::laughs:: Thanks for clearing that up.

^ Yes! But how many more nutshots can Steve (Ballmer) take these days...lol!

recent events...

denied promotion...again
got a new car...the truck finally RIP!
Living in dark ages...electricity down in my room while bathroom is totally remodeled, so no toliet or shower
went out with much older chick...chemistry is there but was never meant to be
landlord gave me a garage from another tenant (dirty as hell) found an original macintosh, dated vhs camcorders, used porn, bible book hymns, and old faded 70's pics of the grand canyon!

where are you t and e? i'm dying here!

hope all of you are doing well!

::laughs:: Dude! Treasure trove of used crap! You should absolutely see if you can hawk some of it as vintage... whatever.

Sounds like you are going through a few life transitions... Best of luck with all of that.

Trying myself to find a place for my career to set down here in SF. Law jobs are few on the horizon--oversaturation of the market has caused some strange results. Best advice: Don't go into law. HA!

Life is rather amazing at the moment, though...

Ramdom thing. Google used to be called:


I did not know this. Imagine if they hadn't changed the name. We would all be backrubbing each other.
history

It's been a while since the last whirly update so I thought I'd check in with all the other men in my life (aka, you guys! )

I have to say first, I thank everyone for keeping this place going while we patiently wait for the next morsel Tom and Ed throw our way. It's so meh in between albums. I'm glad to see everyone is doing all right!

On my end there are some relatively boring life details which would induce a forum-wide snoozefest, so I'll keep it relatively brief.

My son is now in high school, which puts me closer in touch with my mortality. When the hell did he become of high school age? I've been on this board since he was just a little kid and not even in grade school yet, and now he's all... teenagery. It's weird.

My last grandparent passed away on Father's Day, just a few days shy of his 99th birthday. I'm so lucky to be in my 40's and still had a grandparent alive. The last few weeks of his life were really hard, he had a lot of heavy regrets in his heart. The last few days were especially difficult. He wasn't battling a disease. He was simply old and his body was falling apart, yet his mind was still sharp. And he was scared. Surprisingly though, his passing was peaceful and beautiful, and a bittersweet relief. I think the peace he wanted in life, he was able to find when he finally surrendered to the inevitable. I miss him so much. There's just something about the way a grandparent tells a story that makes it endearing, and even though he was crotchety at times, he always loved to be engaged in conversation. He had so many amazing stories about how life was back in the early part of last century.

In other news, we are in the process of trying to buy a home (with the help of family) but it is certainly a challenge, especially in Southern California where the cost of living and property values are totally blown out of proportion. And as the housing market is still trying to recover from the crash, the banks remain in control and withold a lot of inventory only to dole out property a tiny bit at a time so as to to inflate the cost of already inflated housing market. So in the past 3 weeks we've lost out on 3 homes, having been either been outbid by all cash offers (who the hell has 300-500 grand just lying around in this economy??) or have ceased to play cat-and-mouse with the realtors when it comes to countering their ridiculous counter-offers. It's all been a learning experience, but very discouraging to say the least. But hopefully things will turn around and we'll find the right place to call home.

Oh, I got to see the Flaming Lips in July which was awesome!! And I got to see John Williams conduct the LA Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl (which was equally as awesome, but in a geeky kinda Star Wars way). Ah Hollywood Bowl, such fond memories of when Tom and Ed played there...

I was thinking you'd been a bit quiet lately Whirly. Sorry to hear of your loss. 99 Years is nonetheless a great achievement, and at least you won't feel that you were short changed in the grandparent department.
The banks are bastards. Everywhere. I think whenever a person or institution gains power they are inclined to use and abuse it without even realising (power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely). So having created a lot of the financial problems in the first place by being too reckless, they now make it difficult for anyone to do anything...

Aw, sorry to hear about your father, Whirls. ::hugs:: And I'm certainly sad to hear that the housing-market woes have got you down. I hope that you and the fam manage to snag a place that you will be able to call home for a substantial amount of time! But, yes, that sounds like a very frustrating ordeal.

