Yeah, it’s kind of par for the course here to say it’s been a while, but yes, it’s been a while.

It’s now been one week since we’ve touched down into Dublin airport and checked into our hotel (a slight personal ordeal for me since I didn’t get any sleep on the plane, and the room wasn’t ready when we arrived, but I got over it). If any of you two or three readers have been following my twitterings over in the upper right hand corner of this blog, the time here has been, actually pretty exhilirating, as well as eye-opening (well, as eyeopeing as it could be for any American who hasn’t been out of the country in the last 10 years, and hasn’t set foot on European soil in the past 17).

As of last night, we now have WIFI in the hotel room, thanks to BT Overzone (even though the hotel advertizes internet in the rooms, it is, as with most other services here, something you have to pay for. Nice.) So, with that ability in place, a few (kinda) quick thoughts:

1. Dublin is truly an international city, with a HUGE Polish population (as it is apparently is the case everywhere else in the U- ooops, the Irish don’t like to be considered part of the UK, but oh well…). In fact, we were here three days before we spoke to an actual Irish person. It’s been, along with the aforementioned Polish, Italians, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Cubans, Indians, Nigerians, Kenyans, etc. And out of all of those folks, the Italians were probably the nicest, the French (with a couple of exceptions - like the cute blond dude at our hotel’s carvery), the rudest (yo! You are not in Paris anymore! Get with the damn program!).

2. We decided that we were smart to rely on public transport to get around, as Dublin traffic truly is a nightmare, even to witness (the rush hour clog up outside our hotel room is something to see). However, since there is no train service, or even bus service, to most of the inner parts of Ireland, you are better off renting a car if you wish to get out of the city and into the smaller towns.

3. Given our willingness to forgo that, since we also wanted to explore seaside towns on the East Coast of Ireland, we found that DART and the extended Suburban Train routes that goes to Wexford was the way to go. It’s (relatively) inexpensive, and you get little signs telling you where the action is once you exit the station. We had a splendid time in Greystones and especially at this little cafe called the (Apple) Pear. We also went to Howth (in North Dublin bay) and spent some time there. It’s also in these towns (and on DART) where we got our first true taste of Irish hospitality, something that’s sadly missing from our experience in much of Dublin (this was also noted by one of the cab drivers who took us around, an Italian who had lived in the city for 23 years, and said things has changed in the last 10 to 15, which is when Ireland began it’s current economic boom; folks aren’t as nice as they used to be).

4. All that said, and yes, I’ve only been here a week, but I don’t see a lot of ethnicism or racism here. There’s a lot of live-and-let-live that I never saw, and still don’t see, in the United States. Sure, it’s quite the PC environment here, but everyone here truly seems welcome. Or they just don’t care. Everyone from elsewhere comes here to make money. Whatever issues you have, you left them at home. I did have some issues with some Middle Easterners (and Eastern Europeans) mistaking me for one of their own (or as someone who objects to their own) and giving me a hard time (glaring at me, not providing proper CS, etc. until I opened my mouth and my Californian accent popped out), but, for the most part, prejudice has not been an issue, except…

5. I’ve been using a makeshift fannypack in which to keep my money, PDA and camera. Hey! If Dublin’s experienced a bit of crime wave, it at least has kept me from being a part of it! However, according to my husband, in Galway yesterday, this French woman rolled her eyes at me as I was videotaping this street musician with my Flip camera, going on about how I could even be seen with a purse like that. Initially, I got a little defensive when the hubster told me this. Then I started going back to how I was being treated by some of the folks in stores, and I also noted that other American tourists here were not being seen with even a regular fannypack.

I got the message. I got a nice purse for 5 Euros at an international product shop in the Jervis district. After I switched purses, I seem to have gotten better treatment from folks, particularly at the local Tesco, where I had to get some aspirin. I guess nothing truly screams tacky tourist as much as a makeshift fannypack. It’s practical, but sometimes, being more fashionable gets you further.

6. The big issue facing the Irish these days is their country’s upcoming ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which, from what summaries I’ve read in the local free weeklies, is a major amendment to the current EU charter. Last week, the naysayers were out in full force with their campaign. This week, the yaysayers have been having a go at it with theirs.

You can get an idea of what’s going on via this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_treaty

The Yaysayers have their website here:

http://www.yestolisbon.ie

The Naysayers have theirs here:

http://www.libertas.org

Outside of this, some gangland turf wars in Limerick, the outgoing/incoming Taoiseach (sp) (Prime Minister) of Ireland, some stuff going on with Kerry Katona (huh?), Robbie Williams, Madonna or Kylie Minogue (you Yanks may laugh, or scratch your head, but she’s HUGE here), the news is pretty quiet. Minus all the stuff with the IRA or their supposed hatred of the British (historically, for good reason), the native Irish are, by nature, an easy-going lot.

7. Which leads me to the supposed Irish hatred of the British. Surely, since 1921, the Irish government could have forced the use of Gaelic as the national Irish language, rather than the Britishized use of English (with the use of ou’s, rather than o, such as in honor, or honour, as is spelled here). But nope, despite the use of bilingual street-and-else signage (in English AND Gaelic) everyone in Dublin speaks the Queen’s English-even the hardcore Irish, who have been begging the current Queen of England, in ENGLISH, NOT to visit them in their recent newspaper editorials. In fact, the WIFI currently set up in our room is provided by British Telecom. And, as a result, all of my default web settings, from my google home page to myspace, asks me if I want to point to, or automatically point to, .uk.

