The Nousian Ramblings

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Can I Play With Madness? Apparently...

Put them in the Iron Maiden.

Awesome!

Think I may need to scale it back a tad for next year. Had to purchase scroll saw blades to get this one done.

Also discovered that ice cream scoops work far better than spoons for scooping out the inside and thinning the walls of the 'kin.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: 2 Minutes To Midnight -- Iron Maiden

I Remain
Just a quick note that Paradise Lost -- the gothic metal band, not the Milton poem -- has been rocking me ever since I got their latest CD, Faith Divides Us (Death Unites Us). They've been around forever, but have gone through enough evolutions in their overall sound that I'd never paid much attention to them because when they showed up on recommendation lists I'd inevitably find the wrong sample for comparison. Feeling doomy?...here's a more darkwavey track. Want something industrial?...here's an early metal track. That sort of thing. Fortunately for me I ran across a sample track from their new album and proceded to play the crap out of it.

Their current incarnation is a melodic doomy metal with tinges of Metallica back when Metallica still sounded huge and angry. They manage to be accessible and commercial while still inducing uncontrollable headbanging and maintaining musical complexity.

I am so hoping they make it over to this side of the pond before we leave SoCal. I want to see them live -- preferably with Katatonia or Insomnium or Daylight Dies or Swallow the Sun in support. Rawk!

Current Mood: aggro
Current Music: Frailty -- Paradise Lost

Ow...
I'm not teaching any classes this year in college while I'm on a dissertation fellowship. My job is to write. This frees up a lot of the attention that planning a class uses up. It's also a recipe to go stir crazy because if I never have to leave the house, chances are that I won't.

So I decided to do something I've wanted to do for years and signed up for a martial arts class at the campus rec center. It's a Filipino Martial Arts class taught by a master in Giron Arnis Escrima. So for two hours tonight I got to practice knife attacks and defenses, wrist locks, not to mention feeling lost and roaching my quads. It's good for the soul of a near-Ph.D. to be reminded of what it's like to be a freshman and to have actual freshmen who are doing better.

Not sure how I'll be moving tomorrow, though, despite running and rowing three times a week. Those stances may be the death of me. Not that I ever get to work on a stance in isolation anyhow. It's all combinations of steps and grabs and blocks and shifting levels all at once. The rubber knives are a nice reminder, however, of what the stakes would be in a real situation. This is a wicked deadly art and failure will kill you faster than a stance ever will.

Not sure if I like it yet, but I respect it. That's a start.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: A Subtle Violence - Daylight Dies

Idjits

So with all the test firing and trash talking that KJ Illin and N Korea have been doing there's a bunch of chest thumpers running around on some of the fora talking about how we need to go in there and teach them a lesson.

With which military? The one currently in Iraq? The one in Afghanistan? The ones back here after multiple tours trying to get back up to strength and get a break from their combat stress? The one's trying to re-tool after having a bunch of their stuff destroyed in combat?

NK is not trivial. Bugfuck insane, perhaps, but not trivial. And as we are now it will be a few years before the military is back in any shape for another can of worms. The people we have in there right now need a break.

I'm really beginning to think we need to bring back the draft so that the dumbasses with compensation issues might stop playing macho with other people's lives. I guarantee they would not be talking that line of trash if their own asses were going to be parked on the front line. Having volunteers makes it too easy for morons to spend unseen lives with no concern for cost.

Go watch some MMA, ya primates. Leave the damn military alone.

Current Mood: irritated
Current Music: Plasmaterial -- Sybreed

New Addition

Permanent alteration...

The design is a Finnish variant of Thor's Hammer, (ukonvasara in Finnish after) and it is based off of a pendant found in the Old Castle of Lieto near Turku, Finland. The castle dates back to the Late Bronze Age, but the pendant was found with other goods believed to have been buried by the Norse rather than the Finns somewhere around 800 CE. The design is an old one associated with the Battleaxe culture that flourished c. 1500 CE -- a boat shaped stone axe with a blade on one end and a hammer on the other. It seems to have had some magical or ceremonial significance, since these axes continued to be buried in higher status graves even after they had been replaced in practical use by metal axes. The boat shaped battleaxe is associated with lightning, and thus with justice and swift retribution, but also (interestingly enough) with healing in both Baltic and Finno-Scandian folklore.

