Goodbye Blogger

Due to the fact that Blogger is the devil and shut down my blog for well over a week, I've moved to Wordpress along with all my old posts.

I have a new obsession

Pugs in costumes. I think they're amazing. They're cute, funny, and ridiculous. They have these ugly faces that are angry, disheveled, but somehow achieve adorable. And the costumes are what really set it off though. They manage a strange combination of horrifying and sickening and wonderful. Anyways, here are some favorites of mine:

A Favorite Recipe of Mine

I'm going to take a break from writing about music and write about something I love making. WARNING: I use no real measurements so be prepared to guesstimate. It's a delicious soft taco type recipe, so you need ground beef (just a regular sized grocery store thingy should do), a green pepper, small tortillas, butter, taco seasoning, and cinnamon. Yes, cinnamon. I'll get to that.

Now because I'm either lazy or unoriginal, I like frying everything. So the first thing you want to do is heat up a frying pan with a slap of butter in it. Yes, slap. That is a very technical term that is equivalent to 4.32 snicks. What I mean is, just put some butter in. Once that butter is nice and melted and bubbly, go ahead and drop the ground beef in. Stir it around, make sure it gets evenly fried. While it's in there add in a table spoon of cinnamon and 1/2-2 table spoons of taco seasoning in addition to about half of that green pepper. If it's mild seasoning, go high, if it's hot, go low. We're not trying to make it spicy, just adding some spice. Once the beef is done empty the beef and peppers into a bowl, but leave the burner on and frying pan full of butter and juices. Now add about a teaspoon more of cinnamon and turn down the heat. Drop a couple of the tortillas on to the frying pan for about 5-7 seconds, then flip them, then remove after another five to seven. Repeat.

All you have to do know is spoon some beef into the shells and you're set on a crash course for YUM-ALPHA-4. Make it so Number 1!

Album Review: Girls and Weather (Rumble Strips)

This is with out a doubt the second best album I've enjoyed all summer. Well, maybe not best, but second most enjoyable. So Many Nights by Cat Empire is still better.

Regardless, this album is really truly great. It's got a garage rock sound that doesn't trade melody for noise (like so many other garage rock bands) and really brings in a lot of soul influence. The band finally manages to prove that Britain can supply the modern world with a sound that's not Oasis, U2, Amy "How the hell are you still alive and who still cares about you" Winehouse, and whatever the Britpop flavor of the month is. They're upbeat, but not fast upbeat. They have horns, but stay away from ska (thank god- more ska is the last thing the world needs. I mean seriously, what "wave" are they on now? And what's the difference between the waves? And who wants to call dancing skanking? And why the plaid?)

Ahem. It's fun music. Meant to be played loud. Possibly while driving. They're not particularly deep songwriters, but are a hell of a lot of fun. Great example, Motorcycle. It's a song about how the singer's life would be better if the bike he was riding on was a motorcycle. And it basically says he'd be a mad cool pimp. And he'd be halfway home.


I already posted a couple songs before, but that post is getting deleted and the songs will be reposted here.

Girls and Boys in Love, my favorite song from the album.


No Soul, the album opener. A great example of the horns.


Alarm Clock, another fun one. A great example of the sheer fun and cheerfulness of their lyrics.

Plastiques?

I like vinyls. I think they're pretty nifty. I also like CDs. But the vast vast majority of my collection is mp3 format. And this is the strange life I live with my music.

The thing I can't stand is people who "only" listen to vinyl. Or claim it sounds better. Or whatever. Because it's blatantly not true. Yes, a very good quality vinyl will sound better than a song 96 kbps encoded mp3 downloaded off of limewire or wherever kids are getting their illegal mp3's these days, but so will an 8-track. Fact is, most vinyls are recorded on recycled plastic and contain a lot of errors, and the ones that aren't are older and just poorer quality. Most of the time the sound is only as good as the receiver and speakers it's piped through, and because hipsters don't understand this, they have poor quality equipment a lot of the time.

So why do I have vinyls? Because they're fun. They're big, tangible, and just so very real. I rarely listen to my vinyls. In fact, I don't know when the last time I did listen to them. Another thing I like is that it's like having part of history. I have a first edition Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club, which I've never had a desire to listen to (I'm bizarre and don't like that album. One of my few faults, I'm sure.). But it's such an important album in history, it feels really cool to own. I even have the little mustache cut-outs.

What I really like owning though are CDs. They are the perfect music format. They don't compress the music down, or do so by only a bit. So they have a much better sound than mp3s, but aren't as awkward to carry around as vinyls. Plus the whole tangibility thing is going on again.

Long story short

My computer is dead for at least a week, if not longer. So no posts for a little bit.

:-(
Here's a video by my newest love, the Rumble Strips.


And here's another.