expect to be treated with respect. So leave my fucking computer alone and don't fucking turn it on without my goddamn permission. Just fucking call me and I'll say yes.
This, along with a number of other things, is why I want to go to law school out of state, even if that means living the rest of my life in debt. I can't live here for another three fucking years.

Too Busy, Can't Write

2010-06-23T14:43:00.002-04:00

Told you I wouldn't be updating much. I've uber busy/dealing with the fact that my computer is as close to being useless as a computer can be. Honestly, I'm just writing this to prove that a) I'm alive and b) I haven't forgotten about my blog(s). Expect more silence over the coming weeks (at least until my LSAT class is over) unless something major happens. Like a meteorite crash or the US making it through the first round of the World Cup. Oh wait, one of those things actually happened. Anyway, just expect sporadic updates until August. And then expect sporadic updates after August because I'll still be studying for the LSAT and I'll be getting ready for my last year of college. :freaks out completely: And now back to writing questions for Gloria.

Busy Bee

2010-06-14T20:28:00.003-04:00

I think my computer's dying. I've had it for many, many years (nearly as long as this blog actually) but I'm still attached this old thing and would be very sad if it is in fact dying. Either that or Symantec has f-ed it up entirely and therefore it's not dying, it's just very, very sick, which is still annoying. As I repeatedly told my Mom has she tried to make everything all better, all I want is for my computer to work and for it not to die. I have three babies (computer, clarinet, Zune) and I'm only happy when they all work and the fact that one of them isn't working properly makes me sad. Like right now, which is why I just want my computer to be better.
In other news I've decided to catch up on the fifth season of Lost. I watched the series finale and since Hulu is streaming the first five seasons until the end of the year (and I have nothing going on on Mondays and Tuesdays during the day) I figured, why not watch the fifth season? If I'm really bored I'll watch the whole thing from the beginning, but with my LSAT class giving me homework and a clarinet to practice I don't know if I'll have time to watch that much TV. Though we are talking about me, so you never know, I just might do it. We shall see.
So that's it. LSAT prep class on Tuesdays and Saturdays, clarinet lessons on Mondays, and work the rest of the non-Sundays (aka Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.) It's good, I like keeping busy, at least when I'm at home. It keeps me away from the things that are wrong and can't be fixed in this house. So I'll keep busy, which probably means I won't be updating as much. But, as always, we shall see.

Back At Home

2010-06-06T17:18:00.002-04:00

It's amazing how quickly you can slip back into a life. I've been home nearly a week and it feels like I never left. Granted the pile of winter clothing on my floor would beg to differ on that point, but the ease of which I've slipped back into the daily motions of my life here at home just seems ridiculous. I'm waiting to hear from Gloria and save for taking clarinet lessons and a LSAT prep course, this summer will be exactly like last summer. Despite spending five and a half months in a foreign country, it feels like nothing has changed. Except for the law school thing. Other than that, nothing's changed.
Obviously though, that's not true. Lots of things have changed, including my life plan and taste in music (kind of.) Everyone I know agrees that I'm more mature and more self reliant than I was before I left for London, though as with anything having to do with my own maturity I don't really believe that. I'm definitely more world weary and more prepared for life outside the comfortable life I lead with the help of my parents. I also know how to deal with airport security which is nothing to sniff at in my opinion.
And what about London? It wasn't what I expected. I think that largely had to do with the people I was roomed with for the first half of the semester and less to do with the actual city. I've often ruminated on this point and I honestly think that if I'd either been enrolled in a different program or had been housed differently to begin with, the way I experienced London would have been completely different. Despite what the British may want people to think the class system is alive and well and if you live in London that system gets shoved down your throat in a rather uncomfortable way every day, especially outside of central London. That isn't to say happiness can't be found in the city, you just have to be in the right place and around the right people (which entirely depends on your economic status or the what socioeconomic status you're use to mingling with.) A lot of what I did in London was amazing and hopefully that's what I'll remember in ten years time and for the rest of my life.
I'm glad to be home though. I like the life I have here and certainly appreciate it more than I use to (for the most part.) And maybe now that I'm home I'll start updating a bit more often. Maybe.

