Thursday, March 31, 2005
Time takes the Counselor's Bait
This should prove interesting...
1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
On the home computer, fairly few. I have some cd's burned with roughly 1000 - 1500 tunes, but I no longer load them. They're poorly titled, and they make a mess of the ipod. At the office, I have several hundred legitimate mp3's. Some time ago (read, November 2002), I decided to give up on the illegal downloading gig, and now only rip CDs I've purchased and download from itunes.
2. What is the last CD you bought?
I admit I had to rack my brain about this. If, as the counselor ponders, this includes downloaded albums, then it would be Paul Wall and Chamillionaire's Get Ya Mind Correct. Say what you will about the rap game, but I maintain my eccentricity by listening to little else but classical music and hardcore rap. DJ Paul Wall and Chamillionaire are two of Houston's finest, and their 2002 collaboration has often been referred to as the best underground rap album to come out of Houston in the last five years. With rhymes like "don't blame us / for visions of princess cuts on our fingers" and "you get devoured in this game like a wildebeast / with your white gold chain and your silver piece," what's not to love? The screwed and chopped version is also a textbook exemplar of DJ Mikal Watts' talents. RIP DJ Screw.
If, in fact, this query relates to the last CD actually purchased from a brick and mortar retailer, then I think it was one night on Main Street a couple of months ago when I picked up an import copy of Leadbelly's Greatest Hits. It's a quality album, and to be able to find an import for 15 bucks is a pleasure. My favorite track, you ask? Why, of course, it would be "Roberta."
3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
Track 5 off of Get Ya Mind Correct. It's been in the dash for quite a while, and it's tough to get tired of the disc.
4. Write down five songs you often listen to, or that mean a lot to you.
"Game of Pricks" by Guided by Voices. I consider it one of their best. Thankfully, I got to see them before they finally disbanded after some twenty plus years of toiling in semi-obscurity.
"The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace. I remember hearing this song as a child on a commercial for a solid gold 70's album on TV. It has, in recent years, become one of my karaoke knockouts, and if memory serves, I think I gave an impromptu rendition at Lee Harvey's in South Dallas last Friday.
"Oh Comely" by Jeff Mangum off the "Live at Jittery Joe's" Disc. Mangum is the central figure in the ever evolving quasi-defunct Neutral Milk Hotel. If you've never heard of Mangum or his band, you really need to check it out. Live at Jittery Joe's is a recording of an acoustic set Mangum played at a bar in Athens, GA a couple of years ago, and it is nothing short of incredible.
"Grandpa" by L'il Cap'n Travis. It's the No. 2 track off their debut disc, and one of my wife's all-time favorites. Again, if you haven't heard L'il Cap'n Travis, which is one of the finest bands to come out of Austin in the last decade, you really need to head on over to Waterloo and check it out.
"Never my Love" by the Association. It is now, and will forever be, Roberta and I's song. It doesn't get any more "means a lot to you" than that. Enough said.
5. Who are you going to pass this stick to and why?
Probably no one. I think the entirety of my sphere of influence in the blog universe has already answered it.
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1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
On the home computer, fairly few. I have some cd's burned with roughly 1000 - 1500 tunes, but I no longer load them. They're poorly titled, and they make a mess of the ipod. At the office, I have several hundred legitimate mp3's. Some time ago (read, November 2002), I decided to give up on the illegal downloading gig, and now only rip CDs I've purchased and download from itunes.
2. What is the last CD you bought?
I admit I had to rack my brain about this. If, as the counselor ponders, this includes downloaded albums, then it would be Paul Wall and Chamillionaire's Get Ya Mind Correct. Say what you will about the rap game, but I maintain my eccentricity by listening to little else but classical music and hardcore rap. DJ Paul Wall and Chamillionaire are two of Houston's finest, and their 2002 collaboration has often been referred to as the best underground rap album to come out of Houston in the last five years. With rhymes like "don't blame us / for visions of princess cuts on our fingers" and "you get devoured in this game like a wildebeast / with your white gold chain and your silver piece," what's not to love? The screwed and chopped version is also a textbook exemplar of DJ Mikal Watts' talents. RIP DJ Screw.
If, in fact, this query relates to the last CD actually purchased from a brick and mortar retailer, then I think it was one night on Main Street a couple of months ago when I picked up an import copy of Leadbelly's Greatest Hits. It's a quality album, and to be able to find an import for 15 bucks is a pleasure. My favorite track, you ask? Why, of course, it would be "Roberta."
3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
Track 5 off of Get Ya Mind Correct. It's been in the dash for quite a while, and it's tough to get tired of the disc.
4. Write down five songs you often listen to, or that mean a lot to you.
"Game of Pricks" by Guided by Voices. I consider it one of their best. Thankfully, I got to see them before they finally disbanded after some twenty plus years of toiling in semi-obscurity.
"The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace. I remember hearing this song as a child on a commercial for a solid gold 70's album on TV. It has, in recent years, become one of my karaoke knockouts, and if memory serves, I think I gave an impromptu rendition at Lee Harvey's in South Dallas last Friday.
