Rock n roll will never die

Where did this music entering my ears come from?

--

The room had become dark, the light of day having slipped away long ago. I found myself sitting on the couch, mindlessly watching old footage of Def Leppard on VH1. (Single-handedly dumbing down America one minute at a time.) I reminisced about the days when this music was genuinely considered "cool", in a non-sarcastic sense. Classic stuff. Initially revered by millions, and later ridiculed after it had gone out of style. Now it was revered again. I felt inspired to dig Pyromania out of the dusty archives and play it again.

--

I looked at the clock. 18:20. I remembered that a Garbage special had been advertised to begin at 18:00. Behind the Music. A show so cheesy and formulaic that the series itself has been the subject of countless parodies and ridicule. <katz mode> A sign of the creatively bankrupt, crumbling empire that is America's music industry.</katz mode> But I wanted to watch it anyway, because I like Garbage.

I tuned in right as they were talking about how the three veteran producers/engineers of the recording industry, weary of the grunge movement they had helped to ignite, conspired to create "music" by layering pieces of audio that would ordinarily end up on the cutting room floor. Hence the title Garbage.

They found and teamed up with the dirt poor Shirley Manson, whose former band had fallen apart. She would write and sing her lyrics as the three dudes worked the pummeling, pounding machine of sonic vibrations that have become familiar to all Garbage fans. The show summarized the history of the production of all 3 albums. Shirley talked about her ongoing struggles with self esteem, even to the point of practicing self-mutilation during her teenage years (which helps to illuminate the motivation behind many of the lyrics).

I watched and enjoyed the show, which strangely made me feel like listening to all my Garbage albums for the Nth time. "Next on VH1. Ultimate Albums. Def Leppard. Pyromania." I left the tv on.

--

I awoke from bed. The twilight sun was peeking through between the blinds. Habitually, I stumbled over to Argo and checked Content Solutions. A comment by Jaeger indicated that he had submitted a patch to the Content Collective. I checked email. Sure enough. A patch to add navigation to the satellite map, submitted in actual "patch" form.

I verified that it worked as documented, and contemplated just blindly commiting the code. I decided that even though I trusted Jaeger's coding abilities (snicker), blindly committing would be an act of negligence on my part. So I went through it line by line, making a minor formatting change or two to aid my own comprehension, and found it straightforward. In it went.

I tested it out, found one piece of quirky behavior that might be considered a bug (involving zooming in after naving through the satellite), but it could be dealt with later. I announced the change, and released a new source tarball.

--

Was I sleeping? Had I slept? I stumbled out of bed in a state of incoherence. Mid-afternoon. I wandered to the kitchen, grabbed a bite of something or other to eat, and decided I felt like being a couch potato. I was skeptical that I would find anything of interest on any of the N-hundred channels, but I felt too lazy to get up, choose a dvd, and insert it. So I flipped on the cable box, and started mindlessy wandering through channels. Somehow or another, the dial ended up on channel 74. VH1. (That wouldn't have anything to do with 74 being in my pre-selected list of so-called favorites, would it? Impossible.)

Ancient home video footage of a child that looked about 6 years old singing her little heart out. A typical "before they were famous" type of show. Based on the footage, I couldn't guess who it was, so I hit the Info button. A biography documenting the life and times of Britney Spears. I gave the remote a rest.

The picture painted by the documentary would indicate that the ambitious youngster had stardom in her blood from the moment she exited the womb. The spirited youngster constantly pushed herself to excel to an extreme degree in singing, dance, and gymnastics. With the help of parents who were very supportive, she launched an early career acting in commercials, starring on Mickey Mouse Club videos, and participating in rising child star contests.

According to the portrayal, the parents did not push or pressure their daughter. She did more than plenty of that herself, and they merely helped her on her quest to achieve her ambitions. Not sure I totally buy that. But then again, how do you differentiate between parental influence and their offspring's own ideas with any child?

In this case, Britney idolized Madonna starting at an extremely early age, made up her mind to follow in those footsteps, and spent her entire childhood in relentless pursuit of that goal. An 8 year old with more drive and determination than most adults demonstrate in an entire lifetime. No wonder she makes so many people uncomfortable. I'm not saying it's entirely healthy. But intriguing? Certainly.

