I have had a long and turbulant relationship with sunglasses.  I lose them, I break them, I can never find a pair that fits around my gigantic head.  I recall that many years ago I went shopping with my dad for sunglasses.  We were on a mission to find something that Derek would like and would fit.  All around the mall we walked until we came to Eddie Bauer.  It must have been ages that we were at their measly selection of sunglasses before finally I settled on some aviators.  My dad, always supportive, said they “fit my conservative style,” which is odd to me now because I think I’ve drifted pretty far from conservative from that time.

Anyway, armed with my new, non-cheap-o, carefully selected sunglasses, I went to the beach.  And what’s a trip to the beach without going in the water?  So, diligently observing the attention that went into these sunglasses, I took them off and put them on my beach chair and took off to go swimming.  Wouldn’t you know it, my aunt comes by to talk to my mom and chooses my chair to sit in, thereby smashing my sunglasses.  I felt terrible and my parents only heaped the guilt on more, admonishing me for carelessness with my things and lack of regard for the cost of such items.  I haven’t bought a pair of sunglasses over $5 since (in fact, the last pair I wore for any signficant length of time were actually pulled up from the bottom of a lake by my brother when he was playing around with goggles on a canoe trip).  My dad bent them back into shape but I couldn’t or wouldn’t put them back on.

So years pass and I find myself digging through old boxes.  Collections of stuff that I deemed too memorable to throw away at the time, so I piled it into various boxes and carried them around with me from place to place.  Now I’m preparing for another move but one without a time schedule, so I decide, what better time to purge some of this stuff that’s accumulated over the years?  I come across the sunglasses that were smooshed; I had saved them.  I give a little tweak and a bend and, just for kicks, go try them on in the mirror.  Hey… these are pretty snazzy!

Well here I go, trying to write something and something interesting at that.  I watched some of the Radiohead music video contest winners and despite the videos being amazing, I am still unable to get into Radiohead.  I may be the only person on the face of the earth that is in such a situation.

The NIN Hotline had a post about this band Belong with a free download of some work.  It’s a single 14-minute track.  I’m guessing that listening to it on my laptop may have been a bad choice since I wasn’t really impressed.  Good atmospheric stuff but a lot more texture than actual music, in my opinion.  There’s a place and a fanbase for that, so it’s not that the work is worthless; I’m just saying at first glance, it didn’t do much for me.

Latest and greatest: Fear Factory.  There is nothing like tuning out the drone of your workplace with some screaming, growling, double-bass action.  I find I’ve moved to the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal swing of my music tastes lately.  I seem to oscillate between electronic/techno/dance to industrial to hard rock/heavy metal and back again.  Though I guess I also find myself going in for the light background stuff lately.  The kind of chill, downtempo stuff that is relaxing.  Amy Winehouse (as fucked up as she is), Lemon Jelly, De-Phazz, lots of good choices.  Though I do find myself quickly falling into the OCD categorization mode again.  There is an overwhelming need to tag and label and genre and sub-genre all my music before I can actually listen to it.  In fact, for wanting to talk about music, I’m sitting here in silence listening to the sounds of crickets and frogs coming in from the open windows…