tracker7 | Entries tagged with music

It's the first day of summer. Not all that hot, and driving home this evening was pleasant, really. The rain we've enjoyed for the last few days has gone away (darnit) and good ol' Sol was seen as a dull disc through a thick cloud cover. Proper cyberpunk skies.

I finally got over to a theater and saw Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. It is good. Really truly very good. Maybe more visually striking as Into, and every bit as bonkers. Roughly three hojillion Spider-People and so very very many of them in their own animation style. Lots to do with family and identity. Indian Spider-Man pointing out the giant museum in his city of Mumbattan and describing it as something like "that's where the British put all of our stuff" got a big laugh from me.

Hey, do you know why the pyramids are in Egypt? They were too heavy to haul back to London.

Anyway, heck of a movie, and I'd like to give it another viewing just to look for all the little things tucked into the animation. So good.

In other media news, YouTube just served up the video for The Midnight's "Vampires," and it is assembled from clips from Wicked City, and boy that was porny as anything. Whole movie is on Tubi, if you're interested. Not really recommended.

Got a couple of quiet days coming up, then Saturday ... it's going to be a good mental health day, starting with running trains in Jeffersonville, then Free RPG Day at Miso's, then a L5R game at Bryan J's. I know I'll be tired as anything when I finally get home, but it should be that good tired.

Elton John is playing here in Louisville tonight - something like a year after the concert's original date. Yay pandemic. Tickets are available, and for a few minutes I thought about going, but a seat starts at $70 plus fees, so, no.

I do miss live shows. I think the last big arena show I saw was, in fact, Elton John and Billy Joel on some incarnation of their Face to Face tours - I know I saw them twice, and Billy Joel solo a couple of times. Smaller shows and venues got my money in the years after arena show costs went through the roof - Lucinda Williams at the Lexington Opera House and The Midnight (swoon) at Headliners, the last show I saw before Covid-19 did its thing.

I gave Cowboy Bebop three episodes and gave up on it. Was going to watch something on Disney+ tonight, but when I launched YouTube while making dinner, Gunship's "Woken Furies" was the second song to play, and that was as good a sign as any to watch Altered Carbon instead. So, here I am, going back through the first season before finally getting around to the second.

I finished reading American Injustice before bed last night. Stellar read, but frustrating and often infuriating. So many cases of railroaded suspects, indifferent (at best) investigators, and victims denied anything like justice. Again, the United States doesn't have a justice system, it has a legal system. And there is no equality, even acknowledging that.

Moving on, I'm starting Roadside Picnic tonight, filling in one of the gaps in my SF reading. I want to get back to the Appendix N Book Club reading list soon - the new illustrated Elric of Melnibone editions look so good.

After a week of missteps, Russia seems to have had some success in its invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops have entered and held part of Khersen. Russia's paying for it, though - near-universal economic and social sanctions, supply problems, and growing dissent among the Russian population. Ukraine is winning the propaganda war coming and going. Ukraine's President Zelenskyy - a former comedian - has turned into some kind of rallying figure, responding to an offer of transit out of the country with "I don't need a ride, I need bullets." Greek Orthodox inspired artwork of Mary Magdalene holding an anti-tank missile tube has become Saint Javelin of Ukraine. Smartphone videos of citizens driving alongside Russian military vehicles and lobbing Molotov cocktails. An old woman telling a Russian soldier to put sunflower seeds in his pockets so that something good will come when he dies on Ukrainian soil. It's amazing.

Despite the initial blunders, though, I can't see Russia not eventually taking Ukraine. Holding it, though - another story. There is going to be an insurgency like no other.

A few nights ago, YouTube's algorithm served up "My Name is Ruin," by Gary Numan. Heck of a track, with all of Numan's heavy sound, and the video is stark and beautiful. Numan's oldest daughter, Persia, sings backing vocals and appears throughout the video, and I gotta tell you, I've heard people described as "angelic," but Persia Numan is the first that I think I could truly apply it to.

Yesterday was a much lazier day than I had planned for, but I managed to get a couple of resumes out. Lake Cumberland District HD has an incredible opening that I'm in no way qualified for, and the posting almost reads like they already have an internal candidate, but what the hell. If there is a vacancy coming up, maybe I'll be a better fit there.

SpaceX got the first Dragon-flown ISS crew back home safely. Nighttime water landing, this time with the Coast Guard keeping gawkers at bay. China put up the first module for their Tiangong space station.

