Liquid Nonsense

I finally managed to get my grubby little mitts on a Wii! Though in all honesty I wasn't exactly looking with much concerted effort. Things just happened to fall into place this morning, and lo and behold, I have my Wii.

I know a few of my friends have a Wii, so you will all have to send me your console number so we can get our Mii's playing together.

Here's mine:

7382 7294 9140 6677

Do you ever get the sensation that the Universe is attempting to tell you something by means of coincidences, odd happenings, or general craziness?

Chris is going to sleep.

Lately I've been listening to a lot of psychedelic music; mostly a combination of Pink Floyd and various psytrance artists. Anyone who's been over to somewhere I've lived, or who's had me provide music for something, has been exposed to some sub-set of my psybient/psytrance collection. I can definitely say that psychedelic + modifier is my favorite branch of music (psychedelic rock, psychedelic trance, psychedelic ambient, etc).

Today I decided to look up some old favorites and see what they're collaborating on now. After some hunting around I discovered that Shpongle's Simon Posford and Raja Ram are teaming up to produce a fourth CD. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom shortly after the discovery. Furthermore, I knew Posford was working on several other projects, but I finally found a sample of his other big group, Younger Brother, today. After perusing the tracks for a few minutes I decided that I really needed a copy. Those playing the home game may also recall that Posford, as well as 90% of psybient*, is on UK's Twisted Records record label. Getting stuff from Twisted used to be somewhat complicated since they had an extremely limited US distributorship, but now not so much. Most of their stuff will show up on Amazon, albeit sans album covers.

Even though bizarre European psychedelic electronica is now available domestically, I still prefer to buy it from a business in Germany that's given me some great customer service (www.psyshop.com). They have a pretty poor website and you can essentially only browse by Record Label, so if you don't know who someone is with your pretty much screwed trying to use their search feature. Long story short, after browsing them for a while I've got three CDs on the way.

Younger Brother - A Flock of Bleeps (Twisted Records)
T.I.T. - Ambient Factory (Ultra Vista)
Kick Bong - A Cup of Tea (Ultra Vista)

I'm rapt with anticipation.



* 90% of psybient, as a genre, is probably a total of eight or nine people. Being so small, the most recognized artist, Shpongle, is able to claim CD sales in the 80-90K range.

So, today was day four of this crazy diet. The cravings have finally subsided as the book said they would. Yesterday afternoon I feel I might actually have killed someone in cold blood for a brownie. I very rarely indulge in cookies, brownies, cake, and most of the related stuff, but let me tell you, giving up carbohydrates is fucking hard. Maybe it's just me since my usual diet doesn't include a lot of meat and cheese, but these last three days have been really hard. There was actually a point I almost broke down in the grocery store.... definitely not my proudest moment.

Today though my energy levels are almost back to where they should be and I feel like a functional human being again. On Saturday afternoon Friday (end of no carb period) felt like a lifetime away. Now, Friday seems like a fairly insignificant goal since my hormones are starting to reset themselves. Hooray for the human body's ability to self-regulate.

Since I don't have the energy yet to continue working out I've been watching stuff in my spiffy home theater. Since Saturday afternoon I think I've watched something like seven hours of Arrested Development, Napoleon Dynamite, The Departed, and several episodes of the Venture Brothers. I'm not sure when the last time was I camped out like this. Either way, it's been a pleasant change of pace. A little wine, cheese, and a movie night in to relax.

I just finished watching The Departed actually and I somehow have to be able to sleep. The movie has me ridiculously tense (more wine?) and I'm not sure how I'm going to pull this one off. Either way, I need to crash so I can be functional in the morning.

Labels: diet, life

These last couple weeks have kept me occupied. So, here's a list of changes.

1) I'm on a new team at work. Previously I worked on The Company's shopping cart application that let merchants get online and starting doing stuff like credit card processing and shipping. Now, I'm on The Company's PKI team handling secure certificate management. Without going into the details of what this means, it's a much sweeter position with a lot higher visibility. It also means much higher security and a lot more accountability. Ergo, I haven't had the strength for updating this thing quite so rigorously while I've been changing over.

2) House related changes are coming along well. I still love having my upstairs couch in my downstairs. One of these days I will order the remaining amount of cork I need to finish the flooring in my upstairs. Got the backyard finally cleaned out so I can do something with it; the current vote is still koi pond.

3) Phil and I went to Philadelphia several weeks ago. I've actually updated since then, but I totally glossed over it because I was being extraordinarily lazy in the following days. It was great to get the personalized tour and meet some of his friends, specifically, Michael, Jill, Amy, Dan, and Neil. If I forgot someone and they (you?) actually read this I'll happily edit you into the list.

4) Phil has shown me this crazy Natural Hormone Enhancement book/diet plan for optimizing various biological functions. Supposedly the book claims that nobody is really a "hard gainer" and that it's really a product of your biochemistry and whether or not your motivating it correctly. I'm going to give it a shot, but it essentially starts with seven days of Atkins-like eating. No more carbs for me for the next seven days. Then it becomes carbo-tastic.