Links take you to larger versions in the gallery.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Alone -- Amorphis

Swallow the Sun, Warbringer, Darkane, Soilwork at The Jumping Turtle in San Marcos.

Cin and I went to this concert mostly to see Swallow the Sun, who are a Finnish doom metal band. We also like some of Soilwork's stuff, so it's not like the rest of the concert would be wasted. Neither one of us knew much about Warbringer or Darkane beyond that the former is a Cali thrash band and the latter is a thrash/melodeath band from Sweden. Okay.

Never been to the Jumping Turtle, but it looked to be a small venue that does lots of smaller metal shows. When we arrived there 1.5 hours ahead of the show we found that 'small' was the operative term here. The place was tiny. It was also open as a bar/restaurant, so we went in and ordered a beer and parked at a table by the dance floor. As luck would have it we were at the table right next to Swallow the Sun, not that I recognized the lead singer with his glasses on. Not like we'd want to disturb them anyway. I recognize the bassist and the guitarists when they come in to set up the stage. We get to sit through the soundcheck.

About a half hour before the show the promoter came up and talked to us to see if we would mind moving to clear the floor (and because we needed to get wristbands for the show). Cin went outside and I slammed my beer and while I was doing that she commented that it wasn't cool we were headed to the back of the line. True, says the bouncer and gets us our wristbands and lets us in first.

Meanwhile, someone has bought a round of vodka shots for Swallow the Sun and the rest of the band convinces the lead singer that we had done it, so he comes over and chats with us for a bit. Totally cool guy. Very laid back and self depricating.

StS's set was good. Very dignified and heavy. They have a symphonic sound that came across well live, despite the vocals getting buried in a room with low ceilings and room for maybe 450 people if you packed in and became a fire hazard. The band looked a little cramped on-stage, with six members stuffed in front of all Soilwork's equipment and one of the guitarists was nearly hitting his head on an overhang whenever he started headbanging. They rocked.

Warbringer was sort of old school American speed thrash. Not my cuppa, but they seemed like cool guys and they did a good job with their music, so... The crowd was into them and it was the start of the all night mosh pit. One foolhardy soul tried to get a mosh going during StS, but he got shut down hard. No such reservations for Warbringer. I spent most of their 45 minutes on the edge of the pit trying to protect my beer.

Darkane was as thrashy as Warbringer, but more melodic. They actually made a good bridge between Warbringer thrash and Soilwork's brand of melodeath tinged metalcore. They rocked hard and pretty much doubled the size of the pit during their hour.

We caught the guys from Swallow the Sun again in between sets. I flashed their guitarists the horns as they came past and they saw my Amorphis shirt and stopped to thank us for coming out. They weren't happy with the show...I think because of the sound, the cramped space, and the lack of stage lights, but we reassured them that we had enjoyed ourselves. Again, very cool guys. I'll go see them again whenever I get the chance.

Soilwork sounded really good once they hit the stage. Bern's vocals got buried a bit again, but he was still tearing it up pretty fierce and Dirk Verbeuren was -- as always -- a drum god. Their set was a mix of old and new stuff partially selected by their online fans. Very high energy. Unfortunately we had to bail before the end of the show to make the drive back North. Daylight savings sucks.

Good show. Fun venue. Cool bands. I'd call that a success.

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Plague of Butterflies -- Swallow the Sun

Meshuggah

Rocked. *** \m/ O_o \m/ *** Which is not easy to do at the House of Mouse (a.k.a. the House of Blues - Anaheim).

"Attention guests, stage diving, moshing and headwalking are dangerous and are not permitted at this venue. Violators will be ejected and not be allowed re-entry." Or something like that repeated in English and Spanish over the loudspeaker before both Cynic and Meshuggah took the stage. The HoM is a wet blanket on any show, but this was Meshuggah, so...

