TestToneTape



I am such an idiot. I've spent years working with tape recording... 4 tracks, reel to reel, multiple levels of mixdown between decks. For some stupid reason I've never used a calibrating test tone to stripe the beginning of tapes. I've read about it before, but just always blown it off. This came back to bite me in the ass recently when I dumped some tracks back to the 4track and accidentally had the pitch just slightly off. Re-tuning the track was the biggest hassle I've fucked with in months. As a result, I'm now running a 440hz and 333.33hz tone at the start of every tape. Later, regardless of what equipment the tape is played back on, the deck can be tuned to make it run at it's original speed and pitch. Why didn't I think of this before? Because I'm a fucking moron that's why. Honestly, I would suggest doing this even with digital recordings. It can't hurt.

As a side note about analog vs. digital: I still have 4track tapes from 1995 whereas I've lost whole records due to digital audio workstations crashing. Think about it.
- posted by Mason @ 4:25 PM (0) comments

Bootlegs, Bootlegs, Bootlegs


My current obsession: bootlegs. Specifically Springsteen soundboard tapes 1970-1974. The power of live Springsteen (especially Born to Run era) cannot be overstated. The majority of "live" albums are multi-track affairs, recorded for the purpose of later release. They usually feature audience mics mixed in (shouts, claps, singing along, cheering) to capture the natural ambiance of a hall, theatre or stadium... see that way it sounds "live". This is the thing I fucking hate about live albums. The beauty of stereo soundboards is that they feature none of this. They sound exactly as the band did on the night. Unfiltered, unedited, unproduced. Just raw, live and without pretense. I'm in love and I just can't stop. I've been using the following bittorrent trackers to get FLACs of some great shows:

Jungleland (just Bruce)
The Zomb (all artists)
Trader's Den (all artists)
Trade Friendly Torrents (mostly hippie crap)

I'm really excited about my new Lightscribe burner coming from Newegg (a Samsung for $19.99 - thanks black friday), so I can professionally label discs. I'm such a fucking geek.
- posted by Mason @ 4:25 PM (0) comments

Nip/Tuck, again.



In preperation for season 5.5 starting in January (the last five episodes of season 5 that those FX bastards have been holding out on for a year), we're re-watching Nip/Tuck. It's the most salacious, filthy, perverse thing ever on television. It doesn't have the most nudity or swearing (well, ok, for basic cable it does) but it trumps every other series in the history of television for sickness and immorality. Pornography. Incest. Necrophilia. Rape. Murder. Torture. Neo-Nazism. The list is endless.

I love a series whose writers know it's the most ridiculous television of all time and strive to not just "push the boundaries", but go laughably and horrifyingly beyond the edge of taste and acceptability. If you haven't seen the series, I assure you that you're missing out.
- posted by Mason @ 4:25 PM (0) comments

Happy Tofurkey Day



Thanksgiving was so fucking excellent, I can't even tell you. This plate of deliciousness that Meg whipped up blew my mind in ways I didn't think were possible. On this plate of wonderful vegan-ness you have (clockwise from the top):

Spinach Dip
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Homemade Seitan Turkey
Cranberry Sauce
Stuffing
Dinner Roll

There were also three pies, Deep Dish Apple, Pecan and Pumpkin. All animal free! So big ups to the Meg for destroying all previous Thanksgiving records.
- posted by Mason @ 5:22 AM (0) comments

When the world never seems, to be liv-ing up to your dreams....



I downloaded Season 2 of The Facts of Life, and we've started re-watching it. It brings to mind that our relationship is, quite directly, based on this television series. In college, when I was looking for a girlfriend, I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone single that liked to watch hours and hours of television. Eventually I struck gold. Megan.

Countless hours of our time that first year were spent on Facts of Life reruns on Nick at Nite and it's why we've seen nearly every episode (and yes Mom, it was an overwhelming component of my dropping out of college). It's something that makes me deeply personally happy on so many levels that I can't even explain. I dig the ever loving shit out this show. So thanks to your uploader for the rip, it saved me the trouble of doing it myself.


- posted by Mason @ 6:26 PM (0) comments

Cranked Out on Mate



I've been a touch sniffly lately. To combat my lethargy and post nasal drip, I'm full of Sudafed, Advil, and Yerba Mate Limeade. The recipe is as follows:

2 Plain Mate Tea Bags
8 oz boiling water
1 squeezed lime
1 tbsp agave
24 oz ice

Brew the 2 bags in the water, for much longer than you normally would (maybe 7 minutes?). Fill a metal cup with ice, squeeze the lime into it, dump in the agave. Pour the now extra strength mate concentrate over the ice and pass it between two metal cups 3-4 times. Strain the liquid into a fresh cup of ice and enjoy. If you're too lazy for this, buy yourself a bottle of Honest Tea Sublime Mate. It's almost as good.
- posted by Mason @ 6:32 PM (0) comments

Eden Lake (2007)



Fuckkkk. We just watched British horror film Eden Lake. A horror buff (and a touch of a snob), I didn't expect much from it. The odds are totally stacked against it. It's from the UK. It's brand new. It's got no one you've ever heard of in it. However, it has 82% on RT, so I figured, "Why not?".

