One thing that’s amused me over the years of seeing bands that have travelled from some part of the US to play in the UK is the weirdness of locations they usually end up in. Take Tuesday night’s gig for example, the legendary Lungfish. Here’s a massively influential band hailing from Baltimore (and being the only signing to Dischord not from Washington, D.C) playing in a social club in some random ghetto area of Leeds.

In many ways though it’s perfectly fitting, and sums up the DIY ethic and grass roots effort that makes bands like Lungfish and labels like Dischord so special. What amuses me is the underground aspect of it all, like how many people who live in the surrounding area know about this? Probably none.

Anyway, I’m going nowhere with that thought so he’s some stuff about the gig itself. Truth be told I was expecting to be a little disappointed; Although I’ve heard so many people speak about how incredible Lungfish are live, I just couldn’t imagine it. Their music can be simplistic, always mesmerising, and totally unique, but I couldn’t picture how this would come off in a live setting. Having now seen them play though I can safely say you’ve no idea how utterly incredible Lungfish really are until you see them live.
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Typical #quake2.uk:

13:30 [Meatballs] but apparently last year more men got raped than women
13:30 [DoGBoY] if so she wanted it
13:30 [DoGBoY] hgonest
13:30 [DoGBoY] lol Meatballs?
13:30 [DoGBoY] wherE?
13:31 [nick\] lol
13:31 [DoGBoY] i want someone to rape me :FD
13:31 [nick\] dogboy is packing his bags right now
13:31 [nick\] :||
13:31 [nick\] sick
13:31 [DoGBoY] moving out
13:31 [DoGBoY] i’m off to rape land
13:31 [nick\] DoGBoY
13:31 [DoGBoY] y0
13:31 [nick\] raped by other men
13:31 [DoGBoY] oh
13:31 [DoGBoY] :/
13:31 [nick\] you realise that yes?
13:31 [DoGBoY] no
13:31 [DoGBoY] didn’t realise
13:31 [DoGBoY] :[
13:31 [Grumbledook] lololol
13:31 [nick\] you fucking spastic
13:31 [nick\] you deserve to get raped tbh
13:31 [DoGBoY] thought it sounded too good to be true
13:31 [Meatballs] im at kent in canterbury db
13:32 [Grumbledook] man that actually did make me lol
13:32 [DoGBoY] no need for directions
13:32 [DoGBoY] i changed my mind
13:32 [maxi^work] lool

n1 Wes.

What the fuck?

“Introducing BT Yahoo! Broadband

With BT Yahoo! Broadband you get a comprehensive, customisable, high speed, ‘always on’ internet access that allows you to be in control.”

When did this happen? :(

From: “Jeremy H. Brown”
To: all-ai@ai.mit.edu
Subject: GSB: 5:30pm, 7ai playroom
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 16:00:56 -0500 (EST)

“Yak shaving.” Our very own Carlin Vieri invented the term, and yet it has not caught on within the lab. This is a shame, because it describes all too well what I find myself doing all too often.

You see, yak shaving is what you are doing when you’re doing some stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you’re supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you’re doing to the original meta-task.

Here’s an example:

“I was working on my thesis and realized I needed a reference. I’d seen a post on comp.arch recently that cited a paper, so I fired up gnus. While I was searching the for the post, I came across another post whose MIME encoding screwed up my ancient version of gnus, so I stopped and downloaded the latest version of gnus.

“Unfortunately, the new version of gnus didn’t work with emacs 18, so I downloaded and built emacs 20. Of course, then I had to install updated versions of a half-dozen other packages to keep other users from hurting me. When I finally tried to use the new gnus, it kept crapping out on my old configuration. And that’s why I’m deep in the gnus info pages and my .emacs file — and yet it’s all part of working on my thesis.”

And that, my friends, is yak shaving. (Not that this particular
example happened to me recently or anything).