Another one.

A while ago I got on a Constellation Records kick. They’re my favourite label in a whole lot of ways, and I thought I’d pick up a few albums from their current roster blind.

One of them was the Clues album. It’s great — it’s Alden Penner, previously of the Unicorns, whom Mike and I saw in a very, very intimate setting at the Charlotte St. Arts Centre a while ago (though not as Clues then). The show we saw was … well, there were only three or so people in the crowd and probably more than that on stage, and it was pretty awkward all around, but they played well and everyone had a good time. Anyway, the Clues album hits me in a whole bunch of ways Islands (led by Nick Diamonds or whatever he’s calling himself lately, also previously of the Unicorns) doesn’t. I dig the first two Islands albums, but they haven’t really stayed up front and center in any concrete way in particular. Maybe it’s not fair to compare, I don’t know, but the Clues stuff seems to be a more natural progression from the Unicorns stuff — silly, all over the place, not so hi-fi, earnest and meaningful and maybe not quite right all the way around. Anyway, it’s a keeper.

But the one that has messed me up in all kinds of ways is the last Vic Chesnutt album, and I’ve barely even listened to it. I bought this just before Christmas … and before I had a chance to listen to it, the man died. It’s weird having an album of a man who just died floating around, resting here on my bookshelf, there on my nightstand, waiting to be listened to but more importantly, somehow, waiting for the right moment to be listened to. For whatever reason, I couldn’t just bring myself to rip it into iTunes and skip through it on my daily commute.

So a few nights ago I was just sitting in bed reading, and it was time. I listened to it through once, and then again. And you know, words can’t describe. There’s GSY! alumni on the album, so at some points it sounded familiar, and warm and welcome (or scary and unwelcome, depending) for it. The instrumentation is perfect. His voice, and his lyrics, are incomparable. This is a musician I could’ve fallen in love with at any time. And now — I won’t say it’s too late, because the music’s still there, but I can’t help but mourn for something, and someone I could’ve experienced alive, and now never will. That may be overstating the case a little bit. There’s a back catalogue I can explore and enjoy, after all. But any other option is now just null, and that’s as incomparably sad as the music is beautiful.

17 miles on Sunday almost destroyed me. 6 fast miles on Tuesday rebuilt me. Successive bursts of 1000 yard dashes tomorrow will propel me.

I’m back on the marathon training plan, this time on steroids (figuratively speaking). Last year’s marathon (my first and so far only) was good, but I’d like to do better. I’ve decided to target some particular weak points to improve my running and my time: diet, weight and training, in particular.

My diet is probably pretty good given the norm in the northern hemisphere, but I really do want to cut down on the meat and cut up on on the vegetable. I also have to stop eating out so much: Vancouver’s cheap eateries and grotesque commutes make it so easy to do. But I have a great kitchen in my new digs, and I’m remembering some of the larger dishes I used to make back in the day to feed me for days at a time. I’ve also gotten into quick smoothies and such. I should also probably cut down on the beer.

I think the weight issue will solve itself given appropriate diet and cross-training + the normal training runs. I want to drop 10-ish pounds, but I’m leery of getting too scientific about it — counting calories is just not worth it to me. We’ll see what happens. I mean, right now I don’t even have a scale, so I can’t go by anything. I guess aiming for “lighter than I am right now” is a decent enough place to start.

The training … last year, I kept up pretty well with the running plan, but my cross-training was slim to nonexistent. This year, I’ve been trying to swim three days a week (in addition to the 3x runs per week); and as the weather improves, I’ll start biking to SFU 3x per week as well. The ride is easy, and it takes about as long as the bus, which I only daze out on anyway, so it’s not like it’d be eating into my day any more than an extra shower would. But I do figure on some days involving at least three showers a day. And I’d love to get some weights time in, but there’s only so many hours of the day. Ah well.

Lisa lent me Born to Run a little while ago. It hasn’t exactly changed the way I think about running, but it’s brought me back to what I enjoyed so much about it in the first place: the release, the joy in movement, running for running’s sake. I’m not a huge fan of the author’s writing style overall (or of some of his conclusions), but he won me over by the end. I have a feeling that if this spring and summer’s training doesn’t kill me, there’s an ultramarathon lurking in the 10-year distance. We’ll see how it goes; right now, the fast runs feel furious, and the slow ones are meditative (until I bonk and get stripped to the bare metal), and that’s all I can ask for.

I am breaking radio silence to ask: what happens if we establish that we, humans, don’t do much of anything out of individual free will — that everything we do is governed by a system of intricately small systematic little rules and/or patterns of behaviour? Something I’d like to come back to sooner or later. See this chapter for some interesting discussion on our inability to correctly determine probability because we can’t overcome our biases (which we should be taking into account because they aren’t that hidden).

The new Do Make Say album, Other Truths, is out and is amazing. I pre-ordered the deluxe LP package, which came with the following: an 180g LP; a CD; a poster; and a hand-written postcard from one of Constellation Records’ owners. I had to look very hard all over the album sleeve and inserts to find any mention of a URL … the package as a whole felt like a throwback to a pre-internet, pre-mp3 time, and the price for all that — a mere $24 — felt similarly.

The album is four tracks: do, make, say, and think. Each track seems (on the first listens I’ve given them) to be a meditation on one recurring musical theme, not all that different from past albums of theirs. Notes and fragments recall past albums as well. But there’s something I haven’t heard before in this album, and the closest think I can peg is the sound of the very first Furnace Hour. I’m not sure what it is in the mix, but there’s something of that glorious clusterfuck rolling around, buried near the back. Or maybe it’s near the front: that ongoing, sometimes-subtle but mosttimes not surge to the top and over into noise. DMST have done this before, many times before, but this time it sounds different. I know I can’t wait to hear the extended dual-drum rumination on “Make” live.

It’s been a bit of a week. I’m in three classes, and it’s near midterm season and it’s all heating up. I’m also off to Italy for work on Thursday (I’ll write more about that later). I’ve been trying to get stuff tied up before I go, which has necessitated long work hours. I just finished a mini-assignment for a CMPT class, and went to double-check the date to write on it. Long story short, it’s past 12am; I thought it was a day later than it was; I momentarily, terrifyingly thought I was supposed to be on a plane not 30 hours from now but 6, leaving me with a whole bunch of unfinished business, incl. printing out a bunch of stuff before boarding a plane with my damned printer that doesn’t damned work. Good Christ, that was a shock I didn’t need.

Anyway, here’s a solution to a problem that was given in class, written in Java. I don’t know if I can reproduce the problem code we were supposed to fix. Feel free to tell me what it does. I am going to bed now.

package whileIf;

import java.util.Scanner;

public class WhileIf {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		int sum, value = 1, count;
		Scanner scan = new Scanner (System.in);
		sum = 0;
		count = 0;
		while (value != 0 &amp;&amp; count < 10) {
			System.out.print("Enter your value: ");
			value = scan.nextInt();
			sum = sum + value;
			count++;
		}
		System.out.println("The total sum is " + sum);
	}

}