asimplechord | Entries tagged with shiny new toys

!!!!

goshemily has written the fic of my heart. Bravo Two as a punk band. On Warped. They play Gilman. (ETA: fyi, Tim McIlrath is ALWAYS the correct choice. Always.)

I haven't commented on it yet because I haven't finished reading - dammit, why did I have too much scheduled to take a long lunchbreak today? - and my MacBook is currently at the depot having its logic board replaced, making my phone (with its hatefully awkward touchscreen) the default web access for me. BUT I WILL. OH, I WILL. I commented. But not with all the flailing in my heart.

Also deserving of !!!!: PLEASE LET THIS BE REAL.

Not deserving exclamation marks: the live-cell imaging worked technically, but it will not yield an answer to our question. *sigh* Days of work, and hours of confocal time, all for naught.

~ I obtained a free Kindle via a promotion with a vendor at work! I've got the book I had been reading on my phone (Assassins' Gate) and Pride & Prejudice loaded onto it. Y'all should a) tell me where to go to download out-of-copyright books, if there's a better place than the Gutenberg Project, and b) suggest names for what is sure to become my new constant companion.

~ Wrong on the internet. I get that asking readers to choose the "greatest" means it's going to be a popularity contest, but once Green Day Authority got involved, it was all over 'cept the shouting. I mean, seriously, I love Green Day, but ranking them above the Ramones and the Clash? And then we could argue more about what makes a band great: longevity, popularity, sheer musical talent, the volume of their catalog, etc., without even touching on the conflict between global popularity and the original alternative goals of the punk aesthetic & ethic.

~ Leaving for Chicago tomorrrrrrrow! It's possible that I am excited about this. Can you tell? Chicago's weather should be a full 20 degrees cooler than Houston's. And we're staying with friends we haven't seen in a while. AND LOLLA. :D :D :D Just one more day of work to get through. Then cleaning the house and packing a bag.

That high-pitched shriek you heard a couple of hours ago? That was me, realizing that Patrick Stump is going to be in Texas on his tour, 26-28 August. SMALL VENUE AWESOMENESS. :D :D :D

In other news:

1. Sasha is back in my possession. I love my car. I live in the 'burbs, and I drive an unfortunate amount, and I MISSED MY iPod DOCK AND MY DECENT GAS MILEAGE AND MY EZPASS. Now I have them back, and Sasha is pretty and shiny again. My commute time is halved. I am marginally less cranky at the end of my work day now. Marginally.

2. Finished Tropic of Chaos. It's an interesting read, examining what Parenti calls the "catastrophic convergence" of climate change and political/economic policy of the Global North as applied to the Global South. [For GK fans, you'll be amused to hear that when citing The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, a product of CNAS & CSIS, Parenti says that it was produced by "the most scientifically literate of the lot" of DC think-tanks.]

3. Is anyone else planning on going to the Empires show in Austin on the 18th?

a) Yeah, still loving the 2-minute tease MCR gave us.

b) So, instead of spending far more than my Jeep is worth for a fix that will only be temporary, we went car shopping this afternoon. Meet the new occupant of our two-car garage. S/he needs a name. I have to drive it a bit before I can make that decision. I will say, however, that is it WAY easy to speed without realizing it, in comparison to my lumbering Snowflake. And the turning radius is a bit broader.

c) Insights from the Afghan field. A book-rec, but also a really interesting read about cultural differences/memory and imperial mistakes, and how US military/foreign policy has repeated them in the last ten years.

d) I finally read Henry Jenkin's interview with Mary Gray about her book, Doing Drag in Wal-Mart and Other Stories of Rural Queer Youth, which I've had bookmarked forever. I need to add the book to my to-be-read list.

e) I've had the same bit of porn stuck in my head for days, and haven't written it out. I have no idea what my problem is, but I am ridiculously unmotivated. I thought I'd do it today, but we see how that worked, right?

f) M'kay. I'm going to read another chapter of Steven Saylor's Empire, then stir-fry some broccoli and other assorted veggies for supper.

