OneToThirtySix

DJ Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Basically the alphabet of any first drop-down results on WebMD. edit: I think there was an IDM russet in there, but who cares?

DJ Stuffenbitchez

"Not Your Father's Root Beer". The place that has it on tap won't serve you more than three.

The phones in the office all went down. I submitted a support ticket, haven't heard from the guy it got assigned to, and my phone keeps cycling between 75 seconds of attempting to connect and two minutes of notifying me that the connection failed because it can't connect with the gateway. This has been going on nearly four hours.

"I FUCKING LOVE BROCCOLI"

What is one track, by any artist at any era, that you listen to and enjoy every time?

Not even for a Klondike bar.

I've been listening to the Ulrich Schnauss station very quietly on Pandora all day at work, then unplugged my phone to answer a call, now I'm still hearing music in the computer cooling fans.

Is it made from real Vietnamese?

I hit the Num Lock button and Excel decided I wasn't going to get anything entered.

Listening to Knife Party is definitely a problem. Rob Swire gives me a big ol' boner. Sue me.

I got moved to a remote office that draws connections to phone systems and email from a central office, and the central office power went out, so now I'm here to whine about how all I can do is listen to Knife Party and WATMM.

those are amazing. Where/ what are these from?? I'd like to know the first one...looks like some night terror shit.

OH I FUCKING HATE THOSE

I dreamt I was looking out the window while my guy was walking up the driveway in basketball shorts, and snow was falling. (not too weird for Minnesota, more weird that it was June when I had the dream, and have never seen snow in MN.) Also, no plot, just images.

I caught the end of an NPR review of the album (keep in mind I have no real intention of listening to anything Kanye touches) and one point they brought up was how "Blood on the Leaves" comes across rather whiny and petulant when Kanye's complaints about bitches are juxtaposed with Nina Simone's version of a song depicting the lynching of slaves. I love Nina Simone, but the use of this particular song and his "extrapolation" seem deliberately irreverent.

Forza has been teaching me just how shit I would be at driving expensive cars very fast.

1. Gemini (Featuring Solange Knowles) (2:56) 2. Reach for the Dead (Featuring Solange Knowles) (4:47) 3. White Cyclosa (Featuring Solange Knowles) (3:13) 4. Jacquard Causeway (Featuring Solange Knowles) (6:35) 5. Telepath (Featuring Solange Knowles) (1:32) 6. Cold Earth (Featuring Solange Knowles) (3:42) 7. Transmisiones Ferox (Featuring Solange Knowles)(2:18) 8. Sick Times (Featuring Solange Knowles) (4:16) 9. Collapse (Featuring Solange Knowles) (2:49) 10. Palace Posy (Featuring Solange Knowles) (4:09) 11. Split Your Infinities (Featuring Solange Knowles) (4:28) 12. Uritual (Featuring Solange Knowles) (1:59) 13. Nothing is Real (Featuring Solange Knowles) (3:52) 14. Sundown (Featuring Solange Knowles) (2:16) 15. New Seeds (Featuring Solange Knowles) (5:39) 16. Come to Dust (Featuring Solange Knowles) (4:07) 17. Semena Mertvykh (Featuring Solange Knowles) (3:30) *waits for Solange to "sample" a track and tear the fabric of reality a new asshole*

Pendulum's "The Island" (the full track, not that split two-part bastardization) gives me goosebumps everywhere when everything cuts out in the middle and starts building into a sister Dutch House track... It makes me want a fog machine, strobe lights, lasers, and boundless energy. But mostly intense goosebumps everywhere.

Holy SHIT, guys! I went to Stanley's Beer Fest Day in Minneapolis yesterday, tried something like ten ales, or IPAs, or whatever, and I'm not even kidding, the ONLY thing I wanted to purchase at a later date was Fuller's 1845. This stuff tasted like honey or some god-granted thing. Also ranking "really fucking awesome" is O'Dell's Milk Chocolate Stout. Ignore this post if I'm getting a little too jazz.

It's been over 90 degrees all day, and dry, so I'm dehydrated, but the filtered water in the fridge gives me a headache.