This Week

2010-05-27T15:13:00.002-04:00

Right, it's been a week and I have five days left in London. It's a bit surreal to be honest, despite the inevitable mailing that will occur tomorrow (all my sweatshirts, all of the presents for those who don't live with me, my posters, the rest of the large-ish teddy bears) and the fact that I've packed up all my mugs and everything else in my room is, bit by bit, getting put away either in my duffel bag or my carry on. Still, I haven't been resting on my laurels or moping in my room about my departure on Tuesday. No, I've been out and about getting in my last trips both in the southern part of England and in London. There will be more trips in London tomorrow, but for now I'm going to talk about a couple of stand out moments from the last seven days.
So I'm going to admit it: I bailed on Miike Snow. I printed out the ticket but when the time came to leave for the gig, I decided that I just didn't want to spend 3 hours rubbing shoulders (literally) with a bunch of hipsters. I like Miike Snow's music, but the majority of the people who were going to be at that concert are exactly the kind of people who have made my London experience less than brilliant. So I stayed home and relaxed, which given the week I've had was probably a good idea.
The next night however I didn't bail on seeing the Hertfordshire Choir perform Mozart's Requiem. It was an amazing performance and so Mozartian that at points I just had to smile and go "Aaah Mozart. So distinctive, so pattern oriented." I had a nice dinner and in general a nice night out. However to all future composers: Don't try and mix modern music with scientific theories and moral concepts. Especially where lyrics are involved. It doesn't work.
Monday I mailed things. I had grander plans, but after I found out that I would be spending hard cash to mail everything, grander plans went out the window.
Tuesday I went to Brighton and while the weather was nice and I got some good pictures, it was a bit disappointing to be honest. I went to the Pier, but none of the rides were opened and for me, that was the whole point. Sure the Royal Pavilion was beautiful and opulent and well worth the time, but it's not why I went to Brighton. I went to Brighton to have fun on the pier. Still, at least I can say I've been there (like I can say I've been to Leeds, Cardiff, Liverpool, Glasgow, Bath, Winchester, Salisbury, York, Canterbury, Greenwich, Penzance, Windsor, Stonehenge, and Dover.)
Speaking of Dover, that's where I went today. It was over cast the entire time, I couldn't find the restaurant my Mom found for me (I walked past where it was multiple times though without knowing it, which annoys me even more), and it took 35 minutes to get from the White Cliffs (National Trust shop site) to the Dover Priory train station (which means it probably took about 30 minutes to get from the town centre to the cliffs). Once I was at the White Cliffs, the views were amazing, but again, it was over cast and chilly. Not a great day for viewing needless to say. However the day was redeemed because I got a crepe and the book my grandmother wanted me to get for her at St. Pancras. However the some of my flatmates are being obnoxious, but I only have a few more days of said obnoxiousness.
I still have to make up my mind about what I'm doing tomorrow, but I do know that the morning will be devoted to spending a great hairy wad of money to send off the last of my sending off things. It annoys me, but the post office doesn't take credit cards (well American credit cards) so I have no choice. I might be getting my hair done or I might be shopping and going to the Eye. All I know is that I'm having dinner with Amanda and a friend of her's, so part of my evening is taking care of. I also know that on Saturday I'm going to a cinema theater to watch Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb because I haven't seen it all the way through and it seems like a good movie to see on the big screen. In the next entry I will talk about my undying love for Glee and the Comedy Store. But that's next time. Until then, don't panic.

