Listen to the Rain

▶️One, I got my first property tax bill, so now of course I have to become an anarchist. Who are these people to want all this money? ZOMG teh gubmint, etc, etc. It's actually less than I expected it to be so it's not a problem, but it still stings a bit to pay thousands of dollars after the already thousands of dollars I paid when I bought the place.

It helps me remember that mostly, the rich are evil due to environmental factors, not due to innate immorality.

▶️Two, Northern Ballad has shown up a couple times in my Listening To section, and I mixed in Sailing Icy Seas and Parting Icy Skies from the Wrath of the Lich King soundtrack, so I put out a call for similar music, and then thosesocks sent me the song that's currently in there. So I guess I'm on a hurdy-gurdy kick? "One by One" isn't anything like the other songs that's linked above--I can't imagine it playing over a shot of the protagonist coming back to the burned ruins of their childhood home, or a group of soldiers drinking together the night before a battle knowing most of them won't be back the next night--but it's good in its own right! I should look up more of her music.

Also, listening to "Sailing Icy Seas" is reminding me of Wrath of the Lich King, which was the most fun I ever had playing WoW. Partially because balance druids were finally good, but also because I finally got to see the part of WoW Lore I cared about through. One major reason I trailed off hard and then stopped playing in Cataclysm is that I didn't care about why I was doing anything. I played Warcraft III, and then I played WoW, and when I killed the Lich King in June of 2010, that was the last boss I cared about fighting. I stuck around through Firelands, but when I realized I was only logging on to raid and otherwise never playing, I figured my time was done, and nowadays I don't have time for an MMO.

But raiding Ulduar was up there with very-late-night drunk Karazhan raids with some of most fun I've ever had in a video game. I don't actually want to play WoW again, but I miss those experiences and the person I was then who had them.

Well, maybe if they had classic Burning Crusade or Wrath servers I'd dip back in...

▶️Three, I've been eating vegetarian meals for dinner every night this week, after I bought some ice cream on Sunday and then due to בשר בחלב basar bechalav decided to make egg curry instead of chicken curry so that I could have naan (made with butter) with it and it's been delicious. Tonight I'm having pita, vegetables, hummus, and feta cheese--I was going to have falafel, but the Middle Eastern Grocery store was out--and when I had it on Tuesday it was delicious. I mean, spicy hummus is amazing on anything, but I was surprised at how much I liked it.

Long meeting this morning and nothing tonight. Back to work.

A few months ago, resurii reached out to me on a hunch and asked me if I had ever heard of a band called Heilung. I had not, but I went out to listen to a couple of their songs, then bought both of their albums, and then when the tickets went on sale I...missed out because I didn't expect them to sell out within two hours. But due to the massive response, the organizers moved the concert from the Vic (where Mishkan had its Yom Kippur services) to the Riviera, which was both closer to me and opened up more tickets, so I got one. And last night was the concert ritual.


( We are all brothers )

Afterwards we all went out to Fat Cat on Broadway and got food and drinks, and I stayed and chatted until midnight. I was planning to go home and sleep and go then go into work a bit tired, but what actually happened was that I couldn't fall asleep until 2 a.m., I woke up repeatedly during the night with my throat clogged completely full, and when I woke up again at 5:45 a.m. almost an hour before my alarm, I called in sick. That ruined my plans to meet up with resurii, servermonk, sam.florida, and jenna.morgan.750 for lunch at Hanabusa cafe , but I need to rest and I don't want to get anyone else sick. So I'm staying home today, reading and drinking tea, and hopefully I'll be better tomorrow. 🧿

Hmm. Maybe it was the evil eye. 🧿🧿🧿

If Heilung tour near you, go see them! It's unforgettable.

