The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I've been trying to use Daylio (https://daylio.webflow.io/) to track my daily activities and mood. And it offers some options to rate how my day was, like "good" and "bad" that you'd expect. But mostly my days aren't all good or all bad. They also offer "meh" and you can set up your own, like "complicated". But if everything is one category that category might as well be "day" - amirite?

For example, this past weekend.

Friday I work from home, (good, no commute). Working remotely has some drawbacks (meh) but nothing compares to finding out, mid-afternoon, that the hot water heater has sprung a leak (bad) and soaked the garage (bad). Did I mention that the garage is so full you can kind of not really navigate it? It has like five half-finished projects and some furniture that really should go to a storage unit that we haven't gotten around to renting and... yeah, it's one of those things you look at then turn around and close the door. Except now we can't.

Oh, and we're supposed to be hosting a party Friday night. Should we cancel (bad) or postpone (impossible) or just go ahead (good). We pick the good option, send out a "no hot water" warning and proceed to have a fabulous party. It got a little crowded and I felt bad that some of my friends couldn't easily find a place to sit at points but it wasn't quite enough people to start a second cluster downstairs. But I got to sample some very nice new Scotches and meet some very nice new people so overall, good. But if I look at the day? I really would rather not have had a major appliance go bust and not be fixable until Monday. "meh" doesn't really cover it.

On to Saturday when I get to sleep in (good) but have no hot water for showering (bad) and we kind of vegetate for a while (meh). Then we buckle down and spend about 2.5 hours mucking out the garage. Fortunately there's less actual damage than expected (good), but we still have those five half-completed projects (ugh). Those turn into two giant piles of "give this shit away" and "throw that shit away" and a smaller pile of "figure out what to do with this shit". So progress on projects (good) and more work to do (bad) and it doesn't actually solve the problem (meh) but it makes a path big enough that the old tank can go out and the new tank come in (good).

Then we get cleaned up (no hot water still, bad, but heating water on the stove is not entirely terrible, meh) and go out to a friend's party (good). I ended up spending much of the party talking to current Lab people. and getting caught up on the goings-on there (very good). I'm normally not that social but ended up spending a couple of very pleasant hours and met some interesting new people (good). The day as a whole wasn't good - just the evening part was good, and yet it wasn't bad, or meh either.

Sunday we couldn't have game (bad) because Arisia Concom (good) and the meeting went well and we got some things decided. Plumbers were set to show up Monday (good) and I had to work at home (meh). Also, tired (meh) but managed some good adult fun (good!). I mean, that's only like five things which isn't a very busy day and it's still complicated.

Coda:

Plumbers showed up (good) only an hour late (meh), Pygment is an awesome packrat (good) and managed to dig up the receipt for the still-under-warranty water heater (good) that was replaced for merely a thousand bucks (bad) but they did give us a free detector (good) because code now requires that and I did manage to get some work done (good) despite network issues (bad) and the dog (meh).

Daylio? I can't even.

http://audioporncentral.com/2009/07/pump-up-the-volume-the-history-of-house-music.html
APC linked to this online version of a BBC series on the origins of house music. It's oddly cut up into 15 segments of various length, but just push play and it'll run them in sequence for you. I've been watching it in snippets over the past couple of days and I really enjoyed it. The show starts back in the days of disco and runs through The Warehouse in Chicago, the acknowledged birthplace of house, over to Manchester and the UK dance scene, and then back again. Lots of good interviews with people who were there and lest you ever forget that sex and drugs go with rock and roll, you watch this and remember it.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Editors_/track/You_Dont_Know_Love_Cagedbaby_Remix
The Editors (http://www.myspace.com/editorsmusic) have put out some very smooth and interesting male dance vocal sounds. They've always had a bit of the noir to them, without dropping into the nasal whiny thing that turns me off with most emo bands. The remix here adds some lighter backing female vocals, speeds up the beat a little and gives a nice club bass ound to the song.

By the way you really should scroll down on their MySpace page and watch the official video for "You Don't Know Love." That's some hot stuff right there.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/01/hellsongs-warpigs.html
I'm really not sure what to make of this. Acoustic, female-vocal covers of classic heavy metal tunes. Oh, and Swedish. Yes, really.

http://www.kleptones.com/pages/downloads_ud.html
Around Thanksgiving of last year I mentioned The Kleptones as an artist to watch and this month they have delivered in spectacular form. Uploaded on Soundcloud are two set mixes by them, each about 75 minutes long. Called "Uptime" and "Downtime" they are both brilliant, each in their own way. The Uptime mix is a stream of high energy samples and remixes covering a number of favorites from the 80s and 90s with a few older and newer bits. The Downtime mix is ambient and relaxed. I'm particularly in awe of the Beastie Boys sample mix in the middle of the Uptime set. I won't spoil it for you, but really. Do not miss this one.

Oh and for us download and re-listen freaks The Kleptones have provided helpful individual-MP3 downloadable links below each set mix. Hat-tip to them!