The Mooresie

Cool, if i can make another of these entries at last, i must be getting back into the swing of blogging.

• Jen Johnson, Big Brother US 8.
  Physically attractive, professional model, physically and mentally strong, privileged background.
  From all appearances, riddled with Asperger’s, with narcissism as a symptom. This communication difficulty didn’t help her in the game much. Neither did getting targeted by the show producers’ favourite contestant.
  At the end, it was very Lord of the Flies; she was getting constant verbal and psychological abuse from the other contestants (despicable, each and every one) with zero emotional support from either cast or production. i don’t think i’ve seen anyone eat so much shit (metaphorically) in the history of reality TV. (Actually Shilpa Shetty probably exceeds Jen there, but i wasn’t following that show and can’t compare.) Mostly, she just brushed it all off; made some attempts to subvert the Spectacle, that i wished she’d followed through more fully.
  Based on my own life experiences, i can’t help but emphasize, and admire.
• The Mars Volta. Something between Rush and Frank Zappa, very interesting experimental rock. Local St. John’s band Marceno raves about these people periodically, which is why i checked them out.
• My Gallery site. Which i could very well embed in WordPress, if i feel the need later.
• Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. Not that i’m anxious to get back there right now, though. Having to work ruins it.
• My Presonus Firebox, though i’m still trying to get it to work properly with the PC i’m setting up as a DAW. It still stutters a bit when recording and i don’t know if it’s because of the disk partitioning/swap file setup, the minimal amount of background software i have left, interrupts from the old sound card or a slightly underpowered CPU.
  Recording music has been a dream of mine for years and i’m getting close to achieving it.
• Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, not going back, no mo’…
• Nexus War, which is serving me well as methadone for a World of Warcraft dependency.
• Phonogram. Best comics work i’ve read this year. It’s a big allegorical tribute to Britpop – that’d be Blur, early Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, that sort of thing – not really resonant to the North American music experience (because the music is all different over there, you know, it’s a whole different ancestry of influences, as soon as you turn on a radio in England you know it’s different). It still manages to get across a poignant story with only a glossary to help an uninitiated reader get all the references. And the art is immaculate.
• Manic Street Preachers, see above.