I'm just going to cover a few things here:

( Contains moments of life )

I'm incredibly tired today due to screwing up the laundry timing last night and not being able to put all the blankets back on the bed until 11:30 p.m., and even having done that I woke up during the night due to being too cold and needing to pull more blankets on. And then I woke up before my alarm, so while I wasn't completely exhausted, I still feel like there's a wall of cotton between the world and me. The last night I had to myself was the Sunday before last, so I'm looking forward to just doing nothing and going to bed earlier tonight.

Well, nothing other than chores, anyway. Let me tell you, it's garbage that you dust and things are clean and then more dust is there next time you look. Who made that legal?

This is the song I found while I was cleaning yesterday and have listened to at least thirty times today:

Watch on YouTube

The thing is, there's a set of lyrics that go:

From the old world's demise
See our empire rise

But which I cannot help but hear as

From the old world's demise
See our vampire eyes

And it's reminding me of the Flight of the Phoenix game that schoolpsychnerd ran based on a setting I came up with where the main premise was that after a thousand years of rule by the vampiric Nobility, the humans rose up in a rebellion called the Dawn War and threw down the vampires. And because of a millennium of literally bloodsucking, inhuman aristocratic rule, the very concept of birthright and bloodline granting privileges was irrevocably corrupted such that all the nations built after the rebellion were democracies. Accusing someone of aristocratic leanings was tantamount to accusing them of being a vampire-Dominated sleeper agent.

We were very careful in-game to always remember that the word "Noble" itself meant "vampire."

The whole thing was a great counterpoint to the usual chosen one/born-to-power hero narratives in a lot of fantasy. I've always wanted to go back to that setting but haven't had the chance, and now I'm really busy. But maybe someday.

I posted this on Facebook after I got an advertisement for Crusades-themed sweaters (I assume due to posting links to Sabaton videos) and it's worth reposting here:

Broke: "Deus vult!"
Woke: "!שנית מצדה לא תיפול"
Bespoke: "尊皇攘夷!"

This isn't a joke only for me, but it's not far off.

( Explanation )

Sabaton does have some really good music. Apparently they were in Chicago a couple months ago and I missed them.

I didn't do much the weekend before last, so I didn't write about it at all. But I did a lot last weekend, so here's a recounting of my deeds:

( It is written )

I was worried that I would end up exhausted from all this stuff, but I had a wonderful weekend. I wouldn't want to do this every weekend, and I'm not doing it next weekend, but it was a delightful change. And tonight I'm going to a party and then to Simchat Torah, so I'm looking forward to raucous dancing.

I hope you all had a fulfilling weekend!

I didn't have a lot of time to rest this weekend, but I wouldn't change it.

Friday I invited a bunch of people to Shabbat dinner on no notice, so none of them could come and I had a quiet evening in, which in retrospect was probably a good thing.

Saturday I woke up early and relaxed for a few hours and then the day really began when I left to go the second Chicago Japanese Matsuri. Last year was the first Chicago Japanese Matsuri, and I was a bit leery about going then since the things I like about Japan aren't as popular as ramen and anime (though I do like this too), but I had a pretty good time so going again this year was an easy choice. I just went alone, in the early afternoon so I could watch Tsukasa Taiko and the tea ceremony demonstration. Both of them were neat, and I got the chance to ask the person explaining the tea ceremony a question--what is is the different between urasenke and omotesenke? I asked 3388santa--who sometimes practices urasenke--a while ago, and he had a hard time explaining, though he described turning the tea bowl in different directions depending on school. I got a similar answer this time, that the differences were pretty small. He did explain why almost everyone I've met seems to be an urasenke practitioner, though--apparently the 14th grand master Sekisō Sōshitsu heavily promoted urasenke and opened it up, so it spread widely and is what most people think of when they think "tea ceremony."


I only stayed for about an hour and a half, because I had too much else to do, though I did take advantage of the ACEN booth to get an ACEN badge for even cheaper than the earliest early-bird rates available on the website.