Actually, there was little chance that anyone would start stagediving during Cynic's set. They were too jazzy and melodic to generate much in the way of aggression. I think they would have been a better opener for Opeth, but Meshuggah has its jazzier side too (as witnessed by Fredrik Thordendal's amazing, and amazingly out-there, solo album) and Cynic was a welcome discovery. I think that almost half of the crowd at the show must have been musicians of some stripe and a big chunk of them had come to see Cynic's "first tour in fifteen years." Nice set with good energy, but not what you would exactly call 'rocking'.

Within seconds of Meshuggah hitting the stage you knew that the crew at the HoM had their work cut out for them. Meshuggah are a brutal, polyrhythmic, technical-death-metal machine. I think the first mosh started during the second song ('Bleed') and only got bigger from there, so by the time they hit 'Future Breed Machine' over an hour later in the encore the moshing had filled the whole middle third of the pit and people were crowd surfing.

The sound was pretty clear, given two guitarists on eight-strings and a bassist all tuned down to A and locked in some otherworldly stutter-step groove. I have no freaking idea how they do it. It would be amazing if it were just Thomas Haake on the drums cranking out those freaky rhythms (since he has an extra, astral hand and counts in base 33), but it's the whole band. Five guys locked into some off-kilter beat that you can somehow still manage to headbang to.

Speaking of...ow, my neck and shoulders. Skit ocksa!

Jens, the lead vocalist, complained all night that he couldn't hear the crowd. No big surprise given that a) the acoustics in the HoM are decent for the PA, but swallow most everything else and b) L.A. crowds are a little quiet to start with. Part of it is the whole jaded thing that comes with seeing pretty much every band that makes it past New York, but a big chunk of it is also, I think, that L.A. crowds don't want to look uncool and spend a lot of time feeling self-conscious. Whatever. I came away hoarse, sore, and happy. Even Cin, who is not a big fan for casual listening thought it was an awesome show. No worries, Jens, y'all were brutal and we loved you.

Next up, Swallow the Sun, Darkane, and Soilwork in San Matteo, provided the promoter ever manages to put the tickets on-sale.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Rational Gaze -- Meshuggah

Winter Swallows the Sun

Winter Solstice- sunset over Catalina Island...

Links take you to larger versions in the gallery.

Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: These Low Lands -- Swallow the Sun

Proper Music for the Hagstrom

Since

mattshortforbob didn't approve of me playing metal on the Hagstrom, I figure I should share a right-and-proper version of the bit I am currently ~~practicing~~ mangling...

Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett using a Sustainer to maximum effect. No one else I've heard has quite that combination of slow bend and shaky vibrato -- I thought he used a slide until I saw the video. Just amazing tone in those hands of his. One of my favorites.

Current Mood: awed
Current Music: Firth of Fifth -- Genesis

Concertage
Ow. Metal takes more out of you when you are just North of 40. Lamb of God last night. Rocked. Good show, but not a favorite band like Opeth or Amorphis. Amazing energy, though. At one point there were three circles going in the mosh pit.

Good year for concerts...NIN, Opeth, Amorphis, Lamb of God and all attendant openers good and bad. Santa should definitely bring gifts to Samael and Job for a Cowboy, both of whom were solid, and Baroness is better live than on record.

Coming up next: Meshuggah in early Feb. and Soilwork/Swallow the Sun in early March. Not sure how Disturbed fits into the picture. They roll through the same week as Meshuggah but two days earlier and on a weeknight, which is bad, but in the fourth week of Winter Quarter, which is not so bad. Guessing it will come down to Cin's flail level where Disturbed is concerned. We missed them the last round.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Straws Pulled At Random -- Meshuggah

Guitar Porn

Finally got some decent pictures of the baby. Guitars are a bear to photograph and shiny guitars are doubly so because of all the glare. But at long last...

Slightly more accurate color:

Headstock:

Neck inlays (Mother-of-pearl *and* abalone):

Links take you to larger versions in the gallery.

Did I mention that it sounds awesome and plays great? (Even with my hackish attempts at music.)

