hail to radiohead

last friday night was radiohead. i'll try to be brief.

seeing radiohead live is always a surreal experience for me. it makes me want to close my eyes and let everything around me melt away. the music is a journey to a haunting place. to an almost alien place.

as the fog settled into the greek theater before the show, i thought about how appropriate that was to the ambiance that is radiohead. misty, mystical, and utterly moving.

highlights for me were: morning bells, a wolf at the door (seeing thom "rap" is very cool), exit music, and as always, idioteque. the drum beats on there there were spot on, and i just couldn't help jarring my body along with the beat. andrea was ecstatic to hear exit music - one of her favorite radiohead songs. she took digital footage of the whole song with her camera. i wish i could post it, it's totally amazing.

although i thoroughly enjoyed the show, i have to say it wasn't the best radiohead show i've seen. this show seemed subdued to me, a little mellow, a little calm, as was the crowd. a far cry from the highly charged "radiohead or die" vibe from 3 years ago. still though, no regrets - a solid, captivating show that did not lose my attention for an instant.

(photo credit: andrea, who was up so close!)

where do we go after this life?

i got solicited by mormons today. sneaky little bastards. struck up a really nice conversation with me about biking, then sweetly handed me a postcard with a picture of some monstrous temple, saying:

what is the true nature of god?

can families be together forever?

where do we go after this life?

answers to these and other eternally significant questions can be found by visiting www.mormon.org

what a load of bullshit. i wanted to ask if they plan on having multiple wives and raping their daughters (ok, i really don't believe all mormons are like that, but after reading jon krakauer's book, i just can't help it crossing my mind). highly unfair of me, i'm sure. but anyway...

it bugs me because they don't have the answers to these questions. i KNOW they don't. no one does. any religion that claims to have the answers to these questions (namely the first and last) is totally missing the point and trying to con vulnerable people.

there is no heaven. there is no hell. there is no such thing as god. maybe saying that is equivalent to someone saying that there IS a heaven and a hell and there are answers about an afterlife. maybe i'm just the same as the believers in my strong sense of non-belief. probably.

we are no different from any other organism on the planet, except for our capability for reason, emotion, and innovation. i don't believe that these exceptions buy us an afterlife in a heaven. it just means that we are able to experience the earth in a different capacity than other living things. damn, we're lucky. we get to exist on a planet spinning through a vast infinity for a quick flash of time. better enjoy it while it lasts and make the best of it. i don't think anything else comes after this. THIS IS IT. that's my religion. maybe i'll make postcards.

family... *sigh*

it was a nice, unexpected surprise to see my favorite aunt at my parents house tonight. here is how our visit went:

me: hi auntie! how are you? you look good!

auntie: i'm fine sweetie! i always look good, don't i? are you wearing a padded bra?

me: what?! no, i'm not.

auntie: why not! (slaps me on the hand) i told you to always wear a padded bra!

me: well auntie, i'm fine the way i am. i don't need a padded bra. i can't believe that i get a slap on the hand for not wearing one.

auntie: i told you to never leave the house without a padded bra! (slaps my hand again)

i continued the conversation by pointing out that because my aunt is endowed FAR beyond the average woman, her point of reference is skewed. she didn't buy it.

i defended my girls the best i could. i hope their feeling weren't hurt!

new blog

hi everyone!

i have decided to start another blog dedicated to biking happiness: Adventures (and Mishaps) in Cycling!

so if you want to know about my biking escapades, check it out. i'm not going to blog about cycling here anymore.

potential disaster

i think i may have seriously fucked up my iTunes library. i got a program to transfer the existing songs on my iPod to my music library. however, in this process, it changed most of the filenames to 4 or 5 digit numbers.

i made sure to specifically turn on the option that would prevent this before i launched the program. it obviously didn't work.

the files display the artist and track name on the iPod and iTunes just fine, but not in the original files. so if i want to clean up the original files, i have no idea what the file is.

fuck! i'm trying not to hyperventilate.

cool, it is

i just solved some issues at work with another co-worker via back and forth emails written purely in yoda-speak.

*sigh* i love my job.

system error

i consider myself to be decently computer savvy, more than the average joe. so when i bought an external hard drive and more memory to add to gigi (my home computer), i thought i'd have a nice upgrade to enjoy iTunes and my iPod, which i really haven't used with my computer very much in the last 10 months due to my lack of space. read on if you'd like to hear about my trials and tribulations.

well, the external drive install was fine. i transferred all my music, pictures, and other large files that were max-ing out my other drives. images of a fantastically fused denise/leslie music collection danced through my head! however, when i ran iTunes, everything froze. when i attached my iPod with iTunes open, everything froze. i thought the solution would be more memory.

i installed 1024 MB more memory. my computer recognized it. wonderful. but it decided to then reject my keyboard. WTF?? i have no clue how one has to do with the other, but the driver for the keyboard went out the window. and i couldn't download it from the web since i couldn't type. INSERT CURSE WORD HERE.

well, because i'm more computer savvy than the average joe, i figured out a way to find the driver on my computer without requiring the keyboard. great. wonderful. things are looking up.

let's run iTunes! or not! same deal - froze up upon the double click. i uninstalled and reinstalled the program back on the C drive. at that point iTunes didn't even bother opening when double-clicked.

did i mention that during this time, my system decided to spontaneously reboot itself and tell me that "your system has just recovered from a serious error." twice.

and again the next day, after the new memory was removed and other clean-up measures were utilized, right in the middle of a fresh iTunes install.

so now i am now looking at returning everything i just bought and a) buying a computer from bryce, who helped me with this mess (it's better than gigi and for about what i bought the upgrades for) or b) reformatting my whole damn computer and starting, literally, from scratch. somehow, i think i'm going to end up doing both.

how much is your head worth?

so i just discovered that the fall i took on wednesday night cracked my helmet. i wasn't kidding when i said i hit my head *really* hard on the sidewalk.

total bummer since i love that helmet and it cost me $60. it's pretty much useless now. but i guess another $60 is worth protecting my priceless head!