Ooh creepy

Fun little travel story for the season:
The world's creepiest places...
I particularly got a kick out of this one...Mary King's Close, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Now I have even more reason to go to the UK. Subterranean streets...with ghosts!
More info.

Packing avoidance, pt. 2

I suppose there are other things I should be doing right now, but I think I need a short break. I spent most of yesterday stuck inside, putting my stuff in boxes. On the plus side, I got a lot done, and most of my things are now packed up. In a little while, I'll be picking up the truck. I might just be able to get the majority of my things there today, and then this evening I should be able to start setting up shop. I'll be interested to see how freaked out the cat will be when I bring her there. They never seem to be big fans of moves.

Packing avoidance, pt. 1 of most likely many

This whole "packing things up" has become an interesting trip into the past. However, it's not one I necessarily care to take, so I'm using this as an avoidance technique. I think I reached my point of annoyance when I found the typewritten questions I brought into my second interview at my current job. I got this job well over four years ago...can you please tell me why I would still have this?

Anyway, yesterday, I had a thought. For some reason, I thought traveling to South or Central America might be a rather interesting excursion. First, I thought I might want to tour through some countries with a motorcycle. I see the fact that I have no clue how to ride a motorcycle as only a minor obstacle. Overall, though, this idea is basically unworkable.

However, I still want to go down there, and then I thought a volunteer vacation might be the ticket. I love this idea, as I can travel while doing something worthwhile. This idea made me quite intrigued, and I had a hard time sleeping last night because of that. I would most likely want to do one of these trips to Costa Rica, and I was searching the Web earlier today, I came across a trip there through Habitat for Humanity. If there's any charity I'd volunteer for, it would be this one, so I thought, "Perfect!"

However, and somewhat surprisingly, the price tag for such a volunteer trip was rather expensive: 1350, plus airfare. Granted, they take care of lodging and food, etc., but still, this might not be a trip I can do off the cuff, as I thought I might be able to. Oh well...I'll still keep this idea in mind for this summer, and it shouldn't stop me from looking for opportunities to volunteer locally. I'd like to say I'd do something like volunteering for completely selfless reasons, but I'd do it to gain a sense of perspective. With that renewed perspective, I can view my life differently. Basically, helping others might just help me a little too. Maybe it's not the right reason to do it, but so be it. If I got anything from that rather expensive high school education I received is that volunteering in some shape or form is an important aspect of being a good citizen, and honestly, I have some serious catch up work to do.


On another note, I have a new experiment in mind gamery: instead of changing the radio channel when you hear a song you don't like, see how long you can listen to it. I might have written somewhere that Escape (The Pina Colada Song) is my least favorite tune of all time, but I managed to not change the channel for the entire song. Amazing, I know! So, your turn...the next time you hear a song you absolutely despise, see how long you can fight the urge to change the channel. You might like the song, but more important, you might just learn something about yourself, too. OK, not really, but I felt like saying that could be a great "The Wonder Years" moment.

Old papers

* I highly recommend Michael Clayton Very impressive, and I'm sure it'll have a pretty good presence come Oscar time. Great script and well acted, and it was thoroughly satisfying.
* I went through some boxes that I got down from the attic to prepare for my move. I came across some old English class papers, circa 93-95. Wow. They were quite humbling, as most of them were complete shiite, and the professors kindly let me know. Oy! I had good papers too...I wonder where the hell those are? It also begs the question, "Why on earth would I ever need to keep these?"

Record labels

Do superstars still need record labels?
After the RIAA won a rather large judgment from a music sharer, I ranted that is was protecting an outmoded business model. This article here talks about the relevancy of the record industry as its known and how some big acts are steering away from them.

The trend had Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor exulting over being "free of any recording contract with any label" in a recent post on his Web site.

"I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different, and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate," he wrote.

Anxiety dreams

Apparently, I like to have something ontap in my brain to worry about. Last night, I had one of my more odder dreams, built around going to an interview (which I don't even have lined up). See, I don't even need a reason.

* I was wearing jeans and a green polo shirt, which is just wrong for an interview.
* I had no copies of my resume to hand out.
* I needed a haircut.
* My car was...elsewhere. I can't quite account for its disappearance.
* I got lost.
* I had no phone.
* I fell into a pool. I have no idea how or why a pool came into the equation.
* Once I got there, I realized I had interviewed there before, and the interviewer remembered me, muttering something under her breath to someone next to her while looking at me. At that point, I think I just left.

Apparently, even my subconscious thinks I'm thick-headed.

Just call me Krackle

A string of a recent IM conversation:

MG: crap. I just went from contentness to feeling like crap in about a minute!
MG: wow. that was fast
JA: lol
MG: anyway
10:10 PM
JA: you could write about taking the audience on a Jungian journey into the collective unconscious, using the shadow as a metaphor for the primal self that gets repressed by the modern persona and also by using an underground setting and labyrinth office design to represent both the depths of the psyche and the dungeon-like isolation of our increasingly mechanistic society which prevents people from finding satisfying work or meaningful connections with others.
MG: i was thinking about writing about making a movie about Snap, Krackle, and Pop
MG: but your idea works too
JA: almost the same
MG: once i figure out what all the big words are
JA: eh just popped into my head
MG: freud would say it popped into your ego
MG: orville reddenbacher would say all the kernels were popped
JA: its all about the popping isnt it?
MG: hence, your ego is made up of kernels
MG: yep!
JA: i know

The colors slip into the sky

I was walking back to my car from my usual Tuesday night coffeeshop visit, and I could feel the electricity in the air whenever a storm is brewing.
The clouds were thick overhead, and while it was already dark, they produced this eerie glow over the town, caused by all the light from Princeton being refracted off the clouds.
The last time I really bothered to notice it was several years ago, when I was in NYC with friends to usher in the New Year in Times Square. One evening after a museum tour, we made our way out to a snow-covered Central Park. There were families and folks gathering on a decent sled hill, and when we got to the clearing, I looked up and saw the most amazing sky. It was rather late, but unnaturally bright and the sky was a cool orange.
Anyway, I looked up tonight and really took the time to pay attention to the clouds and the effect of the "light" in the nighttime. It makes for an interesting contrast between the buildings and the sky, and they seemed to pop up from the background. I probably looked at them in greater detail than I have before, and somehow time seemed to slow down. For the first time in a while, I was rather relaxed.
What a nice feeling! I shall do it more often.

