November 2011
2 posts
October 2011
1 post
Links in Sidebar Down
Tumblr interface changes killed all of my sidebar links. Will fix soon. Until then, you’re on your own, surfing-wise. Enjoy!
September 2011
4 posts
More
“Baby, you’re showing your ass to everyone in the coffee shop.” [wheezing laugh]
Out of Bounds
Examples of things you should say during a cell phone conversation at a semi-crowded coffee house:
- “I’m at a semi-crowded coffee house. Let me step outside and call you back.”
Examples of things you should not say during a cell phone conversation at a semi-crowded coffee house*:
* All real
- “I won at poker last night, baby. Baby. I won at poker last night… at...
Excited About Rap Vocals: A Text Message Essay
Was working out some vocals for an EP that The Zen Lunatic and I are handing in to mastering on September 21. The band’s name will be Sex Party. “db plus bounce” is a working name for a song I was working on last night:
Blake’s only response:
August 2011
18 posts
Let's Make This Official
So let’s call an end to Abraham Trying to Engage in Social Media 9.0.
It has been a long year here in New Orleans. For those of you back home, the news of professional opportunity, creative space, abundant social life, impending studio builds, sex parties, baby dances, and the like has been absolutely true. However, the assertion, real or implied, that I am doing fine and adjusting well or...
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Explained Absence
Apologies for the lack of posts. Life has been particularly difficult to navigate as of late. Heading away on a meditation retreat in Alabama for the weekend. Should be interesting. I think I’m going to have to wear a white robe. I will post pictures if this happens.
Check out this Moombah Mix by The Zen Lunatic, and...
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One Year in New Orleans - Music
I arrived in New Orleans one year ago yesterday, with a girlfriend, a van full of stuff, and dreams of conquest and carpetbaggery. A year later, I still have the van, and if I choose to do so, I could fill it back up with the stuff. But all else is long since gone. A progress report, in multiple parts:
Part 1: Music. Since this is what most of us are here for.
I spent a fair amount of time in...
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“When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people...”
– Martin Luther King Jr. (via carlykitty)
Thank you. I was thinking about this pretty much all morning. And I was going to post about it too, but I think this pretty much sums it up.
(via unconnectedincidents)
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Things are getting weird over at the Fountainbleau...
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Collar-time USA
Petco Employee: Welcome to Petco! How may I help you today!
Me: This is unrealistic already. Since when has anyone ever been welcomed to Petco?
Petco Employee:
Me: Well, help me out here.
Petco Employee: I am wearing a blue polo shirt with “Petco” written on it!
Me: Getting there.
Petco Employee: You might have noticed that we have reconfigured out store in order to better suit...
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Spongebob vs. Fox, Or, What I Think About a Thing...
Let’s just get it out of the way that these people who are talking about Spongebob are awful, awful, awful human beings (h/t politicsusa). Or, if we want to be generous in regard to their eternal souls, we might call them terrifically and spectacularly stupid, in the sense that we should congratulate them for having jobs and being able to get most of their food in their mouths when they...
Listening to Keith Jarrett, Solo Concerts:...
I cannot get past Side 3 of this record. I bought it at the Hi Ho/Siberia record raid a few weekends back, and it has dominated my life since then. There is nothing in the way of a real review here - it’s just played and (especially) recorded so beautifully that it gives me shivers. The guy I bought it from said to be on the lookout for more ECM recordings. I’m totally sold.
Also, I...
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How's That Whole Hopey Changey Thing Going
Or something like that.
I’m a pretty faithful salon.com reader - mainly for the Glenn Greenwald, but also for the just-slightly-edgier-than-NPR liberal bent, which we are now calling a progressive bent, because we’re afraid to say “liberal,” because Rush Limbaugh makes fun of that, which is a whole other story.
But here is something that really annoys me. The day after...
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REwind: Bad Motherfucker
The summer is getting to me.
Hard to get out of bed. Hard to get work done. Hard to concentrate.
Before things got impossibly thick down here I tried to convince myself that the New Orleans summer would be something like the Boston winter, in that I would spend the bulk of the 5 months inside, shielded from the weather by gloriously efficient-if-expensive climate control technology. But hot is...
