The Vineyards

Three pages into the chapter I was reading this afternoon, I noticed the book alone was not doing a very good job of keeping my mind busy. I needed some wine as well.

The fridge was discouraging. One bottle of champagne (not good champagne, even) that was a gift, and one bottle of white wine from Washington state (… what?) that I have no idea why is there. Better not touch either – red wine it would have to be, since red is not supposed to be cold. So I looked at the pile of bottles right next to the fridge – and three bottles of white wine I bought some time ago were there, waiting anxiously to be saved from the dreadful room temperature. I put one in the fridge – even if I cannot drink it today, it is a crime to leave all of them outside.

On top of the forgotten white wine bottles there was, indeed, one bottle of red wine. I dare not touch that one, since I first tried the brand. Cheap, bad, tastes like overly sweet, bad grape juice. No, no good. The living room cabinet, then, would hold the answer. Would, if I wanted scotch or brandy. The big shelf in the back room, then! Scotch, brandy, tequila, and some other things with names I do not care to remember. Ignobility.

But behind them all, hidden under bottles of strange beverages I have little intention of trying, there was one bottle of red wine! Something I can drink at room temperature, at last. I picked it up, causing the disjointed pyramid to crumble and promising myself to have a proper cabinet for storing bottles someday. What little joy the sight of violet liquid inside that dusty bottle had brought me faded when I read the label, “Beaujolais Nouveau”.

Unlike most wines, the Beaujolais is best if consumed no more than a few days after bottled. It stays drinkable up to a year or two, with proper storage and good luck. But for one to stay good beyond that, the fact is unheard of. This bottle was from 1997.

Pulling out the cork was an endeavor of its own, as it split in two when I tugged it out. First time I see that happen. I had to pull it out in two phases. But after many minutes of struggling, I was pouring some wine in my glass. I knew from the scent it was not perfect, but I kept my last hopes up. One taste, and they disappeared. I have tasted better apple vinegar.

Drowning sorrow in beer is not at all of my taste, but I had little choice. The moment required alcohol. The loss of sixty-eight gigabytes worth of anime, movies and music, collected over five years, requires mourning with red wine.

The comments to the last post put me in a strange mood. At times I was angry over it, then just confused. While I was away from home today, I settled on doing one or both of two things.

First, I would ask, either in a post or in a comment, “why”. I would use wording like this: “You girls are over ten years late in telling me Air Supply is bad. Should had come say it when I finally opened that door and stood at the corridor of my metaphor, waiting for guidance. I am past the point of accepting a simple ‘It is bad’ – I want to know why it is bad.”

Really, it is somewhat tiresome to hear it over and over from so many people. “Air Supply is all bad, and you should abandon it at once. Listen to Pink Floyd and Ozzy Osbourne instead.” Why? What is so bad with them? What is wrong with the unparalleled keyboards of Air Supply? Other than guitar solos, I have seen only one thing rival it: the violins of Kansas.

I was hoping to ask that on a standalone way, so I would get answers for it. In the middle of a post it probably will not. I hope otherwise.

Second. No, no second. I might still do it, sometime. Just not now, it is not the time for that.

So, with those two things settled, I was thinking of the comments themselves. Courtney mentioned the chaotic collections of Mp3 we all have now. And, indeed, although I spoke mainly of bought CDs in the previous post, my collection is quite chaotic. Over 30 hours of music of all sorts and genres. Sometimes I avoid downloading a song I like because I know it will fall into the abyss of E:\Mp3 and never be touched again.

With that in mind, I thought of all the anime I downloaded and did not see yet. The most classic of all shoujo, “Rose of Versailles”; that one everyone saw and I did not, “Cowboy Bebop”; the one that I saw half and found wonderful, but stopped seeing, “Last Exile”; the one I heard only good things about, “Tenjou Tenge”. And so many others that I do not remember half. So, for a brief moment, before horror struck me and I pushed the idea away, I thought…

“The only way to put order to that chaos and make things right would be to lose all those files and have to start over.”

When I got back home, Asgaard was behaving strangely.

After I reset it, I could no longer access the E: partition.

Its label, “Media”, for the obvious reason the vast majority of its used space was populated by music and anime, was replaced with “Local Disk” in “My Computer”. The total size is not visible. Trying to access it returns a “Disk is not formatted. Format now?”. Going to DOS and doing a chkdsk /f /r returns lots of errors from the index table, then puts me on hold forever as the “Step 4 of 5″ lingers hopelessly in 0%.

I stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago, and that belief is not coming back so soon.

By request, and because I said “soon” and it has been over three months, I now finish that story about music.

