Back and forth, geek and half-dead

Right, so I should post something. When I put it that way, We both know I don't wanna. (Don't worry -- I get cheery by the end. It'll be worth it.)

A lot has happened. However, every day feels a lot like the last one. I wake up, I eat cereal, I shower, and I head to work. Work makes me feel impotent, so I come home and vege. Since my cable modem got installed on Sunday afternoon, veging once again includes surfing the web and pretending to write.

That's about it. I don't feel creative at all. I feel emotionally tired. Every day off I've had has been a day to run errands. I haven't had two consecutive days off in two months.

At first, I figured I'd just ride it out. Then I moved, and that hogged a lot of time. When you can only do something in piecemeal, it becomes the grout between the tiles of work. Sleep, move stuff, work. Repeat until your personality has dissolved.

Two consecutive days off may not seem so important to you. This means you get them on a regular basis. I had no idea how much this would fuq with my head. I can't recover from anything because I can't space anything out. I have to be in work mode -- and that's a sales mode, too -- a lot. ( I've become exceedingly impatient... )

I typed this hours ago, but I forgot to hit the button

"Forty-five channels of digital music." I say this line a few times every workday. I used to say it more, but I'd found about one digital cable customer out of one hundred was interested in it.

Now that I have digital cable, I can listen to it for myself. I tried it for a few minutes on Sunday. Tom Waits came on the "Americana" station and I was happy. Then I got back to checking out HBO.

When I got back from my errands today and had spent enough time chatting with visitors, I turned on the digital music again. The "New Wave" channel had The The's "The Beat(en) Generation" just finishing and something evil starting. The 70s channel had "I Love the Night Life", meaning evil was in the house.

As a lark, I turned on the "Sounds of the Season" channel. I figured it would be off the air since the only season I could think of was Autumnal Equinox. Instead it had trance music. While I wondered if the season was "back to school", I was still very happy to find some music I liked.

I recall the line from Sleeper, Woody Allen's 1973 flick about being trapped 200 years in the future. He's in disguise as a robot servant and the home owner says "set the music television to channel 500" in her instructions to get the place ready for a party.

It turns out the digital music comes from a specific company, which obviously has a web site. The site is boasting of its revamped on-screen info (and with this the listener's ability to order CDs directly from the screen). It turns out that mix is called The Pulse, described as "a fine mix of continuous beats highlighting a range of music styles including trip-hop, ambient and acid jazz to atmospheric." It's played whenever a tune-laden season isn't going on. It played all summer after the Fourth of July other than Nouveau Patriotism Day last week. Mind you, it slips behind the horizon again in a few days for Octoberfest. This could be abrupt if you fall asleep listening to LTJ Bukem and wake up to tubas.

GothBox update: I got the DVD/CD-burner thing to work today. I didn't find the black thumbscrews for the back of the tower, but I found a shielded transparent hard drive cable that lets more air around stuff. I also didn't find any black hard drive coolers, active or passive. Thus, spray paint it must be.

I feel properly veged. What a relief!

-a cosmos shaped like a basement apartment, Ps/d

By the way, the track in the music is from a disc called "frenchfriedfunk, vol. 2".