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ARCHIVES | OCTOBER 2000 |
October 23, 2000 | 3:00 AM EDT | link this post
OK, here we go:
Hi there. I'm Chris Conroy. I'm a freshman at NYU, and I'm starting a weblog because (a.) I need the discipline of doing something every day, (b.) I need to work on my web-design skills, (c.) I'm a massive egotist, and (d.) I'm very, very bored.
I apologize for the extraordinarily poor design around here, as well as for the shoddy Geocities location. Once I get up some money, and some knowledge of server politics etc. (I've barely gotten my hands around the throat of HTML, for God's sake), I'll be buying a domain name, signing up with Blogger, and cutting a rug with the big blog boys. But for now, I'll be curled, fetus-like, in this squalid virtual womb.
So that's the introduction/explanation out of the way. The only thing left to do is apologize in advance for whatever crap spews out of my mouth in the coming months.
October 23, 2000 | 4:11 PM EDT | link this post
Just finished Salman Rushdie's HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES last night. Interesting little book. It's basically a children's fairytale, told in his signature style. But it's also the first novel he wrote after having the fatwa placed on his head by the Islamic nation, and so lurking just underneath its surface is one huge tract arguing (actually, pretty much just stumping) for free speech and freedom of expression. I agree with him entirely, but the smirking sanctimony of it was a bit off-putting. The book is still damn good, though, and more than worth the read.
October 23, 2000 | 5:05 PM EDT | link this post
To the milling throngs of you that I've just e-mailed: welcome.
Time to hit the dining hall and get dinner. If I eat one more Pizza Hut personal pan pizza, my body will melt entirely into a puddle of grease which occupies exactly the same area as my human form.
But they're the only edible things on the meal plan.
October 23, 2000 | 9:20 PM EDT | link this post
My roommate is watching the new AIRPLANE! DVD behind me. God damn that's a funny, funny movie.
October 23, 2000 | 10:50 PM EDT | link this post
Shirley Manson, the lead singer of Garbage, has a blog of sorts up at www.garbage.com. It mainly consists of her bitching about how heavily she's menstruating and how hung over she is, but you know, since she's a pop star, these things are automatically more interesting and valid.
All bitter sarcasm aside, she makes me laugh. I love that band.
On an unrelated note, I will do just about anything to avoid writing my paper tonight.
October 24, 2000 | 1:25 PM EDT | link this post
www.grant-morrison.com is up and running. I love this man. Sadly, the design for the site is a more than a bit on the unengaging side, especially for someone as concerned with the manic pop visual as Morrison is. Of course, I can't help but wonder if it's all part of some Mad Plan. But I don't care either way. It's Grant Morrison, he's my god, I love him.
October 24, 2000 | 9:09 PM EDT | link this post
Tom and Meg, wonderful folk that they are, are being ever so kind to me in linking to my site. If you don't visit them, and enjoy their British antics, you are simply no longer my friend.
Been listening to Bjork's new EP Selmasongs, the soundtrack of sorts to Dancer In The Dark (How many links can I fit into one sentence?). I say "of sorts" because I learned today, much to my distress, that the song "Scatterheart" is vastly different in lyric from the version heard in the movie; which is a shame, because it's a crucial song and the film version is extraordinarily haunting. Apparently Bjork didn't think so. Which is, IMHO, everyone's loss.
(I'm realizing now that perhaps the film version couldn't go on the soundtrack because it had so many of the film's actors singing on it, and there might be royalty rights issues. Dammit. I really wanted to make Bjork the bad guy for once. ;D)
Reading one of those books right now where every few sentences there's something you could stop and quote on, for instance, a weblog, and sound extremely intelligent. I'm holding myself back for now, but I'm sure you'll be subjected to some kind of treatise on it in the future...
October 25, 2000 | 8:55 PM EDT | link this post
Swamped with schoolwork. I hate, hate, hate midterms. And I've got a six-page paper to write tonight, too -- I'll be blathering on the idea of violence in Greek religion and how it connects to the modern day. Somehow. I fear it's all just an excuse to talk about The Matrix and the comics I grew up reading, but whatever, so it goes, it's the first draft and I can perform major surgery/triage over the weekend, because after all, it's not like I have a social life.
This is my subtle way of explaining why I haven't blogged today, and probably won't tonight, though God knows I might take a "fifteen minute break" and end up (a.) redesigning this place and (b.) yammering for a good ten thousand words on the subject of, Christ I don't know, the new Robbie Williams single or something equally inane...
October 28, 2000 | 7:45 PM EDT | link this post
Back now. Christ. So much for that whole "discipline" thing.
So. As a card-carrying member of youth culture and a self-professed music geek, I feel obligated to comment on the new Radiohead album, even as the media furor wanes. Last one on the bandwagon, but always on board. *sigh*
Bottom line: I like it, OK? I know that in a startling reversal of fortune, it's actually uncool to like a Radiohead album for once in history, but I still really do. It isn't their best. There's just not enough here for it to be their best. It's just an album that sounds really beautiful in its own way.
I WILL come right out and say that I think Thom Yorke is being a dodgy little bastard about everything related to being in a band. If you don't like being a musician, if you don't like having your work be appreciated -- with everything that entails -- then go back to college and get an M.B.A., for Christ's sake, and stop whining about how nobody's getting it. Nobody's getting it because you're not telling them anything, wanker. And if you don't want to be a rock star -- which you clearly don't -- drop your label contract and start selling records out of the back of your car. Major labels exist for the process of making artists into a Big Deal. If you don't want to be a Big Deal, then don't play the game. Nobody's making you. Make your music your way and put it up on the Internet or something. It's worked for others; if you're worthy, it'll work for you.
Wahoo. And now that I've made myself out to be the arbiter of all that is good and artistically pure in this world... it's time to ask you folks a question about that very same ideal.
So I like U2, right? They're playing on TRL on Monday afternoon. Living, as I do, in the city in which TRL makes its home, and seeing as I have nothing to do Monday afternoon, my question is thus: Am I a bad man if I go down there and make myself a little popwhore in order to see the band? Sure, I'd get to see U2 live, but I'd also be seen on TRL. Which, I think we'll all agree, carries a certain stigma for any self-respecting hipster. What is a boy to do?
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