After going home and eating dinner, I walked over to courtney.mcnally.9's apartment for her Equinox Party. I only had about thirty minutes I could spend there before my next appointment, so I was glad that courtney.mcnally.9, who had been held up at work, showed up right before I had to leave. I very briefly got to talk to pinandstutter and saintofsnark too! Then I had to leave, so I walked out with someone else who had also come early and had two more things to do that night, she took an Uber, and I took the Red Line down to the Self-Help House where Mishkan was holding Selichot.

Selichot are pre-High Holy Days prayer services, but this was specifically advertised as a way to come and learn the songs and prayers before the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur service, or to come and sing. Music is one of the major draws of Mishkan for me, and I don't know some of the specific melodies they use (because the musicians write some of their own), so I went to sing in community and not have to hum along while I figured out the melody during Kol Nidre.

I took a short recording of us singing "Kedushah," which Mishkan had arranged to be sung in a round. That was probably my favorite part of the event. The whole thing was amazing, though, which was the consistent theme in the conversations I had after we were over and I was following the rabbinic command to eat more of the food. There's something about singing in community that's wonderful, and it's not available to most people in secular contexts anymore.

I met the Director of Development and we talked briefly, and I said I thought about inviting non-Jewish friends to services just because the music is so amazing. She laughed, but it's more than half true.

When Selichot was done I walked out into the rain and went downtown for the final event. The City Pop DJ Van Paugam has monthly events here and there in Chicago, and a lot of them are on weeknights or otherwise harder for me to get to. This one was at Murasaki, a sake lounge in Streeterville, and on a Saturday night! I invited a bunch of people and got a few maybes and smtemp's definite yes, so in the end it was the two of us in the corner drinking whiskey (from Hiroshima!) and shochu and sake, eating bar snacks, and listening to City Pop. smtemp even recognized some of the songs! We chatted while we watched the couple across from us dance to the music while seated at their table; the pair of men, one of whom was face-down asleep on the table and the other one was dancing to himself; and the table full of Japan enthusiasts (we could tell because of the cat ears) next to us. We called it a night at 1 a.m. and both went home, where I went almost straight to sleep.

Sunday I woke up and basically did chores for a few hours before leaving to go another group singing event. thosesocks put out a call on Facebook for people to come to a Sea Shanty Sing-Along. I got there a little late and sat in the only empty seat next to thosesocks, listened to people chat for a bit, and then the music began. There were a lot of songs there I knew--"Barrett's Privateers," "Drunken Sailor," "Bully in the Alley," "The Coasts of High Barbary," etc--so I was fine joining in the singing, but while I was encouraged to pick a song if I liked (in a non-judgemental or pressuring way), none of the songs I thought of would really have fit. "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is sung as call-and-response but isn't about the sea unless it's one of the versions where she drowns him, "Lecha Dodi" is liturgical music and in Hebrew and not at all about the sea, and while "Sōran Bushi" is a sea shanty and the refrain is literally "Put your backs into it! Heave, ho! Heave, ho!", it's also in Japanese and I really doubt that anyone else would had been able to join in. Since the whole point was about singing in groups, I didn't want to hog the spotlight.

Though thosesocks did tell me that sometimes people sing in Irish or Welsh, so maybe I'll practice up on "Sōran Bushi." They might be interested to hear a shanty from a completely different musical tradition!

I left a little early after signing up for the mailing list and then went home and made dinner--currywurst, using Indian curry sauce instead of the spiced ketchup that's more traditional--and then left at the last minute to go to my final event of the weekend. When the Mishkan Director of Development called me, she suggested I sign up for the small groups that Mishkan was doing to help encourage Teshuvah ("repentence," literally "returning") and there was one a few minutes away. Unfortunately one of Chicago's stormbursts rolled through right as I was far enough away that if I went back for my umbrella I would still have been soaked, so I arrived dripping wet, and hostess offered me a towel, and soon we moved into the dining room for the main event. One of the instructions at the beginning was not to gossip about it, so I won't, but I'll just say that I'm very glad the hostess picked "Attention" as the prompt.

