Tuesday, July 3, 2012

In The Army

1987. IMU Bacău, now World Machinery Works LOL. I went to a 10 hour video maraton, "videourile", for wich i paid i can't remember, what, it was 70 lei divided by five families? In somebody's apartment. In one of the breaks between movies they played a version of the song In The Army Now with British band Status Quo, the one with running soldiers. I was familiar somehow with the band since i was myself in a band that did our own cover of Hot Dogs, from Cătălin's memory, with mumbled words :D, when i was in the first second year in college. Recently i heard the real song. Kinda rock and roll country.

I got really obsessed with In The Army Now after seeing that video, i think it was one of the first music videos i ever seen don't know why or maybe i got an idea now, i think i should write about. It was probably the smoke coming from the bathroom pipes enclosure, because my downstairs neighbour was smoking, at least for the recognizable part, cigarettes, and then i was getting euphoric, and i used to think by some magic property gained by doing "yoga" in high school. Pretty much like here before it stopped today @8PM at least for now after i threw some water in the gutters. I recorded the song at the "Recording studio" at the street front of Bacău performing theatre building, they just "happened" to have the album, on one cassette all over on both sides so i can play it continuously. Since i had this Russian cassette player at work for our Sinclair cloned computers with which we were pioneering at IMU in Computer Aided Design, i was playing that song continuously, for what, a month or two? Now i remembered what broke that cycle, but i will rather not say. My colleagues were bending their noses of course but didn't stop me. That's when i made my first gears optimizing program in Sinclair Basic, the one that got a very bad review in a big meeting from the production chief engineer conf.dr.ing.Bontaş. That program would have been ok even by today's standards.

And all this happened before we got our PDP-11 clone. Then i made another version of that program, in the BASIC that came with the RSX-11 operating system.  And many other programs in Fortran77 and even Macro assembler (i learned Macro from the course notes and questions towards my ex-colleague and subordinate that spent 3 months in Bucharest at ICI or CC-MIEt (now i have some doubts)) until 89 when i switched to accounting and payroll in different programming languages like Fortran77, dBase and FOXBASE.

I had no idea why the word Quo was in there in the band's name. Maybe it was just subliminal. Maybe the're all gay (Watch the gesture with the guitar at the beginning of this live version). I don't care i just went crazy for the song, that's all.

It was all subconscious. Any wise ass can tell me why? Cause now i know...

By the way i still like the song...


Saturday, June 30, 2012

They Call It News

For the little information that will verify in the future we have to daily scrap through mountains of informational junk some call it news most of the news are made of. And that's only because we are impatient about our future and try to foresee it. Is that an exploitable sin?

Here some examples of weekend inevitable weirdly news that will never be significant in our lives yet is occupying our minds, perpetually right now...






Sunday, June 24, 2012

Landslide


Hope i'm not drunk or somehting while i write this i don't understand all the words in this song as i did not read the lyrics yet. Ok here they are:

I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around

And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
'Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Mmm Mmm...

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I'm getting older too
(Gutiar solo)

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I, I built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I'm getting older too
I'm getting older too

So, take my love, take it down
Oh climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring you down, down

And If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down
Oh oh, the landslide will bring it down


What's more to say? That it gives me the shivers every time when i see and hear this ice cold northern fairy, Stevie Nicks, together with her golden fingered guitar man, Lindsey Buckingham?