Saturday, February 16, 2013

Back, sort of.



Apologies everywhoever, I... wow, a YEAR!? Man, that's bad. Soooo bad.

Several things why!: FACEBOOK. God Damn Facebook. I was warned, but I laughed it off. I fucking laughed it off.

Also, no $$$ for new weird vinyl since the roomie moved away. Been to thrifts like 10 times in the last year and it was all for clothes and stuff. Actually passed up a live album from that man/woman duet who do the slightly-off piano recordings in the 50's? Forget the names. Jack Davis art, too.

Also, spending a lot of mental time battling the upstairs neighbors who feel the need to share their music/TV/parties with everyone else but get horrifically offended when they hear anything else from around them. However, my subwoofer is now against the ceiling and I have 47,000 music/noise files on the hard drives as well as 6,000+ vinyl/etc recordings, so vengeance is at hand.... May start off with some Justin Beiber mixed with Diamanda Galas' "wild women with steak-knives (homicidal love song for solo scream)".

Also struggling with two types of S.A.D. and some other brainy-mental things which keeps a happy, productive spirit nailed to the floor much of the time;

AND still searching for a free sharing site, of which I've had a couple suggestions from viewers which I will hopefully investigate soon. That last sentence sounds wrong, but you get the idea.

Plus I've been spending my precious writing time doing up poetry (prose-poetry, sort of in the Bukowski vein - excellent way of exorcising some little demons, and mostly done when blindingly drunk) and gig/food reviews on the site which may have brought you to this thing.

SO, there's my plight. Want to get some more up here! Very much a "Once I get my shit together..." situation. This whole 'adulthood' scenario is really disagreeing with me....

 (tattooed backwards on my chest)

4 comments:

KL from NYC said...

First, if you go to another server, you should notify the people following the site (only 4??? I thought it was more last time I checked).

And, yeah, I know about Facebook, although I haven't gone that crazy with it. Former students of mine finally convinced me to get an account four months ago.

A lot of other bloggers who post obscure alternative LPs are also having trouble locating new stuff (even though they're not having trouble with the RIAA over copyright hassles -- the recordings are too obscure). And those eBay vultures seem to be buying up all the vinyl and tapes (8-Tracks especially) to sell at high prices on-line even though they don't care much about the music, just the money.
One of the bloggers who runs "A Basement of Curiosities" has had an unusually dry year in terms of finding new-old recordings (and he's in the southern mid-western US), and has been questioning continuing. I may have suggested his site to you before, but it would be a good idea to visit it now in case he decides to throw in the towel (he has already re-upped most of the links and will re-up any dead ones if you leave a request in the comments). He's at http://basementcurios.blogspot.com/

He has a lot of things that you may want to add to your collection to enhance your neighbors' living experience (a cassette on "Advanced Elk Calling" comes immediately to mind).
Sound effects of babies crying (no-sub woofer) is a good choice because they seem to go only in the direction where they're aimed, so other neighbors probably won't be bothered by it. The only trouble is keeping a straight face when your neighbor stops you in the hallway to ask you who has a new baby.
A good mix of Demonic Whispering culled from several horror movie audio tracks could also be directional (haven't done that one...yet), and could freak them out enough to move.
Once, I had one couple next door who would bang away hot & heavy several times a night until one night when I "moo-o-o-ed" next to the wall. They stopped immediately, and I could hear the muffled "Did you moo?" "No, I thought you mooed." The second time I did it they had a screaming argument over who mooed. And the third time she threw him out for mooing; she moved out the next week.
This may not help you with neighbors who live above you, but you can save this info in the back of your mine for later use if you need it -- it worked beautifully.

You'll have to be more creative than Justin Bieber. If they know where it's coming from, they'll just get worse and/or call the cops on you and/or do rotten things to you in the hallway.
Not good.

KL from NYC said...

I forgot to mention that for best results you have to play the recordings very late either when they're almost asleep, or right after they've gone to sleep when they're sure to get woken up by it.

I hope these are useful, entertaining suggestions (always glad to help in these neighbor situations).

I seem to be favoring the Demonic Whisperings scenario, probably because I haven't tried that one yet -- it would definitely be a good one for conspiring with other enraged neighbors.
A "legend" of the woman who used to live in that apartment and committed suicide (wasn't she a witch or something?) might be a nice, creative touch.

Darcy Jansen said...

Yes, at one time there were 5 followers, but I was probably cluttering up that Favorite-blogs thing or something. Hell, I'm happy to have 1!

That is absolutely hilarious about the moo-ing. Funniest thing I've read in a long time. Unfortunately, this couple are very strange (albeit a very boring pair living in an artists' neighborhood and contributing nothing - not even money, since they stay inside 24/7) and don't really want to move for some reason. I think they just like the envy of their friends. Many battles back and forth, but I went and spoke to them face-to-face four times right from the start - all very pleasantly on my part, I'm sickeningly considerate - and was met with rudeness right up to total "whatever, we're not stopping!".
I even held the lobby door open for the female of the two with a nice (non-sarcastic) smile, to which she shudder/cringed and followed by edging around me like I had leprosy.
Hey, I tried!
After this, well, fight's on! Landlord's on my side and there's a cop call against them on record. They're very clean mid-30's yuppies who apparently work for the film industry in some capacity, so no crack addicts or anything.
Other apartments have complained as well, so it's just a matter of time. I'm having fun trying out different ways of driving them mad. Still, I'd rather have peace, as I've had with the last ten or so neighbors up there.

And you're right, they're probably Beiber fans anyways, but most likely don't have any elk-calls in their collection, so I'm totally grabbing that.

And people really collect 8-tracks!? My love for those died the very last time I had to pop one and cello-tape the break...

Darcy Jansen said...

Alright - neighbors (actually hipsters, not Yuppies, so apologies if needed) are moving out as of this weekend, and all past posts are now available once again.