July 2011
32 posts
In Honor of Shark Week
I hereby re-release song #10 from 52pickup, Jacques Cousteau:
Download/play here
That’s how he lives every week like it’s Shark Week:
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DIY Cat Surgery
So-called “experts” in the medical community don’t want you to believe it, but DIY cat surgery is totally possible!
Materials: One (1) bottle of ether, one (1) liter grain alcohol, two (2) prescription-level painkillers, One (1) X-acto knife, a spool of thread.
1. Hide X-acto knife in a safe place so you don’t cut yourself with it.
2. Distract cat with spool of thread.
...
Instrumental EP, Anyone?
Post will be short today. Working with spreadsheets all morning emdullens* my English skills.
* Which is to say, it makes dull. See: Embiggen. Not even writing my own jokes today.
Speaking of English skills - I’m wondering whether people would appreciate hearing my music without my whateveritistoday-addled commentary as accompaniment. That is to say, would you enjoy an instrumental...
“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some...”
– Hunter S. Thompson
An article describing the various ways in which this passage has been misunderstood and misquoted - oftentimes to the music industry - is here.
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Hockey Hair, Volume 1 of Many
Those of you familiar with this blog might recall the baseball card art that I posted a while back (SFW, with NSFW links inside the post; same deal here).
This morning, in the absence of substantive discussion, I decided to do a quick run through a pile of hockey cards and let fly with some great pics of early 90s hockey hair.
1. The Hrkac Circus. His 1986-7 Hobey Baker winning season at North...
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Terrible Rap by People with Advanced Media Access
I have wrestled with the idea of this post since I started writing in earnest, two whole weeks ago. I am not one to loudly proclaim that other artists suck. But then again, maybe these are not artists.
One of the most deflating things that I deal with on a daily basis is watching people with advanced levels of media access who are not rappers leverage their access to become rappers. Now there is...
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The FBI's Anonymous Raids (The FBI Raids...
In the past few days, the FBI has raided the homes of and arrested 14 hackers who were alleged to have been in involved in denial of service attacks on PayPal after the latter capitulated to Joe Lieberman and friends’ absurd demands and cut off funding to Wikileaks.
The FBI only managed to nab itself some low-hanging fruit, and to their credit don’t seem inclined to make examples of...
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““The question is,” said Alice,” whether you can make words...”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Whom Do You Work For?
Just a note that I am waking up every morning and trying to do this. It’s a process, and it often involves sitting and staring at a blank computer screen, and sometimes my results are nothing at all. Seems that I always pick these sorts of processes, and never the kinds of processes that involve holistic health, mental well-being, or happiness. Just the blank computer screen processes. Like...
So August 26th is the mastering date for whatever...
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Good-bye, Space
The US launched its last space shuttle mission two Fridays ago, and it probably looked something like this:
It’s pretty clear that Responsible Decisions are being made here - we’re shaving off a billion here and a billion there so we don’t have to raise taxes on the middle class, or have taxes on rich people. But I think there’s a whole lot more at stake here. It...
Friday Ephemera, Which Would Be a Great Name for a...
1. I just got the most recent Uline catalog, which is a huge deal, because I was out of bathroom reading. Seeing as tape > digital, I went to check and see what was new in that department. Turns out there’s a product called “Quiet Tape,” which sounds awesome, or doesn’t sound awesome at all, on account of its quietude. But here’s the thing:
Now I want to purchase...
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Rob Potylo and the Lonely Planets
[link to artist site]
As a music listener, and as other things as well, I am awash in contradictions. Specifically, I walk the fine line between not wanting to steal music, not wanting to download it illegally, and not wanting to listen to it, because I am tired. Add to that my current, financially-hampered push to purchase and listen to more records, iTunes’ increasing irrelevance (and...
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Obama Doesn't Want a Progressive Anything
Matt Taibbi’s blog piece this morning is titled “Obama Doesn’t Want a Progressive Deficit Deal,” and explains how it’s pretty clear that Obama doesn’t want a progressive deficit deal (RS blog’s headline writer is on point). It’s not that difficult to follow his logic, unless you really don’t want to.
I’m no policy wonk, but it seems to...
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This Is It
Welcome, officially, to the age of me, generating content.
I haven’t written regularly for a long time, which is a shame, because I am somewhat talented at writing. It’s one of those things that I really feel like I need to be in shape for - sort of like beach season - but it’s hard to get started. So I’m starting. I’m going to grab a cup of coffee and blurt out some...
