Archive for November, 2009
Plungers
Almost Saturday
Then the first paper comes and goes and all of this just gets kicked into some kind of overdrive. Or it won’t and I’ll be desperately wondering why. I don’t know. We’ll see. Revision hasn’t been going well or poorly. It just goes. It happens. It is an odd sensation.
It is also odd because this semester is the first one I can remember where I don’t feel entirely lousy. I’ve also been working as hard as I can remember. And yet, in spite of it all, I find myself trying very hard to smother the notion that it’s all been extremely ineffective.
I’ve also been stricken with a slight flu and sore throat. At the risk of making this slightly disgusting, the phlegm has been proving particularly irritating, if for nothing else then for its unfailing tendency to make me feel faintly as if I have to vomit.
It also makes it feel awful whenever I wake up, when the sore throat always seems twice as bad, the nose feels like it’s got plungers punched in, the head spins, and the feeling that I have to vomit is not so faint. Though all that usually lasts for three minutes before it all goes away.
Solar Telescope
Ctein writes an interesting article about his solar telescope. [via The Online Photographer] And it seems we’ve all just learnt that he’s had a picture of the sun both on APOD and on the cover of Science! He just can’t stop being awesome.
Van Gogh Letters
The Van Gogh Museum has put up all of his letters online. [via The Van Gogh Museum] Take a look! It’s free and pretty! There is also a beautiful book edition that I would love, except that it costs about 1000SGD more.
Munro
A look at Alice Munro’s new short story collection, Too Much Happiness: Stories. [via Barnes & Noble]
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Revision x Jukebox
It’s Not Working
Revision is going great. In fact, this is probably my best revision period ever. I’m studying more and further ahead of time than ever. And yet, paradoxically, it is also not working! I’m quite unable to explain this unusual phenomenon, but I will just chalk it down as something I’ll have to deal with quickly. I’m sure if I keep at it, it’ll sort itself out eventually.
My papers are on the 21st, 25th, then the 2nd and the 4th. Almost in increasing order of difficulty. Well, maybe you could swap the one on the 2nd and the one on the 4th around, but it’s pretty close.
Jukebox
I’ve been listening to:
- Kid A. Over the years, I’ve grown to like this more than OK Computer. I suppose it’s a change in sensibilities and aesthetic values. Kid A just feels more refined and immediate to me, though both are exceptional pieces of work.
- In Rainbows.
- Some Duane Allman. Random stuff from all around. Gone too soon, as they said, but every time I listen to his work I find myself quite astounded at the level to which he takes things. He has no brakes. He just jams the gas and creates things quite extraordinary. There are many reasons he’s my favourite guitarist, and sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of them.
- Selected bits of The White Album. I find myself liking songs that I didn’t used to like. Rocky Raccoon, for example. Also, yesterday, the visceral impact of Yer Blues punched me in the face. And here is where I throw in a superlative in the lame hope of impressing it upon you.
- Some Dylan and some Springsteen. The notable tracks are the extremely vicious Hurricane and the very cinematic Thunder Road.
- Cream. Lots of Cream. It had been a while since I last dived into the Cream catalogue, and this recent endeavour has left me quite surprised at the tremendous breadth and range of material covered by the band. I think when I was younger it was always easier to be impressed by the White Rooms and Sunshine Of Your Loves, to the point that I’d missed everything else.
Not being very good at staying awake, this playlist has been working so far for me in this revision period, though I imagine I’ll have to swap things around very soon and remove the stuff I’m more acquainted with so I can replace them with less comfortably familiar material.
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Moonwater
Study Week
It’s the study week. I feel immensely numb. As if they can’t hurt me. Well, I suppose after that storm of a semester, that’s sort of true. The exams are spaced out like nobody’s business, so I get the feeling that it’ll be a slightly different exam period. We’ll take it a day at a time, I suppose, but now that it’s the third year, I don’t think that it’s going to be causing any major states of alarm.
My study plan is actually quite simple. I’ll just be cycling through the things over and over until we reach D-day, and then it’s basically an amusement ride on rails. So, here goes.
Space!
Water found on the Moon! [via SPACE.com]
The Lovely Bones
Boneworms are a relatively newly discovered genus (Osedax) of worms that eat bones. They live in the sea. [via ScienceDaily] Most of them haven’t been named, but their story is immensely interesting.
Moorcock x Doctor Who
Michael Moorcock should be penning a new Doctor Who novel. [via Moorcock's Miscellany]
风声 Trailer
I want to watch this movie.
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Further Impressions
Some brief impressions as I continue to rediscover the Beatles. I know I’m a bit slow in all of this, but I’m doing what I can. Today, I’ll talk about With The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night.
With The Beatles was always, to me, the worst-sounding Beatles album of the lot. The quality of the recordings was probably the worst of the lot. Instruments bleeding into one another, cracking vocals, and a certain degree of noise that made the recordings really hard to listen to. And yet some of my favourite Beatles songs are on this album, so I was really glad to find that they had somehow managed to rescue With The Beatles.
It’s not obvious right off the bat. At least, it wasn’t to me. Something seemed different, but it wasn’t a night-and-day difference for sure. It was less noisy and more well-balanced, for one thing. The differences were clearer a bit more into the album. The clarity of the guitar in Till There Was You, for instance, was a joy to behold. The drums sounded more full-bodied in Please Mister Postman, and were accompanied with a much cleaner bassline. Most of all, it didn’t sound like I was trying to imagine things out of a 50-year old bootleg. I could actually hear things clearly.
I think the most slap-in-the-face obvious thing for me was on Money, where there were guitar notes in it that up to that point I didn’t know existed. (And I still can’t find it on the mono remaster.)
A Hard Day’s Night works out pretty much the same way, with everything sounding just that bit cleaner. If I Fell, for instance, starts out with more than John’s voice. I hadn’t realised that, but it’s very obvious in the stereo remaster. It doesn’t always work for the best, though. Much has been said about the warmth of the mono versions and it’s true, and of the three albums I’ve written about so far, this is the one that I most prefer the mono version of. Nothing to worry about, though. Both versions are astounding bits of remastering, and in the end, I think it’s simply a matter of preference. Both versions are still excellent, though more different than I thought they’d be.
In all, it’s been a joy reliving all of this music. Some days, I want the excitingly creative Beatles, the risk-taking Beatles, the whimsical Beatles, the Beatles driven by the need to invent. And some days, I want the simpler, sweeter ballads, so bright, so positive and so breathtakingly youthful. So it’s no exaggeration when I say that I’m mightily pleased that the remasters turned out this good. Particularly With The Beatles, the rescue of which seems almost miraculous to me.
And as the song goes, I’ll be back.
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