Dusty Chalk

(last night, actually, before Dan's post)

I stand corrected. Justin -- you bought a mud grass horse...with a bowtie?

Atteca Old Vines 2008 -- meh

You bought an alpaca?

Yeah, because the other way, there would be a comma after Mikey. Mikey -- indeed -- doesn't fuck around.

Within Temptation, Enter Oh. So...apparently there is an album earlier than Mother Earth. And it's not "just demos".

Right, but that requires familiarity with both vintages. If someone were to pipe up with familiarity with both vintages, that would overrule my advice. My advice is merely of the "in lieu of actual knowledge" variety. It's like those test questions: 10. a. b. c. d. The answer (at the time I was told) is b., because b. is the most common answer in a multiple choice type test. If there was an actual question, with actual answers, and you knew the answer, that would of course over-ride the b. rule.

Yes please. Aargh. Srsly -- my tastes are not so refined that I think I'd even be able to tell the difference. So I'd say go older if it's a special occasion, go younger if you just want to drink one, buy one of each if the question is a "which should I buy" question.

She looks hot. No, wait a minute, that came out right.

It's not trickery so much as conditioning -- do you remember the Bene Gesserit from Dune, how they could appear to read one's mind by studying one's body language sufficiently? It's kind of like that. The ability to retain knowledge is superhumanly augmented, maybe some of the sensory input, but the psychology of obtaining the information, how to use it later -- none of that is supernatural, it's just training.

(makes a note to wear a large fake moustache when covering "Why Must the Show Go On?/In Transit/Goodbye Bad Times/Brand New Love (Take a Chance)/Valerie")

Is that the name of the new album? I have to say, it's an improvement on When the Pawn.... New EP from Birthday Massacre in August.

When they sell for the $500-$600 range, they get snapped up fairly quickly.

Little People, Mickey Mouse Operation -- really pretty music, instrumental, triphoppy-ish, downtempo-ish, groovy. When I was at 901, they played this first (well, the track, "Moon"), and pretty much everything else they played paled in comparison. I mean, it was a good mix (if you've ever gone into DSW just to listen to the music -- and I do -- then you know what I mean), but Little People just stands out.

I don't know, maybe it's the sight of all those modular synthesizers that puts me in such a good mood going in, and then, out of nowhere...Blam! Teh funneh. I kind of want to know who that is, I don't recognize them, whoever they are. It's not Walter Carlos...

$500-$750 used? And really, that's the only way to do it. Buy used, and that way, when you sell them to try something else, you're not losing much, if anything. I think of that as the price to pay for multiple "extended home trials". Also: here? That's funny, they're quoting $999 as the price for a pair right there in the text, you may want to call them on that, perhaps they'll come down some. Another random thought: 2.1 is probably the best way to get full-range sound and stay small.

Happy Birthday, Ben!

That's why I said, "in my mind" -- he was just sitting there, soaking in all the information, for possible use later...because you never know what's going to be useful and what's going to be trivia.

I'll third or fourth or whatever the Quad 12L's, but really, speakers are such a personal choice (what type of sound do you go for?), you're going to have to audition the shit out of a goodly number of speakers. Okay, so you're not a fan of the SE sound -- do you like midrange? Do you like bass? Do you like detail? Another company in the "high efficiency" category that I've been watching on and off for some time now is Reference 3A, but most of their speakers with any bass are big -- the only small ones are the Dulcet and the MM deCapo. Nothing is going to work well against the wall unless it is designed to do so, but there are a couple. Gallo actually have wall mounts for their Stradas and the globe ones (but IIRC, the latter don't go loud at all, whereas the Stradas go loud just fine), and I believe both Focal and Dali have wall-mount speakers (I believe Dali have a whole line of wall-mount speakers). But I can definitely vouch for the Stradas, I'd find a way to audition those. They're not high-efficiency, but they're not "hard to drive", either. Actives are nice, but they're rarely small. You might want to find an active that has an external box, like SE Electronics' recently released egg speakers: But the bright side is, a lot of them have settings or whatnot for being against a wall, as a lot of studios are set up that way. The Mackies I have, for example, actually have exactly that setting (half wall, quarter wall, or no wall, or something like that). But they're huge, and the active electronics will weigh them down even more, so pretty much are nixed by your "go small or go home" requirement. Some of them are just designed to be against a wall, so don't rule them out if they don't have that setting.

HpA -- I wouldn't rule out family, neither. I mean, someone knew where those were. Was anything else missing, or did someone seem to know exactly where they were and how to get to them. I know you don't want to believe it was family, but you know the old adage about solving mysteries -- rule out the impossible, and what's left is the solution. And yeah, that sucks.

I am seriously thinking about listening to the entire Tales from Topographic Oceans paulstretched. Is there a 12-step program for this? Ah need halp.

Sympathies.

Yeah, I stand corrected. Didn't realize they had expanded their "elite" line -- basically, the upper left hand corner of this page. Looks like there are a couple others in the <US$1K range, including the Zillamatic, which I had looked at before, but dismissed for some reason. Don't remember. "Not black enough"? May have to revisit, in the not too distant future.

Tank-catapult made me laugh. It also reminded me to post this collab between two of my favorite YouTube entities -- Freddie Wong and Epic Meal Time -- a bit old, but worth reap oats: