my hair is part black, part blue now.

tonight megamary is djing with me from 7-9pm PST on my radio show. perhaps you should tune in. we'll be playing an allovertheplace mix of techno house dubstep idm downtempo mashups ambient from 1991-present.

on friday n_o_m_i_c gets here & then we are going to vancouver for the weekend. this w2 benefit party looks like the place to rave at but vancouverites should correct me if there is something more awesome. also, come get drinks. other things i found: culture crawl * make it vancouver. then the train gets back at 10pm on sunday and we'll prolly head to smash putt 'cuz it's luke's birthday and it's awesome.

"Each and every hole is dripping with excitement! 21+ fun gets your balls smashed and your holes trashed late into the night."

i uploaded my latest radio show as mp3.

this one was more all over the place than the last one and included some thumpy minimal stuff, some idm-y stuff, some sad love songs, some wailing deep house, and some indie rockish stuff.

( playlist )

i put some mp3 archives of my show up for people who couldn't tune in but still want to hear it. they're here: hour one * hour two.

glueslabs did the end of hour one/beginning of hour two.

playlist at twitter.com/nadirplaylist

i screwed up pretty badly on my first show attempt (weird mic levels, random track 'flow', etc.) but tomorrow night's will be a lot better. the station sent me a lot of great promos. i spent the weekend at home doing a combination of studying & buying awesome new & old music to play for you.

if you're interested in tuning in and/or keeping updated about the show, the details and twitter/mailing list/facebook/myspace etc. info is at http://www.seattletechno.com/nadirradio/

still haven't found time to make a real post about austin so i'm just going to ramble quickly. shortly before the trip i'd decided that i didn't want to go anymore. originally i thought it was going to be a romantic trip and i'd meet the boy's parents and friends and go see the places he loved. but when the time actually arrived, i felt like our relationship was falling apart and maybe i wasn't a person who should be doing those things anymore. i always feel awkward and anxious around people's parents anyway. they hardly ever like me.

my original plan was for me to be unemployed and have lots of time to research cool things to do by myself in austin. i'd planned my trip to be a bunch of extra days and figured i'd couchsurf or run around exploring. but then the hospital stuff happened and i needed the money. i was working right up until it was time to go on the trip and then immediately upon my return.

so it was right before the trip and i didn't know where i was going to stay or what i was going to do. often i love adventures like that, but i was in such a bad headspace that i began to panic instead. n_o_m_i_c sent me a message and said hey, call me. so i called him from work and started having a little phone freakout 'cause it hit me just then that i was really sad and this whole trip was screwed and i just wanted to hide in a closet until it was all over. but somehow after a few minutes talking to him my mood turned around. he made it sound like it was gonna be okay and fun.

some of it was, although i was so moody that i got wildly drunk multiple nights (and encouraged everyone else to join me, 'cause that's how i roll =P) some things i liked:
- the cathedral of junk, a backyard art project that started in 1988
- rocking out to dubstep
- cool mansion party that i found out about via ev0lchuck (who sadly i never got to meet on the trip)
- deeeelicious 24-hour food at kerbey lane
- many other things that i took pictures of but lack time to talk about ;(

so n_o_m_i_c had mentioned maybe visiting seattle for a fair amount of the time that we've been lj friends, but it became esp. more convenient 'cause he is working in vegas for awhile and it's much cheaper from vegas > seattle than austin > seattle. virgin america had a sweet sale for $31 one way tickets on halloween so he came up and we partied in hydrozoa's sweet mansion with chris & asabass & goldfischegirl & rollersluut & xamichee & aimeceleste & probably some other people i'm forgetting. i failed at a real costume and just wore some miscellaneous odd furriness and turned sam into a princess with some help from the goodwill outlet.

and now he's gonna come back nov. 21 and hang out 'til the end of plzkthxgvng and maybe longer and it's gonna be fun woooo!

She glances up at the sky and asks, "Where did all the stars come from?" She is old and foolish, and yet she is right: Last night's stars seem to have drawn to themselves a new range of galaxies, and the night sky is not dark at all, except where there is a tear in the membrane of light.

- John Cheever (from o youth and beauty)

i'd never thought about it until just now, but music actually brought about the end of both my attempts at living with SOs.

i broke up with jeff on my birthday, but it was prompted by me being upset that he refused to sell me his records. he thought they should go to people who played out more. i came home and people were listening to them on my turntables and i got very upset.

my breakup with jeremy was prompted by a fight where i yelled at him because echospace had been outside neumo's and he'd been talking to them for a long time and hadn't told me. i love echospace. i was the one who played the coldest season album for him in the first place. i was so excited that i insisted he sit downstairs listening to the whole thing.

obviously there were other relationship issues in both these cases, but i still think it's funny.

i'm happy again.

also, i'll be in san francisco with line32 and girlstyle from december 29 - january 5. perhaps we should hang out.

nina simone - i got life.

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,”not much
chance…give him these pills…his backbone
is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he’ll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he’s been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there…also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off…”
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn’t eat, he
wouldn’t touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn’t go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn’t work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I’d had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
“you can make it,” I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.
you know the rest: now he’s better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left…
and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,”look, look
at this!”
but they don’t understand, they say something like,”you
say you’ve been influenced by Celine?”
“no,” I hold the cat up,”by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!”
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he’s relaxed he knows…
it’s then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.
he too knows it’s bullshit but that somehow it all helps.

put some blue over the purple. it's still mostly purple but i like the color better now.

we're having a movie/projector night tomorrow. 7:30pm. it'll be some kind of weird halloween b-movie that i find tonight at scarecrow. you should come over. it'll be exciting. i miss seeing friends and going places. let me know if you haven't been over yet and need our address.

still no time to make a real post, but i have been uploading some pictures of what i've been doing.

i was familiar with that godawful windows 7 promotional video that encourages people to host parties in their homes and the remix video, but somehow i'd missed the host your windows 7 torrenting party one.

now that flickr has a tagging feature, people like glueslabs can also tag me in videos of myself singing karaoke while incredibly drunk the weekend after getting dumped.

i'm still confused about the intro.

hospital forces lesbian to die alone; judge gives stamp of approval

"As Lisa was put into the ambulance I had no idea when she signed “I love you” to the kids and I it would be the last time I would see her beautiful blue eyes."

if you live in seattle, please vote approve on referendum 71.

it would make me happy if you listened. among other things, i'll be giving away tickets to shows in seattle, having in-studio guests, and i'll take requests via IM/email/phone. the first show is tomorrow night from 7pm-9pm PST. jeff will be my guest. the first half will be a variety mix and the second half's theme is "classic idm". the show will be 95% electronic music in all its forms (house, techno, dubstep, drum and bass, idm, downtempo, ambient et al) with the occasional hiphop/indie/etc. track that i love too much not to play.

i always forget to listen to my friends' online radio shows so i set up a bunch of social media ways in which you can get reminded when it's about to go on and/or get playlists:

Email list - you can add yourself at
http://groups.google.com/group/nadir-radio/ or reply back to this and
I'll add you.

Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/nadirradio is the main account
http://twitter.com/nadirplaylist will list every song as I play it

Facebook - add Nadir Radio as a friend (they won't make direct page
links to organization sites! how lame.)

Myspace - dunno if anyone uses this, but if you do,
http://profile.myspace.com/nadirradio

Swaggle list - if you'd rather get a text message when it airs, you can add yourself to nadirradio at http://www.swaggle.mobi or reply back with your cell number and I'll add you.

Google calendar - subscribe at
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/6bmfbd8rjs78kdm7q9tqvuh6l8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic

Ical calendar: subscribe at
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/6bmfbd8rjs78kdm7q9tqvuh6l8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

to listen itself, http://stream.rainydawg.org/

whee!

i haven't found time to write much of anything. i thought that this summer at school plus working was going to kill me and that fall would be a relaxing vacation. i was so wrong. my courseload is insane. it'll be a miracle if i manage to not get kicked out of the school, let alone have any free time. i'm really not sure what made me think it was a great idea to take two programming classes plus a usability research project plus japanese plus teaching myself trig.

you might wonder why i'm doing a radio show on top of all that. music has always been one of the few things that keeps me somewhat sane. i think it'll be cathartic.

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be Earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

i have so much to write about. austin. decibel festival. my strange new couchsurfing lifestyle. i don't have time yet, so instead i'll talk briefly about my new day to day life. my last day at work was monday and i'm now solely at the university of washington fulltime.

my days have become a strange combination of crushing depression and unbridled joy. sometimes it veers between both in the span of minutes. sometimes it's both simultaneously.

i absolutely adore going to uw. i love the campus itself. i wander around taking pictures of the architecture and the landscape design and the leaves falling from the trees. i feel awed in the presence of so much history. some days i just go in and out of buildings like the suzzalo library and lightly touch the walls. i wasn't sure how i was going to feel about being student 2349234-G in a herd of thousands. the only in-person classes i've ever taken prior to this all had 30 students or less. due to my current state of mind, it's been fantastic. i'm just a face in the crowd. being swept up in the mass and the energy is comforting.