Of course, I politely decline. I do wish to “stick with the Yanks”, as I’ll be heading back to be among them at the end of the week.

I’m guessing there’s a begrudging acknowledgement to the British for setting up much of their current social, governmental and intramotional infrustructure. (WIFI being just one, miniscule example). Kids here, for example, learn English as their first language, however, they don’t seem to want to follow government wishes and learn Gaelic, and opt for something more practical, such as German, Italian, French, etc. (The children here are nothing if not practical; who knows if they’ll need to bail for other shores once their currently glowing economy takes a massive dump, as their forebearers have historically done). But, as with the insistance that Ireland is NOT part of the UK, I have the feeling that the British would stop trying to “help” them and let them do their own thing. The British have been trying to “help” the Irish for the past 600 years (from starting universities (good) to, according to the guys from the Musical Pub Crawl we went to last Thursday, banning harps, and, eventually, music all together (BAD)). With the Irish now doing better than ever, economically, perhaps that time has come. It’s like dealing with the big brother who’s a jerk, but who’s help you rely on.

And speaking of reliance…

8. This country is ALL about charity. It starts with the plea for Unicef on Aer Lingus (which we took to get over here) and continues with drives for the poor, the elderly, the Burmese Cyclone victims, etc (personally, for the US military, I’d say fuck the junta and drop the shit off there for the victims, but that’s just me). From my understanding, begging did not exist in Dublin until the current economic boom. Now, beggars are all over peeps at the Abbey Street LUAS station and on the Hapenny Bridge. At least they say “Thank you and God Bless”, unlike the ones back home in SF.

9. The Irish are…all…about…music. This was never brought home more than our trip to Galway or hanging out at Temple Bar and seeing these incredible street musicians get their groove on. As previously mentioned, we went on a pub crawl with some musicians last Thursday, and were given a primer on traditional Irish music, and how it fits in with their scheme of things. It’s a way they live, and it’s a way of their life. If you wonder why one in five Dubliners walk around with a guitar, or some other instrument slung on their back, well, now you know.

I’ve been at this for two hours. More thoughts later this week. Or maybe next.

Hey, it sounded like a nice title, right?

As perhaps one of my three regular readers may have noticed, I haven’t been around much in the past week. I was frankly too weak to write anything, let alone anything of any meaningful import.

Monday morning, I woke up with some pains in the lower left side of my abdomen. While they weren’t killing me, they were getting progressively worse throughout the morning. Finally, one of my more senior co-workers suggested I see a doctor, or, if not, ER. I followed her advice, thinking it wouldn’t take more than a typical lunch hour. I left several messages to schedule an appointment at what I thought was my doctor’s office. I decided I couldn’t wait and went to the local urgent care clinic. They told me they couldn’t help me there and sent me straight to the ER of the nearest local hospital. I was finally admitted after an hour. I was immediately tended to by one of the ER Nurses, as well as the ER Doctor. They took some samples and went on their way. I did a few calls to my boss promising I’d be back soon. I did my final call to work when it finally looked like I was going to be their the whole afternoon, when the nurse stuck some morphine in me.

I was there for about 6 hours; service was slow (it’s ER, after all), but the people were friendly. Eventually, I was wheeled in for a CT Scan. After that, the NEW ER Doctor introduced herself, and informed me that I definitely had a mild case of diverticulitis.

Oh…fucking…great…

I was told that I needed three days on a clear-full liquid diet, eat pureed foods afterwards, and maintain a high fiber diet, without nuts or seeds.

Oooooooooooh kay…

I was put on Flagyl, Cipro and Vicodin. I bought what thought would work. Lots of soups, boullion and such. Eventually, I started feeling ill from all the sodium I was taking in. On top of that, trying to maintain a liquid diet while inhaling these stomach-destroying medicines was just killing me. The acid reflux I was experiencing was just eating up my insides. I ended up cutting coffee from my diet, which I was loathe to do, because I dig the caffeine fix, but anything to get this acid to stop.

On top of this, I was just so…fucking…tired. Even going back to work, I was hardly in a position to speak half the time. So depressing.

It was nice on Twitter to have some old friends from the Bay Area “find and follow” me during this time and show me support. Thanks, ladies!

After two days of this, I tried to get a follow-up appointment with my doctor, per ER’s suggestion. Since I’m out of the country next week, I needed a checkup by Friday, at the latest. It turned out that he no longer worked at that practice, and the other doctors had to “approve” me, before seeing me.

That’s right. I’m a patient left behind by one of their old partners, I’ve just been let out of ER with what could have potentially been a life-threatening illness, and I now have to be “approved”.

Well, fuck you too! Thanks for helping me out of a bind, assholes!

Fortunately, another one of my co-workers set me up with an old doctor of hers, and he was able to see me right away. He pretty much concurred and expounded on what the ER doctor said, and said I could go on to a purreed diet.

