Whenever I'm driving, the rock stations seem to be infatuated with this new band called Flyleaf. I think this is more strong evidence that the music industry doesn't pick the next big hit by talent, but by what they want people to enjoy.
Their big single right now, "Falling Alive", begins with a vocalist that sounds so much like Avril Lavigne that I thought it was her until I heard differently. Seriously, the resemblence is uncanny. Each verse of lyrics is followed by a really slow, really generic guitar riff that sounds like it should be played about twice as fast for it to sound decent. This goes on and on until the chorus, in which our Avil-alike begins to moan and wail like a broken siren, or maybe a dying quail. The point is it doesn't sound good.
So we have a band that can be distilled into a heaveier, angstier Avril and her brand cronies. It makes perfect sense why this band would be hyped up; it has a similar sound to something else formerly popular, but with enough of a twist to throw people off. Why look for something new and good when a label can find a good retread and repackage it?
What doesn't make sense is how they can do this time and again and not enough people notice it.
In other music news, I bought the new Who album for my father during Christmas, and I think I'm listening to it more than he is. Its nothing like their old blend of rock, but the slower, almost folkier style feels right for these aging rockers, and is catchy for its own reasons. I don't think I've had a modern song stuck in my head quite like Endless Wire has been for the last month.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Seagrams
Is it wrong to drink spirits that come from a plastic bottle? That's the general rule among the people I know, and I tend to follow it myself, but there comes a point where you realize that drunk people are using your bottle of Jim Beam Black or Vat 69 with a can of Coke, and suddenly you have no fine liquor in the house. So when a plastic bottle of Seagram's 7 just happens to be on sale, I think the mixers I know will survive just fine. Really they have no choice :)
Anyway, while at the store I started thinking about something; just who the hell makes Seagram's products? The name can be found on well known whiskeys and gin, as well as a few vodkas and even ginger ale. Usually a distillery focuses on just one spirit (thought they may make various flavors and qualities), but Seagram's has its name on several disjoint products. Could one honest to goodness company be responsible for all of these drinks? I decided to do some research on the legendary brand, which I guess just goes to show you how young I am.
My results are far more mysterious than I imagined they would be. Wikipedia gives a history of the company and how they rose to greatness in post-Prohibition North America, eventually getting ridiculous in the modern decades as they tried to scoop up everything from oil companies to entertainment divisions. As of today, it looks as if multiple alcohol conglomerates scooped up rights to the brands they acquired, while Coke and Pepsi grabbed non-alcoholic brands. A fascinating look at the rise and fall of Seagram's, but it still doesn't answer my question; were they an older version of Diaego or Pernod Ricard, scooping up little guys to add to their collection, or did the Seagram's Distillery(ies) originally make all the stuff with their name on it?
I wasn't finding much luck elsewhere. There seems to be no official site for Seagrams' whiskey, either Seven Crown or Vo. A search of Everything2 coughed up the URL seagrams7.com, but that now points to thebar.com, Diaego's massive drink supersite which doesn't even list any Seagram drinks (outside of Crown Royal).
Time for a close look at the bottle. Seems that the smaller Diaego owned company that actually makes the juice now is called the 7 Crown Distilling Company. Googling this brings up nothing of great worth. Finally, it was a desperate attempt to type segrams.com, which lead to Pernod Ricard (which owns the Gin).
So I suppose my search failed. Seagram's today seems to exemplify the entire wines and spirits industry; despite the old fashioned label that boasts some vintage heritage, just about every drink you can find in the store is owned by some gigantic mega-consortium or holding company. They may still actually make it in some single building distillery, but chances are a lot of them are massed produced in who knows what area of the world, hopefully following a traditional recipe.
At the very least I managed to discover what Seven Crown is made of. Looks like a pretty good drink for a blend, with actual whiskeys rather than a lot of grain neutral spirits put in as filler. Though these days, who can you trust?
Anyway, while at the store I started thinking about something; just who the hell makes Seagram's products? The name can be found on well known whiskeys and gin, as well as a few vodkas and even ginger ale. Usually a distillery focuses on just one spirit (thought they may make various flavors and qualities), but Seagram's has its name on several disjoint products. Could one honest to goodness company be responsible for all of these drinks? I decided to do some research on the legendary brand, which I guess just goes to show you how young I am.
My results are far more mysterious than I imagined they would be. Wikipedia gives a history of the company and how they rose to greatness in post-Prohibition North America, eventually getting ridiculous in the modern decades as they tried to scoop up everything from oil companies to entertainment divisions. As of today, it looks as if multiple alcohol conglomerates scooped up rights to the brands they acquired, while Coke and Pepsi grabbed non-alcoholic brands. A fascinating look at the rise and fall of Seagram's, but it still doesn't answer my question; were they an older version of Diaego or Pernod Ricard, scooping up little guys to add to their collection, or did the Seagram's Distillery(ies) originally make all the stuff with their name on it?
