With Apologies to Picnicface

Inspired by "Super Bingo"



Halifax Senior Center Song

Album releases this fall I'm stoked for

Tuesdays are only good for one thing, in my book. And that, my friends, is new records. Here are some key dates coming up:

September 22
Monsters of Folk - Monsters of Folk
Admittedly I only just found out about this indie supergroup of Jim James, M. Ward, and the one and only Conor Oberst (via Rainn Wilson's blip.fm page no less), but the concept alone has piqued my interest. Latter-day Traveling Wilburys? We'll see.

Not wowed by this, but holding out hope for better cuts. "Say Please"

September 29
The Swell Season - Strict Joy
Thoroughly enjoyed the film Once and the accompanying Oscar-winning tuneage provided by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. The man's got some serious pipes and the two of them are quite the team, even if they've moved on from the whole March - July romance thing.

This song isn't from the new album, but it's an awesome live Van Morrison cover they did that I listen to all the time. Enjoy. "Into the Mystic"

October 6
The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come
I'm a pretty big Mountain Goats fan, which is to say that I'm only mildly obsessive (unlike this guy). Bible verses as titles? Maybe a bit presumptuous. But I'll give JD the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, the cover art is SICK.

Reminds me of BNL's "The Old Apartment." A solid though not outstanding track. "Genesis 3:23"

Lucero - 1372 Overton Park
It's been far too long since Ben Nichols and company's last effort, 2006's Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers. Must say that I enjoy the whiskey-soaked, Southern rock-meets-country-meets-punk Americana purveyed by 'em and can't wait for their newest installment to drop.

Judging from this track, sounds like it was worth the wait. Awesome. "Hey Darling Do You Gamble?"

This video hits close to home in more ways than one.

Credit goes to The Glorious Hum, and in turn to Ryan's Smashing Life.

This team needs to have a melee...

...similar to this one.



Found this goodness over at SawxBlog.

Wake to DL, smells fishy but I'm cool with it

Back to blogging with a Sox-related post...

Call me crazy, but given Wake's history the past couple of seasons of breaking down in the second half, it's no surprise to me that the Red Sox today placed him on the 15-day DL with a "lower back strain." Sounds like they wanted to give him some recovery time tacked onto the All-Star break. Meanwhile, it's nice to see Buchholz getting a few more starts to prove he belongs, and hopefully nail down a rotation spot for the second half. Smoltz has not been a significant upgrade from Dice-K to this point, Penny has slipped a bit, and Wake, sorry to say it, is due for a bit of additional regression in the 2nd half, so nice to see Clay come up and hopefully strengthen the rotation. Letting him rot at AAA was stunting his development at this point, honestly. While not stellar, last Friday's 5 2/3 inning, 1 ER performance against Toronto was more than good enough, and better than what we've seen from anyone else in the rotation thusfar in the second half. That said, the Sox could still use a bat, but that's a discussion for another day.
[UPDATE: I was super wrong about Wake. He ended up having ugly bone chips in his back and only made four starts of progressively declining quality down the stretch.]

A pseudo-intellectual analysis of the demerits of microblogging

Of late, it would appear that I have filled the void left by my temporary abandonment of the blog by resorting to micro-blogging via Twitter, which is all well and good except that I frequently find myself going over the character limit, which forces me to make a statement over multiple posts or to my original statement in such a way as to distort or diminish its meaning and impact. My experience with Twitter over the last month has reinforced in my mind the fact that I thoroughly dislike saying something in the bare minimum of words needed to say it. For the better part of a decade I have been self-taught in the art of rehashing material and employing lofty word choices in order to get that all-important paper within striking distance of the minimum page requirement. These devices first employed at school have carried over to my other forms of expression, so much so that as the years have gone by I have developed an almost conversationally crippling predilection to give long rambling answers to simple questions in which I very frequently say little of any real value.

As such, the limits that Twitter (and to a lesser degree, text messaging) imposes on my communications are a drastic change from my expressive norms, and whose negotiation proves cumbersome. While I suppose that tweeting has its place, I have a certain fondness for the grandiose phrasing and wandering prose that have now become permanently cemented as trademarks of my communications with the outside world.

And so I blog.

(And that whole narcissism thing's a turn-off too. Which is not to say that I won't continue tweeting, I just don't want it to become a problem.)

importance of living quarters > importance of blogging

Hello all. The blog has been sadly neglected these recent weeks, in large part due to the following pieces of excitement in my life:

a) the apartment I was going to move into burned down two days before I got the chance (here's some pictures)
b) had to find a new apartment to live in
c) had to move my belongings into new apartment

But now that I'm simply unpacking, I can re-prioritize my life and resume a pursuit with little point! Posts of greater merit are forthcoming.