So, out comes the applesauce, baby food, etc. I even broke down and bought some Ensure, which I really didn’t want to, after witnessing my mom down it like the dickens while SHE was in the hospital, in her 60’s and 70’s. However, the low-energy existence was getting really old. I waited a day, though, because I also purchased the “Soup Man’s” Seafood Bisque, and I just HAD to try it.

That stuff was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO Good. First minimally solid food I had in quite a while. Hey, it’s soup. If I chomp on the shrimp enough, it will become pureed.

It didn’t matter. Some lower-abdomen pain came back the next morning.

Dammit!

Back to liquids I go.

Last night, Hubster and I ate at Saigon 88. It’s frankly my favorite of the recent rash of Vietnamese places opening in this area. The Pho is to die for. I figured it was a safe bet, with my current dietary restrictions. Alas, all their soup has a LOT of stuff in it. I went for the wonton, as it seemed to have the least amount of stuff in it. Well, it came, and it was good, and I even got to slowly and immensely chew on a few of the wontons, with it’s ground pork. But it also had sliced beef, and broccoli, and the waitress seemed a little unnerved that I left a lot of food behind when I was finished. We did our best to assure her that we did, in fact, enjoy our meal, and that it was the fate that I was dealt that forced me to leave the food behind. We left an extra large tip, just to prove our good intentions.

Today is the first day in quite a while that I’ve been really excited about traveling. The Ensure is doing wonders. I also bought Metemuscil, BeneFiber, any supplement I could get my hands on. They all seem to be working. And it’s great for helping me to chase down my antibiotics. As for how I’ll get by eating in Dublin, I’m sure the native Irish diet will do just fine. I’ll just have to skip eating in all these recently opened Thai restaurants there, or something. Damn…

I had enough energy to visit a friend who wanted to lend/give me some of her sweaters, get my car washed, go do some last minute trip shopping in Spanish Springs, and, of course, pack.

Again, I may be blogging from Ireland, I may not. Definitely will be videoing. May just be twittering. Supposedly, the hotel has WIFI. We’ll see.

In any case, this will be my last post on American soil for two weeks. Twitters to follow. Check the status on the upper right hand part of this blog.

Bon voyaggeees!

You run the risk of one of your friends twittering your Facebook business to the rest of the world:

I have shared friends across a bunch of social networking sites. Fortunately, none of them has revealed who, what, where, why, how and wherewithall going on with me or anyone else, that wasn’t meant to be shared.

There’s a reason why Facebook has some aspects of their user profiles private until connections are made. I don’t care how famous someone is among certain circles (high-techy, or otherwise). I personally think that the relationship callout was uncalled for.

I read in Slashdot this morning that Metallica is considering releasing their next album as a “pay what you want” (i.e. free) download.  This, despite their previous stance as anti-free downloading dashers.

Now, before I launch into my rant, some disclaimers:

1.  I was never a Metallica fan.  Liked “One”.  That was it.

2.  I do have an understanding of their initial stance with Napster, aspects of which I’ve already laid out in this blog post from a few moons ago.

However…

These were the same guys who, back in 2000, shut out 260,000 of their biggest fans from access to THEIR music, then made a huge show of it in front of the San Mateo County Courthouse.   And now these guys want to provide their new CD as donationware or even, er, free.

Excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me?

Now, the argument could be provided that, back in the initial Napster days, Metallica was not choosing to have their songs available on the download service.  It was being done for them, without either their knowledge or their consent.  Fair enough.  However, the way they went about settling their issue, locking over 260,000 users from the Napster services, and essentially treating their biggest fans as criminals was NOT the way to resolve the dilemma.  And in fact, if the reaction to the news from many in the Slashdot community is any indication, this PR nightmare from 8 years ago is going to come back to haunt them.    I’m sure the members of Metallica will see it differently.

In the meantime, according to another commentator over at Slashdot, David Bowie saw all this free download activity coming.  He’s apparently made all these plans on how to distribute his music and make his money should the use of a major record label no longer be necessary.   In his mind, and I agree with him on this, the primary income source of professional musicians and songwriters will end up just as it was before the invention of the phonograph - back in the realm of nightclubs and concert halls, where folks paid to listen to songs being performed, as opposed purchasing recorded versions of them.  For those not expecting to restructure their royalty and payment schemes due to the paradigm shift brought about by the creation of mp3s and the internet, this must be a devastating blow.  For all of a sudden, they are expected to provide free samples, where they didn’t have to before.

The rest of us, however, see nothing but marketing opportunities.

Despite my insistence that I need more time away from my computer, I’ve become hopelessly addicted to Twitter. The fact that my husband now has an account on there as well, along with a couple of friends of mine frankly isn’t helping much. But, oh well. A quick microblogging update is easier than writing an email, sometimes.

Anyway, thanks to the twitterings of some folks I currently follow (lots of high-profile tech dudes in Silicon Valley - see, I’m not strictly about the pop culture, peeps), I made my way to a couple of aggregators that basically does the same thing the folks at Facebook were bitching about a year or so ago; keep track of everything you, or anyone you are interested in, uh, following, on any or all of your online doings from any site, or collection of sites, that shares your activities on it/them. On Facebook, this type of activity aggregator was/is called a mini-feed, and it was condemned by old time Facebook users as an invasion of privacy. Of course, elsewhere, it’s called “sharing”. And as a result, the vanity in yet providing even further content to a breathless and waiting world from all your little sites into one feed becomes all the more evident.

