| Christmas in Pearl (12-22-03) I'm in Pearl Mississippi, home of my folks. I'm here in my old bedroom with my new computer set up here. It's messy. They sort of use this room as a storage for grandkid toys/guest bed/mini-fridge/spare TV/etc. Random stuff on the floor that threatens to make me lose the stuff I've brought (and I think it's happened already). I think I might try to clean up. So I can get a "What are you doing?" sort of thing. When you move people's stuff, you know. I'm listening to Nico. I might write back later. Senses
Working Undertime So I decided that after I watch The Return of the King in a few weeks, I'll have a little Tolkien marathon where I watch the entire epic: in cartoon form. I've got the DVDs for the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, the Bakshi version of The Lord of the Rings (which covers The Fellowship of the Ring and sorta The Two Towers), and the Rankin/Bass version of The Return of the King (which I've never watched). Who needs Peter Jackson? His marathon (at least after next year's extended version of The Return of the King comes out) would last up to twelve hours, where this one will only last about five, five and a half tops. I basically have too many DVDs to watch. I said I was going to cut back on buying them because I have too many to watch already and didn't want to get too behind, and Carrie said, "Only you would make DVDs seem like work." I'm watching DVDs the same way I used to read books: at least five at a time, back and forth as I'm in the mood for them. I was told a few times that that wasn't a good way to read books, but I disagreed and still do. I think it's probably the best way to do almost anything. It's like you can take a break from something heavy to read something lighter. I'm almost finished for this school semester. Just gotta caculate grades and turn them in and I'm done. I need to go ahead and make my syllabuses for next semester too, but there's almost a certain fun to that: pretending that the semester will go well if you just organize the hell out of it. Sometimes it works. So there's a song that I thought was XTC's "Senses Working Overtime" that's been in my head for about a week now, and especially today. But when I illegally downloaded that song, it wasn't the one that's in my head. I don't really know any of the words, just the melody (and arrangement and everything else except the lyrics). Does XTC have two versions of that song? Or does someone else have a song called that? Which is the one that Mandy Moore does? Okay, I'll go illegally download the Mandy Moore one and see if that helps. AllMusic isn't helping much since I don't have a lot of info. I'll be back later. Okay, Now
I Rock The new stuff: Stuff I didn't
have to re-buy: So, yeah, I pretty much bought a new computer instead of just updating my old one, but I needed an overhaul. But it still cost about half as much as I spent on my first one, and this one is paid for (my first one was only recently paid off in the I'm-a-poor-grad-student installment plan). I sure do dig it so far, even just installing programs and crap. I haven't done much real yet. The only negative thing about this setup is that the CPU fan makes the computer like a really loud white noise machine. It'll make song recording more difficult. Lots of pillow-stuffing, I guess. Maybe they sell more quiet ones. I need more stuf to buy. Looking forward to rocking the free world with the new machine. Do I expect it to change my life? Yes. Yes, I do. My very first computer made me a writer, my first fancy computer made me a musician, and this one will make me a director/editor. Seriously. I probably wouldn't have been much of any of those things without computer help. Does that make me a freak? Maybe, I don't care. Computers might not make your kids get good grades in school, but they sure are good potential-actualizers for people who need non-messy creative outlets. Oh, and I can play The Sims more better now. Juices:
Past, Present, Future The stuff I crapped out, by the way, was Rusty Spell's Charles Grodin in September, Tommy Burton's So Much for Me and Robert Brenton's 3 disc The New Beau Revere Tape, "Hit the Trigger, Jigger" in October, and DJ Rus's self-titled album in November. I helped with all of those anyway. Mostly I want Topenga to come out soon because I think it's among the best songs I've written and I like people to hear it when I can do something like that. It sometimes feels like I make one real album an year, and that's the TMD album; the rest are just killing time. I know folks make fun of me for putting out so much music, but I don't want to turn around one day and wonder why I wasn't doing it while the music-juice was flowing through me. Why should I stop it just because everyone else waits two years between stuff? What are they doing during that time? I've got zillions of ideas, and I'll never do them all, so I'm doing what I can. I used to write stories