A Place for My Stuff

The Pop-Tart® Tragedy

This is probably old news for some of you, but here it goes anyway.  I was only introduced to it recently.

Some illiterate attempted to write an emotional short story, which has since become known as "The Poptart Tragedy".  It basically another one of those stupid little internet anecdotes that asks people to share or forward it.  But on top of that, it...well, I'll just let you read it for yourself:

gurl stops meking out n asks boi to get poptartz he dus.
den gurl teks deep breff. den gurl sais “bf i am pregnent will u stay ma bf” n he seys “no”.
gurl iz hertbrokn. </////3
gurl criez n runz awaii from boi wiffout eatin poptart n she has low blood suga so she fols.
boi runs ova 2 her.
she ded.</33333333
boi crie “i sed i no b ur bf…cus i wona b ur husband!”
he screems n frows poptart @ wol…a bootiful diomond ring wus insyd.
***LIK DIS IF U CRY EVRYTIM***

Not surprisingly, it spawned a number of parodies.  Actually, I don't know if they even qualify as "parodies", since read and/or act out exactly what's actuall been said.

 

 

Remaking my "Remake" post

Back in 2009 I wrote a post in defense of remakes, and observations about the people who constantly seem to bitch abou them.  I've edited it a little bit.  You can see it here:
http://www.aplaceformystuff.org/2009/10/regarding-remakes-and-their-haters.html

"Why Vinyl and Cassettes Should Stay Dead"

A short but interesting article I just read:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/stop-romanticizing-the-analog-age/

To quote the article's summarizing rhetorical question, "What is [the deal] with [this fad of] adopting long forgotten technology that doesn’t work very well?"

Personally, I'm all for nostalgia and aesthetics.  I really am.  But I have to balance that with practicality and convenience.  It's a personal choice where to draw that line.  Even for the same person, the line is going to be in a different place when it comes to different things.  I can think of plenty of albums that I bought on cassette back in the 80s, but have long since re-bought on CD and now listen to as mp3s which I personally ripped from those CDs.  Why?  Convenience!  I like being able to carry my entire music collection in my pocket.  I do NOT miss the days of having cassettes getting "eaten" by players, having to fast-forward and flip the tape after side 1 was done, and painfully trying to narrow down my cassette collection to a case of 30 tapes to take with me on vacation.  If there's some sacrifice I'm making in aesthetics or audio quality, it sure hasn't stopped me from enjoying the music.

Granted, it can be fun to tinker with an old piece of technology and get it running for curiosity's sake.  I was just at a party a few weekends ago where we listened to 78rpm records on a hand-crank turntable.  It was fun, but I'd never want to do that as my sole means of hearing music, just as I wouldn't want to use an IBM PC Jr. and Word Perfect 1.0 to write this document.  If you're going out of your way to watch most movies in BetaMax, or to use a quill for everyday writing, then at that point it seems to me like you're just inconveniencing yourself out of pretentiousness.

 

It's also not hard to relate this back to the topic of clutter.  Technology has given us movies and music in smaller and smaller-sized media.  We've reached the point where one can, ideally, keep his or her entire music, movie, and book collection on a single hard drive.  Granted, I'm not going to do that myself; I still like having physical collections of CDs of the bands I'm loyal to, and most of the books I read are mathematics books whose e-book equivalents simply don't have the equations and symbols rendered correctly.  But when you have an entire wall o' stuff that you seemingly never touch, whether it's books, records, cassettes, etc., it's worth asking "Can I afford to store or get rid of at least SOME of this?"

RIP, Annette

I was just playing this song for my wife a few weeks ago before she went on a trip to Jamaica.  From one of my favorite bands, Fishbone.

(Oh, and "Annette" is Annette Funicello, singing here with Fishbone.  My wife is alive.  Just clarifying for any of you readers under the age of 30 who has no idea who she is.)

 

Rambling thoughts on Black Sabbath, 2013

 

"There's always a few people left over from the Black Sabbath concert, man."
- George Carlin, referring to the audience on his "On the Road" album

My long, rambling thoughts about the upcoming Black Sabbath album:

1) So Black Sabbath is FINALLY releasing a new studio album in June 2013.  This is going to be the first full-length studio album released under the name "Black Sabbath" since 1995, and the first full-length studio album with Ozzy since the 70s.  They announced plans for it on 11/11/11.  (Nope, albums are no longer done in a matter of weeks like they were in the olden days.)