Not that I mind. I mean, I keep a blog, don’t I (actually about 5 of them, two of which I rarely update)? I also have a myspace, a facebook, and a bunch of other pages I’m finding hard to keep track of. I had one old online friend breathlessly tell me that I’m “everywhere”, when he found me on Facebook. Seems like that with a lot of folks, these days. Forget early adoption. This is all about keeping up. But given my attention whore tendencies, one would have expected nothing less. Plus I have stuff to promote. Why not?

So I set up two aggregating pages, one on FriendFeed, one on MyBlogLog.

FriendFeed

MyBlogLog

First thing I notice on both of them, after the initial setup and rss import; the stuff from YouTube goes on there first, even though I added those videos to my YouTube favorites ages ago. Eventually the other sites followed along. However, FriendFeed is a lot more thorough and quick in terms of updating the Friendfeed Page with content from my other sites. MyBlogLog took a bit longer, and didn’t add quite as much content. Both sites handle RSS feeds and updates from some of the other sites differently, or one offers updates from one site, but not from another. For instance, you can track instances of WordPress blog postings on FriendFeed, but not on MyBlogLog, whereas you can track your Myspace doings on MyBlogLog, but not on FriendFeed (although you can put up the RSS to your Myspace blog). Last.fm updates are treated differently. On MyBlogLog, every track you’ve recently listened to from Last.FM is noted, whereas on FriendFeed, updates only happen when I “favorite” a song, or add one to a playlist. I’d rather have the MyBlogLog’s tracking of last.fm activities. I really don’t mind immediately showing off to the world how much I’ve been enjoying that new Joe Jackson album, or that, after about thirty years, I’ve rediscovered Graham Parker and the Rumour, without having to go the last.fm page and bestow some special status on the songs I just listened to. I tried to set the recently played tracks list as a blog import, but the RSS feed redirects back the last.fm page, which doesn’t have a native feed in it (the actual RSS feed comes from ws.audioscrobbler.com). Oh well, I’m sure some fix will come around for it eventually.

In the end, however, I’m finding I like FriendFeed a little more, given how quickly it adds content to your FriendFeed site, as well as some of the display options. But I’m keeping MyBlogLog due to the portability of it’s RSS feed. For if you try to place the FriendFeed into, say, your wordpress.com blog via the RSS widget, you just get the words “Array”, as opposed to an actual headline. Whereas, with MyBlogLog, the actual headline does show up. Also, I have a Yahoo account and MyBlogLog, having (just?) been purchased by Yahoo, was an easy signup.

However…three day trial for looking at stats? Huh? When Google bought Feedburner, they waived my “Pro” premium payments indefinitely? Why couldn’t Yahoo have done that? Come on, guys…

Anyway, these two seem like a good way to navigate and negotiate all of your online presences in one or two places. I’m just kind of wondering, however, do I really want the whole world to know every little online thing I’m doing?

It begs a pondering…

Alot of folks in the MSM and in the blogesphere are pointing, laughing and/or crying over this clip of Mariah Carey on GMA from yesterday morning:

Personally, I don’t think she did all that bad. She made the most of a skipping backing track, acknowledged a bad situation, and saved it to the point where she came out floating like an, ahem, butterfly.

However, woe be to the backup singer who, around 3:05, tried to do a melissima (sp) all up and around her boss. Mariah’s comeback was golden. I’m in MC’s corner on this frankly. I’d be pissed too, if someone whom I hired to help me out tried to steal my shine. Not to mention, it was quite unprofessional.

That girl will probably have to continue her career on YouTube because Ms. Carey will probably make sure she never works as a backing singer in NYC ever again. Can’t say that I blame her.

Update: Apparently, some of the commentators over at A Hot Mess are saying that the vocal melissimas that stomped all over Carey weren’t from an out-of-line backing singer,  but were, in fact, the result of unsynced pre-recorded vocals.    The whole performance looks to have been a technical disaster, to say the least.
*smacks forehead*

Yes, I’m writing about my album, again…sigh…

Many years ago, when I was an admin assistant in the direct marketing department of a small publishing firm, staff had become depleted for a spell, and I had been asked to write press releases for their products until personnel became sufficient enough to take that function over again.   Unfortunately, for me, I really liked writing the press releases, and I was loathed to give it up when it was time to do so.  Even more unfortunately, in hindsight, I really didn’t know what I was doing when writing said releases and the results were so awful that the higher-ups were more than happy to relieve me of said duty.   It didn’t go without a fight, of course.   Nothing with me ever does.

Flash forward to last night:  I’m confronted with an opportunity on my Soundclick page to promote my new CD on one of their partners, myprgenie.com.   They have a service which, for a nominal fee, will take your promotions and send them to any news service you’d like them to be seen in.   And this month, they had a half-price deal for Soundclick members who just want to use one PR list (it’s free if you just want to advertise on their front page).   So, I set myself down and wracked my brain for something relatively news worthy that I could pop into my PR piece.   I initially did some research on myprgenie.com, but the results got me nowhere, because the efforts of other artists were just as bad, if not worse, than my initial stabs at release writing many moons ago.  I did research on about.com on how to write one for a debut CD (I was able to find something “about” it there - get it? nevermind…).  I went to Laura Vier’s site, because I remember seeing her bio there in PDF format, and I got really good ideas from viewing what her press person wrote about her last CD.

