K. Close III

Today’s Tweets

Friday, October 31st, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

• 08:25 Updated software on my phone last night, now it doesn’t receive my mail. Is this an improvement? #
• 11:13 Burntout Paradise turns GAY: tinyurl.com/5d6owd #
• 11:17 I just had to look up the difference between alumnus, alumni, alumna, alumnae, and the more informal alumn. #
• 11:52 Oh, hey, I was writing a blog earlier… #
• 11:52 #Blog: The Soundtrack of my Life… kclose3.com/blog/?p=160 #
• 14:39 Those grapes were not so good, but I snarfed them down anyway. #
• 14:43 A very nice lunch with Heather, Ansel, Angela and Matt. I could get used to this. #
• 15:01 My eyes are slipping out of focus. :L #
• 15:46 I’m thinking my computer needs a reboot. #
• 16:08 Wow, an NPDOR survey all about Rock Band. #

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The Soundtrack of my Life…

Friday, October 31st, 2008 | Entertainment | 2 Comments

…in which I talk about nostalgia.

I have over 20,000 songs in my iTunes collection. Yes, that’s a lot of music! Every now and then I try to organize it, I try to define the genres, or create a “tag” structure for them, but really, the only organization that seems to work is simply rating them with stars. In order to do this, I have created several “Smart” playlists that keep the un-rated music flowing while I’m at my desk at work, while my iPod is constantly loaded with only rated music. That means, that while I’m out and about, I hear only the best music, but while I’m at work, I only hear songs I haven’t heard in a while (if ever). Every now and then, a song comes on that I completely forgot that I loved, and I’m taken back to a time in my past when that song was “important.” And sometimes, those moments extend into the internet, as I look for the important people from my past who have gone missing. › Continue reading

Tags: music

The Soundtrack of my Life…

Friday, October 31st, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

…in which I talk about nostalgia.

I have over 20,000 songs in my iTunes collection. Yes, that’s a lot of music! Every now and then I try to organize it, I try to define the genres, or create a “tag” structure for them, but really, the only organization that seems to work is simply rating them with stars. In order to do this, I have created several “Smart” playlists that keep the un-rated music flowing while I’m at my desk at work, while my iPod is constantly loaded with only rated music. That means, that while I’m out and about, I hear only the best music, but while I’m at work, I only hear songs I haven’t heard in a while (if ever). Every now and then, a song comes on that I completely forgot that I loved, and I’m taken back to a time in my past when that song was “important.” And sometimes, those moments extend into the internet, as I look for the important people from my past who have gone missing.

I’m not going to say we moved around much when I was a kid, in fact, in my recollection, our family only moved twice. The first time, I was four and we moved from Rhode Island to Connecticut. I don’t know that I had too many friends to miss at that time, though I do remember going to visit my parents’ friends who had kids around my age pretty frequently for the few years after the move. The second move, I was finishing up second grade and we moved across town. We had lived right next to an elementary school and I had several friends who could come over and visit right after school, and when I started third grade, I kind of had to start all over again. Those friends from my first elementary school showed up again when we all went to hight school, but things had changed too much, and it was reminiscent of some of the scenes in Can’t Buy Me Love.

Throughout my life, however, music has always been an important factor, I’ve always loved collecting and listening to music. I think I got it from my dad who had a pretty extensive record collection and was always trying to get the best sound out of his stereo. Over time, I started to build a fairly impressive cassette collection, and then inevitably, a very respectable CD collection, but now its all MP3s and I’ve sold of an awful lot of my CDs. There isn’t a giant wall of music threatening to fall on anyone now, but instead there is the constant parade of larger and larger hard drives and the constant fear that someday it will all be lost, irreplaceably. But enough of those fears, on with the story.

I can’t remember much of what I listened to before High School, well, aside from Goin’ Quackers, which was possibly my favorite Disney Sing-Along album that I have recently found in MP3 format and now have started playing for Ansel. Like most of us, however, High School was probably the most defining years of my younger era, and thus it is punctuated by the music that I was listening to at the time. The music is the soundtrack to a movie I watched years ago, half asleep, in which I remember all of the characters vividly, but all the events surrounding them have become hazy and inconsistent. Every song from that time brings back an emotion that was surely precluded by some string of seemingly earth shattering events, that have since faded away into obscurity. I have dreams that are more fluid than the memories I try to scrape together from my teen years. But when I hear a song from that time, I remember how I felt; I don’t remember at all why I felt that way, but I remember the feeling of my throat choking up as with the anticipation of a new crush, or that sinking feeling of heartbreak, or the desperation of being surrounded by sucking loneliness. All of those guttural feelings persist in the lyrics and tunes, but the history is completely awash. I may remember a split second, like a single frame of a film, but all the rest of the footage is lost, consumed in a nitrate fueled inferno. To be fair, though, Estée Lauder Beautiful will still pull me across a mall.