Gods, I hope not. I lean more towards Brak's take.

It's been a good week. I've been in the best sustained mood in quite a while, just straight-up happy for a few days. I can't (and won't try to) put my fingers on anything in particular; I'm just going to enjoy things and ride them for as long as this lasts.

I mean, right now, I am just ... happy. There's a decent NFL game on, both teams are bad, but they're playing hard and it's entertaining. There was going to be an evening game, but COVID hit one of the teams hard, so instead NBC is broadcasting the National Dog Show and I am going to watch the hell out of that because dogs are just great. I have a boneless turkey breast in the oven, and will mash some potatoes and steam some peas in a bit. Right now, this is just a happy evening.

Cyberpunk Red hasn't made it to my FLGS of choice yet, so I'm going to pull it from the running for my next game. I'm a tiny bit frustrated with said FLGS over the ordering and prepayment process, but it's so minor and it's the firstest of First World problems. All will be well.

Sweet Christmas, I have no idea who performed the pre-recorded halftime show for this game, but man, they were just aggressively mediocre. [Edit: someone named Kane Brown. Gods, I hate bro-country.]

Tomorrow looks pretty good. I think there is some wargaming in the offing, and that would be a fine way to spend a few hours in the evening. If not, no big deal - I'll have the Mariner loaded up later tonight and I'll just launch for Liberty as soon as the workday's over. Already have the PS4 broken down and boxed for the trip, and I'll have my duffel and laptop bags packed in the morning.

It's somehow fitting that, on his 71st birthday, something happened that Bruce Springsteen would write a song about. The grand jury in the Breonna Taylor case returned its indictments. Three counts of wanton endangerment against the now-fired cop. And that's it. The charges are for shots fired into neighboring apartments. It's an insult and an embarrassment, and yet it's more than I expected to see. I would not have been surprised if no indictment at all had been handed down.

There are demonstrations going on tonight, of course, and they've gotten ... vigorous. KSP and KYNG are deployed; last time that happened, a man was shot and killed by a KYNG soldier out in front of his barbecue shack out in the West End. There was an altercation somewhere on or around Bardstown Road. I don't know exactly where, and in later years I may wish that I looked it up, but tonight, I'm just not doing it.

Steve shut down Heroes about an hour after the indictments were announced. Didn't see or hear anything from Colin at TLGS. It seems like the action is mostly contained to the area bounded by 2nd to 9th and Market to Broadway. TARC shut down completely at 6PM, and Mayor Fischer declared a 9:00PM-6:30AM curfew for tonight through Friday. I heard both of those damned helicopters - KSP's Huey and LMPD's 520 - for a few hours this afternoon; if I never hear the former's thud and the latter's whine ever again, I'll be happy.

I'm fighting despair, over this and so much else. This is going to be a long night, and I don't just mean the hours until the next sunrise. There is so much loss and hurt and there is so much more to come. I'm again so very that I never had kids, because the world they would inherit is just fucked.

Thanks to YouTube, I've found another synthwave artist to follow - Lionface. A little heavier than Gunship, and way moreso than The Midnight, so they're a welcome addition to the list.

After too many delays and too much time spent overthinking minutia, I've gotten back on track with the PMC project that's been in my head for a while. Took a step back, rewrote the outline, and started looking at it in smaller chunks instead of one large(ish) whole. I still have no real idea what I'll do with it when its finished. That's maybe a conversation to have in a couple of weeks.

15 days until Indianapolis, and then hopefully a return to Night City.

Violet Days and The Midnight played at Headliners last night, and I'm a little bit pissed at myself for not going. As some kind of compensation, I'm listening to their stuff on YouTube, letting Google's algorithms do their thing. They're an interesting pairing. Violet Days is a Swedish pop band that sounds a whole heck of a lot like some of the better stuff from my teens, with a little bit more cynicism and self-awareness. The Midnight is a duo riding the synthwave ... wave, and they're pretty darn good.

Synthwave has been my go-to writing music lately, along with youarelistening.to. Cyberpunk vibes, nostalgia for a future that never was. The Imaginary Network Expanded art subreddits are complementing the audio with some fantastic and evocative visual pieces - ImaginaryCyberpunk and ImaginaryCityscapes are just full of good stuff. Sometimes, there's a track or a piece that just hits me the right way and it feels like I'm coming home.

