Tuesday, July 31, 2007

jolie

i have renewed my affair with this woman-

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Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

neko case had kind of unseated her. i only have room for one red-haired siren in my life evidently. i hope they can co-exist now. anyway, i was going to listen to 'fox confessor...' at work today but then something made me want to listen to 'escondida' and it sucked me in real quick. i almost listened to the whole thing today- didn't quite get to the last track, but 'darling ukelele' is still my favourite song of hers. amazing.
bought two records at laurie's planet of sound today- the sonics- 'here are the sonics' and blue cheer- 'vincebus eruptum.' good stuff. if i have money later in this pay cycle (haw haw haw...) i would like to go back and buy the other sonics album ('boom') and a rolling stones record they had that i wanted ('between the buttons'- can't seem to ever find that one anywhere).
i also wanted to buy the 'that 70s show' season 4 set. tall order. did not get enough money to press the ep like i was hoping. at this point it looks like i have to either wait for the next paycheck in two weeks or hope that i actually do get my fucking refund check from capital one that they have owed me since april. i'm not holding my breath on that one- i think i have to call them up and yell at somebody to actually get my money. it's ironic isn't it. maybe i should charge them a $40 fee for every month that they haven't paid me what they owed me...
speaking of $40 fees somehow $6 disappeared from my checking account and i overdrew $3.50 and they still charged me a $29 overdraft fee. well, actually my online statement was different from what the woman at the bank showed me on her computer screen. interesting. most curious. somehow i stub every little teeny transaction and check them off as they clear and add ones in that i've forgotten (which hasn't happened in over a year) and balance my register against my online statement with a calculator on a weekly basis and somehow i still manage to 'make a mistake in my math' (this is what they tell you when you call them up to try and get them to remove these overdraft charges). it's funny isn't it? the premise of a bank- you give them your money to keep safe for you, but suddenly when your math doesn't add up to theirs you're the one making the mistakes and there's no way you can prove that they are actually the ones making mistakes and then stealing even more of your money with these little overdraft fees that then make you owe them money. i just need to stick to my very strict 'cash only' policy. the last math error i made was actually in my favor for once and i had $100 extra in my account last month and i used 40 of it and took the other 60 out in cash. i should've just taken the whole lot out right when i found out about it. i usually just leave enough money in there to pay for the checks that i have to write for that pay period and then leave a little padding, but there never seems to be enough- 5, 10, 15, 20. funny that. maybe someday soon i'll be one of those crazies who keeps all of his money in the freezer. it's not far off.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

dontdrinkatcalsbar.com revisited

listen to these kids- they're good-

the sun is so bright
lord can you hear me

some work done, finally...

i finally did some work today- got two vocal parts for rekkerd number 3 done. i now have a tape full of four different vocal parts that need to have reverb from the stairwell added. there's still room on them for more. i also wrote and started to record a new song this weekend. i also did a sort of recorded improvised song as well that i just kind of fucked around a bit and made up and then did a recording pass after kind of trying to find that right delay and distortion settings and stuff. it's pretty sweet. i actually haven't listened to it at all- so maybe it isn't...
we didn't go to see ghost to falco last night- we opted to stay home instead. the money i was going to spend to go to the show and buy one of his new records i would've had to take from my savings and i wasn't too keen on doing that. i really did want to go though- quite a bummer... i flipped a coin twice and both time it told me not to go. i also realised that it could mean that i'd have to wait through another full pay cycle to send off the ep to be duplicated- which i am planning on doing with the next paycheck come hell or high water.
i would like to do some more work tonight- i have a song where the left channel of the loop went dead for a while so i was going to see if i could spend some time to get it fixed properly- it might be a kind of involved process. i'd have to re-record the left channel of the loop on a new input and get it synced up with the right channel. the challenge- it would have to be perfectly in sync. this could take a long time dependent on how long the gaps are. another problem- the song where this happened is an extra track that has little chance of ending up on the finished record, so it makes it difficult to bother with putting all of that pain in the ass time in. shit it makes it difficult to bother to sing the vocals ten times, but i've promised myself that i will give every song that i wrote and started to record for this record a fair shake and the attention that it deserves to be fully completed before being cast aside. the idea behind this being that hopefully there will be enough extra tracks of high enough quality to make up a distinctive and cohesive ep that's different enough from the record to release. i wanted to do the secret double ep thing again too- four or five hidden tracks.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