2) I have been an avid Black Sabbath fan since I was about 13.  My level of Sabbath knowledge is right up there with my level of Carlin knowledge.  I own every Black Sabbath album, from all line-ups.  And I'll buy this one too, because not only do I like buying and listening to the newer works of artists I've come to know and love, but from the sounds and production process of it all it does sound like it will be a well-done product.

3) However, I'm reminding myself that this new album is NOT necessarily going to change my life, or suddenly become my favorite.  I'm convinced that this sort of expectation is why most people end up disliking "reunion" albums, or for that matter movie sequels/prequels, etc.  If you've been loving an album or movie for 20+ years, you've growth *with* it, and  develop a certain affinity for it.  That feeling doesn't happen when you listen to something for the first time, especially when you also have prior expectations of what it should be like.  So I think expecting the new product to change your life in one month in the same way the other did over a period of 20 years, is setting yourself up for a let-down.

4) Some fans are pissed that original drummer Bill Ward has decided to not be a part of this.  If there's one thing I'm used to by now as a Black Sabbath fan, it's line-up changes, so personally I'm not all that phased.  He bowed out due to not being happy with the contractual obligations.  I don't know what those were in detail, but I can make some guesses.  The business of paying band members often comes down the mathematics of risk analysis: if people are still likely to buy tickets to see a band even if member "X" was replaced by somebody else, but won't buy tickets if member "Y" is not going to be on stage, then "Y" gets a bigger percentage of the pay than "X".  The sad reality is that when you do the number crunching, drummers of reunion bands more often than not get a smaller cut than singers and lead guitarists do.  This would hardly be the first time that Sharon Osbourne screwed Bill Ward out of a deal (this is the same woman who sent him a fax around 1997 to say his "services" were "not required" for the first Ozzfest reunion).

5) And one last thing: They keep calling this a "reunion" in the press releases.  Bill Ward or no Bill Ward, how is this a sudden "reunion" if the three of them have been playing off and on together again since 1997?  This "reunion" has been going on longer than their original time together!  So that part's not exactly news!

 

 

Presenting...GeorgeCarlin.net!

I finally did it.  I made my own George Carlin website.  Here's the URL:

http://www.GeorgeCarlin.net

I may say more about the site later, but I figured that a brief mention of it was at least worth blogging about. Yes, I figured that April Fools' Day was a good date to launch it.  No, this isn't a joke; you can go to the website yourself.  I put a lot of hard work into it, and I'm sure I'll be tweaking and adding things later as the months go on.  I hope you like it.

Oh, and if this is your first time to aplaceformystuff.com, and only found out about my blog through GeorgeCarlin.net, well, sorry for telling you what you already knew!

Spacing Saving "Borderline Genius" ideas

Not all of these photos are of spacing-saving ideas, but some certainly are.  This is worth looking at, at least once:

http://boofckemhoo.com/some-simple-ideas-that-are-borderline-genius-3138/

Why I Started Drinking

"I want to be, if I can, as sure of the world -- the REAL world around me -- as is possible.  Now, you can only obtain that to a certain degree, but I want the greatest degree of control.  I've never involved myself in narcotics of any kind.  I don't smoke, I don't drink, because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality [and] fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers, and I want to be as aware as I possibly can.  That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways. But I'm willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world, as close as I can get to it."

– James Randi

 

I was a complete teetotaler my entire life, up until I was about 28 years old.  My first and foremost reason for not drinking was pretty simple: I hated the taste of alcoholic beverages.  To this day, I hate the taste of beer and wine.  I'll never understand why so many people willingly drink that stuff.  It's obviously not just to get drunk; there are other ways to do that with a better taste.

Those teetotaler years of mine included my years in college.  I realized a long time ago that whether or not a college has fraternities and sororities, whether a college is religious or secular, state or private, big or small, co-ed or single-sex, one thing is for certain: you will find no shortage of underage drinking there.  For the record though, I was in a fraternity as well.  Contrary to popular stereotypes, drinking alcohol is not a requirement for being in a fraternity, and I wasn't even the only brother there who didn't drink.