Holy Shit. Eden Lake is one of the most brutal, disturbing and upsetting films I've ever seen. There's no ghost, no monster, no zombies, no masked madman. Just people. Terrible, ignorant, brutal teenagers who commit atrocities for laughs. This is no vampire cult, no Manson Family, no Jonestown. This is just a group of shitty suburban chavs out for thrills.

This film goes in the darkest direction of anything I've seen in a long time. What happens is totally unexpected, but totally terrifying, disturbing and painfully real. See this film. Download it, rent it, see in in theatres (if you live in England), borrow it, whatever. Just watch it.
- posted by Mason @ 6:32 PM (0) comments

Heavy Fucking Metal



Sam Dunn (my new christ figure in anthropology) has followed up his amazing 2005 film, Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, with Global Metal. If you didn't see the first one, you should. Even if you don't like metal, they're such engaging, well produced and powerful documentaries that it doesn't matter. Megan doesn't like metal, and she loved them both. Global Metal looks at the emerging metal scene outside the West. Brazil, Japan, China, India and Iran all have burgeoning metal scenes, now documented by Sam.



Besides watching this doc, I've been listening to Liquid Metal on the XM, and still just don't like cookie monster death metal or screaming eagle black metal vocals. I'm down with classic, thrash, speed and power metal, and that's about it. I was however, reminded that I rather enjoy Anthrax. Check this pretty decent track from their 2003 album, "We've Come for You All". They've certainly aged better than those assholes in Metallica, even having switched vocalists a couple of times.


- posted by Mason @ 6:28 PM (2) comments

Conan vs. The Predator



I've mentioned in the past that we play "Versus" fairly often at work. James proposed Conan vs. Predator today, and I stopped in my tracks. What a brilliant idea. Why have I never thought of this before? Sure, we've done RoboCop vs. Predator and Terminator vs. Predator, even Punisher vs. Predator, but to bring Conan into the mix... game changer.

The best part about this match-up is that it neither contender's cannon is violated. There's no reason to believe that Predators haven't been coming to earth since the Hyborian age, and the Predator's powers and tech aren't out of line with the kind of fucked up monsters and sorcery Conan puts up with on a daily basis.

Furthermore, it's a fair fight. Often when playing "Versus" a n00b will say Superman vs. [insert anyone else here]. This pisses me off to no end. There's no contest. I don't even like comics, and I certainly don't like Superman, but if you take his powers at face value, he's nigh on invincible, making him the de facto winner every time. Where's the sport in that? (As a side note, perpetual favorite Batman vs. Punisher is being made into some sort of bad fan film. Sounds fucking awesome to me. And a side, side note, Punisher: War Zone comes out next week. Yuk.)

So put your thinking caps on and work the kinks out of a Conan vs. Predator battle. Game on.
- posted by Mason @ 6:27 PM (1) comments

Sunflower Farmers Market



I was hoping to write a long post about how awesome Sunflower Farmers Market is, but it's not. Their sale prices are pretty low, but their regular prices are the same or higher than ours. It wasn't bad, and were it the only natural grocery where you lived, it would be great. (It beats the hell out of Akin's, Health Food Center and even Sprouts [though we all know how that turned out].) They had a lot of bulk, nice looking produce and an ok freezer section, but it's nothing to get worked up about. When the Henderson Ave. store opens up, I'm sure we'll go load up on dirt cheap (and in some cases, I think at their wholesale cost) weekly sale items, but I certainly won't be changing my allegiance any time soon.










