So There's This Band, See

As much as it bothers me to do something as inconsequential as this to mark the return of seanandbedonewithit (one man) to the blogosphere on the interwebutron, needs must, as they say, when the devil drives.
I am now a band.
No, not like Alice Cooper, where there is a whole band there but Alice (but really Vincent) has his moniker stamped on their foreheads. Metaphorically. (I hope).
This is the kind where I have this guitar, see, and I play some stuff into my laptop, and then I get my mitts on one of those absurdly fancy one-man-band-with-lots-of-money keyboards to throw any other instrument I want into the mix, do some stuff to it with aforementioned laptop, and call it music. Fo sho, yo.(That's how real musicians talk, kids.) It has a name, unlike that other band I'm in which is probably going nowhere, but just like that other band that doesn't do anything but is destined for great things once all the members are in one room doing musical stuff. FOCUS anyway so this band. It came to me in a dream coffeehouse, listening to a band with some females, one of whom was holding an accordion. These things happen to me all the time, but for once I wrote down the word. (It's Luminousonic, by the way, and if you steal it I'll disembowel you. HAHA just kidding because if I'm kidding I won't go to prison. But seriously...)
So I mused on the word for a bit, and saw in my head an album cover. On this album cover a ruffian hooded individual graffities a wall with said word, wearing a sweatshirt reading "Cartwheels" (you can't have this one either). Even though it tends to annoy me, I began to imagine the title track (I prefer titles independent of their albums, mostly so I can ramble and there will be even more slightly fewer complaints.) I came up with a bit of chorus, which I wrote down when I got home (it was a small piece of paper, okay?). After that I read a bit, named my first EP and its first two songs, and some other songs from the album.
Then today as I was walking home from a mad drunken orgy different coffeehouse, an acoustic guitar started serenading my brain, in my brain. And some people started singing along to it. Ergo, I have another chunk of song, which has music too, but that one could go to either thingy the EP or the album, neither of which exist yet. So it's kind of a virtual band, in that it can't perform in the real world, and it hasn't done anything, but it shows promise. More promise than this hopeless loser music major with no life plan blog, which has chronic arrythmia and other fun ailments as well. Don't steal my stuff yet. Wait until it exists, then cover it so I get exposure, okay? Thankies of the highest order.

En fin, today I am listening to "Ill" which is ill capitalised, by the way, since this font is crap. It is performed by The Indelicates, who graciously gave to Neil Gaiman and me exclusively for free the entire album containing it. Oh, and the rest of the interwebutron to boot. Ergo, go check it out.

Farewell, go with God, and don't take any wooden nickels. Ciao for now.

Oh, what the heck.

Wellwellwell. We meet again, blogbox. You don't seem to have aged much. I have grown older, more powerful. I still don't have much to say, though. We'll see about this poem I've got going on. Might even post it soon. So yeah. That's all I have for now. Bye, blogbox.

Deluxe Blogpost Now Available for only $15.95!

The Setting: Best Buy Grafton.
The Time: 10:00 AM, September 12, 2008.
The Reason I'm Typing About This: Release of Metallica's Death Magnetic.

Right. So being the metal- (and every other music ever invented) head that I am, I show up at opening time for the release of Death Magnetic, Metallica's public apology for St. Anger.
I walk in, I see the one I'm getting. Shiny jewel case, 3D cover (that actually has a coffin-shaped hole in it. I KNOW!), Metallicamusichen inside. We're all set.  But soft! What metal in yonder window breaks?  It... no, it can't be. It is! The deluxe edition of the very album I'm holding!
Now. St. Anger came, in its only edition, with a DVD of the Metallicats live in studio recording all the St. Anger songs. So, with an album from post-reinvention Metallica, with songs harkening back to the days of No Life 'Til Leather thru Master of Puppets, this edition de lujo must have, like, a full length movie, live in studio recordings, and a fake stage pass. All for the low, low price of ten more dollars. Right?


...
WRONG!!

Nope, none of that.

Yes, really.

I suppose you want to know what wonders really lay inside the deluxe edition that you will not encounter in the regular one.
Nothing.

The deluxe edition is clearly operating on a different definition of deluxe than we are.

Actually, you do get something. The trick is to remain blissfully unaware of the not-deluxe edition.  This way, you can clearly see that with the deluxe edition you get the following:

A cardboard case.  It has the album cover printed on it (big spending there) which is flat. No coffin hole. Sad.  So what you have here is a case that is not the shiny jewel case of the regular edition and much more easily damaged.

No lyric book.  Yes, you can pay ten dollars for the sheer unadulterated PRIVILEGE of not knowing what James is singing.  You heard that right, you can now feel superior that you're going to have to live off your own ears and crappy lyric websites rather than read the booklet that came with the serf edition.

That's it.  Actually, I think the price tag was bigger.  And there may have been a sticker letting you know how deluxe it was.

These are not the first "deluxe" shenanigans I have come across, and they will not be the last. I can understand if it was some sort of status symbol, but how often do people see the physical representation of the music you're listening to?  Music is anything but tangible thanks to the internet, mp3s and the whole digital *cough* "revolution" *cough*
...
Yesterday I thought of writing this with some sort of point. I have lost it now. Maybe you'll get it anyway.  But basically, what I illustrate is this: I don't know whose ingenious idea it was to slap the word "deluxe" on an inferior product and weasel ten extra dollars out of consumers for it, but it is by far one of the most offensive displays of moneymongering I have seen in a dog's age.  So what I'm really saying is: go to metallica.com and download the free intro to My Apocalypse. Listen to that for a while and muse on the fact that you have paid NOTHING for the privilege of hearing James Hetfield's intro to the song My Apocalypse, that nobody, now matter how deluxe or regular their purchase was, got to hear.  Well, muse on, my minions.

Tomorrow: a legit review of Slayer's brutal new masterpiece World Painted Blood.
Expectations high, my children. Sean has grown some focus.

Tootles,
Sean ;^)

Don't be frightened.

Yes, yes, I know. It's a post. The only problem is I've got a clever name for the next legit post. This is a mere prelude.  Actual thinking to come! Read on.

COMIX

Okay, so as promised I will now blather about comics for a while.  First of all, so I can get my inter-wanderings back in chronological order, xkcd is just lovely.  There is all sorts of things that go on in my head there, acted out by stick figures, which also appeals to my maximum drawing potential.  Yes, I enjoy reading things that can be classified as attainable goals.  But I didn't stop at one addictive webcomic, oh gracious no.  Besides, it only took me about three days to read through the entire backlog of strips and since I exhibit some addict behavioral tendencies I'd be liable to combust between weeks.  So on I moved, ... (read more)

Up And Running

Okay kidlings, even though I'm quite sure nobody will ever read this one (durr it's the first post and no one knows I exist yet durr) welcome to Sean's blog.  I'm actually pretty excited about this.  My original plot regarding blogs, the starting of was mainly because I want to escape Facebook's evile domain.  (Details on why Facebook is actually the devil later. Unless I decide to not alienate my [hopeful] readers with all my crazy politic-esque shenanigans.)  But now, I get to pretend that people, in places, are reading this and are interested in the awful minutiae of my life, instead of just commenting on whatever happens to be the most ... (read more)