So, two hours later, after some sighing, crying, and laughing, I submitted the results to myprgenie.com, along with my credit card number.

It was ready by 6:30 this morning to view on their website:

http://www.myprgenie.com/item/1341/

In an hour, I’ve already gotten an inquiry.  SWEET!

Two hours later, it’s up on Mi2N.

http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=109112

And I’m in between NightRanger and Kim Ritchey in today’s Music Releases listing. I’m  just stylin’ yo!

http://mi2n.com/category.php3?cat_nb=1&page=1

I don’t know where this is going to go, yet.  This is something I should have done in the beginning of the month.  But I need some self-convincing to get myself out there, get past the old ways I used to promote myself online, and get in to the new.   Hopefully, anyone of any import will like what they hear.  But hey, I could use a bad review too.

Fingers crossed…

I was going back and forth about whether to post of my whereabouts in May or not, just because of this irrational fear that someone may try to find me in such a place (don’t try to figure out what that means), but what the hey?

The hubster and I are going to Ireland for a couple of weeks.  Leave May 5, return May 16th.   Exposition trip, more than a vacation, as we’ll be mostly hanging out in Dublin and exploring possible options in the area. But I’ve planned some fun for us - a pub crawl one night during our first week, a Saturday in Galway, and if we can afford it, a Tuesday in Cork.  I hope.

I don’t know about full-scale blogging, but I’ll definitely be twittering.  Hopefully, should the hotel’s wireless range be strong enough, or even exist to begin with, I’ll be posting some pictures or even a video or two.   We’ll be staying in the Ballsbridge area so expect to see a lot of pictures of South Dublin, if I do get to post them while we’re there (I’m damn well not telling you what hotel we’re staying at! :p )

I’ve already gotten some scant spare change in Euros (one place here charged me $450 for 250 Euros - I eventually discovered I had been ripped. DAMN!), and will probably take my entire paycheck with me when we finally fly out.  

I may even take some CDs (once I get them from Discmakers) and sneakily drop them off at a few coffeeshops while we’re there.  Who knows?

I’m excited and scared.  International traveling isn’t what it used to be.  I don’t care to be mistaken for some terrorist because I carry my Zoom H4 recorder pretty much everywhere I go.  I’m sure one could do worse than travel in Ireland, but I don’t care to end up penniless after two days because I miscalculated my exchange rate in paying for something that ended up costing me MUCH more than expected.  I’m, frankly, stupid like that.

OTOH, I haven’t been to Europe in 17 years.   I’m overdue for another visit.  Even if it’s to a country I’ve never been before.   I’m sure it can’t be too hard to get around in.

Damn, but I’m too set in my ways…wish me luck.

I’ve been following the development of Twitter for the last few months.  Actually, development doesn’t even begin to describe it.  It’s, like, the new Myspace, y’know.

Anyway, I recently received two emails from twitter staying that I now had people “following” me.  Great.  I checked one of them out.  Primarily discusses marketing your blog for fun and profit.  Seems real.  No big deal.

Then, the other person…all his twitters were regenerations of emailing on losing weight, penis enlargement. et.al.

The Twitter “Help” FAQ showed me how to block that sucker.  I mean, puleeeeeze!  Can’t a girl catch a break?

In the meantime, one of the Twitterers I follow, TechCrunch, seems to have some major flaming going down among his followers (or blockers).  Apparently, he called a couple of fellow tech bloggers out, and, er, one of them didn’t take it too well (or didn’t take to well watching his friend get “asassinated”; hey it happens).  TechCrunch also posted about TwittEarth, where you can see locations of other folks twitting in “real time”.  Cool concept, but that Flash world model makes me kinda woozy looking at it everytime someone from half a world away “twitters”.

Also, that tag line’s got to go. Yeah man, I’m a “Live Twitt”. NIIIIIIIIIIICE…

I’ve been following the Twitterings of “BuckHollywood” lately, and today, he informed his followers of one of YouTube’s Featured Videos of the day - a young man daring users to describe their life in 6 six words as it’s happening right now.

Even though I’m a bit old/not emo enough to do this thing, I thought it was a rather cool meme, and I thought I’d try it myself.   So, with apologies to Bob Dylan…

This will probably be the closest thing I will get to a music video (or maybe not).  It seems that I may have missed the concept, and since the video is a rather blatant attempt at promoting my CD (rather obviously at the end), the person to whom I’m responding will probably kick my efforts to the curb.   But still, I thought it was a good try and it only took me an hour to do.

Thoughts?

Ms. Rap Supreme on VH1 last night.  Because I loved the White Rapper Show, and pretty much everything EgoTrip has done.

However, if last night’s episode is any indication, just another reality show featuring a bunch of bitches screaming at each other.

MC Serch, you should have known better. Where’s Flav when you need him?