Drinking didn't look all that fun to me, either.  During my freshman year, I'd see students who'd drink until they passed out, wearing pants soaked in their own piss.  Or some who were still awake, but puking to death over a toilet at four in the morning.  I saw that and said to myself, "Yeah, that doesn't look like a fun time to me."

When I think about it, another reason why I didn't drink, was for the sake of maintaining that title of being somebody who didn't drink.  It was one of those motivators that was more so in the back of my mind.  There was an element of non-conformity mixed into it for sure.  Drinking wasn't a taboo thing; it was a "normal" thing I saw among the people I knew.  So not drinking was sometimes just more blasphemous to people than not being a Christian. 

At college though, I'd be sitting around at parties while everybody else drank and danced.  I came to the realization that if I was going to get laid at college, I'd either have to start drinking or start dancing.  Remembering the classmates with their heads over the toilets at 4:00 AM, I opted for dancing.  I realized that if your goal in dancing is just casual dancing for social events (as opposed to public performance with choreography and all that), there's really not much to it: move to the rhythm while not looking like a complete idiot.  And it worked -- I got to talk to the women, which in more than enough cases led to sex.  Mission accomplished, sans intoxication.

But when it came to alcohol, every now and then I'd get curious.  I'd see all those bottles lined up behind a bar and think "Surely there must be SOME combination of these that I'd tolerate the taste of".  I did love Coca-Cola, so I tried a Bacardi and Coke, then at some point a Jack in Coke.  These didn't really do anything for me.

It wasn't until I was on an airplane ride to see my parents for Xmas, that I tried a Crown Royal with Coke.  I tasted it, and I was sold.  I realized at that point that I could no longer consider myself a non-drinker.  This was something I could see myself buying in the future.  In the years since then, I've found a few other drinks that I enjoy. But again, Crown Royal is what sold me.

I have never been drunk, nor do I have any desire to get drunk.  I've certainly gotten light-headed, and at when that first happened, I said to myself, "I realize where this is going.  I don't like it.", then stop drinking for the night.  This means on average I have one drink when I'm drinking.

And on that note, all this talking has left me dying for a Crown & Coke.

 

10th Anniversary of the fire at "The Station", Warwick RI

I just read an article reminding me that it's now been 10 years since the fire at The Station, the deadliest nightclub fire in US history. I can't believe it's been a decade.

I used to go to this club a lot. If, like me, you were a fan of 80s metal and living in New England, a lot of bands you'd know would come to this club in Rhode Island. Sometimes that's as far north was they'd go on a tour. I have a lot of great memories seeing those bands as well as my friends' bands there. Fortunately, I wasn't there that night Great White was playing, even though I had the club's calendar printed out and taped on my office wall.

I remember getting a call at 8 in the morning from my father, who heard the news and, knowing that I'm a shameless fan of 80s glam metal, suspected there was a chance I was at that club. Naturally, he was relieved to hear I was alive. After getting off the phone and hearing more details of the tragedy in a half-awake state, it suddenly hit me: were any of my friends in that fire? I furiously called a few friends. Fortunately, they had already had a head start calling each other, so I only had to make about 2 phone calls myself to get filled in on the details. Was Paul there? No. Was Dan there? No. Was Johnny there? Yes, but he was alive and was helping to pull out some bodies. Julie the bartender? Yes, but she escaped in time and is going to be interviewed on "Good Morning America" tomorrow. And so on. Over all, none of my close friends were among the body count of 100.

In a way, I'm not too surprised that the fire happened. The vertical space between the stage floor and the ceiling was ridiculously low, maybe 7 feet. The fire exit door on the right of it was usually completely covered over in sound foam. The other exits were awkward to get to. And to think, I was there to see W.A.S.P. less than a year before, and we were all upset that they were not allowed to use pyrotechnics that night.

Hey, it's February 14th!

Yep, I'm posting another one of these.  The truth is, I have a several that I made, and I'd like to make even more.  In fact, since I've been so frustrated at seeing bogus, unsourced Carlin quotes around the 'net, I'd like to set up my own website for this kind of stuff.  Maybe I'll split "A Place For My Stuff" into two pages, one blog and one Carlin fan/quotation page?  We'll see.