Managed to snag a new roommate this weekend. She's a fairly down-to-earth individual, it seems, and my intuition tells me she'll work out just fine. The old guy needs to go.... yeesh. Not a terrible situation with the soon-to-be-former roommate, just not a great one. Enough to start this whole process.

Happy Yom Kippur everyone! Oh, for fun, Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement. How does this relate to you? It never hurts to examine your life and ask what you could do better not just for yourself, but more importantly for those around you.

I believe that the strict interpretation of atonement gets into "sinning" and being forgiven for "sins," and I don't buy that shit. What I do buy, however, is the idea that you have choices that you can make every single day, and that we get ourselves into patterns, habits, routines, and we end up choosing to disregard people around us in unproductive, and sometimes counter-productive ways.

How do the choices you make affect others? It's a simple question to ask. On this spiritual day, simply reflect on what choices you make and how those choices may negatively impact those around you, and see if you can't make a different choice from here on out.

Shabbat shalom.

Thanks, guys! Today is a new day, as every day is. Just keeping on...

My parents (who raised my brother and I in a Happy-Hanukkah-Pass-The-Ham kind of way when it came to Judaism) used to drag us to temple for the High Holy Days growing up. High Holy Days are Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year) and Yom Kippur. We'd drive to San Diego where the majority of my immediate family lived, and we'd go to these massive services held at the civic center in downtown. I think the last time we went, I was about 14. The religion was never a priority for my parents, and I used to kind of resent them when they'd put on this show of Jewishness a couple of times a year for High Holy Days. Aside from some weddings, funerals, passover, my son's baby naming - I myself have not had much interaction with the Jewish community at large. Family, yes. Community, not really. My cousins are always there to remind me of that.

The older I get, the more connected I'm starting to feel with my spiritual heritage, and have found comfort in the idea of a god, and have learned a lot about myself and how I want to live my life in the process.

So back to atonement. I now understand its placement on the Jewish calendar, and it's proximity to the start of a new year. To start anew on a clean slate. And I fully and understandably respect that. To me and to a lot of Jews I think, it's not all about confession of sims or asking for forgiveness of sins. The concept of pearly gates and fire and brimstone are not really Jewish, so they don't necessarily apply in this instance. To atone is to set things right in your soul, and asking for forgiveness for any wrong doing and hurt you've done to other people. It is between you and god, you and your fellow man. To ask for peace, inside and out - from god and man.

As some of you know, my husband is a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, and he's gone through those 12 steps you hear people in recovery yammering on about when they speak of sobriety and what they do to maintain their sobriety. The 9th step is making direct amends to people you've been shitty to. And in cases like my husband's, those amends are more like living amends, done daily. I mean, he's still toomuch'stash/makeskidskill filled with biting wit, fire and spit. Hes just more conscious of what he's doing because he's not loaded all the time, and has in mind to think before he goes off treating someone like crap. The laundry list of wrong doings of an addict is not always substantially longer than someone who is a 'normie' and these steps have their base in faith but can be applied to anyone, regardless of faith or lack thereof. So atoning is an every day thing. To me personally, that makes more sense and is applicable than singling out a big grand day to atone for all the wrong doings that have been piling up over the past year.

Whirly, so sorry to hear of your loss. No doubt your grandparent had full life and I'm glad he spend his last days with family around him.
I hope all of us could say the same when our time comes.

Happy Yom Kippur people! I never knew what that really meant (thanks Pooter!), but it seems like a interesting concept of self-examination, which is always a good thing, if one can approach it with objectivity.

I found that older I am, less I'm inclined to be a part of organized religion. I left church in my teens and, I imagine like most of you, come back only for funerals or weddings. That is not to say that i'm atheist, I believe in some sort of God, I'm just not religious.

Hi Whirly, sad to hear about your grandfather, but for him to make 99 years is amazing. It sounds like you had a really good bond with him. I am hoping to develop a similar bond with my granddaughter, she is only 4

And 40's is still really young. Life for me began at 49 when I saw my first Chems concert and it's been pretty sweet since then.