It's been a weekend for going back to old headspaces. Last night's Somewhere in Time was an episode from the mid-90s about Cydonia and the "Face on Mars" and all that, and Jesus that took me back. In those heady early days of the World Wide Web and my access to it via UK's NeXT machines, I was seriously on board with the groundless crazy of photographs "clearly showing" the ruins of a city near that pile of rock on the Red Planet - a couple of pyramids, a kilometers-long wall, and other features that had to have been built by some intelligence. Goofy stuff, and compared to some of the horrible nonsense filling up the 'Net in these recent days, pretty harmless.

I have to wonder, though, if things like Infowars and antivax and all that awfulness can trace a lineage back to those early conspiracy and secret knowledge sites. Conspiracy theories have always been around, and there's never been anything like the Internet to give them traction and an audience.

Black Panther won three Oscars, the first for Marvel Studios. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse deservedly won Best Animated Feature. Green Book won Best Picture, and the comparisons to Crash's win a few years ago came on in a hurry.

Bumblebee was - damning with faint praise here - the best live-action Transformers movie yet. Never insulted the audience, Hailee Steinfeld is amazing, and there are quite a few really excellent moments. Thoroughly enjoyable movie.

SpaceX is taking another big step this weekend. The first flight of a Crew Dragon capsule is scheduled for late Friday night. It's an unmanned shot to the ISS, the first test of the crewed version of the Falcon/Dragon system. If this and next month's launch abort system test are successful, a crewed mission is scheduled to go up in July, and for the first time since Atlantis made her final flight in 2011, Americans will go up in an American craft instead of hitching a ride on a Russian ship.

Listening to The Midnight tonight, synthwave band outta LA. They're playing at Headliners on April 6, and I'm starting to think that maybe I should go see 'em. It's been forever since I've seen live music (a Waterfront Wednesday last summer?) and Headliners is a darn good venue.

I'm glad to see this synthwave trend rise up in the last few years. Lots of good music, quite often exactly what I need or want to hear. Gunship is my current fave - their "Dark All Day" video is just a thing of beauty.

I expected that I'd lose my shit last night - first Christmas Eve I've spent complete alone in a decade or more. This hasn't been good year, and the last few weeks have really weighed on me. But, I was okay, and that okayness came from a surprising source - before going to bed, I queued up a Christmas hymn playlist on YouTube. The good stuff - old songs and carols and hymns. Stuff from my childhood. Beautiful music. And it brought such peace to me. Not going to chalk it up to any kind of divine influence, but it was more helpful than I would have imagined. I slept so well.

Dead or Alive. The band, I mean. Gender-bending Pete Burns, driving beats, eminently danceable tunes. Sometimes lumped into the array of 1980s one-hit-wonders, definitely part of the era's early alternative groups.

I owe this band my life.

Waking up one morning and turning on the radio and hearing "Brand New Lover" was the final push to get out of the longest relationship of my life, one that had, from the perspective of many years later, choked the life out of me. There were other factors - another woman, first on that list - and years later, a friend pointed out just how toxic and unequal things were. But I stuck with things way too long, until I just couldn't any more. And one fine morning, there's that song, and in that moment it was perfect.

Jesus. I remember Burns dying a few years ago. The Great Sage Wikipedia mentions his numerous and often severe changes in appearance; a Google image search reveals some serious plastic surgery. It's ... it's terrible. The '80s-era Burns was handsome, with the androgynous look that enjoyed early popularity in a time and subculture. Later years, though ... wow. He looked inhuman. Cartoonish, even. I'm all for body autonomy and an individual's right to look and be who they want, but what Burns did to himself flat killed him. Pulmonary embolisms and blood clots resulting from the constant surgeries. He died after a heart attack, probably the end result of being partially reassembled so damned often.

I wonder what Burns was looking for, if there was something he was trying to ultimately become. I've never felt any kind of gender dysphoria, but there have been times I would have readily been rebuilt into another chassis.

There's plenty of science fiction and fantasy out there - and no shortage of scholarly work - that takes a look at wholesale body-changing. Transhumanism. Cyberpunk. In their adaptation of Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon, Netflix is going all-in on the theme of a replaceable body - the lead character was played by a white man, Joel Kinnaman, in the first season, and the second season will see Anthony Mackie take over the role. If I remember correctly, at some point in the novels, the character, Takashi Kovacs, finds himself in a woman's body, and that would be a heck of a thing to put on the screen.