Sometimes I'm smart, and sometimes I am oh so clearly not

* Racing great John Henry, 32, euthanized at Ky. Horse Park
You know how you look at things quickly and totally get the wrong idea? (Flatter me and just say yes.) Took a second for me to realize they were talking about a horse named John Henry. In that brief second, I thought, "Well, crap, man! Since when do they euthanize people?! Horse racing is intense!"

* I was going to write this annotated guide for We Are the World, working from the basic premise that Kenny Rogers got shafted by not having his own line to sing. Here's Kenny, inventor of the roasted chicken (ok, not quite), singing the chorus with the Jackson brothers and...LaToya! Sheesh, Al Jarreau got his own line! They couldn't find one for the Gambler?!
But, of course, I was wrong. Kenny Rogers was one of the first few singers.

* I think The Big-Bang Theory is clever. Give it a watching.

Moving

After two months of hemming and hawing between getting a new roommate, becoming someone else's roommate, and moving into my place, I finally signed on the dotted line on Friday.

Yay! I found a place.

It is a 1bd/1ba apartment attached to a house about a 5-10 minute walk from downtown Princeton (score!). It's got hardwood floors, a smallish kitchen that is still more useful than the kitchen here, a remodeled bathroom, and two decently sized rooms, and it'll be my place as of Oct. 21, which allows me 10 days to move from here. Odd as it may be, it'll be my first place to myself.

I was talking with my brother last week, and he asked, "Aren't you starting to worry about finding a place yet?" Right then, when I was speaking with him, I wasn't worried, so I said, "Nah, I'll find something." Considering that I'm very suggestible, within three hours, I was having a mini freak out. It did not help matters much that as I was driving home from work, I realized that in less than a month, I'd be driving home to a different, as yet undetermined place.

So, at least that little riddle is solved, and I can move on to thinking about other things. I got a whole list!

Also, as I was talking with my parents last weekend, I was telling them, with some certainty no less, that I didn't want to live on my own and actually preferred to have roommates. Just goes to show that even when I say something with certainty, it's all relative.

I haven't ranted in a while

Record companies win music sharing trial

The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $222,000 in damages against her.

I don't really have all that much sympathy for the giant record companies. Basically, my feeling is that this is comeuppance or karma payback for all the artists they have exploited/financially bitch slapped over countless years.

While it's a victory for them, I see it as a hollow victory. To put it into college football parlance (hey, why not), it's like a Division 1-AA team scoring a touchdown against the third-string players during the fourth quarter when they are already down 50 points. The business model the record companies have followed since who knows when is obsolete, and rather than innovate and look forward, they have chosen the route of suing their potential customers. Wow... brilliant. Burning bridges, much?

As for me, I make it a point to purchase music from new artists, as they are most likely broke. It's a tiny percentage of acts that ever make huge money, and if they are lucky enough to have been signed by a label, they are in a huge amount of debt before the record even comes out. If they have a decent agent, they get a 20% royalty rate from each album sale. However, from that 20%, they have to pay back all the recording costs, video production, touring, etc. The cards are completely stacked against them.

Record companies protecting the rights of artists? Bullshit. That's just spin. These are corporations that are simply protecting an outmoded business model that has no future.

Goodbye bats and ghosts of cats

So, two years ago, I was able to withdraw from the bland rectangulardom that was my apartment complex in Plainsboro and move into a thoroughly "unique" space on the main street of Hopewell, right across the street from a cemetery that holds its own Signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The "kitchen" was merely a room that happened to contain a temperamental oven and a fridge, and after the concerted of four adults, also a washer and a dryer. It was purely a utilitarian room.
The "dining room" turned out to be a coffee table in the room we used as a living room. The apartment is rather large, but the only usable space to put a dining table was in the main hall, a location not entirely convenient.
The bedrooms were sizable, and the bathroom ok (except the floor).
It was the attic that sold my roommate and I. Almost as big as the second floor, it was a perfect setting for parties, of which we had several. Also, the place allowed us the privacy to have such parties, as we didn't really have any neighbors.
We had paid double rent on this place and the old apartment, which allowed us the opportunity to move in over the course of a month. If I remember correctly, the first night I spent here, I camped out, setting a mattress pad on the floor and sleeping in my sleeping bag. Why I did that, no clue...maybe for the novelty.
Anyway, today I called my landlady, and long story short, that's that. As of Oct. 31, I'll be at an elsewhere yet to be determined.
I like the place, sure, and it'll have a place in my memory (it'll be strange driving past in the future), but I can't say I'm entirely unhappy to leave. Moving's a bitch, but sometimes, it's just time for something new, someplace new to stir the imagination. Besides, I made too many sad mix CDs in my room...I might just leave some baggage here.
The bats can have it.
* The picture was taken from the cemetery across the street (as is obvious from the grave stones). Probably the one time I actually stepped foot in there.