Don't even think of suggesting Avril

So, I've been thinking off and on about something for a couple months now. I used to really love some female-fronted bands back in the day when I was more into ska -- No Doubt, Save Ferris, Tsunami Bomb.... There was just something about the music that appealed to me, and it's great to hear a little something different in the vocals. I really don't know how to say it, which is why I've been putting off writing about it.

But I've been bitten by the bug for some more lately. While I still have the old stuff, I long for something new. Thankfully, Paramore recently delivered a great new album. I just wish it was easier to find more prominent females in the genres I listen to. I mean, it's rare enough to find one even in the band, but for her to be the lead singer is a real shocker. In the past, I used MusicPlasma (now called LivePlasma) to refer me to bands I might like. But these days it seems LP always fails to even find the band I want to use as a starting point to compare to others. It always returns my searches with "Madonna (Tribute)." What the heck?!? I've turned to LastFM now, and it doesn't disappoint -- it has some really obscure bands, probably because it's easy for users to add them, and every music snob loves the chance to show off how many unheard-of bands he knows. But still, looking at their list of referrals is not as helpful as I thought it would be. I already listen to well over half of those bands, and of those, only one has a girl who sings in a few songs. Then you can use the tags to find female vocalists, but you can't seem to combine tags to find female vocalists in a given genre.

Maybe it's hard to find what I'm looking for because it's the guys that stereotypically take up instruments. They spend their teenage years learning the guitar and forming alternative rock bands thinking it will make chicks like them. Whereas the girls who get interested in music prefer to sing pop songs and dance scandalously to get attention from the guys. I know this is a horrible stereotype, and I'm going to hell for suggesting it. I just wish I could find more good, female-fronted bands to prove me wrong.

P.S. I secretly enjoyed the Josie and the Pussycats movie. Please don't tell anyone.

Reasons, or excuses?

From a recent Gmail chat:

hey, so i want to show you a cool posting my friend put on his blog!
...
http://hotcupojoe.blogspot.com/
oh, wait, not him, he doesn't even write a blog anymore

Oh, the sarcasm is palpable!

Let me fill in the reasons why I don't post (more).

1. I'm not an attention whore.
2. I'm not a voyeur. I don't like to make all parts of my life public. But I might consider it if it weren't for the fact that...
   
3. my life is boring. At least to me...
   
4. and people seem to agree. For this one, a picture might help:
   
   
5. I'm lazy. Yes, I know it's true of just about anybody, and it shouldn't qualify as an excuse. But at least I'm being honest about it.
   

P.S. And now, I have officially spent more time talking about blogging than any other topic on this blog. How boring.

Wide open spaces

See, recently I was telling a good friend about this experience I had on my mission. On our day off, a group of us went to the St. Louis "Children's Museum." This museum was actually more of a large, multilevel play area indoors. There are caves, tunnels, fake hollow trees, and more. (We went to play sardines.) Anyway, I was telling my friend about this narrow, cement tunnel that ran under the main floor. I suppose it was built with children in mind, but that didn't stop us from going through it. It was too narrow to turn around in, and just barely big enough to pass someone else in, and even then, only if you weren't afraid of human contact. A lot of it.

I guess it didn't bother me at the time all that much, but thinking back on it makes me a little nervous. I'm not claustrophobic or anything, but it was rather tight. One of the ends of it was easy to enter, being straight. The other end was a ninety degree vertical turn, which was narrower than the rest of the tunnel. I remember it being very difficult for me to enter or exit that end. I just don't like the idea of having a difficult or impossible exit, and no way to turn around, and wondering if I'll be able to crawl backwards to get back to where I started. But especially with all of the kids clogging it up, too.

So, having just recently related this memory to my friend, what did I do with my weekend? I went caving with the elders' quorum! In reality, the path we took through the cave was very open for all but one time. (That one spot, Fat Man's Squeeze, did make me a little nervous, though. I had to take off my helmet to fit through.) However, there was a pair in our group that did a lot more "exploring" of small offshoots. I joined them for a bit in their first adventure, as did one or two others. But then I realized there were a number of us in this rather small area, with more talking of joining us, so I got out of there rather than press on. I'm not sure if I was most nervous about the small tunnel I'd used to enter the area, the congestion in the area itself, or the possibility of one of the others clogging the tunnel (which would block my exit).



Don't get me wrong. I had a great time. And the one dose of exploration was really fun. I think I just have this thing about personal space. And while having rock in every direction of my personal space might make me a little fidgety, I think it was the people that began to make me really tense. (I remember not being all that comfortable in Time's Square at New Year's, too.) So, basically, I'm just anti-social. I think we should all be allowed one neurosis.

Go fly a kite

I was excited by the weather forecast for today: 17 mph winds. Since I bought my stunt kite about a month ago, there have been two or three days with wind speeds over 10 mph. While the kite is supposed to be able to fly in 5 mph winds, I've found that even on windy days, the wind can be very inconsistent. As it was today. Within 20 minutes of getting out there, the wind stopped entirely. And I had to put up with an "expert" kite flier who, while driving by, pointed out to me that "it's better when it's in the air!" Of course! Now I know what to do next time! But seriously, we get the stillest summers here, and the windiest winters. It's messed up.

The system is down

Right off, I'm gonna say this: don't expect daily posts. I certainly don't. But yesterday, after meeting with my graduate advisor, I came back to my apartment to get some more work done. However, my laptop would not boot up. I've had tons of problems with the hard drive in the past, and I think it recurred while trying to boot. So, the system got pretty much screwed up. I went through my normal tricks to get it to at least boot, but none worked. Mind you, this hard drive contained the only copies of files which I've been working on for months toward my thesis project. (Not the paper itself, which doesn't yet exist, even in my imagination, but the project.)

Thankfully, I knew just what to do. I hooked up the hard drive in my desktop and recovered the files with some software I'd previously bought. Then, I put it back in my laptop and reformatted. Now, I'm reinstalling everything and determining what files I want to move back to the laptop. I'm actually somewhat grateful that I've had these problems in the past. I had the proper adapters and software, and I knew how to use them. If this were the first time this happened, I would be panicking. Really, really, really panicking.

Thankfully, the hardest part about all this is being patient. No, maybe it was trying to track down the disc with the tools I need. The school owns the software, so I had to go from professor to professor, student to student to find the disc. And I still failed. But I found a student with a copy of the programs on his computer, which was good enough.

The hardest part of this project so far has been getting everything working together. Let's see if I can remember how to set everything up again. Here's hoping.