Depending on your take, Kinnaman's played a transhuman character already, taking on the role of Alex Murphy in the 2014 remake of RoboCop. More than being placed into a new human body or having a new one grown or even having consciousness moved or installed into a non-humanoid body, old-school bionics and cybernetics still are my mental go-tos when it comes to large-scale body modifications. A long time ago, I had dreams that sometime in my adult life, I would have my badly-nearsighted eyes replaced with mechanical improvements. Instead, I wear glasses and contacts, and reject getting Lasik surgery because the specs and contacts are such a part of my identity. Humans, man. We are not always anything like rational.

Driving home home from tonight's D&D game, I had a thought about how fucked up magical healing has to be in a conventional D&D-type fantasy world. So, magical healing from clerics and potions and whatnot are commonplace. Say some magic words, down some colorful fluid, and your injuries are gone. But outside of the numbers of hit points, that has to be traumatic as anything to the character and those around him. After a fight, he's got deep wounds, broken bones, burns from chemicals or acid or fire, and who knows what kind of other injuries. His partner says some words or he drinks a few ounces of something, and all of a sudden, he's watching things stitch back together, skin rebuild itself, punctured organs repair themselves ... you get it, right?

The gods of these worlds have to be either utterly monstrous or incredibly good at healing the mind, because that would cause some serious PTSD for starters. Also, at the prices listed for healing spells and potions, for-profit healthcare is utter bullshit, no matter what reality you exist in.

Good grief, this fucking week.

The week kicked off with a misunderstanding that could have cost me some friendships.

Then it leveled off for a couple of days.

And then Thursday showed up. Woke up to a text from a dear friend, telling me that her husband had had a mental inquest warrant dropped on her a little while ago. This, of course, is not good. And I'm having some problems seeing the justification. He's emotionally manipulative (and, well, yes, takes one to know one), and I can't see this as anything but an attempt to hurt and/or control her.

Five hours later, we learned that Prince was dead. 2016 keeps on taking the best ones we have.

Three hours later, the first of two finals for the semester and I don't feel good about it at all.

Fuelling up this morning, "Highwayman" came over the store's PA speakers, and I kinda felt a little better.

Current Mood: tired

Grey sky, always in your eye
Where is the girl behind the cloud?
Grey sky, always floating by
But I only peek when I'm allowed.

Wasn't expecting it to be an evening for Carbon Leaf, but I'm not complaining.

My grandfather died 15 years ago today. Honestly, I remember the date because it's also Sputnik Day. Papaw was a good man, straightforward, strong in his faith, sometimes inconsiderate, but he was able to change and overcome his prejudices. Family lore says I look like him at my age, and I do resemble the Davis/Hamm lines more strongly than the Epling/Keck lines. I'm proud of the barn he and I built together in 1991, and he was proud of me for not giving up and finishing my first BA.

Huh. I guess it would be accurate to say "my paternal grandfather," but my maternal grandfather died 13 years before I was born, so I only know him from a handful of stories and a few photographs. According to lore on that side of the family, Grandfather Keck was born with a caul over his face and could see some sort of apparition the night before a child in the family died - and given family sizes and healthcare in his time and place, that wasn't an especially uncommon event. If I remember right, four of my mom's siblings died before age five, including at least one stillbirth - eight children, including Mom, survived to adulthood.

I played in the first session of a D6 Star Wars game this afternoon. Pretty good, somewhat uneven, but it should smooth out soon enough. It feels good to be back in that setting for a while.

Gaming-related, CincyCon announced its new venue and date this week. The good news - the venue is about 21K square feet, with more parking and a good rate with a nearby hotel. The bad news - it's now scheduled for Derby weekend. All good, I guess. I'm going to Conglomeration in early April, so there's my not-GenCon con.

Taking The Niece over to the St. James Court Art Fair tomorrow. The forecast is for a cool fall day, as it should be for St. James.

Grey Sky, I think I changed my mind
I find no need to pretend
Grey Sky, would you allow me to be
So into you, my friend?

Current Mood: listless

Screw buying a Kindle. The iPad app works really well, and it's not too bright to read in bed, so I'll spend the $120, when I have it to spare again, on e-books.

I intended to start sorting things into the sell-versus-keep categories Thursday evening or Friday, but it didn't happen. Thursday, I slept a heck of a lot, and Friday morning was slept through as well. Wound up going to Louisville on Friday afternoon to see a Moth storytelling competition with Diane. I didn't know how much I needed time with a friend until we got out and ran around for a while. Good conversation and just time with one of the best people in my life. Got a quick and surprising flurry of texts while we were driving around after the competition and some late-night coffee. Got home around 2:30AM, listening to a radio station out of Chicago most of the way.