Nice Things

2010-05-20T15:09:00.003-04:00

I had something nice happen to me today. This is not to say that nice things don't happen to me, it's just to say that one of those nice things happened today. I ran into one of my former music radio classmates Jade. It's been ages since I'd seen her and while we only had the briefest of conversations* she said it was really nice to have met me and gave me a hug. I haven't gotten many hugs while I've been here but one of the things I missed the most during the low point that was the majority of February and March were hugs. I have a friend** at UMW who is a big hugger and while I missed getting hugs from my family I missed getting random hugs from Joe. So, in short, getting a hug from one of the only British people I'll remember fondly was really nice.
So while I've been in London, and in general really, I've been remiss on updating you guys on the music world. This is because I've stopped checking NME.com like a crazy person and rely entirely on the AV Club. I don't know if this is for the best, but it is the way it is. However I read a news item on the AV Club that I had to immediately report which reminded me that I have another news item from a couple of weeks ago that also needs to be written up here. The first item is about George Harrison and a docu about him being directed by Martin Scorsese. I have to admit that after reading two biographies on the Beatles George has become my favourite by a long shot. This is because I will always prefer the underdog and George, at least in the Beatles, was the underdog (and no, Ringo doesn't count, he's just sad.) So the fact that there's going to be a documentary on him that could possible feature demo-ed songs from when he was in the Beatles makes me start salivating. In fact my reaction was "I want now." Sadly, we have to wait until 2011. The other news items pertains to Brandon Flowers forthcoming solo album (aka the end of the Killers). I loved the Killers first album. I liked one of the tracks from their 3rd album. I hated their second album. However I really like Jenny Lewis so the idea of Brandon Flowers dueting with Jenny Lewis makes me slightly interested in hearing this solo album. As the AV Club would say, I'm cautiously optimistic.
So that's it. I've got 11 days left and two music performances in a row. I also have rugby shirts to buy for myself and my Dad. Until then, don't panic.

*In short: "Hey! When are you leaving?" "Hey, in a week and a half" "Oh, well I probably won't see you again, but it was really nice meeting you" "Yeah, you too" "Bye" "Bye"
**Loghman, who I've friended on Facebook, had a really strange definition for friend that I've since adopted. So technically Joe isn't a friend, he's an acquaintance. But unlike Loghman, I make exceptions to this strange definition.

Tanning in the English Rain

2010-05-19T15:12:00.003-04:00

I got a sunburn. I'm known for being suspiciously pale and whenever photos are taken of me next to my Mom's younger sister's kids (otherwise known as my aunt's kids) I look like a freakin' albino (save for the dark hair.) So getting a sunburn isn't exactly something I like getting. However, because this is just how my brain works, I immediately thought of the couplet in "I Am the Walrus" dealing with English rain:

Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain

Of course now said sunburn is itching like a mofo, so the damn thing isn't nearly amusing as it was before it started itching. But how did I get a sunburn you might ask? From riding in an open top double decker bus, that's how. So let's talk Penzance.
After the stress of my final week of classes I decided that going to Dublin would have been too much. After canceling all of my tickets and booking a room in a lovely guest house, it was decided that I would be going to Penzance, best known for being really near Lands End and its pirates. It's also very close to the shore and I thought, what better way to de-stress from a stressful week than by spending some time by the seaside? Well my supposition proved correct and Penzance was just what I needed. While I didn't spend that much time in the actual town, the entire trip was not only incredibly restful but also incredibly beautiful. I visited my final Tate at St. Ives (excellent, though not as fun as Liverpool) and then took a very bumpy and amusing ride to Lands End. The roads in the part of Cornwall I was visiting narrow and aren't really meant for more than one car. Granted there aren't a great many people driving around the area, so the narrow roads aren't that much of a problem. Unless you're a great big bus and have several small cars heading your way. Then you get to do a little dance, which is highly amusing to watch from the top of said great big bus. Sure the wind whipped my eyes quite a bit and I somehow ended up with a sunburn, but I had a great time in Penzance and kind of wish I could have stayed a bit longer.
I've got 12 days left. It's a bit daunting and a bit surreal at the same time. I keep telling people that it doesn't seem that long ago I was landing in London and freezing to death in Paddington waiting to move into my home away from home. I'm looking forward to going home though (not excited about packing, never excited about packing) and seeing everyone after such a long time. Especially my woofies. Oh there were so many cute dogs in Penzance. So until next time, don't panic.

Waterloo Sunset At Last

2010-05-15T15:42:00.004-04:00

I'm done. And no not in the "I can't put up with this anymore" way. I've felt that way for awhile now actually. No, I mean I'm officially and finally done with all of my classes. The last two days were incredibly stressful (and not just because I had to write two papers that were due on the same day). The past week in fact has been incredibly stressful because of the three papers I had to write. And then there was birthday. So let's start there and move forward.

