Doctor Dray designs some kinda decent earphones

Bought a pair of TDK earbuds apparently designed by some fellow with a doctorate in earbud design (I assume. He’s called Doctor Dray or something like that. I surmise he’s some distinguished English audiophile who could tell the difference in quality from leads made with slightly different alloys) mostly because they were the most decent sounding pieces I could find. I’d bought a pair of generic, unbranded ones a week earlier and they’d sounded like someone shitting straight into my ear.

Well it turns out this particular pair the doctor must have made for that hippity hoppity stuff or something because the low end is stupidly powerful, so much so that it drowns out any kind of proper singing or progressive/solo guitar work, which makes up the vast majority of my music. As a result, I’m forced to switch my iPod 6^th gen Nano (which I got for 20 bucks from a friend who “got it from his cousin”)’s  EQ to Treble Booster in order to get decent sound sound definition. I’ll admit that with this setting  it’s pretty good, better than most generic brands I’ve used though not quite as full bodied as my old Samsung pair which I foolishly left in my track jacket pocket when I put it in the wash. Also, TessaracT’s music sounds quite oddly muted, though it sounded very normal in my Samsungs. It doesn’t do this with any other artist’s stuff, or even any other djent songs.

Another, upshot of this is that treble boost consumes battery power like crazy! I just discovered this after barely four hours of play, right as I’m psyching myself up to listen to the latest episode of The Cracked Podcast (which became my favorite podcast with its first episode. Go check it out now, the back catalogue’s still just five episodes thick, so there’s not much catching up to do) when the ‘Pod (does anyone call it that? Or will I have a mob of angry malophiles kicking down my door soon?) tells me I need to plug in. For comparison, I’ve been on 18 hour bus trips listening to back-to-back podcasts and audiobooks and  to loud, techy death metal while I catch some approximation of sleep (I can’t sleep when I can hear the drone of an engine), and never once got that message.

To make things worse, it’s a typical evening in Zimbabwe right now, meaning we have no power, so I’m reduced to the ridiculous situation of powering up my laptop just to charge the ‘Pod (dear Jobs forgive me if I have taken the name of thy product in vain), and writing this post in Word to pass the time and it has just* occurred to me that I could have been listening to the podcast using iTunes (‘Tunes?) all this time. This post really has no point anymore, so I guess the moral of the story is that anything worth doing is worth a hand in the bush.

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To make this worth your while, here’s my favorite TessaracT song. Enjoy.

They cut the second best part of the song – the chilled out trail after the super techy bridge – out for this video. Here’s a full version. In fact, check out the full Concealing Fate if you're up for an excellent 25 minutes. It's absolutely beautiful.

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*P.S. Honesty compels me to tell you that I didn’t *just* realise this. I realized it somewhere around the beginning of the second paragraph.

Sabbath School 16/02/13 - Up the Butt

The fellow holding the afternoon program yesterday (which was about who the ‘boss’ is in the home – guess who they concluded it is) alerted us to one of the greatest tragedies of our time – newlywed young Christian women who are coerced by their new husband into giving anal and oral secks using the rhetoric that he is the head of the marriage and should be obeyed. But the tragic part for him wasn’t the coercion part of it or the stupid, harmful rhetoric used to justify it, but the fact that the young maidens are being made to perform “unbiblical” acts. What’s happening here is indeed a tragedy, buy not nearly for the reason the clueless fool gave.

A woman in this situation is doubly the victim, and the perpetrator is not only the husband forcing her to do something she does not want, but the system that has so narrowed her sexual horizons in this manner. The type of upbringing that Adventists receive and the sex education (or abject lack thereof) they receive completely fails to convey the beauty and adventure of the act, instead filling anything that does not fit into their narrow view of what is acceptable (heterosexual intercourse in the missionary position, preferably for the purposes of procreation, the sick, sick bastards) being filled with shame. There’s a lot of blabber about sex between two married people being a beautiful thing without showing any real appreciation of that beauty, or of the fact that sex, in any paradigm in which you prefer to exclusively or non-exclusively define it, can be just plain fun.

To top it off, they close off some of the most amazing sexual experience. “Congress of the mouth” as it is known in the Kama sutra is a wonderful thing for both giver and recipient, and who the hell isn’t up for a little buttsecks every once in a while? And besides, despite what the old fogeys would most fervently like to believe, some of the best hea- no, I think I’ll hold that thought to myself (hint: it involves the very same mouths from which such marvellous melodies are produced during song service every Sabbath. I do not disapprove – quite the opposite. You’re all champions in my eyes, girls ;)

 On top of this, I believe the young gent is also a victim in all of this (please bear with me; I’m not making an apologism for rape). Sex is at its best when it is a union between equals (or play-acting dominant and submissive roles). It is a congress of mutual, communal pleasure. It becomes an ugly thing when one party is doing something against their will, is under coercion or duress, is not enjoying themselves to the greatest capacity or is in physical pain (unwanted pain: that distinction is important ;). When such is the case, that one enters the relations with an obvious superiority complex, they prevent themselves from experiencing the full beauty and glory of the act. So the ultimate perpetrator, the one which deserves most of the blame, is the edifice, the structure within which all this brainwashing and the terrible lessons and psychologies it perpetuates. The victims are the precious young minds that have been mentally crucified upon the cross of the previous generation’s ignorance.

 (That being said, the folks at this new church know how to put on one hell of a potluck. Numerous side dishes, meat (including god-damned AMANGQINA!!(cow shins & hooves, a local delicacy) and one hell of a dessert to top it off – that has to have been the best potluck of my life thus far!)

[P.S. God damn! It's been more than a year since I last posted here! Well, in that time I've gone through some downs, and more recently a few ups. I was in the doldrums for quite a while, since before I started this blog, in fact. It really intensified last  year, and I frankly couldn't find the old creative spark that burned for so short a while. I may not fully be out yet, let's just wait and see. I'm going to be using this blog from now on as a bit of self-therapy. I've put aside the dreams of becoming  some black atheist Moses who will bring the Children of Africa out of the darkness of religion. I'll be happy enough just to put my thoughts down in print and out to the world, and maybe discover who I am again. Oh, and also share some of the awesome metal I've got myself acquainted with ;P]

[P.P.S. Update on my personal life: I'm still in the closet. I'm also back home in Zimbabwe, since last year in fact, though I moved to another city this year. University keeps being pushed further back; hopefully I'll be going next year. In the meantime, I'm doing a computer engineering diploma course in the equivalent of an American community college.]