BZPower is the only place on the Internet where I feel as if I can truly state what I feel without fear of someone seeing half a sentence and assuming something terrible about what I'm trying to communicate. I take a middle-of-the-road approach and try to see the good in people, and I feel as if BZPower is the only site that won't blow up in my face when it comes to moderate viewpoints. - - - - - Well, the latest firestorm of drama hit BZP earlier - this time on representation in media. It'
Alright, so I'm going to have to finish up being sick, play baseball thrice a week until May, prepare for the end-of-season awards day/roast for the team (I'm in charge of making dumb videos for the roast portion), and finish up my course work for this semester. I was going to compete in a piano competition in Charlotte but that fell through - even though I passed the regional with flying colors, the state tournament conflicts with a home game for us against the toughest team we're due to face
I have been a member of BZPower for nearly seven and a half years. Every time speculation on new spinnies arises, I am there on the front lines campaigning for to become an official spinny. Today, my fellow members, I am proud to say that I have succeeded in this illustrious endeavor. I came to this web site with a mission, and now that mission is complete. Spin on, my friends. Spin on.
The past week or so has been absolutely mad. I won't try to list all the crazy things that have transpired so I'll just kind of condense it: Our washing machine began to go bad and broke, so we got a new one, only for the delivery to be delayed because of store-side incompetency, ice, etc. Our mailbox decided to bite the dust around the same time, although getting a new one was relatively simple. The high school baseball season was slated to start last week, but our first game was sleeted ou
SUMIKI'S PAST 24 HOURS: A DRAMATIC LOG Midnight: Reading in bed. Allergies begin. Reading ceases. 1:00 AM: Allergies still continue. 2:00 AM: Finally asleep. 3:30 AM: Wake up to a huge flash of lightning and massive crash of thunder. Walls shake and windows are vigorously rattling. 3:45 AM: Unable to return to sleep. Get up to close blinds and check the weather online. Mom comes up, awakened as well by the bomb-like sound of the storm. 4:00 AM: Back in bed, but unable to sleep. Light
SOMEONE SPECIAL IN YOUR LIFE? YOU CAN GET THEM: TREE CARCASSES TATTOOED WITH MASS-PRODUCED ROMANTIC MESSAGES A SERIES OF CAREFULLY ARRANGED PLANT REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS CAREFULLY ARRANGED BITS OF FLAVORED DOG POISON, PREFERABLY ONE WITH A MAP A ROCK
The snow here has been strange. The first layer - a good five inches - was a dry snow of the kind I'd never seen before. Around 8:00 on Wednesday the snow turned to sleet, which ceased at around 2:00 Thursday morning. This sleet froze over the soft snow and provided the base for the second layer of snow, which lasted until around 4:00 on Thursday afternoon. Strangely enough, this snow was the wet, thick, packable kind of the kind that I'm used to. Perfect sledding conditions. A few runs down
I swear this isn't a music blog. (Okay, it kind of is.) I've listened to a wide swath of different pieces of classical music, and I occasionally come across some things that are just ... well, strange. We're talking off-the-wall levels of goofy here. -----La Monte Young - Piano Piece for David Tudor #1 This piece doesn't even have a proper score, just a sheet of paper telling the performer to come out onto the stage with a bucket of water and a bale of hay for the piano to drink and eat.
After my opinions on Mozart and much of the Classical era, I got to thinking about modern classical music, which in this sense means any music written after 1900. I have ... mixed feelings, shall we say. Time for another music history lesson. By the turn of the century, late Romanticism was beginning to die out. Gustav Mahler was writing symphonies of epic proportions, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were defining a musical style dubbed "Impressionism" - though Debussy hated the term - and
Let's get this out of the way: I really love classical music, and I kind of know a lot about it. I'm willing to bet that I know more things about music history than anyone else on BZP ... save for perhaps -Windrider-. Dude's a beast when it comes to this sort of stuff. Most people don't really hold opinions on classical music one way or another, and those that do generally see it as monotonous and boring. I've never really held this opinion, but my favorite music has always come later in music
Long-time Blogarithm viewers may remember a long rant I wrote about the link between Star Wars and BIONICLE with regards to their respective prequels. In it, I made the case that fans of a certain thing have higher expectations and preconceived notions regarding backstory. I thought that it might be time to significantly expand on that train of thought by considering the monstrous job that now lays ahead of J. J. Abrams, a task that is both Herculean and nearly Sisyphean in its proportions.
Or: Why The Eternity Code was the best Artemis Fowl book Spoiler warning for ... well, the entire thing. I'm not marking individual spoilers; it's been long enough since the last book was released. Also this is really going to be rambling, I can just sense it. Consider yourself warned. Ever since a friend loaned me the first book in the series, I'm a fan of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series of books. The characters and re-imagined concepts of Colfer's stories captured my imagination. As I
The Great American Road Trip -1: The Hidden Buffalo A decade before my birth, my parents (and my mom's parents) took off on a road trip to South Dakota, to see Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, and the surrounding region. While in the Badlands, they went to a restaurant/gift shop for something to eat. My grandmother ordered a bison burger, but she could not eat it all, so she discreetly wrapped the rest of it up in an array of napkins and stashed it in her purse while no one was looking. Later
The Great American Road Trip 0: The Quest for Lobster Five and a half years before I was born, my parents lived in an entirely different section of North Carolina. With a number of days off of work after Christmas, my dad gets an insatiable hankering for a Maine lobster after seeing a particularly delectable television advertisement. "Pack and get in the car," he says to my mom. "Where are we going?" she asks. "We're going to Maine." So off they went. Twelve hours later, it's midnight,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ank-lcc-bhU Einojuhani Rautavaara is a contemporary Finnish composer who has written a substantial amount of orchestral music. His rejection of "modern" composition techniques and his unique style has led him to a musical language that is accessible yet still distinctly modern. His most famous piece is "Cantus Arcticus" - a concerto for birds and orchestra featuring recorded birdsong - but his other pieces, particularly his piano concertos, deserve further study.
In first place, with eight votes: PALEO! In second place, with four votes: REZNAS! In third place, with three votes: PALEO! (again) Your prizes will be autographed selfies, featuring exclusive snippets of wisdom. (I may or may not have ripped off this idea from Windrider.) Congratulations to the winners and big thanks to all of the fantastic entries - although no one guessed correctly.
It's time for the poll. Vote for up to THREE explanations of the nature of my status updates. Vote in the comments. You can only vote once. Voting will end on January 19th at 11:59 PM Eastern. A tiebreaker, if necessary, will be held the following day. - - - - - - - - - - Entry 1: You have invented a new form of musical notation, which uses syllables to represent notes. Your status updates are in reality short piano pieces. - Entry 2: Written on paper strips are th
