Friday Music Post - Dredg

This is going to be a larger music post, because Dredg is one of my absolute most favorite bands. Most favorite. I really haven't been to that many concerts in my life, but Dredg is one of the few bands I have actually seen live. I've been listening to them since high school. Some of their interviews make it seem like they're a little full of themselves, but then again they're in a band, so that's to be expected.

Leitmotif



Their first two CDs are the better ones in my opinion. Leitmotif as a whole is a little heavier than their usual stuff, which still isn't that heavy. According to wikipedia, Leitmotif is about "a man with a "spiritual disease" who must seek out different cultures of the world to find a cure for his affliction." The CD's no longer in print.





El Cielo



El Cielo I think is Dredg's best CD. It's a concept album based around a painting by Salvador Dali, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. The painting itself is most likely about Dali's wife's sleep paralysis.







Catch Without Arms



Dredg took it in another direction with Catch Without Arms. Their style became a little more conventional and simpler. Some people like the new direction, some people don't. It's difficult to judge one style as 'better' than the other, because you really can't compare two entirely different things. But I will say I like their older stuff more. Just opinion. Catch Without Arms is also right about the time people started taking notice of them, and Dredg actually started getting a little radio and TV time.

Gavin has said of the album, "The whole underlying basis of the lyrics and the music is opposites, contrasts... I’d written some lyrics that are based around conversations or arguments, so we thought about a record with two halves that contrast each other. The whole basis of the record could be about objection to ideas, and contrast."

Which is understandable. I wrote a paper about Taoism a couple years ago for a class. Taoism is that yin and yang stuff. That symbol on the cover of the album is a variation of a chinese symbol which is closely related to Taoism and the yin-yang (in the original symbol, the circle at the top is a square, and the dot in the middle is a horizontal line). For the life of me, I can't remember what that symbol is called, and google hasn't been able to help me. I only remember it because of that paper.





The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion

The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion just came out last month. In all honesty, I'm still not exactly sure what to think of it. It's really good, it's just a little different. It's almost like they tried to mix their simpler Catch Without Arms style with their stranger Leitmotif and El Cielo style. The album is loosely inspired by an essay from Salman Rushdie called "A Letter to the Six Billionth Citizen." The essay argues against hardline religious dogmatism in favor of moralistic and intellectual freedom. You can read it here. It's quite beautiful.

I lost twenty pounds during camp, and I can say I'm almost in somewhat decent shape. I've been looking for an excuse to finally start working out, and this right here seems to be a better time than any. I've only exercised twice since I got back, and I've already lost another two pounds. This shit's easier than I thought. And I'm not even doing all that much, either. Buncha push ups, and a buncha those bicycle kick thingies where you twist your abdomen. That's all, and it seems to be working. I guess a sexy bod just kinda morphs around me naturally, amirite ladies? (flexes)



I wasted half of my first paycheck on iPod Touch, and it is fucking amazing. I spent a couple bucks on this iFitness app, and it's pretty sweet. It gives me a bunch of images and instructions on a couple hundred different exercises, keeps workout logs for me, and gives me cool charts n' junk. It tells me I only need to lose four more pounds to move from "overweight" to "normal". In my defense, the BMI is kind of bullshit anyway, since it classifies George Clooney as "obese."

I'm also gonna try to get involved with the gym my dad stopped going to. The next hurdle will be eating food that doesn't slowly kill me with every scrum-diddly-umptious bite. I've never had a salad in my life, this'll be fun.

As ridiculously awesome as this iPod Touch is, here's the complaints. It is really fucking small. 16 gigs for three hundred bucks? Seriously? And the only model that's bigger is a hundred dollars more. That's only 32 gigabytes - the biggest one they have. My first mp3 player ever was 70 gigs, and I'm a little confused as to why technology is suddenly getting worse. Listen Apple, I understand - this new iPod is thin as fuck, there's not a whole lot of space inside the thing. But I don't give a flying fuck how thin it is. Make it as thick as you have to. Just give me something that I can actually fit all my shit onto. I have about 20 gigs of music, and 13 more in podcasts. Even if I chocked up the four hundred bucks for a 32 gig model, all that still wouldn't fit on it. And give me some god damn bluetooth, for crying out loud. You already have wifi on the thing, some bluetooth wouldn't be that fucking hard.

But it was worth it because of all the other shit it can do. Check owt dis app I bought:



It is fucking amazing, and I am a nerdy faggot. You point your iPod at the sky, and its motion tracker causes the stars on the screen to shift to wherever you're looking at. I wish I woulda had this at camp for the times we went stargazing. It says nothing about magical shooting stars though, so I guess they don't grant wishes after all.

In addition to this, I also got Mass Effect Galaxy, Oregon Trail, Knights OnRush, and the Price is god damn Right. Most were on sale for a dollar.