Current Mood: metal
Current Music: When I Was You -- Green Carnation

Better Late Than Never

Jack'08'lantern

Creepy cover art from Katatonia's "Deliberation" single.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Deliberation -- Katatonia

Quick Follow-up On Cin's NIN Post

Words do indeed fail to describe the Total Media of NIN's show. Fortunately, we have pirate video:

One of the coolest of the songs for FX: Ghosts 19 ...it's from another show (Toronto), but still pretty much the same as what we saw at the Forum, except we were on the left side, rather than the right.

And just because it rocked...Reptile!

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Echoplex -- Nine Inch Nails

I Am...

...teaching. It's the middle of Summer Session II and the students are all about to hand in their first research paper. Normal quarter is 10 weeks. SS2 is 5 weeks. Syllabus is the same. Needless to say, they are all feeling a bit rushed at this point and there's still one more paper to write in the next week-and-a-half. Somehow they don't hate me. Yet.

...not getting as much done on my prospectus as I would have liked. Teaching really fucks with my attention and priorities. It's not that I'm making no progress so much as that I'm busy trying to figure out which six of the eighteen things I want to do will actually work together and create a coherent dissertation. I just read a couple books that turned some things on end and I'm still trying to get things put back in their new order. Not easy to do when I'm answering a dozen questions about theses and how to cite a wikipedia article about a youtube hip hop dance video interpretation of an academic journal article that was reprinted online on a think tank's website. I'm running an older processor. It doesn't do multitasking very well.

...listening to new music yet again. This time it's Swallow the Sun and Daylight Dies -- more cheerful gothic/death/doom metal from Northern Europe. Well, okay, Swallow the Sun is Finnish, but Daylight Dies is actually from North Carolina. They just sound like they are from Sweden. Both are worth checking out if you have a soft spot in your heart for heavy, melancholy music without the emo/metalcore flavor-of-the-month posturing of the current American crop or tEh Tr00 Br00T@1Z of the niche metal crowd. Also got Cin some Katatonia b-sides and remixes for her birthday, all of which were as cool as anything on their last album. Good, crunchy, gloomy stuff.

...playing guitar some again. Because it gives me something creative to do that has nothing to do with academia. Not that I play worth a damn, but that's not the point. Besides, Cin gave me the green light to spend a bit more than we had planned on an amazing guitar deal, so now I have a new (and beautiful) electric to play with.

Me = happy. Cin = sainthood.

More later, maybe -- probably more blathering about the guitar. Meanwhile, I have work to do.

Current Mood: rushed
Current Music: Descending -- Daylight Dies

Junot Díaz on writing...
For Cin and all you other frustrated writers on the list, taken from a Junot Díaz interview in The Improper Bostonian:

"Writing is this thing I wish I didn't have to do, and yet no matter how much I resist it always pulls me back. Like a really fucked up old friend with a huge bag of coke."

Current Mood: headachy
Current Music: Beneath the Mire -- Opeth

Book Meme....not

Not doing the book meme because, having had to put together my own lists for grad school and go through the whole MA exam thing I think that the list itself is not particularly interesting -- just a bunch of random books thrown together. It needs more 18th C. works for coverage and is entirely lacking in medieval or classical lit and it has no poetry. It has too much Dickens and Austen and the boring Brontë (well, unless you count their brother, Branwell, in the mix).

So, instead, how about we suggest alternatives to works that are on the list that either expand its coverage in areas where it's inadequate or provide better alternatives that fit the same niche as another work already on the list?

I'll start...Dan Brown? Puh-LEASE. It's derivative crap that rips off Holy Blood, Holy Grail and it reads about as easily as one-legged drunk dances. I'd replace it with either Umberto Eco's superior, (albeit flawed), Foucault's Pendulum or any early Thomas Pynchon or Don Delillo's Libra. Those are at least good conspiracy novels.

Patching coverage problems, how about adding Zamyatin, Bulgakov, Zola, Flaubert, Kafka, Woolf, Defoe, Fielding, Hemingway, Faulkner, Twain, London, Shelley, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Aphra Behn, Charlotte or Anne Brontë, Solzhenitsyn, Eliot, Pound?

How about some better science fiction? How about some good modern horror? What Agatha Christie should be on the list?