(Re: post title? The Badgers are gonna fall in the rankings after today's debacle, even if they pulled out the win in the end.)

This entry was originally posted at http://favoritemistake.dreamwidth.org/4208.html.

Current Music: Ludo - All The Stars In Texas

♥ I'm not sure what's up with this Google Wave thing, but I guess I have invites? It looks like it'll make collaborative writing with

why_me_why_not and the email list we send our bits and pieces to easier, since everyone can comment/edit waves. Otherwise, IDK. Was it created by fandom people, that everyone's so excited?

♥ Black Rebel Motorcycle Club announced 2010 tourdates, including a gig at Houston's HOB on a Saturday. Probably no one else here cares about them, but I AM THERE. I WILL BE WAITING IN THE PASS THE LINE QUEUE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE THAT SATURDAY. 666 Conducer LIVE.

♥ I asked this on Twitter earlier: would it be an abuse of power to persuade MrIris to go to Italy this summer for vacation, at a time that would overlap U2's show in Rome?

♥ Adam Lazzara gives good mic, but TBS's show tonight felt short. Anberlin's set started at 7pm, and I was home before 10pm. That is just bizarre. Also, Adam Lazzara: a giant? He looked really really tall from my angle in the balcony. But maybe that's because I've gotten used to bands populated by shorter-than-average people. Or, IDK, are Matt Fazzi and Eddie Reyes really short? I can't recall noticing before, but that's probably because I was way the hell at the back of the venue or I was busy being a creeper and checking out band family members and managers instead of paying attention to what was happening during the openers' set.

♥ I'm going to go contemplate pre-coffee counter sex. I need to at least have an IDEA about the direction things should go before I type a wave for people to fiddle with, right?

I used to get annoyed at people recording and photographing at shows, especially when the artists specifically expressed negative opinions on the matter. Now? I do it myself.

It occurred to me mid-way through a concert call to

why_me_why_not that Ichtaca (that's my iPhone's name) can record voice memos.

So. I make no promises about the quality - the beginning is particularly noisy - but here's Snow Patrol performing Chasing Cars.

Current Music: Kill Hannah - Acid Rain | Powered by Last.fm

+ I've never been interested in Heroes, but I started watching it (yay for streaming via Netflix and Xbox 360) last night. It's all Zachary Quinto's fault. ( Damn you, Spock! )

+ To say that imaging is not my favorite type of experiment would be an understatement. I spent this morning in the most boring training seminar ever (seriously, does anyone LEARN when some talks at them and points and clicks? give me a manual and let me try it for myself, okay?) so that I could have access to the department's shiny new Nikon confocal microscope. It is a thing of beauty. Completely fucking state of the art, tunable laser sources, options for manual or automated focusing, perfusion chamber for live cell imaging over extended periods of time, capable of doing Z-stacks and time-points on multiple different x/y coordinates.

Shiny, even for someone like me, who has been traumatized by microscopy (my freshman-year Cell Bio lab is to blame for many terrible memories) and hates staring down a 'scope all day.

+ Someone (who understands how very bad I am when it comes to controlling my music-related purchases) should persuade me not to download the Shazam app to my iPhone.

+ I don't know what to have for supper. Perhaps I should just drink more wine and go back to watching Heroes?

+ Where has my ability to write porn gone? Seriously, I look at what I've written (which is a (now) late birthday gift) and hate it too much to even edit it.

+ Watching the rebroadcast of Green Day on TCR. I really enjoy the way they are random enough in their answers that Stephen Colbert can't drive the interview the way he usually does.

+ Also? Billie Joe Armstrong's tiny pointy teeth are even creepier than Gerard Way's.

+ It is inconvenient that iPhone's software doesn't allow txt forwarding. Even more annoying? I lost ~200 text messages worth of fic when I switched out phones. >:/

+ They Just HOWL is available for download now. &empires;