Birthday!
I haven't really done anything special for my birthday for the past couple of years because school lets out a week before my birthday and so all of the people I would invite to a birthday party are in other states. That and I'm not use to really having birthday parties for people outside my family. You could say I'm out of practice. But since I don't really have a lot of family over here I decided that I would take my only friend here out for pizza. Amanda and I shared a pepperoni pizza at the place my Mom and I found near Holborn and I had a nice glass of red wine with it. We talked about how weird it was to think that our time in London was almost over and wondering what the heck we are going to do with all the stuff we're not bringing home with us (Oxfam!). It was really nice all in all. Then I went home and opened some really lovely pressies. I got two QI DVDs from my Dad's parents, a CD of accordion music from my Mom's older sister, and a lot of other really nice things (books, more DVDs and a blouse to be specific.) I talked to my Mom and Dad on the phone and then I talked to my sister on her cellphone. It was, all in all, a much better birthday than I was expecting.

Papers
Then the paper writing started. Actually it was more like, I spent a day "researching" and then on Wednesday and Thursday I wrote papers. I had spent Monday morning finishing my marketing paper even though it wasn't due until Wednesday because I wanted as much time to focus on my other two papers as possible. I spent most of Wednesday writing my law paper and then most of Thursday writing my incredibly crappy and awful Art and Society paper. I really didn't like that paper. The law paper was better though largely because I felt more secure in what I was doing. The marketing paper was not brilliant, but passable and that's all I care about with that class. It was a huge relief to get them done though. I had spicy beef pho for dinner with a beer and strawberry with "fresh" basil sorbet for dessert which was even nicer than getting the papers done.

Friday
For my birthday my Mom's parents gave me a considerable amount of money. I felt very fortunate to have such nice grandparents and decided that on Friday I would spend it on a nice shirt/sweater combo at White Stuff, my new favourite place to buy clothing. So after a relaxing morning (sort of) I went to Spitalfields, had lunch at Crepe Affair (my favourite crepe place in the whole world outside of Paris) and went to White Stuff. I got a cute orange shirt and a striped blue/light green sweater to go with. I felt very pleased with purchases and with some time to spare I wandered around the stalls before finding a stall that sold really cute mens cardigans. I proceeded to purchase one even though it just about emptied me out. Then, in my big plan for the day, I went and saw a movie. The movie, highly recommended by Time Out, was La Danse and was about the Paris Opera Ballet. As I told my Mom it was more a visual stream of consciousness than a documentary with a story to tell (or at least a story in the traditional sense.) It was a beautiful and fascinating movie and I'm very pleased I didn't chicken out on seeing it.

Winchester, Salisbury, Waterloo
I wanted to go to Solsbury Hill. It turns out Solsbury Hill is nowhere near Salisbury is nowhere near Solsbury Hill, despite the fact that when spoken they basically sound the same. However I did see two more cathedrals (Winchester and Salisbury) and got spend some more quality time on trains looking out at the British country side. There's something inherently peaceful about the country side that I appreciate deeply. The cathedrals themselves reminded me of many of the other cathedrals I've seen, though Winchester was less impressive than Salisbury (and none of them compare to Canterbury.) The weather was off and on, though there was no real rain, which was good since I forgot my umbrella. After making my way back to Waterloo station I decided to take advantage of the nice weather in London and take pictures from Waterloo Bridge while listening to "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks. This has been a goal of mine basically since I got here so getting to do that, while dorky, was fulfilling. Then I went home in a tranquil state and watched the second to last episode (ever) of Ashes to Ashes on the BBC iPlayer. I'm going to miss that piece of software after I leave this country. It's so legal.

So that's it for me. I've got two more weeks in the UK and on my itinerary I've got Penzance (where hopefully there will be no pirates), Brighton, Dover, the Eye, the Imperial Museum, and some quality time in Hyde Park. It's not particularly ambitious but I do have to pack at some point. Also, next week I'm seeing Miike Snow and the LSO perform Mozart's Requiem. And hopefully getting a haircut at some point. Until next time, don't panic

I Don't Like This Paper

2010-05-13T10:36:00.003-04:00

I can't decide whether I work better in the library or in my room. I've written the majority of my papers this semester in my room, but I've also written a couple in the library and I can't figure out if I concentrate better in my room or in the library. Sure, there are technically less distraction in the library and so I probably finish the papers quicker in the library than in my room. However I feel more relaxed in my room which I think makes my writing more coherent and just better overall. Granted I also think that my attention span is better when I actually care even an iota about what I'm writing about. For instance, I don't really care about portraiture and yet here I am writing a paper about portraiture and how it reflect society. I'm almost certain that even with a lengthy introduction and conclusion I'm not going to reach the target number of words, even a modified version of the target number of words. But I just don't care anymore. I want these classes to be over and I want this experience to be over. I want to go home. But I can't go home until these papers are done and that means I have to write about something I could care less about. At least with the law paper I actually cared a little bit. With this paper I don't even give a damn. If it were up to me, I wouldn't write it at all. But I know I must and I've grown up enough to realize that avoiding isn't the best way to deal with things I don't like. So here I am, writing a paper I don't want to write in a country that I would like to leave as soon as possible. Well either leave the country or move to another part of the city, one that's less annoying and loud.
Really though, I just don't want to write this paper whatsoever.