Suggestions? Here's your soapbox. Delete and add.

Talk to me.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: The Empty Skies -- Swallow the Sun

Yes, indeed, I think I liked this June 3rd.

Okay, so technically June 3rd started for me on June 2nd. I should probably explain...

June 3rd was the official release date for both Disturbed's latest, (Indestructible), and Opeth's latest, (Watershed). I've been far more psyched about Opeth than Disturbed, so I jumped at the opportunity to preorder Watershed a few weeks back in the hopes that I'd qualify for the limited edition poster as well. Alas, I am neither a big enough, nor (evidently) a quick enough fanboy to have been one of the first 750.

Sob.

On the bright side, however, The End Records had to make sure that the CDs all arrived in the fans' hands by the release date, so they mailed them out last week, and my CD arrived over the weekend while we were in Berkeley doing The Big Read again. So I got to listen to the CD a day before its official release during my office hours on Monday. Quite cool.

I was a little disappointed on first listen, but that disappointment has gone away with subsequent listens. It's a really excellent album -- alternately majestic and soaring or crushingly heavy with a healthy dose of experimental and quirky thrown in for variety. I think I was waiting to get that jaw-dropping amazed feeling that I got from listening to Blackwater Park the first time, and I don't think that will happen again because, six CDs into Opeth now, I expect Opeth to amaze me, and I had already heard the one song on the album (The Lotus Eater) that was most likely to do that two weeks earlier. Now that I've settled into it, though, I think this is going to be spending as much time on my earbuds as Ghost Reveries and Blackwater Park did early on. It's definitely one of their best and it does mark an exciting transition in the band's sound.

The new Disturbed is good, too, mind. I think it's on par with the last and they haven't yet become a mainstream parody of themselves the way that many platinum selling bands do after a couple #1 albums. They haven't gotten comfortable. They're still hungry, which is great because I do fear for them sometimes. They are one of those bands that could either burn out or descend into self-parody without some really careful balancing. So far they keep managing that balance.

So June 3rd gave me a solid release from Disturbed and another favorite album from Opeth. It's a great prelude to the start of the summer and the chance to irritate the hell out of everyone that pulls up next to us at a stoplight with the windows down. \m/

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: The Lotus Eater -- Opeth

Games. Work. Music.

Am currently playing my way through Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers after a long delay called exams. Interesting game, though not quite as good as the first one. It's shed some realistic constraints in favor of a more explicitly video game oriented experience. I hate it when games increase difficulty by either decreasing their believability (waves of enemies who are better shooting you with an AK when you are moving than you are shooting them with an AR when they are standing still) or just reducing the number of save points (the absolute cheesiest way to raise difficulty). Still, it's fun, even if it gets a bit frustrating.

Second thing on the list of recent developments. I'm teaching a prototype for a new writing class this Summer (or a new version of an existing class, more like). This means that I'll be making new course plans for the second quarter in a row. And it might be three in a row if I get the course I applied for in the Fall. It's more work, but it's also more engaging and I like that the students are coming to things fresh rather than having to do the same assignments that all their friends have already completed with all the attendant temptation to copy sources and papers. Am also trying to put together ideas for a panel proposal for next year's big composition conference.

Third -- lots of music stuff going on. Just got tickets for the fall Amorphis tour (with Samael, Leave's Eyes and Virgin Black). Am skipping the Dream Theater/Opeth concert in favor of holding out for Opeth's headline tour in support of their new album coming out in June.

Yeah, Opeth. ( \m/ Metal Inside \m/ )

Current Mood: metal
Current Music: Porcelain Heart -- Opeth

Paean to Artemisia

As promised by

cinnabari:

It all started with the November 2005 Wired article on absinthe...

Okay, it probably started before that, what with my gothic past and love for Oscar Wilde, but it was the Wired article that put me past all the sordid legends surrounding absinthe and made me want to try it for myself. It only fanned the fire on the cube when

zero_gravity and

thebigbad got some a while back and tried it. I've been wishing for a taste ever since, but the internet stores were a bit more than I wanted to spend on something I might not like.