On with it, then. I stopped at age 16, when I ventured outside my imposed boundaries of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, John Lennon (post-Yoko), soap opera music, and anything French or Italian.

It started with a little program called Turtle Beach Midi Karaoke. It was a big pink box with two floppies inside, one for the program and another for the .mid files. My father just bought it one day. No questioning from my part, just installed it and went to check the music. Lots of things one would expect to hear in easy listening FM stations. The heaviest thing in the collection was “We will rock you”, which is funny enough and unmusical enough to capture my interest. Seeing, then, “Memories”, “Blue Moon”, “It Might Be You”, “New York New York”, I was obviously fated to like it but remain in my little circle. Except there was one I liked more than all others, and I was sure I knew it, even if I had no idea where. “Dust in the Wind”, by Kansas.

A few weeks later I was surprised once again when my father came home with a Kansas CD. “Point of Know Return”, because it had “Dust in the Wind” in it. A full CD of an American band playing with electric guitars (and violins and other unexpected instruments, but bear with me). The cover was a ship falling off the border of the world – not anywhere near any album cover I had ever seen. The booklet had drawings of the members, all with long hair, some with beard. It was quite shocking, but I gave it a try – if they made “Dust in the Wind”, they surely are not very bad.

I paid my fee for innocence when I realized that was the lightest song in the CD; everything else was heavier. And I paid my fee for ignorance when I caught myself listening to the CD over and over. With exception of two songs I considered too heavy and just skipped (“Lightning’s Hand” and “Sparks of the Tempest”), there was not one I did not love. I accepted defeat.

The door was open, then, and there was a corridor ahead, that everyone had taken years before. But I had no one to lead the way. So I stood at the door watching, and accepting anything that came along, but never looked for anything, never was given any indication of what I should listen to. The big turning point of my life in terms of music had the single immediate result of making me switch my alarm radio from AM to FM. Nothing more.

So limited I was again, not by my own walls, but by a complete lack of leads to follow. The result of that is that I can sing about twenty songs by Air Supply flawlessly – their CD is right next to Barry Manilow’s, Celine Dion is next, then Diana Ross. I keep them in alphabetical order, on top of everything.

Cliché, but Mp3 played a role there. In fact, one Mp3. At the time, internet was something distant, and there were many BBSs. I was a member of one, and someone uploaded Jewel Kilcher’s “Who Will Save Your Soul”. I downloaded it and liked it, then went out and bought the entire album. Shot in the dark, but it worked better than anyone would ever expect – in that album are two of the three songs that can make me cry.

So, buying albums based on a single music works. So I bought Natalie Imbruglia’s “Left of the Middle” – yes, because of “Torn”, damnit. And each track makes me remember a level in Duke Nukem 3D, as I always played it whenever I faced Puppy in a match. I only won three times.

(Breech deserves mentioning here, but it had a post of its own some time ago. It has its standalone importance. It did not to much in the big picture, even if I really like it.)

So, it was me and Air Supply, Bee Gees, Celine Dion, Jewel, Barry Manilow, and Kansas remained the only thing remotely “rocky” I had touched. Then finally someone came from the long corridor to the door where I was standing and said “come, I will show you something”. It was a bit late.

First was Joanne, known to most as Pashura. She hates Air Supply and Celine Dion with a passion equal to her love for Scorpions. Always insisted she would “corrupt” me. I asked her to, even, but it did not go far. She had an account on a Mp3 streaming service that was going to close down, so she asked me to download all the songs from it because she was on dial-up. Granted, I liked many of them, and still keep them all here, but nothing really sparked me enough to go out and buy a CD, perhaps for lack of emphasis. Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Aerosmith, there are a couple of songs from each of the big bands in those she had me download, but it stayed at that. Probably because she did not make me listen to them as much as she had me Scorpions. Before I finally gave in and bought two albums by them, I knew at least fifteen songs. Unfortunately, they never meant as much as Kansas. Shame.

In conclusion, Pashura introduced me to (and made me walk five miles into) Scorpions, and had me listen to an assortment of other bands and singers of varying quality (there was one I mocked her often, because I found him so bad and she liked him so). All in all, I am happy for what she did, even if it was overly Scorpionesque.

Next was Donnie, known by more names than I remember. Rather erratic suggestions, and often overwhelming, although he did try hard. Gave me lots of Opeth songs. Opeth is great because it varies unbelievably – some songs can make a baby sleep, others can wake the dead, but they all sound “full”. I liked many songs by them, and by some other artists he told me to try. But, as I said, it was overwhelming, and I quickly lost track of things. I could never download the full pack he prepared for me, for instance – something I regret tremendously. The list of suggestions was just too big, I did not have time to get used to a song before he would throw another Mp3 at me along with three more names of things to look for. We lost contact for a while, as happens very often, and we both gave up. A true shame, I am sure there was a lot to be taken from that, hm, class, if we had sync’ed our paces. I hope he will want to try again sometime.