According to my stats, my blog was rather popular today:

Title
Views

Monday Evening Oggcast, July 23, 2007 -
49

“Ho Sit Down!” moments, #1
14

Boca Java Coffee Reviews #1 & 2
8

“Everybody, move your feet and feel unit
6

“People Out There Turning Music Int
5

I’m a Bunch of Celebrity Lookalikes, Get
5

Pictures…
2

Tea meme
2

Yet another cool birthday present…
2

All I wanna do is a zoom zoom zoom zoom
2

I was hoping this surge was due to a sudden interest in my music/my opinions.  But, alas…it was the result of  research these little girls were doing on the results of the Rock of Love II finale that went on last night on VH1, and shaking their head in disappointment in only finding commentary on my blog on the FIRST Rock of Love from last year (that, and finding the the oggcast associated with that post is no longer available, as I do take those down after a short time, especially if they involve other people’s music).

Anyway, as opposed to the first season, I think I only watched two or three episodes this time around.  It just didn’t interest me that much.  The contestants, in particular, were a lot less likeable/hateable and a lot more boring.  There were no firm standouts like the scheming stripper Heather or that red-headed psycho Lacey, nor was there a true blue overachieving sweetheart like Rodeo.

Instead, we had this botox-lipped, blubbering trailer trash of a disaster named Daisy (I think that’s what her name was - see how much this show means to me?) and Ambre (Ambre?), an otherwise not-terrible person who’s got a career as a TV show host, and some common sense (though why she would ever want to be Bret’s Rock of Love is beyond me, unless there was some under the table money involved).   The one thing she did get wrong was that she lied about her age, presumably to get on the show (she’s 37, rather than 32 - gee, that’s a stretch). The both of them were actually quite manipulative, though in different ways: Daisy being WAY too obvious, and Ambre being forgivably more subtle, though a bit on the snitchy side.

SO, WHY did they put them in the same room?  I guess there was not enough drama in putting the girls in their corners last season?  So much unnecessary conversation, so much padded content.

Anyway…If this were a true relationship, I doubt the guy would asked for hot monkey sex after obtaining the girl of his dreams.  I see these peeps calling off the proposals after the reunion show.  Bring on “Rock of Love 3″.

OTOH, Nah…

Should music be taxed? Or no?

Discuss…

I saw this occur twice this evening, while reviewing my sitemeter stats (yes, I’m a dweeb like that.  Deal…)

I’m sure it’s harmless, but I’m wondering…is this an indication of Amazon trying to compete with Google?  Not that I’d put it past them, but…

Discuss…

One of my old buddies Trudy Ann sent this little note to all the folks on her email list. I thought it was pretty inspirational, and I thought I’d share it with you all. And, unlike other memes, nothing horrible will happen to you if you don’t share it with others! Although I’m sure it would be nice if you did.

Both of these stories came out of her recent trip to India. Hope you enjoy!

We were going on an overnight train from Bombay to visit my cousin. Total strangers, fellow passengers started talking with us and exchanging life stories as is the norm in India. I told them that some of my friends were worried I would not return. This wise man says to me, ” What the Western world does not understand is that once and Indian decides to love, they never let go of the other hand that they love even from far away.” It was and is so true.

Another day, I was in Bombay at a toy store feeling a bit frazzled for various reasons. The owner, a stranger to me, saw my face and said, ” What is wrong?”. I said, “Nothing”. Then he said, ” Ok, then have a cup of tea”, to which I said, “No thank you”. (since that is the correct response.. you first decline). He said, ” But it is home made”…. and the tears streamed down my face as he pulled up a stool and served me tea and talked about life and I felt much better.
That is India for me… the kindness of strangers. After years of making many cups of tea for people, this one was very special.

I’m a big fan of sticking it to the man, when one can. So, sure, we overdid the Radiohead love for a few months last year, but still we must once again celebrate both their musicality and their business acumen. For, thanks to all those stems they sold on Itunes upon launching their current remix contest - their song “Nude” crashed onto the Billboard Hot 100 at # 37. This makes this song only their 2nd Top 40 hit and effectively their biggest hit single since “Creep” charted - 15 years ago.

A long time between hits, no?

Of course, one could go on about how they sold out, jumped the shark, blah blah. However, when one is an unsigned artist with nothing but distribution deals, hustle is the name of the game.

Besides, Radiohead have finally done for themselves in a short time period of commercial freedom what l4 years be chained to EMI could not.

And they couldn’t have done it with a lovelier song:

The 2 to 3 folks who regularly check the RSS feed of this blog will have to move along tonight, for there is nothing to see here.

For the folks who actually hit the blog, however…

I swear to God/dess, this will be the last time I post of my mp3′d CD release.  For a while. Until the physical release comes out.  Or until it gets featured somewhere.  Perhaps Rolling Stone will give it a 4 star review.  Or I’ll get the 20 point smackdown from Pitchfork.  Whatever.

Anyway, I’ve made a few small changes here and there.  For instance, the CD cover is now in the “My Music” and “About Me” areas.  And the space to the right which used to only host the Mike Fitch and Dr. Seuss quotes now has full disclosure of who I am, what I do, and what I desire to achieve (hopefully with this blog).  I was always a little hesitant to place my name in these parts, given the things I write about and the language that I use.   I mean, I don’t want my opinions or viewpoints to matter to me as I make yet another go at a music career (or a partial career, anyway).   OTOH, I’m sure my WordPress profile would be easy to find.  And whatever cached blog posts I tossed out due to my recent paradigm shift will surely come up for me to answer to.   Which I already have answers to:

1. I felt that way one time, I do not feel that way anymore.

2. I felt that way one time, I may still feel that way, but I don’t like to keep trash around the house.

3. I felt that way one time, I still feel that way, but if the rest of the world is over it, why should I care as well?

But, you know what?  I’m proud of what I did.  And I want to show it off.  And make some money in the process (hopefully).  If I risk rattling some skeletons from long ago, so be it.  And at the risk of sounding like Stuart Smalley, I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dammit! I’m talented enough to make a difference.  Even if it’s a small one.    Surely it can’t be that hard to find a small audience for your CDs while operating outside of the recording industry.   At least there’d be no corruption involved.