I wasn't finding much luck elsewhere. There seems to be no official site for Seagrams' whiskey, either Seven Crown or Vo. A search of Everything2 coughed up the URL seagrams7.com, but that now points to thebar.com, Diaego's massive drink supersite which doesn't even list any Seagram drinks (outside of Crown Royal).Time for a close look at the bottle. Seems that the smaller Diaego owned company that actually makes the juice now is called the 7 Crown Distilling Company. Googling this brings up nothing of great worth. Finally, it was a desperate attempt to type segrams.com, which lead to Pernod Ricard (which owns the Gin).
So I suppose my search failed. Seagram's today seems to exemplify the entire wines and spirits industry; despite the old fashioned label that boasts some vintage heritage, just about every drink you can find in the store is owned by some gigantic mega-consortium or holding company. They may still actually make it in some single building distillery, but chances are a lot of them are massed produced in who knows what area of the world, hopefully following a traditional recipe.
At the very least I managed to discover what Seven Crown is made of. Looks like a pretty good drink for a blend, with actual whiskeys rather than a lot of grain neutral spirits put in as filler. Though these days, who can you trust?
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Edgy Eft is here! For a while!
Apparently Ubuntu Edgy Eft has been out since October? I'm really on the slow take here. Anyway, it turns out my Dapper Drake install was so cluttered with stuff that i didn't even have enough disk space to upgrade. So after a fresh install of Dapper and an upgrade to Edgy, I'm back in business. Here's something of a mini review Practical Linux Guy (that's me).
For the most part, Edgy is not the leap that we saw from Breezy Badger to Dapper. Instead it looks like the Ubuntu crew took it upon themselves to clean things up a bit more where it counts and give the base install the important tools a user would need. For example, the Applications toolbar is really getting perfected, the "Accessories" section has Archive Manager there by default, as well as a handy Disk Analyzer as well (this is in addition to the calculator, dictionary and screenshot programs already there before). The music section now also has a good version of Rhythmbox as well (was that there before?).
The Places toolbar got some major changes, allowing you to get to all of your mounted drives much easier than in the past with a simple option called "Computer" that gives you all the mounts. Good stuff, but the only problem is they got rid of the "Disks" option that was under the Admin options! This was a quick and easy way to check my free disk space (which is important considering how much I chewed up). There are other ways, but I don't see why this one had to go away.
Finally, the System toolbar is mostly the same, with a (possibly) new options for the look and feel of the GUI and extra account options.
All in all, aside from my Disks gripe, the tweaks are nice, and make it easier to get to things that the average user needs.
A few GUI tweaks though, good ones too! There's a nice little button in the right corner for logging out that's apparently been there since Dapper, but never showed up before for me (because I fucked around with XGL and Gnome before). It also seems that more apps in Edgy minimize to taskbar icons in the right corner, which I quite like (I hate it in XP, but here it feels less invasive).
Oh, and no more sound issues with flash and firefox. I've got Strong Bad emails to catch up with.
The bad
- Edgy seems a bit more sluggish than Dapper, and I'm not sure if its the apps I'm running or Edgy itself. I hope its not my hardware - in any case its not like its horrible, just not as snappy as I remember in the past.
- Default option is for two virtual desktops instead of four. Why is this?
Conclusion: Dapper Drake was fantastic for me, and allowed me to do a lot of fun hacking. It was such a solid release that I hate to leave from it, but the bottom line is that Edgy is necessary to easily get newer versions of your favorite apps (I'm sorry if I don't fucking build everything from source). Already I was able to get a better version of Banshee that supports all the plugins I wanted, so in the end it was all worth it. I'll play around with it some more and see if anything else good or bad happens. Also later I'll do separate impressions of Banshee and the new version of GAIM.
For the most part, Edgy is not the leap that we saw from Breezy Badger to Dapper. Instead it looks like the Ubuntu crew took it upon themselves to clean things up a bit more where it counts and give the base install the important tools a user would need. For example, the Applications toolbar is really getting perfected, the "Accessories" section has Archive Manager there by default, as well as a handy Disk Analyzer as well (this is in addition to the calculator, dictionary and screenshot programs already there before). The music section now also has a good version of Rhythmbox as well (was that there before?).
The Places toolbar got some major changes, allowing you to get to all of your mounted drives much easier than in the past with a simple option called "Computer" that gives you all the mounts. Good stuff, but the only problem is they got rid of the "Disks" option that was under the Admin options! This was a quick and easy way to check my free disk space (which is important considering how much I chewed up). There are other ways, but I don't see why this one had to go away.
Finally, the System toolbar is mostly the same, with a (possibly) new options for the look and feel of the GUI and extra account options.
All in all, aside from my Disks gripe, the tweaks are nice, and make it easier to get to things that the average user needs.
A few GUI tweaks though, good ones too! There's a nice little button in the right corner for logging out that's apparently been there since Dapper, but never showed up before for me (because I fucked around with XGL and Gnome before). It also seems that more apps in Edgy minimize to taskbar icons in the right corner, which I quite like (I hate it in XP, but here it feels less invasive).
Oh, and no more sound issues with flash and firefox. I've got Strong Bad emails to catch up with.
The bad
- Edgy seems a bit more sluggish than Dapper, and I'm not sure if its the apps I'm running or Edgy itself. I hope its not my hardware - in any case its not like its horrible, just not as snappy as I remember in the past.