I Completely Forgot You Where Here

2010-05-09T14:52:00.003-04:00

While in London I've done a good amount of solo dining. Taking into account that I don't eat out every night and that I've been to a number of the same restaurants more than once, I've been to a good number of restaurants in a variety of locals throughout the city. Solo dining however is not the easiest. Dining in London, in general, is not a quick affair due largely to the entire waiting service of the city being very well trained in the art of not looking at their costumers. With a larger group, or a small group with one particularly vocal member, is more likely to get attention than a small group with no vocal members. It's even worse for someone dining by themselves. However, despite the above description, I haven't had that bad a time in my dining experiences. I believe this is in part because I go to restaurants of a high-ish caliber and I tend to frequent restaurants that are short on space and therefore paying attention to me means getting a table free quickly for two people who will spend more than I ever could. For the most part I've enjoyed my dining experiences both in London and throughout the UK. Last night though I hit rock bottom at a restaurant recommended, oddly enough, by Zagat. I was effectively ignored for the entire time and my original waiter, who went off shift after placing my order, admitted that he had forgotten I was there. The risotto I had was undercooked and a bit bland to be honest. However the pinot grigio I had was lovely. Last night though, in my mind, was the bottom of the barrel in terms of London restaurant service. As I stated, I've mostly been pleased with the service I've received and the food I've eaten while in London. But for anyone who's has plans to eat in London, even if it's with other people, be aware of how the service works here. It's nothing like in the US and can take a while to get use to, but is ultimately worthwhile. London may not have the best food in the world, but it does pretty damn well and whole lot better than people give it credit. Granted, I'm not talking about English food. That's a whole other story.

Fuzzy Brain

2010-05-07T16:24:00.005-04:00

Edit: I didn't get the internship at Sirius XM. Still, at least I got to the interview part and the whole process was quick like ripping off a band-aid which is better than with NPR. And I still have WPFW to return to, so it's not like I'm at a loss for things to do. Better luck next time I say.

If you've been reading this blog for more than a year, you probably know the following facts about me:

I'm an anglophile
I've had a minor obsession with a number of male singers
QI is my number one lifeline

Another leading fact about me is that I don't really pay attention to politics. I'm aware of what's going on around the world because my parents wouldn't let me be that ignorant, but I don't read a newspaper every day, watch a news program (except during the summer when I can't help it), or listen to news radio. However, the British recently held an election, one that was really hard to ignore even for me. The result of the election was a hung parliament which means that there's still a chance that the Cyborgs* could come into power and do severe damage to a fragile country. As I mentioned at the beginning of this ramble, I don't really care about politics. It's depressing, even though it's getting slightly less so in the US, but not much. However, I really like the UK and I don't want to have to ban myself from it because of this election (which is what will happen if the Cyborgs get power). This was meant to be more coherent, but this is what happens when my brain stops focusing, which it hasn't been doing for awhile now.
In other news I'm in love with Glee and Kurt. He's so wonderful and the show is so ridiculous sometimes, it's like critically lauded crack. It fills the gap that Gossip Girl use to fill but since that show has sadly gone to seed and so I'm glad I have back up now. Again, this was meant to be longer and more coherent, but my brain seriously can't focus, though it doesn't have to do with Glee. That show just makes me giddy, not unfocused.
That's it really. I have PEO and Macbeth tomorrow and then it's the epic paper writing spree of 2010. Also my birthday on Monday which means I get to open all the packages that have been accumulating. So until next time, don't panic.

*The conservatives. Cameron doesn't look human to me, so I've labeled the whole party cyborgs. It's not mature, but they aren't my politicians.