See what I mean? It's just ok.
- posted by Mason @ 6:26 PM (1) comments

More Demolished Man



I know, I know. I REALLY need to stop buying copies of this book. But I can't help it. I like it so goddamn much. Bester was a true visionary and reading this in the 10th grade "flipped the script" (as ya boi Issac would say) on my view of fantastic fiction. Having mostly only read the "classics" (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke) up until then, Bester fucked my shit up harder than Burroughs or any of the beat writers (and not just because Alfred Bester is actually a great author and not just a junkie claiming to be one). If you'd like to borrow a copy of it, I have several.
- posted by Mason @ 6:26 PM (0) comments

Procol Harum



Procol Harum is one of those bands that's been in the back of my head for years. A decade ago (while working on the first MMDS record incidentally) I listened to Rick Dinger's CD copy of "A Salty Dog", and I really liked it. This was just before MP3s and filesharing ruined the record industry, and it wouldn't be till the next year when I started ripping things myself (Switched on Bach was the first thing I ever ripped - I checked it out, ripped it and reburned it to CD - Transcoded. Horrible, I know, but I was young and naive.) So I listened to this Procol Harum record, then promptly forgot about it. In the last ten years, anytime I hear "Whiter Shade of Pale" I usually say "You know, I listened to 'A Salty Dog' years ago, and really liked it," and leave it at that.

Thanks to our new XM radio, they were brought back up when Megan said, "I love this song (shade of pale, obviously), do I like Procol Harum?". To which I replied, "You know, I listened to 'A Salty Dog' years ago, and really liked it," but instead of leaving it, I came home and downloaded the 320kbs complete discography. You know what? Procol Harum is pretty fucking awesome.

I listened to the first five records tonight and I really, really, really fucking liked them. Meg liked it too, but I don't think nearly as much as I did. They're mostly proto-prog with shitloads of hammond organ. Gary Brooker's voice is excellent and they manage to keep Robin Trower's overblown and self righteous guitar playing in check (which is why he eventually quit the band in 1972 to go solo so he could dick around all over the fretboard). If you like early Genesis, then you should like Procol Harum. If you like beautiful, masterfully produced early 70's progressive pop, you'll fall all over yourself to eat a dick for Procol Harum.

Their current official website is, by the by, pretty embarrassing.


- posted by Mason @ 6:26 PM (0) comments

I did it. I posted it. Now watch it.



I've utilized that wicked new VTR/VCR device. Transferred to DVD, ripped and upped. So that now you can download it. Let me know if you're interested in the full DVDR... I can't tell that much difference since it's a VHS rip, but you might be more of a stickler than I am (Will Scovill).
- posted by Mason @ 9:23 AM (1) comments

Pizza Jesus: Second Coming



Well, I made another delicious vegan pizza last week. Oh shit. I can't get over myself on this one. Look at it. LOOK AT IT!!!! You want to eat it!!!! EAT IT!!!!!
- posted by Mason @ 7:10 PM (0) comments

Scuba-Do, Motherfuckers



I bought this lil gem at Half Price with ya boi Issac. It's a country and western record by a scuba instructor. All the lyrics are about scuba diving. I'll rip it and upload it sometime. It's not very good, but it's fucking weird.


- posted by Mason @ 7:07 PM (0) comments

Sticker Shock


white rock lake 7-11

Our economy is truly in the toilet. Gas is under $2 bucks a gallon. I bought at $1.87 this week, but it's down to $1.79 in south Dallas now. "But hey, gas is cheap, that's good right?" Uh... no. You see, falling oil prices are a strong indicator of how our economy is totally fucked. If we're all lucky maybe the oil will run 20 years sooner.
- posted by Mason @ 7:07 PM (0) comments

Time to xfer some videotapes, ya herd?



I bought a bad ass Sony SLV-M10HF video tape recorder at the thrift store for a finback. A 1/2 sawbuck. $5. I immediately used it (in conjunction with my $5 DVDrecorder) to digitize A Thief in the Night (the best 70's christian apocalypse movie ever). I have a whole stack of awesome OOP VHS tapes to run to disc. I'll be posting them on Demonoid as I rip them.


- posted by Mason @ 7:07 PM (1) comments

"The worst enemy this country has is American Wealth"



"The worst enemy this country has is American Wealth." -rodeo dude interviewed on MSNBC this week.

Right on, cowboy.
- posted by Mason @ 9:38 PM (0) comments

Is it you that is talking to me?



I rewatched Taxi Driver. I didn't understand it the first time I saw it when I was 12. I didn't understand it when I watched on laserdisc at 21. I think now, at 27, I understand it even less than I did 15 years ago. I'm confused as to the epilogue, and the necessity of Travis living after the shootout in Iris' apartment. It should be reedited to omit the last five minutes.

