Ok, there is no way that little line of text can ever convey the sonic expression with which it is delivered in the music. Even if it were all caps and the words were spppellleeeedddd out really long, it wouldn't have a prayer, so I won't even bother trying.

I suppose that's also proof that I haven't completely given up on recent music, despite what I may have said or implied in previous entries, since that cd was released and purchased by me less than 2 month ago. Tool. Lateralus. No sound quite like that band. I like the way Scott Andrew put it:

"Tool makes me think of an ancient steel machine that sits, covered with cobwebs, in a remote corner of an insane inventor's attic. It sits silently for centuries, never rusting. Until one day you get too close, and it suddenly grinds to life, unwinding like a coil, with mechanical precision and a terrifying purposefulness, bites the head off your teddy bear, and then proceeds to carry out its primary directive of destroying the world. And it's all your fault."

Yahhhaaa. A beautiful description of this demented music. (BTW, a fun experiement to try on just about any Tool song: Try to keep track of the rhythem. You know. Counting the beats in your head or out oud, like "1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4" etc. Chances are that on at least some of the songs from AEnema or Lateralus, you'll find yourself getting confused sooner or later. Quite perplexing, isn't it? :)

[Bitscape foolishly attempts to play the above game, and after a few minutes, ends up becoming very perplexed and confused.]

Some of the tracks actually have a consistent rhythm, but others just seem to continuously spiral off into this rhythmically incomprehensible wierdness. For a while, it sounded like part of the opening track "The Grudge" had 5 beats per measure, but only for one section of the song. Then in seamlessly morphs into... something else. I wonder how (or if) they ever write it down on paper in musical notation.

Okay. Now that I've managed to use up a good bit of bandwidth rambling aimlessly about Tool, let's get to the meat of it, shall we? A couple of notable items this weekend:

• Obviously, for those who have been vulturizing other nearby content farmers, a great fest is planned at the Boulder Compound. Argo and I will definitely be there.
• My birthday. Sometime during the course of the fest, I shall turn 25. Certainly not as much of a ra-ra event as it was when we were little kids, but I suppose still notable nonetheless.
• 3-day weekend (for me). I arranged to have Monday off work. I figured that between fest recovery and birthday aftermath, it would be as good a day as any to take off.

From the civic-mindedness dept: Tomorrow, I'm thinking I might go stop by Pearl Street, and, if nothing else, at least sign the petition.

Having not mentioned it here, I guess I assume everyone who hasn't been living in a cave already knows about the Dmitry Sklyarov case. A non-US citizen, sitting in one of our jails without bail, because he came to share information with us. It just so happened that some of the things he said were not to the liking of one unscrupulous corporation.

So, here in the "land of the free and the brave", what happens when you offend a big company by having the audacity to state out loud that the emperor has no clothes? You go to jail, of course! Free Speech my ass.

So here I could sit with the rest and scream, "boycott Adobe", but in my case, it wouldn't matter much, because I wouldn't have been likely to purchase any of their Windoze-only products anyway. But I'd say that they, along with the corrupt government officials who have done their bidding (which they now conveniently retracted after the damage is done), have raked in enough negative karma and bad will points with the public to scar their image for many years to come.

Um... So yeah. Boycott Adobe. Free Dmitry. Vote all those corrupt bastards who passed the DMCA during the '99 term out of congress, and all the rest of it. End rant.

I'm going to get some food.