(You Come In) Burned
- Posted by mariteaux on October 30th, 2020 filed in Updates
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Well, it’s been, what, eight days since I last posted here? Suppose I should try to get back on the blogging thing. It’s pretty low-impact, and my brain’s about shut off for the year at this point.
Here’s a recent photo of me:
Anyway! Cute animal pics aside, here’s some updates…
On the content front, borb and Savannah got me on the topic of keeping backups one night, so I present the Center for Data Redundancy, which is a collection of rambles and recommendations if you’ve just come to the realization that the last 3-4 years of work is sitting on your computer, ready to disappear at any moment. Save your stuff, friends.
On the story front, I just wasn’t feeling the spooky vibe enough to finish what I started with Pennyverse this year. Is funny–the end of last year was kind of a mess, and the end of this year is looking like the world’s best, longest nap. I don’t do the “lay back for two months and play vidya” thing often, but wow, do I want it. I know that sounds kinda weird, given that I’m still not working (how much could I really be getting done?), but I like to think I’ve kept busy on something enriching, even if it’s not paid work.
Not to say I don’t still have something planned. Some of it will still end up in a kind of post-Halloween story (or what would’ve been the end of it, anyway), still involving Seb, now sickly in bed after his little rampage with a Cat next to him. Cat’s lovely. She hasn’t gotten enough screen time to really make herself known, but she’s a subtle girl in my head, more sensing and feeling and philosophical as compared to rooty-tooty-point-n-shooty mailmen, psycho kitties, fat fuck sculptors, stormchasing paranormal bunnies, and Diesel. Whether I’ll explore any of that in this one, I’ll wait until I sit down to start it.
As for the special? I mean, I just finished two of my favorite stories off the backs of drafts I started months ago, so no doubt you’ll see it at some point. I’m just pretty well written out at this point. I’m satisfied, and I didn’t want to muck it up with another forced round of Halloween stuff. Last year was bad enough. But this year? Pleased. Pleased and ready to change it up.
Speaking of changes, let’s go back to rambling about music!
I don’t usually buy CDs anymore given that my income is somewhere around the square root of fuck all, but occasionally I’ll spot one I’ve been wanting for years now for fucking $3 (and $3 for the shipping, so cheap) and go for it. I do like The Dandy Warhols. I haven’t seen Dig!, I don’t care if the people who write the songs I like are total asshole jerkoffs–basically, I can see why they turn people off, but they write bops.
Now, Welcome to the Monkey House was my introduction to them. It’s their synthpop record, as expected, given the guy who did keyboards for Duran Duran ran the boards for it. But unsurprisingly, because even Capitol thought the Dandys were a challenge to work with, it wasn’t the original version of that album! After outright having The Black Album swatted down in favor of the more palatable …The Dandy Warhols Come Down (and I still love that one either way, sadly, copies of the original look a bit on the expensive side), Capitol again batted down their banana-flavored efforts.
Instead of making the band re-record the entire thing, however, Capitol instead handed it off to be remixed and turned into a true, thick, bass-heavy rave-up. In 2009, on their own label, the Dandys finally unearthed the original mix as The Dandy Warhols Are Sound, and most people didn’t quite seem to get it. I once had an iTunes copy of this thanks to an old friend of mine, but those files have long since disappeared and I’ve just been wanting a CD of it anyway. And hey! Now it’s in the collection.
Of course, I’m the perfect kind of sperg to get it and…yeah, depends on the song. There’s definitely a difference, and the two MP3s I’ve attached to this post (DMCA permitting, I am providing commentary, lads) are an example where I do prefer the remix, but they both work well in their own way and the songs are still catchy. (I’ve RMS normalized these two so that way loudness doesn’t play a factor–Are Sound has no loudness war bullshit and is much appreciated for it.)
Anyway, now that all that’s posted, I’m off to clean a bit and relax. Definitely miss blogging, and the first anniversary of the Scratchpad is coming up towards the end of November, so be on the lookout for more from me. (More video game stuff too–PCSX2 1.6.0 came out a few months ago and my god is it so much more functional than 1.4.0, that what I was using for all these years.)