After an hour of that, there was nothing else on tv. I was feeling tired again, and since this is my official day to laze around and do nothing, I went back to bed.

--

I found myself naturally awake at an unusually early hour for a Sunday. Was it 0700 or 0800? Daylight savings time always confuses me until I get around to switching the clocks that require manual intervention. I remembered that I had been unsuccessful in syncing last night's movielog entry, so I decided to try to diagnose the problem.

Jaeger had attempted to talk me while I slept. Probably wanted to find out what was going on. I methodically went through the steps of narrowing down the problem. ssh tunnelling. Through trial, error, and a bit of research, I finally concluded that something in the ssh protocol depends on the hostname passed on the command line. If it doesn't resolve, it won't work, even if it is in the hosts file on the local machine. I switched my references from festing.org to rage.festing.org, and that seemed to fix things. (Jaeger also added an A record for festing.org afterwards, which makes sense.)

I played a game of Kohan, took a shower, and ate some leftovers. Having gotten up so early, I felt tired again, so I went back to bed.

--

Having watched Monster's Ball with an old friend, we discussed it for a while afterwards on the way to drop him off at his place. Although I could agree that it was a very well made movie, it inexplicably wierded me out in some ways. It wasn't because it portrayed an interracial couple (I like to think myself as enlightened beyond such petty silliness), but seeing the poor woman whose husband died on death row getting it on with the guard who killed him, reformed as he may have been after his own trauma, was just enough to tweak my sensibilities. Their reactions felt realistic, emotionally speaking, which may have added to my own disquiet, because it was believable. I guess good art will do that to you sometimes.

After a good talk, we parted ways, and I headed home to type my entry.

--

I departed the Castle Lair, and drove to the southern metro area to meet up with an old friend. Though I had to make use of the cell phone once, I managed to find my way to his place without much trouble. Since he hadn't yet eaten, we decided to go in Tobias so I could drive while he ate. We made our way to one of the best kept secret hiking spots near the southern denver area: Roxborough Park.

A 2 hour hike around the glorious rock formations which rival the Flatiorns in majesticness, concentrated into a much smaller area.

After the hike, we made our way to Park Meadows mall, where we wandered around for a while before eating at the food court. Then went for dessert at the world famous Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. While their ordinary doughnuts at the counter are nothing special, if you aske for one straight off the assembly line, still hot and fresh, it tastes quite delicious. Plus, they have the glass window where you can watch the entire process of thousands of doughnuts being fed through each step of the machine as they are created.

After dessert, we were off to the movies!

--

I woke up Saturday morning, remembering that I had made tentave plans to meet with an old friend later today. I showered, attempted to once again curtail the mess into which my kitchen had evolved, and cooked myself a pan of Delicious Dish. While I ate, I watched the commentary track for Romeo + Juliet.

Sure enough, right around 10:20, the phone rang. Specifics were arranged for meeting.

I watched the rest of the commentary track, got my stuff together, and departed.

--

The weekend was underway! Off work, I knew I would have to squeeze to finish what I had been putting off and still make it in time for the new Farscape. I journied to Boulder to wash Tobias. (Yes, I am crazy, but I love that particular car wash. Besides, Tobias throws a temper tantrum if we go anywhere else.)

I stopped by Target for some much-needed supplies, including a lightbulb, so my bedroom will not be in complete darkness anymore. (I really want to get a real lamp so I can have something besides that little reading light, which I still haven't done, but if I've gone six months without one, I can stand another month.)

I successfully made it back to the Lair, and turned on the tv seconds before the teaser started. An hour of Top Quality Television Programming ensued. The best, Jerry! The best.

Watched my Romeo and Juliet dvd, typed up an entry, and went to bed.

...

Prologue: While typing this rambling, I watched the first 20 minutes of the second airing of the Garbage Behind the Music special. Now I think I'll spend a few minutes in musical meditation before I rest, and prepare for the dawn of another work week.