Home. There's a heck of a word. For about half of the week, home is a cheap hotel room in Shepherdsville. For the rest, it's the house I grew up in. On the whole, it's good to be back here. The night sky is heartbreakingly beautiful, I'm with my far-too-good-for-me parents quite a bit, and even with the clutter, it's comfortable like you wouldn't believe. I'll be glad to have a place in Louisville, and hope that happens soon, but there are far worse situations to be in.

If I hadn't been so dumb, I'd probably be at Iroquois Park tonight, rockin' out to the Arctic Monkeys.

Current Mood: optimistic

This was, unfortunately, a lost weekend.

Plans to go to Louisville on Saturday for a roller derby bout were disrupted because some people can't bother with a simple phone call. Less than thrilled with this.

Sunday started off well, at least. Long-overdue trip to the grocery. Watched the last three episodes of Fringe. Settled in to write. For whatever reason, some recent writing blocks didn't show themselves, and I managed to get quite a bit done. Put the fantasy project to the side for a while and went back to an older action-espionage project. Mixed that in with some fiction. Felt good about it when I stepped back for a reread and evaluation.

Lengthy phone conversation with CPTAAL, on his drive back from Louisville. He had a good weekend, at least.

Oh, hey, for you Jane Siberry fans out there, she's giving away the whole catalog.

Current Mood: working

I finally got out of town on Saturday. Went to Louisville to hang out with D, and it was, on the whole, a very good day. We indulged our craft nerd sides - she has a nifty new mug and I got some new cheeses from a local dairy. Shopping on Bardstown Road, including throwing some money at Ear X-Tacy, 'cause if there's any music store that deserves to stay open, that one's it. Picked up a few back issues at The Great Escape. Dinner at Lynn's Paradise Cafe. Went to a movie, and that's when the trouble started. I'll save you the squishy details, but my stomach went into open rebellion. I made it back to Lexington easily enough, but had a hallucination-grade fever by the time I hit Frankfort.

Sunday was spent dealing with the sick. Dehydrated, continued fever, headache, weakness. I'm hoping it was my peculiar food allergy (strawberries) kicking in rather than a virus of some kind. I took today off to rest up, and the symptoms seem to be gone now.

Oh, the movie? The Wolfman. Not bad - perfectly serviceable little popcorn flick.

Watched the Oscars last night for the first time in a few years. Ben Stiller's skit was embarrassingly bad (and really, who's surprised here?), and the dance program went on waaaaay too long. Happy enough with the results of the night, I guess.

Probably going to drop Daredevil from my comics list. Brubaker spoiled me, and the new guy's not bad, but the tight focus on Hell's Kitchen really worked for me, and that's now gone. I'm going to pick up the second monthly Iron Man title, of course, and probably the new Avengers title, too. DC's launching yet another LSH book, so that'll get added. That'll put me at 5 DC and 3 Marvel titles a month, at least for a while. Unexpected.

Started my Community Emergency Response Team course last week, and I really like it. I like being back in a classroom, learning something new. Stagnation sucks rocks, kids.

Hopefully getting back to the Hollow Earth Expedition game Wednesday night. And I'm running a Traveller one-off in a couple of weeks. Gotta get cracking on that one.

Current Mood: drained

Exceedingly busy day. Silly drama among the peripheral team. Yay for headphones.

I've finally acquired a copy of the score to Near Dark - along with 52 other Tangerine Dream albums. Almost two days' worth of listening material.

The current reading material is Halting State, by Charles Stross. I'm only a few pages into it, and it's interesting. Written, so far, in second person.

This is, I think, my third read of a full-length Stross product. I thought Glasshouse was extremely good, and had a lot of fun with most of Saturn's Children, but there was a chapter there that left me physically ill. Can't say as I'd like to revisit that experience, but I've got to give Stross credit for being able to elicit that kind of response.

A significant winter storm is forecast for the area tomorrow. 2-6 inches of snow. We've had slight dustings and some ground cover over the past few days, but nothing like points to the northeast and northwest.

