Knuckledragger

Bought Forza Horizon 4 during the SSS. 89 GB download. Oh my poor SSD. Also my craptastic rural W.Mass internet connection.

100 years ago today: Also, at over 40 minutes this is a much longer time commitment: One of my favorite analyses The Shining. It makes a nice followup to the 2012 documentary Room 237. Also if you ever want to go off the deep end into flat earth/faked moon landing levels of conspiracy theory delusion, do a bit of dig on YouTube for fan theories on The Shining. It goes from zero to batshit insane real fuckin' quick.

Think about it. Mahatma Gandhi's statue after some prankster added red lights to the eyes of it (San Francisco, 2019).

It might not be up to TICE, Inc.(tm) standards, but it was done by a 21 yer old kid for about $1000: https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/o9ar3j/the_1000_diy_experiment/

Last night's set is up on Mixcloud: I still need to post like a month and a half worth of shows to the podcast feed.

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

Let's bring up an old favorite. Ievan Polkka is a traditional Finnish folk song. It's been recorded by many artists, but most famously by Loituma in the mid 1990s. About a dozen years after they initially recorded it, the song went viral as typically nonsensical internet meme. Late last year the song went viral again when it a version by blind Turkish street musician Bilal Göregen went viral: While his skills are impressive, I must admit I never particularly liked this version. First off I find repetition he uses to be bothersome, secondly he just can't compete with the four part harmony of the Loituma version. I realize this a wholly unfair comparison. Of course the Kiffness did a remix of Bilal's version, which is an improvement but in my jaded opinion still underwhelming. This version by a group of Finnish women is impressive for its insane speed if nothing else: The end of it would make a gabba DJ do a doubletake. Not to be outdone by a song they recorded 25 years ago going viral yet again, Loituma did a "zoom call" version earlier this year. You'll have to click through to watch this version because YouTube won't allow an embed. It's worth it, I promise. TL;DW: Loituma still have it a quarter of a century later, though I notice that the singer (I am not even going to attempt Finnish names) who does the most iconic part of the song (the bit looped in the original meme, which where the titualar Ievan is asserting that she is having too much fun at a party and will not leave) does NOT project like she did in the original version. She still hits all the notes (and, ahem, words) and conveys the feeling behind them but just not with the same power. This live version from 1996 is still the best version for plainly obvious reasons. 100% Finnish projection. This other live version ca. 1996 is also excellent. Sadly, there's another version of this video with 14M views that use (otherwise fine) album version audio. The recorded version is fine, but given how much energy there is in this performance, it's a travesty to strip the audio out of it. There's a bunch of "club" mixes of the Lotiuma version from the mid 00s. They're all unimaginably bad and absolutely ruinous to the original. Avoid them like the plague. Ievan Polkka remains an enduring meme that succeeds largely because it's such an infectious, timeless song. Even if one doesn't speak a single word of an extinct regional dialect of an already impenetrable language. 10/10 would Barillas dilla deiaduu badaba daga daga daga daga dujaduu again.

Guys don't let it out, but I think the CLIMATE of the GLOBE might be CHANGING.

Finally catching up on uploading past shows:

There's a YouTuber named Fernafloo who is quite famous in the Spanish speaking world, and relatively unknown outside of it. I became aware of him years ago because someone was micspamming a rap song about him in a TF2 Casual match (you don't need to know what any of that means.) I don't speak Spanish and have more or less no interest in streamers or streamer culture, but I found the melody of that novelty rap song to be quite catchy. That turns out it's because the rapper (Bambiel) lifted it from a song by TheFatRat: I'm ...not really into TheFatRat's brand of hands in the EDM, but he has a knack for writing oddly infectious melodies.

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

LG 27GL83A-B 27 Inch Ultragear QHD IPS 1ms NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible Gaming Monitor $285 at BozosLand. $15 cheaper than it was on prime day. My only hesitation in buying it is that the cost for a GPU capable of driving it is "lol"

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

Man, I haven't been in NoHo in what feels like 2 year (pre-covid) and I live like 25 minutes from it. I kind of miss the place, in spite of the fact that I spent what feels like half my life there doing lights in nightclubs. I wish I could go there right now, TBH. There's a marijuana distro there called Canna Care and I could really go for some low dose edibles. I got my second dose of Moderna yesterday and it is really kicking the shit out of me. Last night was an endless series of fever dreams (including one where I was trapped in my own Steam profile while I was in a Discord call where no one could hear me) and today is all about soreness and fatigue. It is my plan to do my radio show tonight, but it will be what they call a "game time decision" in baseball.

I might just buy that NOS pair. The guy has a "make offer" option. In other news, this week is shaping up to be a gold star one: I now have two glasses halves balanced precariously on my face. I'm sure I look like an idiot, but fortunately no one else is around. I put them on last night, felt a weird cracking sensation, then both halves slid off my face. I'm overdue for a new glasses 'scrip, but my plan (of the "Mice and Men" variety) was to get my second vaccination jab (in two weeks) then wait two more weeks for full immunity then visit the eye doctor. That is no longer an option. :headdesk: I am clumsy and blind. It's hell to get old.

OOF. Started today by putting my foot through the arc of my prized Senn HD-590s and breaking it. I've had these things for over 15 years at this point and they're one of my favorite cans. While their presentation is deeply flawed, their nutball 3D imaging is one of my favorites for ambient. I've used them to prepare for my radio show for over a decade now. Of course it's my stupid fault for leaving them at the foot of my bed and not putting them on the shelf, but dead is dead. I do have a physically identical pair of HD-570s (which sound awful) and I did investigate taking both pairs apart to find donor parts but looking at the wiring that seems like a nearly impossible job.