wishes for 2014 part two

Last week, I asked what you want out of 2014. You collectively responded with a lot of different and varied answers. They all seemed pretty reasonable, honestly. Health for elderly relatives. Time. A better sugar-cookie recipe. Fewer bad things going down.

I’m not so reasonable. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want for 2014, and I think a lot of it comes down to wanting to be done with all the bullshit.

That’s both nonspecific and unattainable – there is always bullshit – but I would like there to be less of it. But less intentional stupidity. Less believing in lies for the sake of tribalism. Less of politics as some sort of goddamn sportsball event. I’m sick of that.

But I don’t want to externalise all of this. I want less bullshit on a personal level – not in the sense of lying, but in the sense of moving on past things. I’ve had a rough history, in a lot of ways – Batman ain’t got nothin’ on me – and I’ve had to deal with a bunch of that over the last few years. I’m tired of it. I want less of that and less of the mental expenditures and less of the blocking that kind of thing creates.

See, kayjayuu on Livejournal? Kayjayuu asked for forward motion.

Yeah.

See, the thing about all the bullshit is that it impedes, and I’m regularly feeling stalled out and delayed and I’m tired of that. Lots of North America seems to feel that way to me, too – but I can’t be sure that’s not just my perspective, my filters, my projection.

But even if it is, it’s the view I’ve got.

Forward motion through less bullshit in 2014.

That is a goal.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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airplanes in my ceiling

I got up into the attic above my studio this weekend, because I have this leftover rock wool sound insulation, and wanted to see whether I could further dampen the occasional airplane noise that makes it through everything.

I’ve never lived in a new-construction house before. This thing was built in 1998-2000. (Why such a wide date range? Because this.) I’ve always lived in old buildings. Attics are dark spaces with 2×12 joists and random boards lying about and forgotten storage and knob and tube writing (sometimes just remnants) and hopefully bare-bulb light-fixtures and places where they took out the pull-down staircase and probably spiders and possibly livestock and almost certainly not ghosts.

This attic? Basically, this attic has no goddamn floor at all. Turns out the top floor ceiling is just wallboard held up by 2x4s, which are in turn hidden and drowning in an ocean of blow-in insulation. And while blow-in insulation is awesome – I’m all for insulation – having literally no visible places to step is not awesome. It’s like the end of the world in Skyrim. LOL NO FLOOR ANYMORE HAVE FUN WITH THE OCEAN.

I’m not walking around up there, much less putting in rock wool. And while, okay, 2x4s, they can hold up wallboard, and hopefully me at least briefly, and hopefully all that blow-in insulation but I’m not convinced, I’m mostly in the category of whose idea is this?! Can wallboard ceilings hold up rock wool? I would think so, but I don’t even know! Hell, I’m not even enamoured of it holding up that much blow-in thermal insulation because that is a lot of insulation up there.

Basically what I’m saying is that compared to what I’m used to, this attic “floor” is made up of assurances which are made up of lies. So I’m not remotely surprised I hear airplanes through it.

What do I do here? Continue to live with it? I mean, it’s only occasional, and it’s at -60db when I do hear it at my normal recording levels, so even if it happens during recording it’s not that big a deal. Do I tack up another layer of wallboard to absorb low-frequency airplane noise, maybe on floaters of some kind? Do I make rock wool pillows and hang them from the existing ceiling and try to compensate for the brightness loss by taking out other baffles? Will this all literally come tumbling down on my head if I do any of it?

I’ve no idea. And really, I suppose it’s not that important. But it tasks me. It does, it does.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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last day for free downloads

I meant to turn off free/pay-what-you-like Bandcamp downloads last week, but I didn’t warn people. Accordingly:

Today is the last day you can pull my Bandcamp albums down for free/pay-what-you-like. So grab while the grabbing’s good; I’m putting minimums back on tomorrow.

A couple of singles – Kaiju Meat and The S-100 Bus being notable examples – will stay free/pay-what-you-like permanently, but the rest? Not so much.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
Bandcamp (full album streaming) | Videos | iTunes | Amazon | CD Baby