From wikipedia on the ending:

Roger Ebert has written of the film's ending:

"There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's 'heroism' of saving Iris, and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true? ... I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence plays like music, not drama: It completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters."[7]

James Berardinelli, in his review of the film, argues against the dream or fantasy interpretation, stating:

"Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader append the perfect conclusion to Taxi Driver. Steeped in irony, the five-minute epilogue underscores the vagaries of fate. The media builds Bickle into a hero, when, had he been a little quicker drawing his gun against Senator Palantine, he would have been revealed as an assassin. As the film closes, the misanthrope has been embraced as the model citizen—someone who takes on pimps, drug dealers, and mobsters to save one little girl."[8]

On the Laserdisc audio commentary, Scorsese acknowledged several critics' interpretation on the film's ending being Bickle's dying dream. However, he admitted that the last scene of Bickle glancing at an unseen object implies that he might fall into rage and recklessness in the future, and he is like "a ticking time bomb."[9] Writer Paul Schrader confirms this in his commentary on the 30th anniversary DVD, stating that Travis "is not cured by the movie's end," and that, "he's not going to be a hero next time."[10]

Well fuck you Ebert. Arguing for a dream sequence interpretation tells me that you've either never seen another Scorsese picture (which I know you have), or that you're a fucking idiot. I'm leaning toward the latter
- posted by Mason @ 4:23 AM (0) comments

My minidisc brings all the boys to the yard...



Well, I finally figured out what to do with my $2.00 minidisc deck. I now use it as a lossless, transparent intermixing stage! "But, Mason," you say, "What the fuck does that mean?". Well, dear boy, I'll tell you. When you're 4-tracking, sometimes you actually need more tracks. One option is mixing down what's been done to cassette (what I've done in the past) before running it back into the four track. This leads to over-compression, loss of highs and lows, pitch problems and the over-dubs sounding more clear and upfront than the original four backing tracks. That sucks. The other option (this is where the MD deck comes in) is mixing down to a lossless digital medium to run back into the 4-track. HAHA! Yeah, I know, I'm pretty happy about it too. Is this cheating? Maybe, but who fucking cares. I really need a standalone audio CD burner with a really good A/D converter for the digital dump from the cassette master.
- posted by Mason @ 9:39 PM (5) comments

Buy me a toy.



I bought an $1.00 copy of The Whole Synthesizer Catalogue from the editors of Keyboard Magazine. It's from '85, and filled with awesome original reviews of bad ass synths from a 75-85. It brought up a long elusive keyboard I should have bought ten years ago, the Oxford Synthesiser Company's "OSCar". It's a DCO based mono-synth
from 1985, and pretty fucking cool. This is another "I'm stupid" item that I should have bought in 1999 for $200, because one sold (albeit very well serviced and MIDI retro-fitted) for over £800 in the UK. Ouch, that's a lotta scratch. There are several software based clones of it, but that's boring. I love this book ever-so-much and will probably be posting more from it this month. Some scans maybe? Yeah.


- posted by Mason @ 9:39 PM (0) comments

White Trash Given Ignorance Medal of Honor



Mason's New #1 Favorite Story of All Time

By Roger Croteau - San Antonio Express-News

Belinda Davis just wanted to get something off her chest. So she called the Rush Limbaugh radio show to vent and, much to her surprise, ended up with a new Chevy Tahoe.

“I was frustrated about movie stars who helped with Barack Obama's campaign and the millions of dollars they gave to him,” she said.

Davis, a Kerrville resident, didn't like all the attention and praise celebrities got for supporting Obama, while working stiffs like her and her husband were ignored.

A lady at the Kerr County Republican Headquarters suggested she call Limbaugh. Davis did, and after a few tries she was put on the air.

Limbaugh thought she sounded under the weather and suggested she try an over-the-counter cold product called Zicam, which advertises on his show.

“I would go out and get some and swab your nose,” Limbaugh said. “I'll tell you what else I am going to do. I'm going to send you a copy of Vince Flynn's latest novel. In addition to Vince Flynn's latest novel, I'm going to buy you a car.”

Davis didn't know what to think.

“I thought he was joking at first. I had no idea he was really serious about this,” she said.

But two days later, she was at a local GM dealer, where she picked out a $58,000 fully-loaded Tahoe.

“I'm just so thankful to Rush,” she said.

Limbaugh told CNSNews.com that he made the offer on a whim because “she sounded so tired, distraught and frightened about her and her husband's business future with an Obama victory.”

Davis and her husband David make jewelry in their home under the name D.D. and Angel's Gems and sell it at area outdoor markets. She said they do pretty well, but still struggle.

“We don't eat out,” she said. “We don't buy anything brand new. We didn't use air conditioning all summer and we hardly go into town because gas is so much. We started getting some food stamps and that has helped a lot. Rush didn't know any of this.”

And they needed a new vehicle badly. Their car's transmission recently broke, and they thought they would not be able to replace it until next year, when David starts drawing his Social Security.

Much like Joe the Plumber, who John McCain made famous during his presidential campaign, Davis said that although her household would likely get a bigger tax cut under Obama's plan than McCain's, she hopes that her jewelry business grows and doesn't want to be punished by higher taxes if that happens.