Well… There was Justin, of course. But only for a day. Not sure why, since we never talked about music, he sent me a link to open with Winamp. “Now I will submit you to music.” There was a lot of VNV Nation, if I remember. More dancy than I expected from him. It did not last long, as I lost the link. So he is mentioned here just so he will read it (two weeks from now) and make a witty comment pretending he is hurt by what I said. Justin is great and needs no music to be.

Unfortunately, that was all. No one else tried to make me like what they fondly call “good music”, even though most of what I listen is considered “horrid music” and they find it absurd that I touch it at all. All my saviors are gone.

If anything, however, I have some new songs in my list that I would never dare to listen to before these people came along. And after all their attempts, I consider “Lightning’s Hand” and “Sparks of the Tempest” quite nice. Maybe if they kept trying consistently for longer periods I could become a fan of something, but no one would invest that much time and effort on my musical taste. Really, if even I will not.

(Perhaps ruby might, but there is no way to tell, as she is yet to try, if ever. But she keeps making me try to guess who sings each song playing on the classic rock radio station. I make wild guesses and get about one right in each twelve after I hear half the music; she recognizes the majority of them on the first few seconds – and for Pink Floyd music she also says in what album it is. But she can sing not one song by Air Supply, hah!)

At the end, after all the attempts, I am still left standing at the door, with a few indications but no real lead to follow. So I listen to what comes along. Lately it has been a lot of anime music, and some things I find very good from that station mentioned. And those classical ones, of course.

ICQ tells me today, July 10th, is the birthday of the top comments poster here in the Vineyards, Courtney. The place might soon be claimed by Flines or ruby, but counting the Live Journal days, she is still quite ahead.

Among what few readers I have, Courtney is the one I have known the longest – not counting Flines, of course, who is my sister. And she keeps forgetting it, but we first met in Kugnae’s Boa Cave, when Nexus still had a Boa Cave. We then met in Dark Ages, not knowing who each other was, and became actual friends when I learned who she had been in Nexus. “Friends” used loosely here, as we never spoke much. I remember, however, she always mentioned she liked handwritten letters, and sometimes said we should use that ancient media. I always found an excuse not to.

Then she left Dark Ages, and we nearly lost contact. I still had her in ICQ – and even gave the UIN to Justin once or twice – but never really talked.

I still knew of her whereabouts during these days thanks to Joanne, player of Pashura in Dark Ages, who was her roommate. When Joanne told me Courtney was playing EverQuest, I was quite sure she was lost forever. And then I was told she was getting married. “EQ players get married!?”, I joked with Joanne, who did not like the joke. “She met him in EQ”, she explained. “Yes, she is lost forever”, I thought to myself in conclusion. Sad, sad days.

Then somehow she found the Vineyards in LJ, and commented a few times. First anonymously, then signed on unusual names which I somehow recognized as hers. It was very surprising that anyone would find that journal, it was even more surprising that it would be one with whom I had not talked for such a long time, and who was on EverQuest. It was very good to know I was wrong, I must say.

She continued to comment every now and then (given how often I write, she commented a lot) and eventually we started to talk on ICQ again. Very pleasant conversation, it is a shame we have so little to talk about – which is odd, because I would not have more in common with a twin brother if I had one. I lost count of how many times I said or heard “that is my favorite, too!” when talking to Courtney.

I know she has a homepage of her own, because I visited it once, but I have no idea where it is anymore, which greatly embarasses me. Since it is her birthday, I was going to add it to the links, and read its archives – I like reading archives, honestly -, because she deserves it, even if we do not talk often. But I do not have a link, so I add nothing to my list.

(Add, although I should have it replace the deadmemes link, because the site is closed, I think deadmemes looks a lot prettier now, so it stays there – and hopefully Justin will bring it back soon, keeping it that pretty.)

If ICQ is fooling me, I am making a bit of a fool of myself, but Courtney is a nice young lady, who no longer plays EverQuest, is always happy to talk and tell her stories, has the most fancy and scary dreams, and likes to make cookies and send them by mail; therefore, she deserves a mention even if it is not her birthday.

And if it indeed is, happy birthday, Courtney.

So what has been keeping me from writing, now? Still school – that is, college – work?