I just don’t like the idea of mellowing out my tone, just to possibly make myself ready for prime time.

BTW, if you downloaded the zip file of the CD, I’ve been informed that there was an issue with one of the MP3s on it (which, if you’ve already played it, you no doubt know what it is). I’ve fixed the problem, re-added the MP3 to the zip file, and reuploaded the zip file to my server.  If you can’t be bothered to download 37 MB of MP3s all over again (and I can’t say that I blame you), here’s the link to the corrected file, that I’ve also uploaded to my server. 

http://helensventitsky.com/PartyToAnEscape.mp3

My sincerest apologies…

And again, thanks for your support.

I don’t know how I found it, but I found myself looking at this article in TechCrunch about viral video strategies and the extensive amount of comments that followed.

Sure, Ackerman Greenberg’s tactics to get his clients featured on YouTube are slimy, sneaky and underhanded.  But at least he’s HONEST about his tactics being slimy, sneaky and underhanded.   Why else is it called guerilla marketing?

And for all those people in the comments area calling for this guy’s head, for chrissakes, YouTube is (repeat after me) just…a…site.

All charts can be gamed.  It was that way on MP3.com back in the day when I was on there, it’s ALWAYS been that way on Billboard, and it’s that way on all of these popularity based sites, such as YouTube.    If you can’t deal, then don’t bother paying attention.

Maybe I’m just cynical.  I could probably use some of those suggestions laid out by Ackerman Greenberg.

Then again, maybe not…

Oh com’ on! You knew this was coming, didn’t you?

Anyway, I’m not sure what my life is going to be like this weekend, so I’m getting to it now.  So pull out the party hats and shake up the Mumm. This oggcast is to celebrate the official online release of my new CD, Monochrome In Technicolor!   

As with all oggcasts, it’s a mix rather than individual songs.  You can click on the image to access it.

Contents:

1. You And Me And The Goddamn City
2. Requiem For My Singlehood
3. Incident At Motel 6
4. Party To An Escape
5. Alzheimers
6. WIthdrawal Symptoms
7. Sheila And Mayron
8. Ringed By Lovers
9. Taking Back Kosovo

As per usual, we have the MP3 streaming preview.

And if you’d rather have individual MP3s with lyric sheets and artwork in a zip file, ala Nine Inch Nails (sort of), we have you covered there too.

Official Album Download Page

I’ve set this thing up to be donationware for right now (which accounts for the Paypal Donation button on the page) but while a tip would be appreciated, it’s not necessary. 

I’ll be taking the whole thing down once the CD gets duped and hits the ITunes and CD Baby stores, so get it for “free” while you can!

Comments, as always, are appreciated, even if you hate it!

Thanks to my two to three regulars, as well as any passersby in the rest of the world, all for your support! :) 

Well, this is interesting…

I’ve only uploaded this song to last.fm this evening, and it’s already making the rounds on their various suggested tracks lists.

Even to me:

Nice…

I know.  This blog has become all about Helen working on and promoting her new CD.  Yawwwwwwwwwwnnn….Whatever.  Too bad.   Bloggers are narcissists, anyway.  I am no different.

Anyway…

I received the last of my masters from Songmastering.com.  The guy was nice enough to remix two of my songs, and did a pretty decent job with the third one.  I still found things in parts of two of my songs I wanted to redo, but the guy will charge me if he does any more work on them, which is fair enough.  Besides, I’m anxious to get the thing out, and it’s kinda hard to get total perfection out of tracks done with a PDA.  The feedback, where and when I’ve gotten it, has been pretty damn nice.   I’d rather not push it.

I’ve decided to keep the song count for the CD at 9, after all; I’m still kind of exhausted from that whole month of putting music together, and, to be fair to the RPM Challenge folks, I should promote the same CD that I provided to them.   

I’ve been spending the last several days getting the promo in place for the new CD.  This means following all the good little online artists to places like Facebook, ilike, bebo, et. al, and proclaiming myself in profiles, uploading music, blogging and bulletining like crazy.   It’s pretty exhausting.  I was especially targeting Facebook, Myspace, and Soundclick.  Facebook’s been frustrating, to say the least.  Turns out I had to create another page there.  No biggie.  BUT I also ended up having to create yet another profile on yet another OMD site that plugs into Facebook’s apps-cool as it is, actually-because Facebook insists on you uploading a .jpg of your drivers license or passport before they let you even think of upload music onto THEIR servers - I don’t think so!  Plus it’s hard figuring out which app is musician-centric and which one is listener-centric.  I have room for both, but I have to have reach too, ya know.