Then I went home, watched the last episode of Fruits Basket (Season Two next year! ), and then went to bed. Tonight, worldbshiny and I are going to try once again to go to soufflé pancakes and then she's bringing me to a performance of Bernhardt/Hamlet at the Goodman. Considering the material, I'll be very disappointed if it doesn't end in a riot.

I was, well, not quite volunteered for it, but nearly so.

To explain, we don't really have a telework policy here, it's most just an ad-hoc determination where managers have sole discretion and no one else has any way of predicting or scheduling anything with any regularity. So they want to make a telework policy and I got invited to the planning meeting. I work directly with physicians' private data and I always figured that's why remote working wasn't allowed for my section, but there are plenty of companies where employees work with sensitive data from remote locations, so there's no fundamental reason it's impossible. I rarely have to collaborate with co-workers and most of my workday is listening to podcasts and staring at a computer.

So, I wandered over to the "Technology, Equipment, and Tech Support" table where people were brainstorming and got roped into joining, so I did. Now I get to research that and we all formulate a presentation (though just the slides, not the actual presenting part), and meet again in a month. I've managed to avoid this kind of thing until now, but nothing lasts forever.

Then on the way home, I got on a later red line than I usually do because I stayed late for the meeting, and we went one stop to Chicago and waited. And then the driver said we all had to get off because of mechanical failure, so I immediately left the station--I knew there would be no point in waiting--and started walking. I got on the bus around North and Clybourn and took it to Belmont, stopped for dinner, and walked the rest of the way to the Otherworld Theatre. Once the sun started setting it was a great night for walking, but it took me an hour longer to get to the restaurant than I expected. I'm glad that the Gateways performance was so great, because I needed it after that day.

Also, I've been listening to a lot of dubstep lately, which is a statement that me from five years ago would be slack-jawed in astonishment at:

"Illenium & Kerli - Sound of Walking Away" (Watch on YouTube)

Like almost all the modern music I listen to, I found it through nightcore. I found a nightcore mix of "Fortress" (pic is a little NSFW) and after I listened to it, I thought "What if this were, like, 20% slower?" and I've since bought almost all of Illenium's albums.

He's coming to Chicago in November and I'm thinking of getting tickets. Do I really want to hang out with a bunch of EDM kids for a few hours? Maybe. Maybe I do. 🎶

Edit: Gorgeous (off the latest album, Ascend), is also really great, and its lyrics are pretty resonant with my life over the last year-and-a-half.

Still sick, but I took today off to recover.

After ACEN, I got home, cleaned up a bit around the apartment, and then texted lisekatevans and asked her if she wanted to go to the Cowboy Bebop popup happening at the Whistler out in Logan Square. I got a text back a couple hours later saying she had been planning to invite me over for cocktails and co-working, so we split the difference--I ate dinner and cleaned a bit more while she wrote, and then I went to her place for an hour before we went out to the bar.

When we arrived, sassyfri and chad.smith.3158 were already there, dressed in Cowboy Bebop shirts, and we settled in and listened to the music, ordered $10 drinks--a miracle in Logan Square--and talked about what made Cowboy Bebop so amazing while we watched someone drawing fanart that was projected on the wall behind the DJs. I also had a nice conversation with chad.smith.3158 about the upcoming Tolkien TV series and how much we'd love to see a Silmarillion TV series, even if it was too high-concept for most people to accept:

Him: "Music? What? What is happening?"
Me: "You're telling me that the problem is the villain sings badly?"

The bar wasn't crowded at all, which I'm of two minds about. At the time it was great, since the volume level was low and we had an easy time talking and no need to push past people. But at the same time, if they didn't get as much business as they wanted, then they won't be of a mind to do an event like this again, and really it's exactly what I wanted from a Cowboy Bebop-themed event. Cowboy Bebop-inspired music, drinks that were delicious and not too expensive, good friends, great conversation, and a lovely end to an ACEN weekend. It reminded me of when greyselke and I used to go to Nocturne in Philadelphia, before either of us could drink, just to sit and listen to goth music and play Geas with my Tarot deck.