With Walter Cronkite dead, the only man in the media we can trust is Jon Stewart. He had a fantastic debate the other night with Mr. Conservative himself, Bill Kristol. Mr. Stewart got him to admit that the government-run health care program our soldiers are on is "first-class health care" and the only reason we're not extending it to the public is because it's "expensive." In the meantime, the United States is the only industrialized nation on the planet without a public health care option.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bill Kristol
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

But according to Rep. Louie Gohmert and Rep. Virginia Foxx, our soldiers should be DROPPING LIKE FLIES!!!!



Good thing the government doesn't fund our schools or anything, that would be socialism.

Back from Camp Bunn until next summer. Fucking hell, I missed it.

This was Sam's last year. Sam's been working the climbing tower since I was twelve. He's getting a bit older and is having some trouble with his knees (I think) and I guess his wife would like him home. Sam is without a doubt one of coolest people I have ever met, and I wish I had the chance to get to know him a bit better. I didn't find out until near the end of the summer that he's a political science professor, so I brought that up at one point and we had some pretty cool discussions during the last week.

And the chickens. Oh god, the chickens. Sam has two rubber chickens named Friar Cluck and Cluck Norris. To entertain the scouts, the staff "kidnaps" these chickens, and then write ransom notes during the week. Sam reads these ransom notes to the camp during meals. Various demands this year included Jeffy having to paint his truck bright pink, Sam shaving his beard off, and me and Tyler getting up to sing the power rangers song to everyone. We don't negotiate with terrorists though. Pictures are also included with these ransom notes to show Sam that the chicken-nappers mean business.

Sam neglected to show that last picture to the scouts like he did with the other ones. Can't imagine why.

People who manage to climb all four walls of the climbing tower get the Spiderman Award. I've never even attempted it before, but this was Sam's last year, and I wanted him to be the person to give it to me. The first three sides were no big deal, but fuck, that expert wall was a bitch. The tower's only open Monday through Wednesday, and only one difficult wall is open on each day (the beginner's wall is always open). I tried the expert wall on Wednesday. The halfway point is the hardest part of this wall. The grips are very small, very awkward, and very spread apart. I got about halfway up, and I needed down for a water break because my throat was getting really parched and distracting me. Tried again, got halfway up, needed a break. Tried one more time, I got past the halfway point, but by then I was too exhausted and couldn't pull myself up anymore. My arms were fucking destroyed. Then I came back after dinner to try one more time. This was the last week, and I was the very last climber. If I didn't get it then, I'd have to wait a whole year. My arms were still sore as hell, but I made sure to drink lots of water during dinner so they could have a bit more fuel. I got up past the midway point without too much difficulty, but near the top my arms were giving me a bitch fit. But I finally pulled myself over, and I got that motherfucking god damn Spiderman Award. And then Sam wasn't even the person to award me at the firebowl. It was Pete. FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Chris is another person I would have liked to know better. This was also Chris' last year (school). In the whole two years I've known him, we've had about two or three rational conversations. And it was almost always about music. He's one of the only people I've met outside of internet forums who's heard of Murder By Death, Godspeed, and the Black Keys. He can be an extremely intelligent person when he wants to be, but he spends most of his time just fucking with people because he finds it hilarious. Most of the discussions he's involved with has consisted of him dryhumping someone, licking someone, tickling someone, rubbing someone's nipples, eating someone's hair or grabbing someone's ass. And it really is pretty fucking hilarious.

Every friday night is Uncle Christopher's Storytime. After the firebowl, after the families leave (friday's family night), and after everyone gets done with paperwork, we all sit in a circle behind our tents. Chris calls upon a buckaroo to sit on his lap to hold the flashlight, while he then reads from his previously chosen material. His "Uncle Christopher" character is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. Some pretty perverted shit.

The last friday was really fucking depressing for everyone. It was the last night Chris will ever be there as staff, and it was the very last storytime. For the first time ever, Chris took it on a serious note. He built a fire, he had no buckaroo, and he read from a fantastic book. Half the staff didn't seem to be listening, and some fell asleep, but it was some of most incisive stuff I've heard in quite a while. And with the fire right there, it only made the mood more sad and reflective for everyone. Nobody said a thing once he finished.Chris closed the book, and for the longest time, everyone just kind of sat there and stared into the fire.

I'm pretty sure it was Jeffy who broke the silence, "Am I the only one who's tearing up right now?" That sort of piped us up a little. People started leaving for the tents shortly afterwards in complete silence, one by one. I was walking by a little bit later, to see that Chris was the only person still by the fire. It was really one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen. Chris has worked at Camp Bunn for a long ass time, I want to say maybe five or six years. I talked to him a bit later about it. He said to me, "That place has been the only constant in my tumultuous life. I feel extremely comfortable there."

It's the ultimate form of peace when you're able to find a place that can temporarily shelter you from the outside world. I don't know Chris very well. My first year, he told me he lived in his van for a time, and that he really fucking hates his dad. It's safe to assume that he's had a harder life than I have. I can't even fathom the pain someone would be forced to go through as he said goodbye to the safe place of his adolescence, especially if it brought him as much comfort as Camp Bunn apparently brought to Chris. I'd never be able to understand. I've never had to go through something like that.

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Next week is the very last week of camp. I'm sad.

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Saturday Youtube Post

Happy Independence Day