Current Mood: content

Much of the primary route between Lexington and Liberty is a Radio Dead Zone - virtually nothing but homespun gospel and country stations. Sometimes you can get repeater stations of the EKU and WKU NPR broadcasts, and on a really clear night, WUKY for a while, but for the most part, at least half of the drive is a frustrating and constant tapping of the Seek button. I'm constantly reminded that I need to upgrade Hephaestus' audio.

Tonight was shaping up to be no exception, but about midway between the Casey-Lincoln line and Hustonville, I picked up an FM station out of Stanford. Instead of radio-friendly hat bands, there was talk. Talk of ghosts and other supernatural things - like Coast to Coast AM used to be, before the Noory Times. The in-studio guests were locals, with some good stories to tell, and one mentioned his time as a staff writer at Somerset Community College's newspaper. This perked me right up, as I was on that staff for a couple of years, including a stint as editor. I wondered, would he mention ... he did! The two entities in Stoner Hall - one in the theater, one in the second floor hallway. I tried calling in, as I wanted to see if the guests had the same sense of gender about the two entities that I (and my friends, a long time ago) did, but when I got to the Brannon Crossing light north of Nicholasville, both the station's signal and my cell connection went away.

It was good.

Aunt Clara kept her Bible right next to the phone
In case she needed a quote
While she talked to someone
In my memory she smiles while the blessing is said
And visions of freeze tag dance in my head
She says I'll grow up big
If I eat all my roast
I'll still believe in heaven
But I won't believe in ghosts anymore

I'll put away childish things

Every other weekend at the age of thirteen
With my fishing pole and my Field and Stream
Ridin' back home on the Trailways bus
I looked out the window
‘Til I saw too much
And I called my parents by their own first names
I played in the alley
But I didn't play the game anymore

I put away childish things

The wolves howl all night long
They won't stop and they won't go home
Beneath my window they run
Probably it'll be alright
If I keep it all locked up tight
And wait ‘til daylight comes

Now my boy goes like a house on fire
He'll never burn out and he'll never retire
And I remember when I used to think like that
When I was young and the world was flat
But I'm forty some years old now and man I don't care
All I want now is just a comfortable chair
And to sell all my stock
And live on the coast
I don't believe in heaven
But I still believe in ghosts.

Current Mood: thoughtful

I grew up in rural farmland Kentucky, but very little music in the world hits me like Bruce Springsteen's songs of life in urban/industrial places. "Youngstown," for example, can often make me just stop whatever I'm doing for the duration of the track.

Still on vacation. Probably no trips to the theater today, and I'm focusing my writing energies on one of the Spycraft projects rattling around.

Yesterday? Good day. New books, new CDs, and a good Trinity session. Should have gone in with

tegyrius on a pizza at Puccini's Smiling Teeth, though, as there was a bit too much mushroom in my lasagna for my liking.
Lucinda Williams' new West is a good album, just a notch beneath World Without Tears. I'd put it on an equal footing with WWT, but "Come On" is just a dreadful track.

Talked with Erin last night. Some ground got covered, and we're really communicating again, so that's a plus. We're working on a couple of character ideas for The Effect, one that she came up with after getting stuck in the woods after sunset, the other a sidekick/partner based on a character idea from various cyberpunk-style games from way back when.

Holy cow. "Wishing Well" just started playing on the MusicChoice '80s channel. I'm suddenly 16 years old again. It will pass, but there are some happy thoughts there.

No word on the cousin's funeral. According to an updated article yesterday, he was found in a vehicle owned by his employer, and a search warrant was executed on the company's offices as part of the investigation.

My old desktop machine continues to slowly kill itself. Discovered last night that OfficeXP has become corrupted. However, the Sun StarOffice 5.1 (current version is 8.0, to show this thing's age) package that was original installation is still working just fine, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I downloaded and installed OpenOffice 2.2. Tiger Direct has some decent desktops (refurbished, but that means still running WinXP instead of Vista) that are comfortably within my budget, and I'm starting to sort through those and determine which one is the best option for me.

Current Location: The Bunker

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
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15	16	17	18	19	20	21
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Roadside Picnic

Bright Ideas, Dark Futures

Nemesis

In God's Country

More Pressure

Are Friends Electric?

Do You Wanna Touch Me

The Ghost of Tom Joad

No Hope State

We'll get it right in the next life.

In the Name of Love

Christmas 2018

You Spin Me Around

Suitcase Blues

Grey Sky Eyes

Symmetry

Canyon Voices

Unknown Pleasures

Sunshine

With special thanks to James McMurtry

Dry Lightning

Little Red Corvette

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