Here are some things to do with Pandaemonium that I'm looking for advice on:

1. What stores should I poster?  In particular, is Sloth gone, or did it just move somewhere else? 
   


2. Should I do street postering?  If so, where?  Will anyone volunteer to do it, or should I hire and pay "the guy that all the other clubs are using"?  (There really is such a person, btw - I met him on 17th Ave and have his contact info.)
   


3. Can any metalheads out there recommend some stuff they like that is post 2000, and preferably post 2005?  I've slacked off on metal a lot since starting Chimera, so I could use ahead-of-time-requests so that I can start building up the selection early-on.  Preferably specific songs as well as bands and albums - I don't have time to skip through tons and tons of tracks right now, so the more specific, the more useful to me.  Doesn't matter if it's mainstream-ish metal, "nu metal," power, viking, etc. - I can use all of it.  I have trouble telling one death metal track from another though, so if you want to recommend that, please be really specific because I will not listen to whole albums of it.
   


4. Need specific song recommendations (i.e. both "what are the hits?" and "what do you like?") especially for the following: Dragonforce, Manowar, Blind Guardian, any Slayer album newer than "God Hates Us All," Mercyful Fate / King Diamond, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Venom, Faith No More, newer Disturbed albums, Mudvayne, Slipknot and all its related projects (Wednesday 13, Murderdolls, etc.), Lamb of God, Chimaira, Arch Enemy albums other than "Wages of Sin," Opeth albums other than "Blackwater Park."  Yeah, I grasp that some people probably hate 3/4 of those bands, but I'm just trying to diversify here.

Thanks for any help that anyone can provide.  (Darkgentleman: I'll make a write-up requesting volunteers in the next couple days; just haven't had time yet to see if I want to change the wording on the poster I used at Chimera.)

I've vaguely been feeling like I should post something this week, but really haven't had a lot of time to be on here. 

Between research, marking and normal class prep, I increasingly feel like this semester is slowly turning into a clusterfuck.  Not that I won't get everything done ok in the end - inevitably I do - but the intermediary state(s) are currently annoying me more than usual. 

Next weekend is likely to be a shut-in-and-catch-up one, though I do still intend on going for tea on Friday.

In the meantime, my apologies to various people who are e-mailing me with social or event-related questions and not getting rapid responses, or who I said I was going to send things to and haven't yet done so, and etc.  I'll try to get to it in the near future. 

Due to talking to my brother about this earlier, I seem to have gotten my brain a bit worked up about some long-distant past issues regarding certain people trying to choose my friends for me.  Since this is aggravating the usual Sunday night non-sleepiness, I'm just going to rant about it for awhile.

Note: I've turned comments off on this entry, because if I wake up tomorrow to various people arguing with me when I'm sleep-deprived, it's going to piss me off.  So if you don't want to read it and not be able to comment, feel free to just not read it.

Oh, and one more disclaimer: if you're on my LJ-friend list currently, please rest assured that whatever overlap there may be between what I'm talking about here and your views, this entry is not attacking or complaining about you.  So please don't interpret any disagreement I may have with you on the subject in question as meaning that I don't respect you or appreciate hearing your insights and concerns even when I end up not agreeing with them.  I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.

* * *

Okay, big Angels of Disruption site update today:

1. Honest Evil's comment log was full of spam, so I decided to just delete the whole site for now;
   


2. A javascript wasn't working on Mourning After Pill, resulting in the website being totally fucked up.  This has now been fixed.
   


3. Rearranged the main Angels of Disruption page, to get rid of Honest Evil and make room for some new items.  There is a big space on one side, but that is intentional because I anticipate putting New Item #2 there a couple months from now.  For now, only New Item #1 is up, that being....
   


4. Pandaemonium: A rudimentary website is now up for the new event (start date: Wednesday, April 14) that I'd been hinting at.

Edit: Here's a more legible-for-online flier; I'll put the obnoxious burning goat behind a cut.

Another great night at Chimera.  Similar sort of turnout to last month, including (strangely enough) a lot of old Warehouse crew.  Seems like the number of request songs is ever-increasing, but I think I kept up way better this month than I sometimes do.

As I had previously threatened (heh), I did end up getting a megaphone.  I'm unsure though as to whether it was loud enough at times.  I am still getting the hang of it though - apparently one needs to speak with one's mouth right against the receiver to get any decent volume - so I think I will stay with it.  It's at least better than the stupid amounts of howl-feedback that the microphone was regularly producing.

Incidentally, I got the megaphone at Bianca Amor Liquidation Centre, which seems to be sort of a cross between XS Cargo and... the flea market?  Very interesting store that I had never been to before.  But yeah... anyway, I can't complain for $20 as far as the megaphone goes.