- Default option is for two virtual desktops instead of four. Why is this?
Conclusion: Dapper Drake was fantastic for me, and allowed me to do a lot of fun hacking. It was such a solid release that I hate to leave from it, but the bottom line is that Edgy is necessary to easily get newer versions of your favorite apps (I'm sorry if I don't fucking build everything from source). Already I was able to get a better version of Banshee that supports all the plugins I wanted, so in the end it was all worth it. I'll play around with it some more and see if anything else good or bad happens. Also later I'll do separate impressions of Banshee and the new version of GAIM.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Food
I've been thinking a lot about food lately. Or rather, how food is marketed to us. It makes me realize that not only am I getting better at understanding the way of the marketer, but it makes me sad to think that I fell for some of this shit for so many years.
Here's a starter example; wild berries. We've got "wild cherry" sodas, and "wild blueberries" in our muffins. What the hell do they mean by wild? Are they telling me that this flavor is "wild and extreme?". Cherry Coke has been around since the 50's - it isn't some new flavor phenomenon. Plus I don't see what could ever be extreme about baked goods. But maybe they really mean wild as in "berries grown in the wild". Again, bullshit - we don't even get real sugar in our colas. There's no convincing me that our cherry flavoring is coming from somewhere other than a factory in New Jersey. Plus there's no way that mass produced muffins are being made after people mosey into the fields by the woods picking berries that may not even be safe. Its the farm or the hydroponics plant, no question.
Then there's the ethnic slant. Apparently Americans have to be convinced that on every corner in Europeland there's a fancy little cafe with elegant fare that we wouldn't dare concoct on our own (because the English totally don't buy generic verision goods at Tesco all the time). Thus the explosion of "bistro blend" on every kind of food. I didn't know that "bistro" food meant sprinkling olive oil or sun dried tomatoes and maybe some fancier bread. Nothing beats consuming the same food as before with 10x more garlic in it.
Its the same with the East. Notice how everyone is in on the "Asian salads" and "Asian Veggies". These Oriental dishes are the same vegetables Americans have been eating for years, like fucking peas and carrots, with the single addition of mandarin oranges or some sort of orange glaze. Maybe some almonds too. Remember people - its Mandarin. You can't get more authentic than that.
How about the popular trend of "down to earth" products. Target sells fancier versions of all our favorite snack foods under the name of "Archer Farms", in order to convince us that this is all coming from some small secluded group of farmers somewhere in the midwest that just so happens to have the ability to supply every Target in America with Rosemary Soy Crisps. Give me a break. I'm also reminded of Seattle's Best coffee, which at first glance seems like a smaller, more authentic version of the sludge Starbucks sells- until you know that Starbucks bought them a while back.
I could go on - and maybe I will later when I remember a few more examples. I just wish they'd stop telling me that everything I'm eating is homegrown and made with the finest ingredients. I know I'm eating unhealthy, preservative jacked junk. I'm cool with that. Kay?
Here's a starter example; wild berries. We've got "wild cherry" sodas, and "wild blueberries" in our muffins. What the hell do they mean by wild? Are they telling me that this flavor is "wild and extreme?". Cherry Coke has been around since the 50's - it isn't some new flavor phenomenon. Plus I don't see what could ever be extreme about baked goods. But maybe they really mean wild as in "berries grown in the wild". Again, bullshit - we don't even get real sugar in our colas. There's no convincing me that our cherry flavoring is coming from somewhere other than a factory in New Jersey. Plus there's no way that mass produced muffins are being made after people mosey into the fields by the woods picking berries that may not even be safe. Its the farm or the hydroponics plant, no question.
Then there's the ethnic slant. Apparently Americans have to be convinced that on every corner in Europeland there's a fancy little cafe with elegant fare that we wouldn't dare concoct on our own (because the English totally don't buy generic verision goods at Tesco all the time). Thus the explosion of "bistro blend" on every kind of food. I didn't know that "bistro" food meant sprinkling olive oil or sun dried tomatoes and maybe some fancier bread. Nothing beats consuming the same food as before with 10x more garlic in it.Its the same with the East. Notice how everyone is in on the "Asian salads" and "Asian Veggies". These Oriental dishes are the same vegetables Americans have been eating for years, like fucking peas and carrots, with the single addition of mandarin oranges or some sort of orange glaze. Maybe some almonds too. Remember people - its Mandarin. You can't get more authentic than that.
How about the popular trend of "down to earth" products. Target sells fancier versions of all our favorite snack foods under the name of "Archer Farms", in order to convince us that this is all coming from some small secluded group of farmers somewhere in the midwest that just so happens to have the ability to supply every Target in America with Rosemary Soy Crisps. Give me a break. I'm also reminded of Seattle's Best coffee, which at first glance seems like a smaller, more authentic version of the sludge Starbucks sells- until you know that Starbucks bought them a while back.
I could go on - and maybe I will later when I remember a few more examples. I just wish they'd stop telling me that everything I'm eating is homegrown and made with the finest ingredients. I know I'm eating unhealthy, preservative jacked junk. I'm cool with that. Kay?
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