Spring Break, camera obscura, and Modest Mouse.

No Padre Island, but it is spring break.  I spending it working on catching up on homework.  How exciting, you might think, but it’s not all work.   Thanks to an especially generous Christmas and Birthday endowment from my progenitors, I am working on re-activating a part of my life that has long lay dormant: the photographic part.  I am awaiting delivery of a shiny new Nikon digital camera with a few lens.  I still have some funds to get a few more accessories thanks to some careful price comparisons.  I’m really excited, I think that next to school, this will be the best thing that’s happened to me in  awhile.  I’ll post a few choice shots here in the future.

I already know that I’m interested in surfaces that reflect an unconscious design generated by human activity.  I guess I can show it better than explain it right now.   I’m also interested in competing philosophies that collide in a single object.  For instance, there is this graffitti all over the train cars that pass by the tracks near campus.  I’m not so interested in the comment of the graffitti itself, but I find the color choices interesting; the indutrial, utilitarian of the train cars, and the commercially created spray paint.  Even though the graffitti is intended as a subversion, the color of the paint was chosen for commercial appeal.  That juxtaposed to the choice of colors of the train cars makes for interesting color collisions, and it’s really an unconscious choice of juxtaposition.  I mean, the graffitist didn’t paint the cars to make them “pretty” they were making another statement, the color of the cars were chosen not to make a statement except for the ownership of the car.  So I think it’ll be fun to make these colors my own.

Lastly, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with this song lately.  SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE.

Spoon – You Got yr Cherry Bomb

 I saw this band on Thursday at Warehouse live.  Their music really affects me, and I’m not sure why.  Their influences just seems so unique.

Radiohead – In Rainbows

The new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, is out today. It’s excellent! It took me a few days to digest Hail to the Thief but IR is much more accessible, yet, still as entropic as any Radiohead album should be.

Cool iTunes feature

I’ve never tried it before, but iTunes can fix scratched CDs. I found that out on accident because I have a copy of OK Computer by Radiohead that has been scratched since day 1. I was moving it over to my iPod and discovered that it fixed the scratched tracks. So now, I’m re-burning–having imported the tracks as .wav files, whereby, they are fixed. I’m now going to try it with some other discs. I’m sure it won’t work for all, but if even a few are fixed, I’ll be thrilled.

Learnalilgivinanlovin

Pronounced Gore-ti-yeah. Great band, too bad they don’t have more exposure in the US. They are big in Australia, apparently. Enjoy!