DW-peoples dinner

Sometimes, I think that some parts of this must be the best of all possible universes, for I would be hard-pressed to imagine one better. (Other times, not so much, but this is one of the good times.) Part 1: dinner!

Friday night, there was the Dreamwidth Open Beta Party at the Delancey Street Restaurant. I got gloriously lost on my way there, because a vague disclaimer is no-one's friend when it comes to public transportation, particularly public transportation where the correct connection information varies depending on time of day. Happily for me and my sour mood, my pathetic nod to "Trying to Communicate" resulted in a direct message from jd, a desperate call back from me, and subsequent directions back down underground to seek train-time. I arrived safely, albeit late.

Attending were: ataniell93, jamoche, damned_colonial, litotease, someone with long green hair whose name I did not catch, zdashamber, emceeaich, cynthia1960, and me. There may have been someone else as well.

On my way there, some more Dreamwidth as compared to LiveJournal similarities/differences had struck me, so I was tumbling those things over and over in my brain. There was game-chatter. There was fandom-chatter. I networked with emceeaich a bit (and downloaded Second Life, much to my amazement, upon returning home). Partway through all of it, I got a bright idea and started grinning like a maniac as I scribbled bits and pieces down. No, not fic or game, geek meta, an expansion on some of the stuff that had been forming on BART. There was locality-chatter, and ancestry, and all manner of fun.

There was dessert. Glorious hot fudge sundae, how I love you. Oh, iPhone, how you taunt me, there is no way to set a custom tone for the arrival of a text message for a single sender. (If there had been, I would have assured myself of the instructions, betaken myself to my computer, recorded "HEY MARK! HEY MARK! HEY MARK!" on the good microphone, then packaged up the lot to send to synecdochic so she could tamper with zorkian's phone while he was sleeping, awaiting the next text message from nagios. Oh, how I amuse myself.)


Upon arriving home, life abruptly became less-awesome, as my friends page brought me the unwelcome news of Gordy (Mr. Out)'s death. It still doesn't seem real, quite. I tried to figure out Second Life and then started compiling my tribute (which his mother found on a Google trawl this evening).

Best of All Possible Worlds: best friend

Best of all possible worlds: best friend.

Somehow I let it go too long without talking to my best friend (though I did try the other day but miss him), but he was in this afternoon when I called. We chattered about many things of little consequence, including my sunburn, and music and other pieces of hilarity. The Snowflake incident came up; I described in some amount of succinct detail, and this resulted in him cracking up and making Helpful Suggestions. He was shocked that I'd never seen Dark Crystal; we discussed David Bowie's pants in Labyrinth, also.

He mentioned, in passing, a certain 90s song with a fascinating title:

( Hurt Me, Hurt Me, But The Pants Stay On )

That song's title cracked me up enough that I moved away from the magic spot in which my phone gets reception. I dropped the call a few times, all told. I told him about earwormhole. He was almost tempted to join in the fun, and started plotting what he might like to share with it. I pointed out that plotting isn't really the thing. He plotted anyway. Then I mentioned that an invite code was necessary (but I could get him one if he wanted) and he deflated a bit. (Alas.)

Eventually, I told him about Gordy, and the tribute, and the comment from Gordy's mommy came floating in while we were on about that. And I shared what she had to say, and that made us laugh, and we wound up talking music again. He would want a celebration of his life and the good times, not seriousness and mourning. We're of a like mind on this. He suggested Voltaire's Brains, or Graveyard Picnic. But, he warned me, his taste in such things was Weird and Strange; after all, I was talking to the man who thought that the Imperial March was appropriate music for a wedding. "Ha, guess what I was planning to walk down the aisle to, when I was planning to get married," I reminded him.

We talked my phone out of battery. It was over an hour, all told. I miss him.

def-

[02:38] john: ...I will say again, this whole "defriending your best internet friends who are moving to DW" thing is WEIRD.
[02:38] * john defriends Azz
[02:39] * Azz defiends john
[02:39] * john defends Azz
[02:39] * Azz defronds john
[02:39] * john defrocks Azz
[02:39] * Azz defenestrates john
[02:39] * HatMan deflowers... never mind.
[02:40] * Azz defragments HatMan
[02:40] john: Honey, that flower has already been de-ed.
[02:41] * kat_fw departs

test

test for IJ

Music, creativity, and my fucking attention span

I've found that when I'm deepest in concentration, music will sometimes take up attention that I needed to use on whatever it was that I was trying to do. So from that, I tried concluding that actually music was a detriment to my productivity.

However, sometimes I found myself craving music when trying to get settled into a grove. At first I thought that it was only mood, but then I realized that it was more than that.

My brain needs the music sometimes to provide a distraction for me when I'm not settled into the deep kind of concentration that precludes any distractions at all. The music is enough distraction, and the right kind of distraction, that I can stay focused on the creative task at hand and not go haring after IRC, or that post I saw two minutes ago, or any of the other things that try to steal the bits of my attention when I'm trying to focus.

Music with a good solid structure is the best. I can't listen to unstructured music when I'm trying to sleep, and when I'm trying to concentrate, if I don't know the music or if I can't predict the structures of the song to some degree, it will distract me more than I plan to be distracted. Baroque is good. Things with the structure stretched out too far are bad. Techno is good. Techno that fuses a techno beat on a classical framework may have been made for the specific purpose of keeping my brain in one piece while concentrating. It's really lovely.