Or, I'm in a hotel in Rochester scrambling for a blog topic and Cody is great at finding music.
I don't know how he does it, but the lovely Cody, at least once a week, finds some new fabulous band. And then proceeds to linkspam me everything about them. A few months ago it was Of Monsters and Men. I just got around to really listening to the whole album recently, and it's fantastic. I'm hoping to find a way to work it into my nano soundtrack for next year.
They're an Icelandic indie/folk group with a pretty unique sound.
I really enjoy the percussion. I also feel like their accents add to the winsome tone of the singers. And the rest of their instrumentation - but really, I'm a sucker for delightful guitar with punchy brass and smatterings of accordion. They're touring through the US soon and Cody snapped himself up a ticket minutes after they went on sale. Good thing too, because they sold out in a few minutes and now I can sneak to Seattle, quietly incapacitate him, and steal it.
I've got to use all of this pharmacy knowledge for something, right?
Yes, I'm using my powers for evil. Shh.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Sleeves Can Suck It
I have finally finished another sweater!
This one:
As you can see, it has no sleeves. Because sleeves are of the devil. The pattern is Sparreholm, out of Noro Revisited by Corneli Hamilton.
This is the one, however, that tried to kill me by lying about the amount of yarn required. I would have finished it on Halloween and gone as a competent knitter if I hadn't run out of yarn and thrown a hissy fit. Instead, I was a sexy librarian. Sarah can attest to this.
Yes, I'm wearing penguin pajama pants. Today was rough.
This one:
As you can see, it has no sleeves. Because sleeves are of the devil. The pattern is Sparreholm, out of Noro Revisited by Corneli Hamilton.
This is the one, however, that tried to kill me by lying about the amount of yarn required. I would have finished it on Halloween and gone as a competent knitter if I hadn't run out of yarn and thrown a hissy fit. Instead, I was a sexy librarian. Sarah can attest to this.
Anyway, behold the finished sweater!
Yes, I'm wearing penguin pajama pants. Today was rough.I'm still trying to be happy with the fact that Noro yarns aren't supposed to match up, even when you desperately try. Despite what every beautiful pattern picture shows. It's absolutely maddening to me that the stripes don't match. I'm not tearing this beast out, however.
This is the next sweater I'll be embarking on, as I have the yarn and it also lacks those cursed sleeves. My rebellion continues!
Oh look, a hood! And more of the penguin pj pants.
This is the next sweater I'll be embarking on, as I have the yarn and it also lacks those cursed sleeves. My rebellion continues!
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Alternate Basses
Or, why God hates accordion players. Me specifically.
I've hit the point in my accordion book with alternating basses and it is destroying me. I can do a waltz pattern just fine. I can even string together a decent polka beat. The second I try to add a melody in there the entire thing caves in on itself and it's like I've been trying to record something suitable to post that won't make everybody bleed from their ears, but I'm not there yet. I'm stuck on finding the sweet spot of paying just enough attention to my left hand that I keep the beat but not so much that I over think it and start hitting the wrong buttons.
Luckily (for her) my roommate is gone on a wonderful interview opportunity this weekend and won't have to hear the deranged and dying elephant that is my practice these days.
I'm also finding that, as I thought, I am awful at taking pictures. I had a fabulous idea to fulfill day three's requirement of 'hands' by taking some shots of Buster Blue's hands while they played at a concert last night. Turns out the camera is sensitive enough that when I used the flash everything was washed out and horrible. As a result, instead of human hands in some kind of cool musical display, you get dinosaur hands.
Today's subject is 'a stranger'. I feel like a stalker, but I'm dutifully going to haul the camera out to the streets of Reno and try to take a picture of someone without getting arrested for harassment.
Here's the best shot of hands I got - that's Bryan on the banjo and Rachael being a certified accordionista. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to manipulate camera settings and make it look better.
I've hit the point in my accordion book with alternating basses and it is destroying me. I can do a waltz pattern just fine. I can even string together a decent polka beat. The second I try to add a melody in there the entire thing caves in on itself and it's like I've been trying to record something suitable to post that won't make everybody bleed from their ears, but I'm not there yet. I'm stuck on finding the sweet spot of paying just enough attention to my left hand that I keep the beat but not so much that I over think it and start hitting the wrong buttons.
Luckily (for her) my roommate is gone on a wonderful interview opportunity this weekend and won't have to hear the deranged and dying elephant that is my practice these days.
I'm also finding that, as I thought, I am awful at taking pictures. I had a fabulous idea to fulfill day three's requirement of 'hands' by taking some shots of Buster Blue's hands while they played at a concert last night. Turns out the camera is sensitive enough that when I used the flash everything was washed out and horrible. As a result, instead of human hands in some kind of cool musical display, you get dinosaur hands.
Today's subject is 'a stranger'. I feel like a stalker, but I'm dutifully going to haul the camera out to the streets of Reno and try to take a picture of someone without getting arrested for harassment.
Here's the best shot of hands I got - that's Bryan on the banjo and Rachael being a certified accordionista. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to manipulate camera settings and make it look better.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
The Dream of Perpetual Motion
There was no post Monday because I was busy rocking an interview and didn't plan ahead . . . next week will be better, I promise.
I was going to continue shamelessly stealing from Sarah's idea of monthly book reviews, but I only read one last month worth talking about - The Dream of Perpetual Motion.
I cannot emphasize how much I loved this book. It's sheer lyrical poetry. I finished it and sat there on the plane, just trying to absorb exactly what it was about the book that spoke to me. This is a book that begs to be read aloud.
