wallpapers

Posted on December 30th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.

When we were in Seattle for Christmas, I discovered that nearly all my Parlando wallpapers looked like crap on widescreen monitors. I'd already adjusted them a couple times for bigger screen sizes and smaller resolutions than I use at home, but this was too much; I couldn't see any way to fix the problem other than making brand new wallpapers, and right now designing non-tiling wallpapers that work both on regular monitors and widescreen is not a task I am up for.

So I am now making tiling wallpapers for Parlando. I'm planning to change them entirely every month, though I'll probably also move some in and out whenever I feel like it. The first new eleven are up now.

2 comments.

the joy of duty

Posted on November 14th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.

When I left work last night, I had worked 27 hours out of the preceding 36. I'm certainly not complaining; we can use the money, and I'm not breaking rocks. But it has taken me a while to properly wake.

The last two days are an intensified example of how busy my work life has been lately. I had not intended to fall silent here, but just when I started taking on freelance copy editing again to supplement my dwindling hours at the ad agency, the office work started picking up again. And I'm suddenly getting more freelance work than I had anticipated. Rains, pours. Because of assorted financial pressures in our life right now -- debts, Christmas travel, the need to move -- I'm not inclined to turn down the work until it's literally more than I can do.

The creative writing has to come first, and I'm barely making time for that. And I've become somewhat obsessed with photography (some of which I post at my my other weblog). And I'm trying to read a lot more fiction than I have in the last few years. (I've severely cut my online reading.) And of course I'm still completely in thrall to music.

So, well, I do intend to keep writing here. But it's likely to be pretty scattered. And honestly, I'm not nearly as good a writer on music as I wish I were (this is not a cry for reassurance), especially at describing the specifics that make music work for me. (Two recent posts at Pretty Goes With Pretty, about Slint's Spiderland and Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime, are a great example of what I wish I could do: he told me specific musical things about those albums that I hadn't known.)

Feelings of inadequacy aside, I'm unlikely to ever entirely stop writing about music I love and trying to spread it around. Just not so much right now.

8 comments.

an explanation

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.

Things have been slow here, I know. I have been obsessed for the past couple weeks with our new digital camera. I didn't expect it to take over my life, even briefly. I've discovered that it's an excellent tool for shoring up my awful memory, so I've been spending almost all my free time learning to use it. Most of that stuff appears over at Memory Machine, my weblog that's not about music and words (as such), just random observations and life tracking.

More soon.

0 comments.

high on the list of things no one else cares about

Posted on September 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Oracles, Boring Posts.

The fictional names of spam senders are mostly amusing to the recipient and no one else, inasmuch as everyone has the opportunity to be (briefly) amused by these absurdities in their own overflowing inboxes. So I note almost entirely for my own amusement the email I received today from Grackle L. Pigging.

3 comments.

today's work headphone music

Posted on July 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Boring Posts.

  • Ronald Shannon Jackson & the Decoding Society, What Spirit Say
  • Shipping News, Very Soon, and in Pleasant Company
    (++ "How To Draw Horses")
  • Phillip Johnston's Big Trouble, The Unknown

3 comments.

today's work headphone music

Posted on July 18th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Boring Posts.

  • Duke Ellington, Soul Call
  • Lambchop, Is a Woman
  • King Tubby & the Aggrovators, Foundations of Dub
  • The Coctails, The Early Hi-Ball Years
  • Comsat Angels, Sleep No More

0 comments.

work music

Posted on July 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Boring Posts.

I've decided, for no reason I can articulate even to myself, to track the music I listen to on headphones at work.

28 June 2007

  • Duke Ellington, Uptown
    --repeat
  • Cub, Come Out Come Out
  • The La's, The La's

2 July 2007

  • Ronald Shannon Jackson & the Decoding Society, Live in Warsaw
    --repeat
  • Borah Bergman, Meditations for Piano

3 July 2007

  • MX-80 Sound, Out of the Tunnel / Crowd Control
  • Six Organs of Admittance, School of the Flower
  • Brooklyn Funk Essentials, In the Buzz Bag

5 July 2007

  • The Sea and Cake, Everybody
  • Komeda, Pop Pa Svenska / Plan 714 Till
  • Aterciopelados, Gozo Poderoso

9 July 2007

  • Earth Wind & Fire, Earth Wind & Fire
  • Henry Mancini, The Jazz Sound from Peter Gunn
  • David Bowie, Station to Station

10 July 2007

  • Paul Hindemith, Kammermusik 1-3; Kleine Kammermusik
  • Ronald Shannon Jackson & the Decoding Society, When Colors Play
  • Peggy Lee & George Shearing, Beauty and the Beat

11 July 2007

  • Philadelphia Roots (Soul Jazz)
  • Nao Wave (Man Recordings)
  • Chris Hinze Combination, Sister Slick

Fascinating, eh?

5 comments.


  • If I can't be a lover, then I'll be a pest.
    - Daniel Johnston