That too, yes, but that did not prevent me from writing two posts since that last one you see published. I removed them both.

Never had I done that before, not even in the LiveJournal days. Back then, once I started writing a post, but stopped in the middle, “This is worthless and uninteresting”. I wrote something else a few days later. But to write, post, and remove, this was the first time. And second.

Both posts are still safe here, marked as drafts. The second one may be published someday again, after it is heavily altered – it had a flaw at its base, that I may correct with some further thinking (or rather, not correct, but work around so it is hidden and makes sense even though it says something that cannot possibly be agreed to – rhetorics, wonderful). The first post is likely to never return, but that is actually decided by that devious entity I mentioned, not by me. It stays there, thus.

The post about music waits a little longer. And I am seriously considering following the example of my good sister and starting a second blog solely for tales. Maybe in that format I will actually write some of the stories I have been meaning to.

It is funny, you see – I always felt most comfortable writing stories in two programs: Netscape Composer and Outlook Express. Netscape Composer, because that is where I wrote the majority of my Dark Ages texts. Got used to it. Outlook Express, because I have a taste for randomly adding fiction or twists to e-mail – like a huge story about why the city of Undine (in Temuair) had a big lake in its middle, or one case where I started each paragraph of a mail with each letter of the alphabet, in order, A to Z.

To be honest, however, the Movable Type entry box is not a very good place to write. It shows less than twenty lines at a time. Maybe if I rearrange it I can get better results. Or maybe I can use Mozilla Composer. Or even Word, for spellchecking.

But now that I think of it, I could, instead of creating a new blog, write the tales right here, but use the Extended Entry function to keep clutter down – my normal posts are long enough without my stories among them. But I would still keep them somewhere in separate, so they do not get lost in here.

The conclusion to that post about music will wait a bit. I am sure the first part did not cause a good impression anyway, so I am in no hurry anymore.

That will be all.

A few days ago I looked at these Vineyards here and noticed how boring it is. The layout is boring – heck, it was copied from a default first generation Live Journal template. The texts are boring – I just start talking and never stop, and the subjects are hardly any fun at all; it is in English, which means it will be ignored by the majority of readers of other blogs I read; the text column is too wide, making it hard to read (but that goes in layout).

Then I reached a conclusion that wizard from Deoch 1 would never reach on his own: I want to make people happy.

What do you mean, make people happy? What devious malevolent entity got hold of your sanity?
What entity? Not telling. But that part about making people happy, that is just it. I wanted people to be happy when they read something I wrote. Or maybe if I could be so bold, something I drew – but that is a long way ahead, if ever. Something I coded could work, eventually; something I composed is most unlikely. All in all, something I created. Maybe I could write a children’s book. Or a nice little text. Or draw something beautiful. Anything. I just wanted to make people happy. I want someone completely random to look at it, smile, and show it to someone else completely random – not because they are my friends or liked my past writings, but because that one piece made them smile.

But I do not currently have time to do any of these things. I am stuck with these “school papers”.

“Oh”, says the passing reader, “another angsty teenager with too much acne, which led him to read loads of bad novels, and now he daydreams that his writing is good enough to make people happy – ah! it will not make anyone better than himself happy. At least he is not writing goth poems like he read too much Poe.”

My my, what a little expression can cause, no? “School papers”. No, I am no longer a teenager, I am no longer angsty, and I did not read loads of bad novels. I read a lot of Poe, but I certainly am nothing anywhere near goth.

If I change it to “college papers”, does it help? No, because it is in English, American English. And in the United States, college students are not a much better bunch than high school ones. Shame, because I cannot go higher and say “master papers” – if that at all exists. We will all have to settle down with college papers and agree that they are not easy, not shallow, and I have not been stuck with them because I had parties with lots of beer and boobies to go to that only end when the police comes. No, no such parties. Yes, I know, I took the stereotype from teen movies. It was on purpose.

I am stuck with these papers because they are hard to do. If I just had to write a short story, all would be perfectly fine. But one is an analysis, half-breed academia, half-breed journalism (I am not a journalist, what do they want from me?), the other is a journalistic text (ditto), and… I forgot the rest. Hopefully their deadlines are further away.

Concluding – I cannot do anything to make people happy right now, and I cannot make the Vineyards less boring, because I have all these things to do before I get to it. I partially regret not having finished that biographic tale about music, since now I have to finish it before making changes to this blog’s style.

Oohh, he called the Vineyards a blog!
Well, it is not in Live Journals anymore, it is not a journal anymore – and never was, really. Let us just call it properly from now on.

Alright, I am done. Back to being lost about these papers.