Tags: entertainment

Today’s Tweets

Thursday, October 30th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

• 08:39 Anyone care to try to win this weekend’s Xbox Fable II contest with me? tinyurl.com/6xmdlf #
• 13:13 I just embedded a beard hair so far in my finger I needed to use a needle and tweezers to get it out. It hurt as much as any splinter. #
• 13:58 I totally never realized that Torchwood is actually an anagram of Doctor Who! #
• 14:06 PSST: tinyurl.com/5ng566 #
• 16:36 I keep thinking I need to blog, and never seem to find the time to do so. #
• 16:50 Next time I need a bunch of holes drilled in a metal box, I’m just going to ask for the tools and do it my damn self. #
• 17:06 I miss Torchwood and Doctor Who, but even when they return, its only for five episodes each for all of 2009. No full seasons until 2010! #
• 18:48 Man, I wish I had a beer. #

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They can’t fuck it up any more than we do…

Thursday, October 30th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | 1 Comment

"Gay Marriage Can’t Hurt My Straight Marriage. Pass it on."

Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you’re in a heterosexual marriage and you don’t want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

Today’s Tweets

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

• 07:34 My phone didn’t charge right again last night. #
• 08:22 Okay, maybe Tatu doing a cover of “How Soon is Now” might be a little too much. #
• 08:34 Guitar Hero: World Tour vs Rock Band 2 – tinyurl.com/6a7ptg #
• 08:46 Oh good, Monty Python Fluxx isn’t ALL Holy Grail cards. #
• 08:52 I’m thinking its time to brew up a little coffee… #
• 09:07 My Bonsai is kind of dry and spiny. Its also growing awry. Needs to be watered more and then trained. #
• 12:15 how can consistent formatting be this difficult? (again, a database driven site could completely resolve this). #
• 13:58 Debating a soda… <<gasp!>> #
• 15:10 The New Xbox Experience is taking far too long to get here. #
• 17:27 Guitar Hero is about what I expected, but still fun and not at all effected by my use of a Rock Band guitar. #
• 19:02 It was determined that if I “lost” my phone, I’d likely get a Samsung knockoff. #

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Today’s Tweets

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

• 07:35 If I don’t hear back soon, I may be driving myself to work… been using an awful lot of gas lately, may not last until November. #
• 09:18 So now that I’ve hit the End Credits, I’m really hoping Guitar Hero: World Tour arrives this afternoon. #
• 10:41 Figures we would have Internet connectivity issues in the middle of a system rebuild. #
• 13:03 Yeah, if I had money, I’d probably consider picking up Fallout 3, but I’ll have to settle for renting it in a week or so. #
• 13:05 Its getting to the season where I have to keep lip balm with me at all times. #
• 13:24 Okay, so who’s going to babysit for us on Nov 14? #
• 13:36 This lack of internet is killing me! #
• 15:22 Entourage doesn’t have nearly the image/text layout capability that Word does… means I can’t make a really nice signature like I want. #
• 16:05 My Bonsai tree has started to distinctly turn up at the end… going to have to try to get some wire after that. #
• 16:53 So apparently I need a new 90mm fan. #

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Today’s Tweets

Monday, October 27th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

• 00:40 Can I take my Xbox to Jury Duty with me, tomorrow? #
• 09:14 90 down, 70 to go, still in the clear. #
• 15:13 I’m concerned I’m getting close to the end of Fable! #
• 15:37 I got the Garth doll at the shooting range… Willing to trade for the other collectible dolls. #
• 18:20 Apparently it takes me a week to complete Fable II. #

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Today’s Tweets

Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

• 12:00 I had the most completely debilitating and painful back spasm in my life this morning. I thought I was going to be sick from the pain. #

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Today’s Tweets

Friday, October 24th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

• 08:57 Awake and contemplating more Fable. Though, right now, a little reading feels right. #
• 12:46 I’m making my Fable II experience last by walking everywhere and generally screwing around! #
• 12:53 Time Control V is very cool, indeed! #

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