"Oh Comely" by Jeff Mangum off the "Live at Jittery Joe's" Disc. Mangum is the central figure in the ever evolving quasi-defunct Neutral Milk Hotel. If you've never heard of Mangum or his band, you really need to check it out. Live at Jittery Joe's is a recording of an acoustic set Mangum played at a bar in Athens, GA a couple of years ago, and it is nothing short of incredible.
"Grandpa" by L'il Cap'n Travis. It's the No. 2 track off their debut disc, and one of my wife's all-time favorites. Again, if you haven't heard L'il Cap'n Travis, which is one of the finest bands to come out of Austin in the last decade, you really need to head on over to Waterloo and check it out.
"Never my Love" by the Association. It is now, and will forever be, Roberta and I's song. It doesn't get any more "means a lot to you" than that. Enough said.
5. Who are you going to pass this stick to and why?
Probably no one. I think the entirety of my sphere of influence in the blog universe has already answered it.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
The Scourge of the Deadbeat
I understand the existensial crisis which from which the counselor recently seems to have rebounded. In this blog-a-minute world we now live in, it is hard to keep one's focus when one's blog seemingly has none. I, too, suffer from this crisis of identity. It seems to me that the more successful blogs have a theme, or at least a catchy name.
Who the hell knows what Rationator Mirus means, anyway? In addition, it's quite a mouthful.
It is with this in mind that I recently decided to give naissance to a new blog-dentity, with the focus being the strange misadventures of a twentysomething lawyer living in the pulsating heart of the energy capital of the world. The catchy title, you ask? "Urbanscrawl," I reply.
You can then imagine my dismay to learn that the urbanscrawl url is already held by some deadbeat asshole who hasn't blogged in the last three years. And urbanscrawl.com is a British outfit that owns the URL, yet hasn't a page with either a .com or .co.uk extension. What insolence! What arrogance!
There should be a procedure whereby, after a month hiatus and the obligatory Dedman reprimand, should you continue in your deadbeat ways for over 365 days, your blog is reverted to the people of the blogosphere, to conscript, overtake, and do with what they will.
In the meantime, I suppose I will have to do this the old fashioned way: find urbanscrawl.blogspot.com, and make it an offer it can't refuse...
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Who the hell knows what Rationator Mirus means, anyway? In addition, it's quite a mouthful.
It is with this in mind that I recently decided to give naissance to a new blog-dentity, with the focus being the strange misadventures of a twentysomething lawyer living in the pulsating heart of the energy capital of the world. The catchy title, you ask? "Urbanscrawl," I reply.
You can then imagine my dismay to learn that the urbanscrawl url is already held by some deadbeat asshole who hasn't blogged in the last three years. And urbanscrawl.com is a British outfit that owns the URL, yet hasn't a page with either a .com or .co.uk extension. What insolence! What arrogance!
There should be a procedure whereby, after a month hiatus and the obligatory Dedman reprimand, should you continue in your deadbeat ways for over 365 days, your blog is reverted to the people of the blogosphere, to conscript, overtake, and do with what they will.
In the meantime, I suppose I will have to do this the old fashioned way: find urbanscrawl.blogspot.com, and make it an offer it can't refuse...
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
There's nothing in Particular
It's good to see Ole' JD finally at it again, though I now have to take down the "countdown to deadbeat blogger-dom" calendat off of my wall.
I'm told there's some new fledgling blogs penned by Baylor Lawyers with whom we were classmates, and I'm trying to track them down.
In other news, the passing of the Ides of March marked the 211th anniversary of Eli Whitney's patent on the cotton gin.
Today marks the 39th anniversary of the Gemini VIII's first U.S. manned docking of 2 spacecraft in orbit.
And in ten minutes I go to the dentist for the first time since moving to Houston. I feel a bit uneasy about it, not because I possess the archetypal fear of the dentist, but because for the entirety of my existence on this small planet, I always had the same dentist. Howard Cohen, DDS, in Plano, Texas, took mighty good care of mes dents for those years, and except for a couple of visits to a local fella when we moved to the country in my youth, has held exlusive license to my grill. It is my sincerest hope that today's visit to Dr. Blum will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
And you thought the title was just a clever misnomer.
Welcome back, Counselor.
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I'm told there's some new fledgling blogs penned by Baylor Lawyers with whom we were classmates, and I'm trying to track them down.
In other news, the passing of the Ides of March marked the 211th anniversary of Eli Whitney's patent on the cotton gin.
Today marks the 39th anniversary of the Gemini VIII's first U.S. manned docking of 2 spacecraft in orbit.
And in ten minutes I go to the dentist for the first time since moving to Houston. I feel a bit uneasy about it, not because I possess the archetypal fear of the dentist, but because for the entirety of my existence on this small planet, I always had the same dentist. Howard Cohen, DDS, in Plano, Texas, took mighty good care of mes dents for those years, and except for a couple of visits to a local fella when we moved to the country in my youth, has held exlusive license to my grill. It is my sincerest hope that today's visit to Dr. Blum will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
And you thought the title was just a clever misnomer.
Welcome back, Counselor.