dontdrinkatcalsbar.com

our show at cal's was kinda crappy. sound was shitty, crowd talked LOUDLY through our entire set and then who i would assume was the booker got huffy when stefanie asked us if they gave the bands free beers. the bartender was about to give her two when he came over and was like 'well, you only brought in one person- so i'm just going to give you one' and some other stuff as well i believe. we were going to hang around and watch the other band- but after that we'd kind of lost the desire to be in this guy's establishment so we left. i wanted to stay for the other band's set because they seemed to like us quite a bit despite the fact that they talked through our set really loudly.
so we're never going back there and we're also never going to break our 'no bars' rule. i was going to try and get us a show at ronny's- but since that's a bar that would be breaking the rule. i'd really just like to play at mr. city, south union arts and the empty bottle again. i also wouldn't mind playing at subterranean. all of our friends punked out on us and didn't show up too- which was kind of a bummer since they seemed so hot-to-trot to come. i was pretty sure they wouldn't though.
i really hate it when you play at a place that isn't really dependant on the money that they make from shows- usually people will pay the cover to just come in and drink and they have people coming in and out drinking there all day. cal's is in the loop and is the only bar that stays open after 7 and they get a ton of extra business because of it. if other bars in the loop are able to stay open until 7 and pay their rent then it seems to me that them having shows should be no pressure and thus leave them as a good choice for bands with little to no draw (like us). it's getting kind of annoying though since our friends never really bother to come us see us (except for the once). i think we play too much. i'm not sure that'd make a huge difference. i guess we should see. i think i might just try to commit to working on the record. i'd still like to do some acoustic instores for the ep. if the above listed venues reply to our requests for shows then i'll take them. otherwise i'm not going to try and book any new shows at any new places- especially bars. shalloboi+bars=big disaster.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

welcome

this is my first post here at blogspot. i'm hoping i like it a bit more here than at livejournal. i guess this will be a new place to put all of my surveys and ramblings and whatnot. no particular agenda i guess. just more tyler. you poor bastards.
tonight i got super pissed because my online payment for my washington mutual credit card didn't post for some reason (who knows why) and naturally they charged me $40. seems reasonable right? so i'd try and do another payment, but since they already charged me the fee i'm going to go ahead and wait a week to see if it posts later. if it does then i'm fucking screwed because i entered for it to post on the day that it was due and that means that since i have to use my paycheck from the 15th of every month to pay it and it's usually due on the 17th so now it looks like every month there's a good chance i'll be charged a $40 fee. i didn't get a confirmation number either so for some reason stefanie told me to call them even though i knew it wouldn't do any good. i'm really upset about this and it's really unfair- a similar thing has happened to me with online payments and transfers before and it's had the same result. last time it resulted in about $120 in overdraft charges at my bank at the time and since they wouldn't reverse all of them i closed my account. fucked up. i'm just one of a million people who get screwed by these bloodsuckers every day. i may never get out of debt if this continues. shit- three months of this and i'm $120 in the hole. since i've transferred my balance and made payments each month of at least $100 my balance has still managed to go up $250. riddle me that. my balance transfer is supposed to be interest free until september.
anyway we had this really depressing state of the union talk and i thought i should try to release the ep a different way and we went around in circles and as it turns out the way i was going to do it is still the most cost-effective and sensible. i have more than half of the money that i need for the cd pressing as of right now. the packaging we are going to do ourselves and we already have the cardstock for the front cover image and i was going to get a silkscreening kit to do the printing on the back. i was even going to look in to going to kinko's and getting some stickers printed of the endless december logo to put on the cds.
it is late and i probably should get to sleep...