Interview, Julian Barret, Brian May

2010-05-03T15:09:00.004-04:00

I just* finished my first real interview ever. It was for an internship with Sirius XM in their music programming department. In case you've ever wondered, the biggest surprise about me is not that I'm obsessed with Glee but that I like sci-fi (like Star Trek and Star Wars). :hits head against desk repeatedly: I need all of you to think nice things and keep your fingers crossed for the next two weeks because it would be super awesome if I got this internship. However don't feel the need to hold your breath as well, I don't want to be responsible for any deaths.
In other news my grandparents arrived with only minor** delays and because it just made sense I spent the weekend with them. As far as I can tell a good time was had by all, especially when my great-aunt Hina showed us every program she has recorded from Japanese television. Here are some more highlights in bullet point form (because we all know how much I love bullet points).

Julian Barret was spotted at the second to last performance of Spymonkey's Moby Dick gathering new ideas for the next series of The Mighty Boosh. My suggestion would be to rip off the whole thing and claim it as theirs. It could work.
Brian Fraking May. And a chorus of 1,000 people. But more importantly Brian Fraking May.
Sweet Charity is possibly the sweetest musical about a dance hall hostess ever. Despite the undercurrents of cynicism and prostitution it really is a sweet play. Too bad she doesn't get the guy because he's an idiot. Anyway.
London's perfect weather went away. I suspect it was upset with TfL as well and decided to spend the bank holiday in Europe.
It's exactly a week until I am no longer half of the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I will accept late presents. Or mailing tubes for posters. Either is fine.

Well that's it. This week is fairly boring. I have PEO on Saturday and I'm seeing the Scottish Play that same night. I've decided that I'm going out for dinner for my b-day, I just have to figure out which restaurant location I'm going to drag Amanda to. That's the problem with having one's birthday on a Monday and having three papers due two days later: You can't really big it up. So until next time, don't panic.***

*When I say "just" what I mean is about 15 minutes ago. I had to talk to my Dad first and it takes awhile to write these things, despite evidence to the contrary.
**If minor is a two hour delay from 11pm to 1am. Then they had minor delays.
***I should have mentioned HHGG. However I was trying desperately to avoid mentioning DW, so that whole section of my brain shut down. Oh well.

Trains and APD

2010-04-29T15:32:00.004-04:00

Transport for London (TfL) and I currently have a love/hate relationship. I love them when they make the trains run on time and everything is going smoothly (which is most of the time) and hate them when they close of my Underground access to central London (which occurs on a nearly weekly basis.) Sometimes the closures aren't so bad. For instance, they'll only close the Metropolitan around where I live but the Bakerloo line (which is just a 10 minute walk from me) will remain open the entire weekend. Other times the Metropolitan will be closed one day and the Bakerloo the other day. Or the Metropolitan is closed both days of the weekend, but the Bakerloo is open on Saturday so I can still get into the city, even if it's not from the most convenient location. And then you have weekends like the one I'm about to encounter where all the lines that can get me into the city are closed. Thankfully my grandparents are in town and staying at a flat in zone 1 and I'm staying over from Friday to Saturday, but Amanda and I have plans (and have had these plans since March) for Sunday afternoon in the city. The Bakerloo is shut down as is the Metropolitan. These kind of shut downs only seem to happen on bank holidays (and Easter oddly enough), so it's not as though it happens every weekend (then I would have serious issues), but it's highly annoying anyway. I don't think I would mind so much if didn't have plans on Sunday, but these closures effect more people than me. It effects everyone outside of zones 1 and 2 to be honest and the fact that TfL doesn't seem to have an issue with cutting people outside those zones off is a problem in and of itself. I know they need to get these tracks fixed and spiffed up for the Olympics, but it shouldn't be to the detriment of those people who live outside of central London. Especially people who live outside of central London who have plans to go into central London.
In a completely unrelated topic, many, many moons ago I mentioned that I have auditory processing disorder. While I have a really hard time explaining it to people not trained in special education, this past Tuesday the New York Times had an article on APD in the health section of its Science section. The article does an absolutely brilliant job of describing what APD is and how it effects both the scholastic and social aspects of their lives. As a person with this disorder I'm glad it's getting this attention because, despite what some people might think, it's not a well known learning disability and often gets short shrift in comparison to the bigger name disabilities like ADHD and dyslexia.