I mean, the truth is that immigration sucks, that it would be easier and cheaper and more profitable for me to work in the U.K. for a year than in the U.S., that I'm paying 1000 dollars to the U.S. government to keep my job this summer (this fee subtracted from my wages makes it so that I may as well be working illegally. Well, not really.)

I'm compulsively replanning my life to fit with new facts I get. My mother is considering moving (she loves this house, is too tired to move, and yells at my father about the brand of hair dye he mixes up for her while drunk at 10:45PM), so that she can have another job.

This summer is one of the most dreadful to date in black and white, in facts, in legal fees and the second to last sample check I wrote out to my mother in block letters, TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS of my first pay check goes to her, to pay the bills, the A/C that's set on 81 degrees at night and 79 degrees during the day, the gas for the cars that stumble when they hit 35 miles per hour (2nd gear), the food that goes in our stomachs only to come out again, into the water system, into pipes and porcelain. We pay for all that too.

But summer is okay, really. Hanging out with friends a lot; work is satisfying and still interesting, and I really enjoy my co-workers. Playing a lot of music by myself right now, very very soon (this coming week) to be playing a lot more with lots of different people. I am making bassoon reeds and learning Haskell and going to be fixing an organ and a road bike.
And Ben comes home two days from now and that is a very big deal and I am very glad.

I sometimes wonder if I'm going to spend a lot of my life waiting for him, waiting for him to come home to me, but I think that is just the now. It is not okay, I miss him dreadfully, but it is how it is; and I realize that someday, maybe sooner than I think, he will be the one waiting for me.

U.K. fall 2009 or spring 2009? Summer 2009 is France if I get this grant for this idea I want to do, U.K. or Canada if I don't and just want to work.

unusual evangelism

I've always complained about last.fm's recommendation radio; how it failed me after its first and only victory: The Magnetic Fields, but the fact is, that if anything, I have failed last.fm.

For those not in the know, last.fm is a social music platform that allows you to share what you're listening on your computer (and now ipod) with your friends by "scrobbling" your latest tunes. After you've listened to a few hundred tracks or so, it'll also start giving you recommendations for new music, as well as compiling a radio of "your favorite music". Awesome? Yeah.

Except for the fact that I haven't gotten a recommendation that I've agreed with in the last two years. So what's up with that? last.fm uses the music you've played before to give you new recommendations. But it interprets the music not by dsp but by user tags given to the song / artist / album. I have not tagged more than 3 artists. How should I expect good recommendations from last.fm? In fact, like any collaborative, I will get more out of this if I put more into it.

So...go! get a last.fm account! tag everything! Results will be better! Tailored to you! to the collective conscious!

it's free! it's fun!

You can find my music at: last.fm/user/pencilshavings , if you so want.

(picture taken from www.school-for-champions.com)