I hadn't really thought about absinthe before heading to New Orleans this weekend, despite it being the home of the guy in the Wired article, but when we met with one of our panel members on Thursday she mentioned that her husband and she had heard that absinthe had been legalized in NOLA and that there was a place that served it in the French Quarter. So I was, like, "Oh, hells yeah!"

Turns out it wasn't just any place. It was the Old Absinthe House -- built in 1820, named in 1874, and visited by a host of literary giants.

If only I had known all this when we went there Thursday night. It would have been even cooler.

Cin has already described the ritual -- pour an ounce of absinthe (Lucid, made by Breaux, the guy from the Wiki article) over the sugar cube on the absinthe spoon and into the glass; light the cube, now soaked with the potent (124 proof) spirit, on fire and let it burn out; pour ice water over the cube and into the absinthe, dissolving the sugar; add water until the mixture begins to cloud as the water releases the herbal escences from suspension in the alcohol; stir and enjoy.

Absinthe is unlike any other alcohol I have ever had. It's more potent than your average 80-90 proof standby and it is chock full o' herbs like Chartreuse or Jagermeister or Aquavit. Lucid is light on the anise and heavy on the fennel, giving it a sweetish licorice flavor. I'm not the biggest fan of licorice, but I liked it better than Jager, and I've drunk plenty of that, so that wasn't about to stop me.

And the buzz...Cin is right, it's not like a regular alcohol buzz. Absinthe elevates your mood and leaves you feeling altered, but still on your center. It's no wonder why Wilde compared it to a sunset. It's calming and sublime. I'd love to try more.

I may get my wish. Absinthe isn't just legal in New Orleans, it's legal in most of the US now that distillers can control the thujone content and keep it within the legal limit of 10mg/L. I checked and I can buy Lucid and 3 Kubler at the local BevMo if I'm willing to pay as much for a bottle as a good 12 yr. old single malt or cognac.

But first I need to find a good absinthe spoon.

Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: A Fair Judgement -- Opeth

Update-ish Thing -- On Becoming ABD

Better late than never. Just getting dug out from under all the crap I've let slide for the last few weeks, which is why this news is a couple days late.

Tuesday and Thursday of the last week of February were the written phase of my Ph.D. qualifying exams -- six questions on material drawn from a list of 100 or so books to be answered over a total of eight hours split between two days. I was pretty panicky on the preceding Sunday, but settled down more the closer I got to the actual test. The first day (questions on American Lit since WWII) went pretty smoothly. The second day (questions on Literary Theory and Technology in Literature) was a little rougher. Theory is hard to write, and write about, under the most ideal circumstances. It's a lot more dense and concentrated than writing about literature because each statement requires a lot more supporting explanation to clarify the nuances. Whatever the case, I managed to get through it all with some semblance of dignity, then got to grade and comment on student essays over the weekend while waiting to hear back from my exam chair whether or not they were going to go ahead and schedule the oral exams based on my written answers.

(Cin, just for the record, was a rock throughout, despite my panicky moments on Sunday, and kept everything going while I was obsessing over preparing for the orals.)

I found out in an email on Monday that my committee had approved the orals. I probably would have found out in person from my chair, but in all the panic I got my meeting day with her screwed up and didn't talk to her until Tuesday. She reassured me that I would do fine and sent me off to relax a bit.

Last Friday was my oral examination: two hours of questions on War Literature drawn from another list of 50 books (and any follow-up questions on my written answers) from a panel of five professors working in that area.

Well, more like 1.5 hours of questions when you subtract the 15 minutes of pacing outside the room while they discuss my written answers and the 10 at the end of the time where I was back on the balcony again while they were deciding whether I passed or not.

I'm not so sure that they should let the examinees anywhere near a balcony during those ten minutes.

Anyway. The last five minutes of the two hours were me being congratulated by my committee and signing all the paperwork for the Dean notifying him that I had passed and was authorized to begin work on my dissertation.

I am now officially a Ph.D. candidate. Now all I have to do is write the damn dissertation.

And that I know I can do.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Journey Through Pressure -- Katatonia