i love my classes. i was accepted into an hcde research group about persuasive technologies. it's almost entirely masters' students and p.h.d. students. being around smart, geeky, motivated women is especially awesome. pre-uw my plan had been to get my required year of programming experience out of the way at community college. my plan failed. at bcc they teach c++. after taking the first half, i discovered that the second half wasn't being offered online. it was only available in person, and the in-person time conflicted with my work schedule. at uw they teach java. the idea of starting the second half of a java class without having any previous java experience didn't seem like a good one, esp. since i'd only passed the c++ class with help from jamz anyway. i'm sure i could have done well in it if i hadn't been simultaneously working, getting up at 6am, etc... but regardless, i disliked c++ and decided that i probably didn't like programming in general.

so i signed up to take the intro java class very reluctantly. the advisor had strongly recommended that i avoid taking it and referred to it as a "weed-out class". that terrified me since i'm determined to do well and the last thing i wanted was something that might bring down my GPA. but i immediately loved the professor and started cataloguing his random quotes about gangstarap.class and BOOYAH, world! other students have apparently been similarly amused and there's a youtube video of some greatest hits where he announces "pimpin' ain't easy!" and tells bill gates stories. today he let us know that "java doesn't roll that way". when a student asked a question about why something was slightly nonsensical, he replied "well, if everything made sense in programming that'd make it easy to understand... and then it'd be too hard for all of us to get rich." it's a constant very non-PC tirade of hilarity. today's code example was to use loops with homer simpson's "i am so smart. S-M-R-T."

uw's offering a concurrent free python class, so i've started attending that too. the first day started with this xkcd comic. python seems so much better. maybe i don't dislike programming and i just dislike c++. it just seemed so annoyingly redundant. i'm sure part of it was the mostly-simple tasks we were assigned combined with my high level of stress at the time.

i'm also loving japanese. it's really challenging to learn both a language and a different writing system at the same time and i constantly feel like i'm behind. there are a lot of students in my class who already took japanese in high school. it wasn't even offered back when i was in high school.

all the classes move at a very quick pace and have a large amount of required work/studying. there's no way i could have done well this semester while working as many hours as i've been doing. i'm absolutely sure that i made the right decision and that i'll never regret it. but i'm also going to have to change my life considerably now that my income is $0/month.

i was terrified that my sorrow about losing my love would ruin my ability to focus at school. so far it's been the opposite. when i'm concentrating on school is the main time when i feel okay. it's the moments between working that are hard. i start crying unexpectedly in a store when they're playing a silly pop love song or when i look out over the campus and the sun is setting on mount rainier or when i find a rose on the ground. i stay at school all day and at different friends' houses at night and fill any moment of longer than 5 minutes with a scheduled activity. one of those activities has unfortunately been nervously smoking cigarettes that people left at our house during decibel. i'm giving myself 30 days to stop doing that again.

tonight i'm going to an 826 seattle benefit showing of where the wild things are at cinerama with kncoffey & megamary & enth. i bought tickets the moment they went on sale and have been terribly excited. it's weird remembering what i felt like when i bought them and what i thought my life would be like right now.

next weekend is a nerdfest: http://www.infocamp.info/ - "unconference about user experience, information architecture, user-centered design, librarianship, information management & related fields." i'm totally excited.

you are also encouraged to join me at the found footage festival. (for my out of town friends, it's playing in dallas, houston, austin, san francisco, arlington, portland, eugene, madison, various other places.) here's the seattle tickets. i'm going thursday the 3rd at 7pm. it sells out a lot of the shows so i'm planning ahead ;)

"The Found Footage Festival is a one-of-a-kind event that compiles over
an hours worth of footage from videotapes that were found at garage
sales and thrift stores, and in warehouses and trash bins throughout
the country. Curators Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher host each screening
in-person and provide their unique observations and commentary on
these found video obscurities. From the curiously-produced industrial
training video to the forsaken home movie donated to Goodwill, the
Found Footage Festival resurrects these forgotten treasures and serves
them up in a lively 90-minute celebration of all things found."

( more info courtesy of the festival webpage )

got dumped on saturday night. wheeeee

Seattle mayoral candidate Mike McGinn on Wednesday came down on the
side of the city's bars and nightclubs, saying new residential
developments "must not be able to drive out existing nightlife
establishments."

He also said he favored staggered closing times to cut down on
rowdiness when bars and clubs close.

( rest of the article )

On Sept. 30, representatives of the city's music industry will help
stage a fundraiser for McGinn, county executive candidate Dow
Constantine and Pete Holmes, who is challenging Carr in the city
attorney's race. The event at Seattle's Crocodile Cafe features The
Presidents of the United Sates of America, former Nirvana bassist
Krist Novoselic, The Maldives and DJ Supreme.

If you approve of this you can also donate to his campaign via paypal at http://mcginnformayor.com/donate/