I've been accepted to the University of Maryland. However, it was to the M.A. in math education program, not the Ph.D. I think that's because their Ph.D. program assumes a masters degree instead of being an entire bachelors to doctorate program. I'd still be able to get an assistantship, so it's not much of a difference.
"The Ecstasy of Influence" by Jonathan Lethem, a fascinating exploration of copyright, influence and plagiarism. If anything sums up the importance of the copyfight/open culture movement without resorting to tech-speak, it's this. This is a very important article, I think. And maybe it will do some part in toppling the tyranny of ownership within my lifetime.
Now that we're over a month into 2007, I think it's time for me to make some wildly speculative predictions of various levels of seriousness on what will be hot this year.
TYPING IN ALL CAPS WITH NO PUNCTUATION BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THAT CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL
There's a party at my house on Friday. It's my friend Vanessa's birthday, so I'm throwing a shindig. I'll have some fucking awful beer for you to drink as punishment for not bringing your own. Also, I will be doing something I've never done before: DJing live. Expect a mix of electro, techno, disco, hyphy, dated dancepunk, old funk & soul, rotten mashups, boring indie rock, dreadful novelty tracks and trance. Lots and lots of trance. Watch me awkwardly beatmatch via laptop & turntable until I get drunk or bored and just put on a DJ set I downloaded off the internet.
I heard back from my first school today. I have been accepted to Michigan State. They don't know exactly what kind of deal they can offer me yet, but at the very least I'll have a 2 year Teaching Assistantship. The department has recommended me for several fellowships, but the decision is made by the college, not the department. MSU is not my first choice, but this is still good news.
I also send out the last parts of my applications to University of New Hampshire and Arizona State University today. I might be applying to University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as well. I wasn't aware of their program until the deadline had already passed, but they said they'll accept my application anyway.
I sold a Sunn0))) shirt for $30 to some dude in Germany. Germans love metal! And David Hasselhoff! I sold some old Marvel trading cards for 15 cents. I sold fairly beat up action figures of Ash & Evil Ash for $5.50.
I also listed a bunch more books on Amazon & Half.com. I scanned across my shelf looking for books that I don't really care about anymore and ended up with a pretty good stack. People have already bought my copies of Fight Club and War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Any books that don't sell by the end of the semester will be sold at the Dickson St. Bookshop or given away.
I keep finding more things that I can sell. I'm going to list some more band t-shirts tonight, an old cable descrambler and a Japanese DVD of Canadian wrestling. (Cam: Do you have any interest in this? It's Stampede Wrestling.)
I've also decided that I'm going to sell that Toothpaste for Dinner painting, but not for a while. I want to build up my eBay rating before I sell something that might go for a pretty large sum.
Also, does anybody know anything about selling clothes to Cheap Thrills? I've got some more band shirts that I want to get rid of that I doubt would sell on eBay, as they are still in print.
"Imagine the GOP nomination going to Rudy Giuliani--practically a Democrat at this point, with no apparent inclination to paper over his past positions or to pander to the religious right a la McCain--and in response the wingnuts break off and run Sam Brownbutt as the nominee of the brand new American Constitutionalist Taxpayers' Party of Jesus, splitting the already dwindling Republican base and delivering a 20 point victory to the Democratic nominee, who might as well be named Abortion T. McGayGay for all the difference it'll make. Just... savor the image for a moment." source
It's a twee rap ode to pussy...cat that is. I ended up writing a long review of it for Foxy Digitalis that will go up next week so I won't say much now. Basically this is the kind of song you'd play at a library to make the cute girl who owns a cat and works at the bookstore shake her booty.
It's made by two guys from Providence. The Prov is weird.
If your question is "Ed, what have you been doing recently?", my answer is in three parts:
Watching Battlestar Galactica
Last week, I was looking for something to watch on the internet before I went to bed. I put on an episode of Battlestar Galactica (the new series, not the old one) from Quicksilver Screen with no expectations and was blown away. I've watched the opening mini-series, the first season of the full series and the first three episodes of the second season and I have come to the conclusion that it is the best science fiction TV series ever. It's got great writing, great characters, great acting, great design. Hell, even the cinematography is good.
Selling things on eBay
I mentioned previously that I sold a lot of books. Well, the selling has continued. Last week, I listed 8 of things on eBay. 7 of them sold. The only one that didn't was a loose action figure of the Sea Captain from the Simpsons. Some went for more than I though (8 bucks for 7 loose pro wrestling figures from 1999!), some went for less (only $4 for a sealed, mint copy of Wolf Eyes' "Stabbed in the Face" 12"), but overall I was happy with it and made about $45.
After that success, I've decided to try to sell even more of my stuff. I really need to pare down my possessions in preparation for my move. Right now, my target is clothing. I'm selling two shirts on ebay that I only wore once because they were too small. One is TV on the Radio and the other is SunnO))). The SunnO)) think I might get a pretty good price for. I have few other shirts that are practically unworn, but I don't think they'd go for much on eBay. I doubt anybody is looking on eBay for a Metal Urbain or The Advantage t-shirt. I have a closet filled with shirts that I don't wear anymore (or that don't fit anymore), but most of them are pretty worn out. Maybe I'll see if Cheap Thrills will give me something for the ones in decent shape. Otherwise, I'm going to make a big donation at some charity thrift store.