like crazy and I felt the same way then. The story-juice has left me (temporarily, I hope) and now I got the music-juice. I do feel sad that we haven't made any real videos since 1997. That's over five years, people. That's waaay too long. I'm going to start making movies next year if I have to shoot myself in the mirror doing them. It's sad to me that the last six years of my life haven't been creatively captured on video. I know that sounds stupid, but -- you know -- if it isn't recorded, it didn't exist. At least we shot some random home video here and there. But nothing real. It's not that I don't have movie-juice, because I think I do, but movies almost always require other people, and everyone's nice and scattered right now. Movies are rough anyway. I'd never be a director because too many people are involved. It's not small enough, even tiny movies. I'd like to try, but I have a feeling it would just be a headache. However, I'm all ready for collaborative-juices to start flowing. I'm a little tired of doing stuff by myself all the time. Anyway, 2004 is going to be nice and fresh and different. That's what they all say, but I'm saying it anyway. Belle &
Sebastian Robert
Brenton Childhood
Fears: Gun-Jumping I've decided not to post anything else about my computer until it's working. Or until I'm dead, whichever comes first. Which reminds me: I wonder what will become of rustyspell.com when I'm dead. Perhaps I should will it to someone. Those Rheostatics fans would be upset, if no one else. Childhood
Fears TV Land is airing an episode of Fantasy Island Thursday night that scared the crap out of me as a kid, and I'm going to watch it and see what happens. I haven't seen it since I was six or however old I was. You should watch it with me. I'll update you on what happens. I have papers to grade. No one likes doing that, I think. No one, I think, likes hearing about other people having papers to grade either. No one likes hearing half the things we feel the need to say, like that we have headaches or our daily schedules. It's a neat trick if you can get people to care about what you say. Step one involves not telling people you don't like grading papers. You May
Have Won the Battle, 2200+ I'm reinstalling everything to my old computer (more commonly known as "the old standby") so I can finish up these albums and stuff. Bad News
Updates My computer stuff I ordered a month ago still isn't working right. If anyone knows what would make Windows XP shut down the entire computer while installing it, email me and let me know. The canker sore on my tongue is disappearing, but it feels that one is appearing on my cheek to take its place. But the good news: Tommy visited me this past week and we had a great time. We made two albums, saw the Alamo, broke the Guiness' Book of World Records record for most drum beats in a minute (unofficially right now, but we might work on making it official if we're not too lazy). The other good news is that I'm feeling generally happy in spite of all the bad news bears. Cures I've got a canker sore on the tip of my tongue. I think the pain of my canker sores correspond perfectly to my overall mood. I haven't been in a good mood today or yesterday. Maybe it's the sore, maybe not, but it seems to happen every time. Chicken or egg? Neither? An Open
Letter To Tommy's Mother (Another Tommy, Not Tom Green) We are not gun-jumpers. When someone from The New Tom Green Show calls me personally to say I'm going to be on TV and to let everyone know, that's what I do. It's not my fault that Tom got sick or whatever happened to prevent them showing my clip. Therefore, telling everyone is not jumping the gun. We were told 100% that we'd be on, so it was a sure thing as far as we knew. Also, my new computer isn't working yet, so I'm upset about that. With much love, Tom Blue Actually, I don't mind other than the fact that a handful of people watched it expecting to see me and I wasn't not there... and that they probably won't tune in Monday when they actually most likely will show me. I don't know what the deal was. They told me in no uncertain terms that I'd be on tonight, but c'est life. Green Thumb
Up the Butts of Pundits You Can All
Be Green with Envy I'm the tall white dude with the glasses. Other good stuff that happened today: I ordered my computer upgrades which will allow me to edit videos and make DVDs of our stuff finally (not to mention just having a better computer). And I registered www.nikcusproductions.com, which should be up in a day or two. Yesterday Saved by the Bell came out on DVD. The fact that you can see Mars has made everything right in the universe. It only gets better from here, kids. Live Goes
On I guess you've all heard now that Kool-Aid MC with a Lemonade Spritzer died. Their death inspired DJ Rus of DNS to record a song for them entitled "Tribute (Why, God?)" which will appear on his first solo recording. |
Copyright (c) Aug 2003 by Rusty Spell Dot Com