I could tell I was getting sick then, though, and I did. lisekatevans said she was impressed with my ability to hold my liquor and survive on little sleep, but it caught up with me this time. Still, it was a great end to a great weekend!

Last night, thanks to being told about it by houtarouh, I went out to Booze Box in the West Loop to listen to Van Paugam spin city pop and eat Japanese food and took stephen_poon, abby_the_hairapist, and lisekatevans along with me. stephen_poon and abby_the_hairapist had gone to a similar event last month on a Friday and told me that it was immensely crowded and they didn't stay very long, but going on a Thursday worked out for us. We arrived and stood around for a bit before abby_the_hairapist flagged down a server and, on hearing that we wanted food, they showed us to a table and we took a seat.


There was no DJ booth or anything, but there was definitely city pop coming through the speakers. I don't know much about it other than Mariya Takeuchi (who wrote "Plastic Love"), but stephen_poon mentioned that a lot of the music reminded him of an old action anime's ED. I kept trying to make out the lyrics, but it's harder for me to understand music in Japanese and also it was in a crowded izakaya with people talking all around us, so "a lot of stuff about love" is about all I got. Sadly, I can't seem to find a set list anywhere online.

The server told us that the kitchen was about to close but that he'd put in our orders before then, so we ordered real food to go with our drinks.

( One food picture and one drink picture )

The noise level was low enough that it didn't feel overwhelming, and Booze Box is the first izakaya I've been in that looks like a Japanese izakaya, all dark wood and small tables set on raised bits of floor tucked into the corners, with dim lighting coming from chōchin-style red lanterns. But we all had to work the next day, some of us earlier than others (up at 6:30 for me...), so after a couple hours we called it a night and went home. But you, going out on a weeknight was pretty nice. Getting up this morning was harder than usual, but I don't feel excessively tired.

Hopefully that continues into the future.

I finally had a dream I remember where the dream was in Japanese. I was at a festival of some kind, but it was dream-weird--it took place in a library and there was no one else there other than me, but I still knew it was a festival because that's how dreams work. I went over to a food stall set up in a side room, and when I walked up I said hello in English. The shopkeep gave me free samples of matcha ice cream, taiyaki, and kitsune udon, and I ate the taiyaki and said it was delicious in Japanese. Then the conversation switched to Japanese and stayed there for the rest of the dream. The shopkeep asked why I hadn't eaten the ice cream--it was because I was too busy eating the other food--and then I was very briefly somewhere else. damaskrosechicago was throwing a party in a room that definitely wasn't her apartment.

Then I was back at the festival and the shopkeep was clearing away breakfast and setting out lunch. It was pretty soon after I had already eaten, so I asked about dessert, and the shopkeep brought out two flavors of ice cream and red bean desserts that looked a lot like build-your-own anmitsu, though the shopkeep said it was something else, and I don't remember the word she used. The two flavors were a purple one, murasaki imo (purple sweet potato), and a green one that looked like matcha, and which I kept calling matcha, but wasn't. I think she said it was honeydew (well, メロン, "melon")?

And then I woke up before I even got to eat it.