I also needed help in putting together widgets.  I found this blog useful for suggestions, even though I can’t use most of it on WordPress, and had to use linked JPG’d screenshots of the widgets, instead.  Grrrrrrrrrr…

Anyway, you can see the results of what I did on the My Music page of this blog.  Nifty, no?

It’s been pretty tiring, trying to get at least some of the work out there to be listened to and promoted.   I’m a little concerned about turning back into this all-internet-all-the-time dweeb I was back in the beginning of the century when I was promoting a goofier musical project of mine.   So I’m thinking of doing PR Genie, and AdSense.  Let someone else do all the work, while I do all the singing!

Good idea? Or Bad?

Anyway, I just have to finish the artwork and then the thing’s going to press.  In the meantime, until the thing’s actually released for real, you can preview and download ALL 9 SONGS from said CD on my Soundclick page (which I highly recommend for the Creative Commons partnership alone, if you are like me and can’t deal with spending $45.00 to register a SONG with the US Copyright office), or you can stream it on my last.fm page (don’t pay any attention to the “buy from Amazon.com” messages - it’s not there yet).   I’ll also have a zip file of all the songs from the CD up on my site before this weekend, which you can download for either free or a small donation (I’m still deciding).

Anyway, feel free to listen, comment, etc.  And if you like it, please tell folks who it is and where you got it!

I’ll explain why in a bit. 

I swear to God/dess I did!

For those of you who’ve been following the progress of my CD, and are wondering why the hell it isn’t out yet, well…

• I received the masters of 8 of the CD’s songs from the mastering service I sent the them to; the guy who worked on them did such a good job, that I was able to hear some rather ugly mixing mistakes I made on two of the songs. So I remixed them, then sent them back to be remastered. I also sent him “Ringed by Lovers” to work on as well (I delayed my sending it to him, on account of changing a couple of lyrical passages - I mean, the song’s embarrassing enough as it is, really.) They should all be done by the end of the week.
• This means that I may or may not be able to set aside funds for an upcoming overseas trip AND pay for duping by Discmakers AND take advantage of their online distribution deal until maybe April 15th. I’ll watch my pennies and see.
• Today, I started my initial promoing for the CD like mad. It kinda pissed my husband off that I spent so much time in front of the PC doing this, but well, I’ve sat around and done nothing but sit in my room and write, or write and record. Now that I have something that can be called a viable piece of work put together, it’s time to, as they say, shit or get off the pot.

Things I did to make this happen:

• I updated my Soundclick page with Mp3s of 6 of the masters. Initially I was not getting any sound from the page players, until I realized that some of the ID tagging I had put on the MP3s were causing some encoding issues on Soundclick’s end. So I had to resave the MP3s but without the ID tagging, then re-upload. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….
• Soundclick has a partnership with creativecommons.org to apply CC licenses to any song you upload onto their OMD. So, of course, given that registering a song with the US Copyright office, the last time I checked, was US $45.00 PER SONG, obtaining a license I didn’t have to pay for was a pretty sweet deal. In fact, after we get back from said overseas trip, I may just start giving them some money each month, after taking a free ride for about 8 years on their servers. After all, I don’t think anyone expected Soundclick to survive the OMD wars in the early 2000’s, and yet, here they are, creating new services, and being artist-friendly. And where’s IUMA or MP3.com (wait, don’t ask…)?
• Also, for the first time since I started my profile there, I completely wiped my Myspace profile of any and all of my songs, and uploaded ones from the upcoming CD. I did a small little bulletin, and I’ve already gotten some comments and quite a few listens. Things, right now, are going pretty good. I was even able to add a playlist widget of songs from my Soundclick page.
• Now I’m starting to feel ambitious. I recall that I had an empty iLike profile that was probably started as a result of my attention-whoring ass being all over the internet. It DOES happen. Anyway, I figure what’s good for REM is good for me, I claim the rogue profile for my own, add images, songs and albums to it - even including the little EP I recorded in 2002 and made it available solely on Artistlaunch.com. (I may need to make it available again somewhere, now that I’ve told the greater world about it in even further detail…OOOPS!). It turns out that the iLike artist profiles will automatically port over to the Facebook music profiles that were just introduced. Killing two birds with one stone. Not a bad proposition.
• iLike also works with Bebo. I then remembered that I had started a profile there some time ago. So I went there and did a search. There were 3. YIKES!!! I took the one that was accessible and did some work on it. Uploaded songs, videos, etc. Then I tried to get it featured. Which got me this message:

Your Band has been reviewed and deemed unsuitable for featuring. There are many reasons we may decide not to feature a Band and we are unable to enter into discussions on why, we just receive too many requests. Sorry!

Whatever…serves me right for not jumping on their bandwagon right away.

• Anyway…all my efforts to put my ducks in a row took about 6 hours. This includes sending emails on my Facebook network, my Myspace network, et. al. It’s frankly rather exhausting. I don’t like spamming my friends in the first place, but also, I used to do all this sort of crap when I first put my mp3.com page up back in 1999. It was the start of a massive internet addiction that took me about 6 years to break. And occasionally, I still have to fight it. It’s not healthy. Not for either my online or offline relationships.

Hopefully, I won’t have to go onto these networks every day and remind people that I exist and that I have music. OTOH, nothing would piss folks off more than a nagging wuss.

We’ll see…