bad taste show tonight in anderson, indiana at the odd fellows lodge. punk bands, rock bands, an installation by bobby vomit, and sets by stAllio!, unszene, and bobby vomit. should be interesting.

and tomorrow night, listen online to the sound experiment, featuring stAllio! and others.

see awia news for all the info.

i am as healthy as ever; connie is much better although still coughing somewhat. in a few minutes we're going out for dinner with my parents. now i must pack the car.  ¶ 2:23 PM

connie is here! i picked her up from the airport last night & she is currently resting in the guest room. she is still a bit sick, and barry & i are not totally recovered yet either, but hopefully we can resist spreading too many germs around.

happy birthday connie!

so i'm officially on vacation, and i might or might not post much in the next several days.  ¶ 1:34 PM

when did drew daniel (of matmos) start writing for pitchfork? and more importantly, why? why, drew, why, in the name of all that's holy? you can't possibly need the money that badly, can you?

god, i hate pitchfork... bunch of indie-rock hipsters trying to prove their hipsteria by writing a bunch of "clever" record reviews. unfortunately many of their reviewers seem to spend so much time being "clever" that they seemingly forget to listen to or review the actual records in question. sometimes they do actually seem to "get it" and i'll read a review i agree with. what else could explain a site that give's mc paul barman's paullelujah a 2.0 out of 10? come on, kids. i think of pitchfork as being the spin magazine of the '00s: trendy for trendiness's sake.

so i was reading the pitchfork top 100 albums of 2000-2004. (don't ask why i was reading it when i knew i wouldn't like it. it was probably because someone on imn suggested there was "far too much electronica" and i was like "too much electronica, on pitchfork, a site that reviews maybe 1 electronic record for every 10-20 indie rock record?") that was when i stumbled across the name "Drew Daniel" as one of the reviewers, and sure enough, it is indeed that drew daniel.

of course, the problem with electronica on pitchfork is not that there's too much: it's that most good electronic music these days flies beneath pitchfork's radar. by the time an electronic artist is mentioned on pitchfork, they've pretty much hit mainstream & are already darlings of the indie rock press. and having drew as a staff member does not fix this problem. maybe he feels compelled not to write too much about his buddies; i don't know.

then i saw this blurb, for #67, bodily functions by herbert (reviewed by drew daniel).


arrgh! that's precisely the kind of clever-but-ultimately-ridiculous review that i despise pitchfork for! give me a break!

anyway, one good thing came of that list: it inspired me to listen to radiohead's kid a last night, which is ranked the #1 top album of 2000-2004. i don't think i agree, but it's a good record, anyway.  ¶ 11:43 AM

despite my sickness, and despite the terrible download rates i've been getting for the mp3 of the week, i've posted a new mp3 for the week. it's "stobor niklat evij", recorded by me & t'kahr maximm, the first track on perpetual emotion machine.  ¶ 7:59 PM

warning: unpleasantly scatological blog entry:

bobby vomit posted on friday that he & his family have taken ill. then saturday night, my young nephew ian became ill and was up all night vomiting. then i got an email from connie, who is flying out to visit on wednesday, that she too is sick. and now i seem to be sick as well, cursed with nausea and diarrhea. that three geographically separate households have all been infected at about the same suggests that there are some really nasty germs floating around this season.

i went to bed a bit early last night, after watching the simpsons and american dad after the super bowl. at first i thought i was simply tired from doing various cleaning & tidying around the house (and especially the attic). but quickly it became clear that i was actually ill, as my stomach began to turn. eventually i got out of bed & crawled over to a trash can to throw up.

here's where living in the attic gets to be a pain. as i hunched over the trash can, spewing forth liquid, my bowels loosened slightly from the convulsions. and because the germs had struck me with diarrhea, i couldn't hold it back. i have since soiled three pairs of boxers and pajama pants in that fashion, to varying degrees. at 4am it happened bad enough that i had to hop in the shower to clean up.

i don't feel too bad right now. it has even been a few hours since i had to go downstairs to the toilet (compared to last night, when i'd awake every 90 to 120 minutes with more diarrhea). but i'm not brave enough to try eating anything just yet; i had literally two bites of dry cereal earlier but couldn't hold it down. later i'll probably try to have some soup.

i expect everyone to be mostly recovered by the time connie actually arrives wednesday night. but this still cuts into all my preparation time. i had been counting on having all night tonight & tomorrow to clean up the attic. but i figure i won't have any energy tonight, & possibly not tomorrow night either. so the place won't be as clean as i'd hoped. so be it: connie will understand. i just hope we're all feeling better by then. what tragic timing!  ¶ 1:37 PM