So, EmuParadise is shutting down basically thanks to Nintendo. They already removed all of Nintendo's games a while ago, but they recognize that companies are getting more litigious and are trying to head off a ruinous lawsuit at the pass. That's understandable. A lot of the discussion I've seen online focuses on a different aspect of the problem, though--history. As video game historian Frank Cifaldi points out in this twitter thread, most companies do an abysmal job of preserving their own history, leaving it up to the fans to track down betas, put old licensed games online, or keep games working on newer hardware or software, though the companies are sure happy to exploit those efforts for cash. The most obvious example is how GoG.com basically only exists because of hobbyists making DOSBox so they could keep playing old DOS games, though Nintendo packaging up downloaded ROMs and then selling them is pretty egregious too. Nintendo definitely comes off as "thanks for your hard work, now stop or we'll sue you into oblivion" most of the time. Or, as this tweet puts it:
Another tweet succinctly sums it up by saying piracy is a customer solution to a distribution problem. ROMs are why Western gamers were able to play translated versions of Seiken Densetsu 3 and Mother 3 at all, for example. Final Fantasy V wasn't on sale in the West until 1999, but it was available from 1997 as a complete fan translation. The various early Super Robot Wars games will never come out in American due to licensing issues, but fan translations and ROMs means we can still play them. I played Trip World thanks to ROMs, since even the downloadable versions didn't get an American release. The Switch has been out for a year and a half, there's still no virtual console, and the most plentiful retro games available on the eShop are for the Neo Geo.

The status quo is bad for many reasons, is what I'm saying.

I stayed up too late listening to nightcore. I finally listened to Angel with a Shotgun, which itself justifies nightcore as a genre (150 million views?). And I had to go through a bunch of hoops to download these songs, since most online sites don't allow conversion of YouTube videos to mp3s anymore. I get why, but hard to get personal copies of nightcored songs any other way. Angel with a Shotgun has a download link, but it doesn't work anymore.

Looking forward to a low-key weekend before an extremely packed next weekend.

Over on Facebook, I shared a "What music do you think I listen to?" meme and got a few of the expected responses from friends. Techno (True, I listen to Group Therapy), Symphonic Metal (True), Nightwish (True), "The sound of the wind in the leaves of a crisp fall dawn, and also the wailing of a thousand lost souls" (True and True), and video game music (Extremely True).

One person said "Elfcore," since I have a reputation among my friend as an elflord. And with a bit of searching, well, it exists:

Watch on YouTube

Rave in the Woodland Realm tonight. Follow the bonfires.

​Last night, schoolpsychnerd and I went to Shabbat dinner at a stranger's house. It was organized by Mishkan Chicago, which I've heard good things about from multiple people before, but I've never signed up to one of their events or attended their services. I keep an eye on their schedule, though, and when I saw the dinner, and that it was within walking distance, I thought it might be nice.

And it was! It was organized by Mishkan, but they didn't really take part in the actual working of the event. We signed up through One Table, which gives out free gift cards for people to host Shabbat dinners in another of those "rich benefactors endow an organization to encourage more Judaism" plans, schoolpsychnerd made a carrot and chickpea salad with tahini apple cider vinegar dressing, and then we walked down to Andersonville for the dinner. We (all 13 of us) sat around in the hosts' living room for a bit, then moved into the dining room, lit the Shabbat candles and said the blessings, and ate and talked. I was a little surprised at the informality--at schoolpsychnerd and my Shabbat dinners, we always read the week's parashah and talk about it after we finish eating--but it was nice to meet new people and talk about environmental sustainability and how terrible Chicago's recycling programs are. schoolpsychnerd picked up on another guest referencing about Sailor Moon and ended up talking to him about RPGs for most of the night. It definitely makes me want to go to future Mishkan events if these are the kind of people who attend.

We got several invitations to attend Mishkan services as we left. We might.

Today is crowded, with Call of Cthulhu taking up most of the afternoon, and then we have tickets to Symphony of the Goddesses in the evening. This tour is supposed to include music from Breath of the Wild, and I'm really curious to hear how they're going to do that because while I still haven't played the game, I've listened to the soundtrack that came with our copy and most of it is merely okay. There's nothing like Ocarina of Time's Gerudo Valley or Majora's Mask's Deku Palace. Maybe even the subdued ambient pieces will sound better in an orchestra hall, especially when I'm closing my eyes to avoid spoilers from the video accompaniment.