Her main reason for supporting McCain, however, was that she thinks he would have handled the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan better than Obama will.

“But I've got an open mind,” she said. “I'm ready to see what Obama is going to do.”

The italics are mine, obviously. I don't think this story even needs a comment, you can see the comedy for yourself.
D.D. and Angel's Gems. Come on, you couldn't make that shit up. It's the most flea market thing ever.

link to the article
- posted by Mason @ 5:27 PM (0) comments

Death of a Hard Drive



SHIT!SHIT!SHIT!SHIT!!!!

The hard drive in the thinkcentre is toast. I spent hours today figuring that out, swapping it out, reinstalling and setting up. The only upside: incentive to upgrade to Hardy Heron (ubuntu 8.04, duh). I'm not happy about it, but at least the pc itself is ok. Fuck, what a hassle.
- posted by Mason @ 3:49 PM (0) comments

tres ninjas golpean con el pie detrás



In the breakroom this afternoon, Telemundo was showing Three Ninjas Kick Back. This is not the "spanish audio" from the DVD release, this is a total strip of the soundtrack. Dialog, Music, Foley. Everything. Action sequences, usually the territory of throbbingly generic "rock" music, are repopulated by zany, public domain calliope rolls and flea-market mariachi brass. The bizarre result suggests low-rent vaudeville troupe more than Jackie Chan slug fest. Kick and punch sound effects replaced by a tape recording of a man slapping a watermelon, only serve to further bend the mind to the psychedelia that is the re-dubbed version of this film.

If I were a person that took drugs, this would beat 200 Motels for a total freak-out any day of the week.
- posted by Mason @ 3:49 PM (0) comments

Steven Spielberg is a Hack.



We forced ourselves to sit through Minority Report. It just really wasn't very good. Spielberg just can't resist that whimsy, can he? In what should be a highly serious and cautionary moral tale about the failings of the criminal justice system, Tom Cruise is forced to accidentally drink spoiled milk and eat a moldy ham sandwich (the hilarity ensues in both a vomit and spit take) and to chase his own eyeballs down the stairs Laurel and Hardy style.

Critics loved this movie, but I suspect it's their Spielberg fetish more than actual opinion. Anything and everything that Adult-Peter-Pan touches is always gilded by the entertainment media, even by people that I usually respect. I was most offended by this film as a Phillip K. Dick fan. The original story only serves as the first act of this aggrandized, multi-millionaire-mutual-masturbation vehicle, leaving the remainder of the screenplay floating in a haze of future cars that drive sideways, holographic home movies and injections that turn Tom Cruise's face melt into a horrifying visage of age, paying homage to a fever dream version of Tom Poston.

Anyway, I didn't like this movie. Please tell me why you did or didn't like it.
- posted by Mason @ 3:49 PM (2) comments

The Thrill is Gone...



Well, here comes the post-election depression. We've been so wrapped up in politics for the last six months that we don't know what to do with ourselves since its over. I still have a hard time believing the whole thing is true. Like I'm going to wake up one morning, Grandpa Shithead will the be president and everything will be fucked. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this isn't the case.

I could not be happier with the way this whole thing shook out, so now we sit tight and wait for the change-over. Let's hope President Beer Bong doesn't do too much damage in the next two months.
- posted by Mason @ 3:49 PM (0) comments

I have never been more proud to be an American.



10:11pm CST: Barack Obama is the next president of the United States. We spent all day working the polls at our precinct. We helped hundreds of people who'd never voted before cast their ballots for (what we assumed at the time, and now know from our local results) Barack Obama. We had a 65 year old white man, totally illiterate, come out and vote for Obama because, as his wife (who'd never voted before either) said, they "felt like they just had to get out and vote for him." She told Megan, "He's 65, and I know I'll never get him to read or write, but he believes in voting."

Thank you so much, America, you've made the right choice.
- posted by Mason @ 10:09 PM (0) comments

Vote for this Man, I implore you.



Tomorrow's the big day! If you haven't voted yet, tomorrow is your chance. Meg and I'll be up at dawn, and at the polls when they open. If you live in Dallas, and you need a ride to the polls, email us and we'll come pick you up. Please vote for Barack Obama, he's our only hope.
- posted by Mason @ 10:20 PM (1) comments

Wicked Sci-Fi Book Cover



Robert Sheckly's "Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?"
- posted by Mason @ 10:24 PM (0) comments

Happy Birthday, Megan!



IT'S MEGAN'S BIRTHDAY. That's all. Happy Birthday Megan, I love you.
- posted by Mason @ 8:13 PM (0) comments