Liking semi-obscure bands is a mixed blessing. If they’re well represented on the web they’re likely to have a free sample or two. However, if they’re too obscure you can barely find any reference to them at all.

One other band I thought I’d mention, although precious little of them is on the web and no free music I can see, is The Receptionists.

The group is comprised of three women whose recording studios apparently consisted of largely of Vassar dorm rooms, and whose instruments of choice are guitar, accordian, bells, mandolin, and xylophone, supplimented with a large dose of whistle.

The Receptionists instrumental sound is a dissonent cacophony and reminds me alot of the NPR clip years back where a group of musicians made music on whittled out vegetables. On top of that their vocals are usually an off-key monotone.

But somehow with The Receptionists all the discord seems to fit together brilliantly. It’s like these girls really know their stuff but got bored perfecting the craft, maybe got larangitis, and one of ’em said, “Hey, let’s just break out the veggies and jam a bit.” And that was fine with everyone else.

This is a bit of an exaggeration though. There are a few of their songs that wouldn’t sound totally out of place in the medieval-reenacting female folk singer repitoire.

On Raphsody only their song Soren Loved Regina (apparently a reference to Soren Kierkegaard’s relationship with Regina Olsen) is available, and that only on a compilation “American Pop Style”. Cashing in a gift certificate recently netted me their only available Album The Last Letter, though supposedly there’s another set of their songs out there under the title of Keep Your Secrets.

Of the songs on The Last Letter, probably the most accessible is The Piracy of Saint Philomena, backed by accordion accompanyment. A few, like Soren Loved Regina and In Love Again are sweet. And others like the Laundry Song and Stamp Song are amusingly wrought micro-ballads about the ironies and injustices of life.

Unfortunately though it looks like their latest recordings on the Last Letter album were done in 1997. And since the first few pages of google searches turn up only a smattering of cursory reviews and advertisements for their work, I think it’s safe and sad to say that The Receptionists are now defunct.

I’m likes me music and have this insatiable appatite for random indie-ish bands, especially semi-obscure ones with a few cute or quirky songs.

Alot of these I can find on Raphsody, but of course there are a few not on there, and I don’t have Raphsody at work. Also, as you might’ve gathered from my earlier post I’m kind of cheap when it comes to shelling out money for every CD, new or obscure, under the sun.

Fortunately a little googling turns up a bunch of songs here and there by some of these artists available for free. Now and then there’ll be one of their more popular songs as a sample, and occasionally a whole bunch of limited availability songs (EPs, concert specials, etc.) on tap somewhere. Most of these are even in MP3 format.

Continue reading More FREE “Barely Legal!!!” MP3s →

Just in case anyone’s interested:

I subscribe to a couple of e-mail lists for modern-occultish/paranormal RPGs. As plot and background ideas they tend to throw around some links to the stranger and more intriguing subject matter out there. Some of it’s definitely true. Some is more speculative, theoretical, or incredible.

For my own reference I’ve started a webpage to collect some of the more interesting links brought up. Mostly it’s from the “Delta Green” and “Unknown Armies” lists, but some stuff is gleaned from other sources though (the “Camel Spiders” were referenced by Penny Arcade for example).

I’m trying to keep it updated as the information trickles in (usually once or twice a week). Those interested can find it here.

Is is possible to synthesize the element plutonogen? If not, what is the most “powerful element ever” not yet listed on the periodic table?

I have provided a chart that will hopefully help clarify last week’s question.

Charts, links and quotes are acceptable in your answer.

The Ameviathan script we will be shooting will be “The Green Machine”. Though we are still looking into filing for profit or non-profit status for the film-making future, “The Green Machine” will not receive third-party funding.

There are a couple reasons for this. With a 20 to 30 minute length video, there isn’t any sort of shelf life for the current incarnation of “Ameviathan” outside of the realm of television show. And with the the heyday off Sid and Marty Kroft (rather sadly in my mind) behind us, there also isn’t any real hope of a major bidding war for airing rights breaking out any time soon.

As such, “The Green Machine” will be S.T.I. (straight to internet), and see release here exclusively on Protozoic. However, none of this means that the our goals for “The Green Machine” are any less lofty. Technically, “The Green Machine” will represent the most complicated thing we’ve done to date, in terms of the writing process, pre-production, production and post-production.

This week, Tim and myself have started with a thorough read-through of the the screenplay, making some appropriate decisions. Next, I’ll start story-boarding and Tim will look into lighting. Meanwhile, Brian will harvest ants from our yard.

As for the future: We will continue to look into filing for non-profit or profit status and I will continue working towards the completion of a feature length script. At the current time, I am still working on producing treatments for potential ideas, though I think I’ve landed on the idea I’ll be developing. Brian’s plans for the future will remain steadfast: the ant-opian dream.

My boss grew a bunch of zucchinis in his garden a couple weeks ago and managed to foist them upon the staff. I ended up with one that sat in our refrigerator for quite awhile. Sadly due to our poor eating habits many vegetables sit in our freezer until bad things happen to them (other foods sit there for a long time too but happen to have a higher endurance).

Fortunately a recent visit to our relatives (just before the too-brief NJ stop) netted us several of grandma dragon’s recipees including a bread that actually involves zucchini. Attempts on my part to prepare a sustaining loaf of the same returned various results.

Recipees and commentary on the attempt follow:

Continue reading The Zucchini Bread Variations →

“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The forgoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we enjoy an original relation to the universe?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”, Selected Essays, New York, 1985, page 35.

I spent a lot of my childhood in the company of ants. There is a big cable/electrical box complex in front of the house I grew up in where I would spend days playing with my little formic friends, narrowly avoiding dangerous wires. While it seemed like the height of interest for most kids was burning ants with a magnifying glass, I can’t remember ever doing that. Instead, I interested myself in their social aspects. How they, as a society, organized their tunnel system and reacted with certain stimuli.

Continue reading Ant Farm v4, Day 1 →

three major factors would contribute to the success of such a test: strong potentiality, unrealized phenomenal nascence, and temporal and physical constrainment.

Simply based on the popular interest in fringe-science and folk-conciousness, the likely “virtual entity” candidate for such an experiment would seem to be a ghost, urban legend, or other widely recognized supernatural entity. The more widely recognized the entity the greater the potentiality. Such phantasms are popularly accepted as straddling the fence between forms of existence and non-existence anyway and would make ideal test subjects on the basis of “unrealized phenomenal nascence”.

In the area of temporal and physical constrainment it would be useful if the phantasm was traditionally associated with a particular geographic area to help limit uncertainties regarding spacial location which might occur upon nascence.

As an additional factor: it might be prefferable, if only for the purposes of provability, to choose some entity with qualities which are improbable through conventional scientific understanding, unsubstantiated by established historical prescident, yet undeniable as an entity in the phenomenal world. For example: bringing Abraham Lincolon or John Wilkes Booth into existence would be easy for skeptics to construe as a hoax (anyone can dress up in period costume and human cloning isn’t too far beyond the realm of what seems possible at this point). But if you could manage a gorgon or Paul Bunyan, who could doubt?

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