Passages like this:
"This is the time of night just before sunrise, that time that no one owns, and if you have found yourself awake and alone during this time, out in the city, outside the safety of the walls you call your own, then you know me, and you have felt what I felt. This is the hour of the night it's best to sleep through, for if it catches you awake then it will force you to face what is true. This is when you look into the half-dead eyes of those who are either wishing for sleep or shaking off its final remnants, and you see the signs of the twilight in which your own mind is suspended.
At any other time it's better. You can do the things you feel you should; you're an expert at going through the motions. Your handshakes with strangers are firm and your gaze never wavers; you think of steel and diamonds when you stare. In a monotone you repeat the legendary words of long-dead lovers to those you claim to love; you take them into bed with you, and you mimic the rhythmic motions you've read of in manuals. When protocol demands it you dutifully drop to your knees and pray to a god who no longer exists. But in this hour you must admit to yourself that this is not enough, that you are not good enough. And when you knock your fist against your chest and you hear a hollow ringing echo, and all your thoughts are accompanied by the ticks of clockwork spinning behind your eyes, and everything you eat and drink has the aftertaste of rust."
Anyone who has unwillingly been awake at this hour, who walks at night, alone, knows this feeling.
The book is a scrambled steampunk world of imperfect machinery, with a smattering of themes from the Tempest. Everyone and everything is flawed, and the protagonist probably shouldn't even have the term anti-hero applied. This is not a character driven novel, but more a meditation on the world they inhabit and the consequences of unbridled technology existing just because it can.
Here's another of my favorite sentences, largely because I love this description of something I look at daily.
"They are made from materials engineered by Prospero, invented substances with names made of nothing but rootless suffixes and prefixes, that designate long molecules that bite their own tails and wind around each other like the links of a chain."
I've seen some reviews criticizing the book for being 'deeply misogynistic', but I disagree. The sections pointed out in those reviews depict misogynistic ideas taken to complete extremes, and it, to me, serves as a way to lampoon those ideas. Some are made absurd, some horrifying, but I did not come away feeling as though Dexter Palmer wrote this book to hate on women. Prospero's obsession with Miranda feels off from the start and it's very clearly shown to be a negative thing with negative consequences.
A quick perusal of the author bio reveals that his dissertation was on Joyce, Pynchon, and Gaddis. It shows, in the best possible way.
And here's my first photo of the photo a day challenge! Today was "your view today". This is the view from my apartment balcony (okay, this is the view from leaning way out over the balcony and almost falling into the bushes two stories below). The tall building on the left is one of the wings of the hospital I've been rotating in! The one on the right is a casino . . .
I was going to continue shamelessly stealing from Sarah's idea of monthly book reviews, but I only read one last month worth talking about - The Dream of Perpetual Motion.
I cannot emphasize how much I loved this book. It's sheer lyrical poetry. I finished it and sat there on the plane, just trying to absorb exactly what it was about the book that spoke to me. This is a book that begs to be read aloud.
Passages like this:
"This is the time of night just before sunrise, that time that no one owns, and if you have found yourself awake and alone during this time, out in the city, outside the safety of the walls you call your own, then you know me, and you have felt what I felt. This is the hour of the night it's best to sleep through, for if it catches you awake then it will force you to face what is true. This is when you look into the half-dead eyes of those who are either wishing for sleep or shaking off its final remnants, and you see the signs of the twilight in which your own mind is suspended.
At any other time it's better. You can do the things you feel you should; you're an expert at going through the motions. Your handshakes with strangers are firm and your gaze never wavers; you think of steel and diamonds when you stare. In a monotone you repeat the legendary words of long-dead lovers to those you claim to love; you take them into bed with you, and you mimic the rhythmic motions you've read of in manuals. When protocol demands it you dutifully drop to your knees and pray to a god who no longer exists. But in this hour you must admit to yourself that this is not enough, that you are not good enough. And when you knock your fist against your chest and you hear a hollow ringing echo, and all your thoughts are accompanied by the ticks of clockwork spinning behind your eyes, and everything you eat and drink has the aftertaste of rust."
Anyone who has unwillingly been awake at this hour, who walks at night, alone, knows this feeling.
The book is a scrambled steampunk world of imperfect machinery, with a smattering of themes from the Tempest. Everyone and everything is flawed, and the protagonist probably shouldn't even have the term anti-hero applied. This is not a character driven novel, but more a meditation on the world they inhabit and the consequences of unbridled technology existing just because it can.
Here's another of my favorite sentences, largely because I love this description of something I look at daily.
"They are made from materials engineered by Prospero, invented substances with names made of nothing but rootless suffixes and prefixes, that designate long molecules that bite their own tails and wind around each other like the links of a chain."
I've seen some reviews criticizing the book for being 'deeply misogynistic', but I disagree. The sections pointed out in those reviews depict misogynistic ideas taken to complete extremes, and it, to me, serves as a way to lampoon those ideas. Some are made absurd, some horrifying, but I did not come away feeling as though Dexter Palmer wrote this book to hate on women. Prospero's obsession with Miranda feels off from the start and it's very clearly shown to be a negative thing with negative consequences.
A quick perusal of the author bio reveals that his dissertation was on Joyce, Pynchon, and Gaddis. It shows, in the best possible way.
And here's my first photo of the photo a day challenge! Today was "your view today". This is the view from my apartment balcony (okay, this is the view from leaning way out over the balcony and almost falling into the bushes two stories below). The tall building on the left is one of the wings of the hospital I've been rotating in! The one on the right is a casino . . .
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