How to turn a table lamp into a ceiling light
KeithHandy posted in Funny ha-ha on May 8th, 2007
Or, “unemployment is the mother of truly desperate invention”.
No, it’s not that dark in here — I used a fast shutter speed so you could see more detail on the light itself.
Hanging behind it on the end of the flourescent fixture — which I refuse to use — are a Christmas toy soldier ornament, and some kind of clay insect thing that supposedly brings good luck. (Maybe I should have paid more attention to season 4, episode 73 of the Brady Bunch, in which Bobby finds an evil tiki that causes Greg’s surfing wipe-out, a visit from a large, hairy spider, and a back injury for Alice.)
Speaking of things that are evil and bring bad luck, here is a not necessarily final but not terribly rough either mix of Tea Time Pow Wow:
May 10th, 2007 at 7:08 am
hey, Keith. i’m sure MacGyver would approve here.
& yeah, i share your aversion to those evil lifejuice-sucking(albeit energy-efficient) perpetual buzz sticks. having worked many a job with them glaring down the back of my neck, i’ve since denied them access to my personal fortress of pseudo-solitude. (i’m reminded of the scene in, i believe, Joe vs the Volcano, where Tom Hanks expresses a similarly distinct distaste for the ‘’suck-suck-suck” effect they seem to have on the human spirit in general).
incidentally, K (& not with the intention of prying or anything) how is the job situation at the moment? do you have the luxury to coast downhill for a change & work on your music, or are you having to look for Plan B post-haste? due to some physical technical difficulties (compounded with my more ‘technical’ technical difficulties), i presently find myself in a similar boat (whose captain seems to have temporarily misplaced his oar,compass & Graval bottle)…yeah, afraid i’m a bit of a parentheses junkie as well. it’s a 12-step program…(baby steps).
oKAY!…i’ve exorcised the ramble now. And Now For Something More Musical: i really like TTPW, Keith (& i’m not just typin’ that). there’s so much going on in there, it demands repeated listenings. great keyboard bits (especially that warbly one in the first half)..and the drums?..not a machine…you? it’s reminiscent, without being derivative, of all that’s good about progressive (not necessarily a bad word in my book)rock. haven’t digested the lyrics yet. i generally get drawn into the music first & only later (sometimes much) realize what the song was about. but anyway, long story…um..less long. me like.
do you regularly take video of yourself actually working on your stuff, as you did in your most recent YT post? it may lure some more YouTubers into your web of whack if they could SEE (being the visually needy creatures that we are)more of what you’re doing. just a thought.
right then. i’ve blown my blah here for the moment i think. probably bump into you over at YT sometime today. later, man.
boo out :)
May 10th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Job/luxury: the state is “researching” to see if I really deserve unemployment $$ or not. Human resources told me there’d be nothing negative on my record, but it’s held up now, so that makes me nervous. I’m trying to channel that nervousness into productivity best I can. Also, if I’m blogging about it, then you’re not prying by asking about it.
I don’t entirely know what TTPW is about myself, I’ve had so much trouble coming up with lyrics for it that I used a number of techniques to force them out. One was to sit with a pad and pen and just write lyrics as fast as I could, whether they sucked or not. Another was to feed some of the lines into a computer program that would randomly do word substitutions. The net effect is that it’s the sound of me being taunted in a semi-cryptic way by a rather pervasive inner demon.
I do intend to do more video of my sessions, but this one was already done and it just needed some tweaks to the mix. A video of me tweaking the mix would be really visually boring. :)
May 10th, 2007 at 10:26 am
I knew I’d leave something unanswered in that rather dense (as in “packed full of goodness”, not the other meaning) comment of yours. The drums on this one (and Broken Wheel) are sequenced on the computer, but the sounds the computer is playing as the sequencer rolls merrily along are samples of actual drums being thwacked by an actual stick in my actual hand.
Actually, the sounds on Broken Wheel are half-and-half: in BW, the kick drum and the hand claps are the el-cheapo stock sounds that my computer’s soundcard plays. But TTPW uses only samples from a real drum kit.
I’ll have other songs up soon that actually have me playing the set, with only minor editing to clean up some sloppy spots. Look out, John Bonham! (Yeah, right.)