Another item I'm considering selling is a painting I have by Drew of Toothpaste For Dinner. About a year and half ago, Drew did a set of 12 8x10 paintings that he sold for $70 a piece. It happened right after I got a new job and had some money. So I bought one. I was a big Toothpaste for Dinner fan at the time. It's kinda cool, but not that cool. And mostly just sits on top of my bookcase reminding me that I spent $70 on it. So I think I might sell it, but only if I can make some money on it. I'll have to do some eBay research and find the best method to sell it, as I want to minimize my risk and maximize my reward.
Also, I think I'm going to sell my childhood memories on eBay. My childhood memories will consist of a big box of old Star Trek and comic book memorabilia. Maybe I'll get $.99 for it and make some money on Shipping & Handling.
Drinking Beer 30.
I went to Liquor Mart a while back and saw a big case of beer called Beer 30. Its slogan was "Anytime is the right time". It came in a 30 pack, naturally, and was only $15. So I bought it. It's pretty bad, but not as bad as you'd think. I'd say its about on par with Natural Light. I don't plan to buy it again for personal consumption, but next time I have a party...
The other day Shaun told me that Spun had a couple of copies of Neil Young's After the Goldrush, which is the only of his classic albums that I don't have on vinyl. (I now have every Young album on vinyl up through Trans except Zuma, which is one of the hardest to find for some reason, and this double LP soundtrack to his purportedly awful movie Journey Through the Past.)
Any, so I went to Spun to buy a copy. I skimmed the new bin and saw a few things I'd been looking for. And then I saw it.
A box of records marked FREE!
Needless to say, I jumped on it. And I got some awesome scores!
This weird quasi-bootleg Rod Stewart compilation called 16 Early Hits. A Stone Poneys compilation that was released as Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys to capitalize on her new fame. Harry Chapin's last album. Hamilton, Joe Frank & Dennison's sole album under that name (they were originally Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds and had some hits) Asia's flop of a second album Alpha A Phil Collins-era Genesis album. But the real winners are these two stone cold 80s pop classics:
I've had another blog over at http://www.uglymusic.org for a while now. I used to just use it to post my radio show playlists, but I decided to use it for another thing now. Record sharity.
Like most record geeks, I've got my fair share of rare and out of print vinyl. I now have a really good turntable, so I've started ripping that stuff to my computer. I'll be doing about a post a week, I think, but I've started off with two: a Les Rallizes Denudes bootleg and a pair of singles on Lloyd Price’s Turntable from ‘69.
Like sakuraamplifier, I know in advance that I'm moving in several months. And like sakuraamplifier, I sold some bullshit yesterday. When I was in Mena, I brought up a box full of old books that had been sitting on a shelf in my parents house for a very long time. I sold most of them at the Dickson St. Bookshop yesterday. They were going to give me either 32 cash or 48 credit. I chose to split it and got 20 credit and 18 cash. I had also brought up a few old textbooks to sell. I also had a few textbooks laying around my place that I'd been meaning to sell for a while. So I took all those to the Dickson St. Book Exchange, and they gave me 52 bucks. So I got a total of 90 bucks just for getting rid of some old bullshit!
The money got me all in selling mode, so I looked up the textbooks that I couldn't sell back on Amazon. I listed them, and one of them just sold a few minutes ago. Bye bye old Japanese textbook. Hello $36.15!
Now, if there was only a way that I could turn a big stack of old Star Trek novels into money. Seriously though, anybody want some old Star Trek novels? Anybody?
Here's some classic gospel from Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The electric guitar solo she rips into about halfway through will have you jumpin' and shoutin' "hallelujah!".
The line has always been that I hate lyrics. Which isn't entirely true, I just generally don't care or even notice what people are singing about, even if I know the lyrics and am singing along. An exception to this is when lyrics are so ridiculous or banal that they are impossible to ignore and make the song unbearable. Example: Bright Eyes songs, "positive" indie hip hop, faux-epic 90s alternative rock, etc.
Another exception is when I actively like the lyrics of the music that I am listening to. There's a fairly short list of songwriters whose lyrics are a main reason why I enjoy their music. And I realized that the general thread that ties them all together is that they use narrative. I don't enjoy reading poetry, I enjoy reading prose; so I'd really rather hear a person sing what amounts to rhyming prose or is at least an allegory rather than just a series of metaphors and similes. I love allegory.
Now, I don't enjoy all or exclusively narrative lyricism. There's plenty of counter examples on either side. It's a common thread, not a hard law. And there are a few specific types of songwriting styles that I am particularly fond of. Traditional country lyrics of the heartbreaking kind always break my heart. I do love the epic fantasy tales of traditional and power metal. And I have special fondness for two kinds of male songwriters: the manly, but intellectual, songwriters of the 70s (Newman, Nilsson, Springsteen, Cohen, etc.) and the nerdy male songwriter who tells first person stories that may or may not be about himself archetype that Jonathan Richman invented and that can be seen today in Stephin Meritt, Jens Lekman, Don Lennon and Jeffrey Lewis.
Which brings me to my point. I've been listening to a lot Jeffrey Lewis recently and I wanted to share this particularly excellent song that I listened to today. Its directness hit me pretty hard and I connected with it in a way I haven't with a song in a while.
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