You have to enjoy your children while they are with you, because next minute they have moved out and have children of their own. But once that happens the responsibilities of those parenting years lessen and you can spend more time having fun yourselves. Life begins at 49!

This is pretty cool. Dublab did a project called Secondhand Sureshots, where 4 djs are given $5 each and told to buy 5 records from thrift shops, then are tasked with creating their own song using only samples of these records. Cuts and effects are ok, but no other instruments beyond the sampling. The "documentary" is on Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/24183764

I've been participating in a replication of this held by my local record store, just finished a track. I'll post it in the YOUR MUSIC HERE thread once everything's finished.

^ that was a neat video. I can't say I really liked the finished product of any of the tracks, but I enjoy watching producers talk about how they go about selecting samples.

lol at the music studio in the shed.

Among the producers featured, I only heard of Daedelus

WhiteNoise, on 03 October 2013 - 7:04 AM, said:

I trust Engelbert Humperdinck will feature...

The Chemical Brothers won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize:

http://news.yahoo.co...-232447897.html

Long time offline, how is everyone keeping?

I switched over the channel there and found Sky Arts were playing Don't Think - it's currently at Saturate crossing into Believe (wow) - and thought I should check the forum as I haven't been on in some time. Life is moving on at an unfortunate and unrelentingly steady pace. I believe the last time I was on here in any regular capacity would have been around the time of a tinychat/video thing for a radio show maybe 3? years ago. (can that be right, surely it's only been two?!)

Tonight I am studying, working on some COBOL programming (now I'm getting very little done as 'Believe' has gone full-on mind-melting!) Been studying software development with an aim to diverting into computer security and digital forensics as of next September. I've lost a lot of friends to emigration over the past 2 years and felt stuck in a rut so I took a leap of faith last October and quit my job - with nothing lined up afterward. Nothing!

Mum, on 1 November 2012 - 3:04 PM, said:

'For what?' indeed... So I did something, I went out selling alarm systems door-to-door for a while then realised it was the middle of winter and that maybe I should've waited till the Spring, or at least bought better socks. Then as springtime came, I took up a beginner course in software development and an evening course in college in Digital Marketing, both of which has been quite the roller-coaster but have me in a better place now than I have ever been in my life. I gained a distinction in the college course and graduate next Friday, while I continue to work through next April on my Software Development skills.
I've made big changes in my life as I was quite depressed and seeing a counsellor to help cope with the muck in my head. Key to a lot of it was the fact that my brain was stagnating. Once I had a grasp on my issues and what I needed to do about them, then took the actual step of doing something about it all, I began to see more clearly that I am capable of a lot more. I've gained my driving license and quit smoking along the way - 1 year non-smoker as of the 9th of this month! - and trying out my '30 suit' since June - this being the weight I've gained since turning sexy thirty . (These children-clowns are a bit freaky, not to mention the wired Japanese audience!)
I've read some of the updates above and glad to see people still check in here regularly and keep the chemical heart pumping while we rest in eager anticipation of the next installment from the Brothers we adore. I've recently been enjoying Tom's solo efforts which are perfect for listening to while out running. (This is my first time watching Don't Think in full, and that was one epic finish to the show!)


Anyhow, I just thought I'd check in and see how folk were doing - I hope you guys are all well and positive, or if not, share it (a problem shared is gossip! a problem halved!)

Congrats for going all out on such big life decision! That was 'big balls' of you to quit your job, and now feel limitless about your future and your current bliss. Sometimes we never know if we would've made different decisions during our lives that would impact us completely. I mean just telling yourself to drop everything in front of you and go and reach for something else. Most people would worry, have anxiety, and even fear. I personally couldn't do it, but it's good to hear that someone had made it through the other side (cue 'doors' song)

So you liked the movie? I gotta put that on again! I usually go straight to Star Guitar, then Saturate, then DT! But honestly, I need these chemicals BAD! VERY BAD! Way too long since the last album! A DJ set would suffice, but enough of my rambling! It's good to hear your still down with the Bros and the forum as well.

..great life changing post indeed!