Thanks to:

• darkgentleman, diss_tress, Kaye, mauler and assorted others for helping on the door.  (I was unclear on whether cadredlight and arden_drake were on the door or not, but certainly my thanks to you as well: arden_drake for helping take things out to the car at the end, and cadredlight for providing an excuse to distribute cake, cupcakes and general merriment throughout the bar. )
• Everyone who signed my "Chimera Volunteer Marine Corps" recruitment sheet.  It's definitely a case of "the few, the proud" right now, but I will be more aggressively recruiting in the next few months because I need staff for the other events...
• The awesome staff at Soda... whose awesomeness you are likely to be hearing even more about in the next couple weeks.
• Everyone who made it out to show their support for the night.

And here is the playlist:

I've decided I won't make official and/or specific announcements about this for a few weeks yet (i.e. late into the second week in March), unless Soda makes the announcement themselves before that time.

That said though, I've been super-excited for the last few days and am having trouble keeping this entirely to myself:

There are currently some "scene" developments being worked on that I think are likely to both a) go some distance in filling the vacuum left by the Warehouse, and b) make a lot of people happy.

Seeing as how this potentially involves me DJing about 2.5x as much as currently, however, my thesis supervisor will definitely not be one of the happy people...

Beyond that, all I'll say for now is that if everything works out the way it's supposed to, look forward to April, and look waaay forward to July.

In the meantime, hope to see you at Chimera tomorrow (i.e. later today).

The following entry is of a rather personal nature.  If you don't know me well, I wouldn't blame you if it made you uncomfortable.  On the other hand, the longer you've known me, the more likely it may make for fascinating reading.

I don't like doing locked entries, however, so I'm putting this disclaimer here so that if you do not want to a) read lengthy, potentially "Too Much Information" anecdotes from my life and b) hear me philosophize and/or moralize about sexuality, the BDSM scene and related topics, you can skip it easily.

Incidentally, I'm braced for this entry to seriously alienate some people, but I've just gotten to a point where I want to speak my mind about this subject regardless.

* * *

I'm tired, but I have two quick thoughts about love to share:

1) Effort

You know what?  If you try and try and try, it might not work.  But if you don't try, because you assume that it won't work, it will definitely not work. 

That's why people stick with things.  Sometimes they stick with stupid things, it's true, but I don't think that unfortunate tendency entirely invalidates the principle.  Hence the sentiment of last year's Valentine's Day post, i.e. fuck the naysayers.

2) Compromise

As in, relationships require it.  "I will not compromise!" is the battle cry of an alienated ego rebelling against the concept that other people also have needs. 

If you don't want to adjust yourself to someone else's needs, don't be in a relationship.  If you don't want to change anything about yourself, then keep to yourself instead of looking for a partner whose primary role is just to validate you.  If you don't want to have to think about how the things you say sound to the other person, or about why they feel and think and respond the way they do, or how the world looks to them, why bother even being with them? 

By all means, don't just try to be someone you're not in order to please and impress another person, but fuck off with this "I will never change myself" attitude so many people seem to have.  How are you supposed to learn and grow and otherwise have a life together if you are not open to being transformed by one another?

That's all I've got for now.  I've got plenty of other things going on in my mind re: love and the nature of the universe, but upon reflection I don't think it's appropriate for what I want in my V-Day entries, so I'll share it some other time.

Something random and amusing I saw when I was just out getting groceries:

This family walks by: mom, two little girls, dad.

The girls were intent on following the mom, but the dad wandered off to the side and was like "ooh, Olympic flags, we could get one of these."

To which the mom replied, in the same tone of voice normally directed at small children who are whining "I want ___" while pulling every visible random thing off the shelf: "no, we don't need that, we need meat for dinner."

I just thought it was funny: reminds me of a wedding I went to in which someone made the wisecrack that, thanks to getting married, the woman (formerly a single mom) had acquired an awesome older brother for her little boy.

I was going to write something constructive reflecting my thoughts about love, as per my usual V-day tradition for the last few years.  However:

a) On the positive side, I've spent the entire late evening (after Chinese New Year's with my family) having a fascinating, enlightening and moving conversation with Zyclobonzaron... hence had no time this evening for other diversions;

and

b) On the negative side, I've received a rather pathetic and presumptuous message from Jerkass, who on one hand refers to me with a compound word of the f___c___ variety, yet at the same time seems to find it mysteriously difficult to stop renewing contact with me even from the other end of the damn country... hence not feeling real inspired at the moment.

So maybe later.

For now, here's a short story from E. O. Wilson about... wait for it... ants.  I actually had wanted to share it when I first found it anyway, and just forgot, but strangely enough the little incident in b) seems to have reminded me.

Edit: Oh Boing Boing, how do you manage to be so awesome at just the right time? Look at this adorable cake!!