Quote by AnnaMayZing
I am more than happy to go with that. We have a national radio station called Classic FM. They too include many film scores and other pieces that can't really be classed as strictly Classical. Maybe they should be called Orchestral FM? But then I suppose not all Classical music is necessarily orchestral...
Of course, if you're going to get really strict, Classical is just the music between Baroque and Romantic, so Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven, Salieri, etc. 😉
Mains. In fact, I installed a central vacuum system. Motor and dust bin are in the garage and I just connect a hose to an outlet in the wall. There's like 3 outlets in strategic locations so I can reach the whole house with a 30' hose.
Carpet or hard floor (wood, tile, vinyl)?
Quote by JustAnotherSapphic
I've legit written more in the last week or so while listening to my Tommy than I have in the last year.
This might be of interest (not sure how much of it you already know). Some Tom Petty trivia. Like the fact that he appeared 8 times as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Or that when The Heartbreakers original drummer left in 1994, the first offer to replace him went to Dave Grohl (this was just after Kurt's death put an end to Nirvana). Grohl drummed for the band on an SNL appearance but turned down the offer.
Quote by verbal
Who knew I would become an acupuncture junkie?
My resident artist on Wondercafe2 swears by it and alternative medicine in general. She's got some kind of chronic fatigue thing that mainsteam medicine hasn't been able to treat. You should change your board name to "Pincushion" and use Pinhead from Hellraiser as your avatar.🤣
Quote by verbal
The cats and I will be bacheloring it up with Taco Bell and bad monster movies and baseball games.
Talia: I'm leaving! Bye!
Cats:
Quote by verbal
Plagues are the new zombies. Kill the world with a contagion.
Wonder how that happened, eh.😊
I've noticed, too, that zombies themselves are getting more variety. The use of fungus-based zombies, which actually have a basis in reality, in The Last of Us comes to mind.
Quote by AnnaMayZing
However, although such t music will become classic in the future, I would say that it isn't in that category in the present.
LOL. Tell that to the streaming services. If it is orchestral or even vaguely operatic vocals (think Sarah Brightman or Three Tenors), it often gets socked into classical nowadays. Lines are very blurry. Legendary classical label Deutsche Grammophon released a live album of John Williams' film music (conducted by Williams himself) and that gets tagged classical due to who released it. If "All the Works..." had been released as a separate disc titled "Holopainen : Orchestral Suite No. 1 : All The Works..." rather than being part of Human : || : Nature, I can almost guarantee that someone would tag it "classical".
Voces8 is a vocal octet from England who have been putting out some fantastic work for a couple decades now. Founded by brothers Paul (formerly a bass-baritone but no longer sings, focussing on management of the group and its educational programs instead) and Barnaby (counter-tenor and music director) Smith, they sing repertoire from the Renaissance to the present, with the present including settings of popular music as well as contemporary choral works by composers like Eric Whitacre and Christopher Tin.
But since this is the classical thread, here's a couple of their performances of older works.
Some Bach
And a double motet by 16th century English composer William Byrd
The blonde soprano in these is Eleanor Cockerham who is an amazing singer in her own right. She left Voces8 a couple years ago but comes back from time to time, esp. when they gather with their associated groups and students to form larger choirs.
Depends on the music, but I tend to leave bass kind of middle on car systems (which tend to be bass-heavy), maybe turn it up a notch if I'm using buds on a phone or something else that is weaker on the low end. But, again, the music matters. Metal sounds better with a bit of extra bass, not so much smooth jazz.
Old school damp mop or Swiffer?
Quote by AnnaMayZing
I just found this on YouTube. Everyone knows Running Up That Hill was by Kate Bush, but doesn't it just suit Eivør? It was as though it was written for her!
Anneke van Giersbergen does a great one, too. Dutchies on Floor Jansen's fansite have told me she did a whole concert of Kate Bush covers once.
Quote by redwriter
Arrival at hospital 3.00pm---return home 2.00am.
If it makes you feel better, Canadian ERs are like that, too. My son once waited 13 hours for stitches.
Good morning, world! Wet here. Showers and periods of rain through until the weekend. But I am getting my winter tires off since it seems that the cold wet stuff is done with us.
Putting on some Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee. Form the tea crowd we have Scottish Breakfast and Original Earl Grey.
Okay, not really the world, just civilization as we know it. There's all kinds of ways people have ended the world. Sometimes that's the story. Sometimes it's the backstory to a post-apocalyptic adventure.
There are, of course, a few common ones.
Nuclear war seems to be on a comeback after seemingly falling out of favour for a while after the Cold War ended. It's a fairly realistic one, too, even if a lot of post-nuke fiction gets a bit too gonzo.
Plagues are another realistic one and COVID-19 kind of reinforced that, even if it did not prove civilization-ending itself.
Asteroids or similar celestial phenomena as the cause of our downfall have actually been around for a long time. When Worlds Collide dates to the thirties as a novel (a film followed in 1951) and has another planet on a collision course with Earth. Of course, since the realization that an asteroid impact caused, or at least contributed to, the downfall of the dinosaurs, this now seems a lot more realistic than maybe it did back then.
Then there's zombies, which became popular after George Romero's "Living Dead" movies came out. Sometimes they fall under the "plague" category but not always. In Night of the Living Dead, the cause is never identified though there's mention of a satellite mysteriously crashing to Earth. In the horror-comedy Return of the Living Dead, it's experimental nerve gas that starts the ball rolling. So, really, they are kind of a thing unto themselves that sometimes overlaps with others.
Alien invasion. One of the oldest in modern literature, dating to H. G. Wells' still classic The War of the Worlds (serialized in 1897, published as a novel in 1898). The reasons for these invasions vary. Some are full-on military invasions (e.g. the aforementioned War of the Worlds), some are trojan horses (e.g. the TV series V), still others are subtle infiltrations (e.g. the various iterations of Invasion of the Body Snatchers). And, yes, zombie alien invasions are a thing.
Any favourites? If you were doing apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction, how would you end civilization as we know it?
Yes, I'm contemplating whether to do something in this vein, if not now then eventually.
And Violet again. She credits this to Whitesnake but their version is actually a cover of a 1974 song written by Michael Price and Dan Walsh and recorded by Bobby Bland. And it has been covered myriad times in myriad genres. Violet and her band get bluesy for this one, and I think her voice is fantastic for this sound.
Quote by AnnaMayZing
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - Fanfare for the Common Man.
Funnily enough, I watched that just the night before you posted it. Nice performance and cool that they shot it in the Big O, as we Canucks call Montreal's Olympic Stadium.
Nightwish's last studio album Human : || : Nature turned 4. Came out just in time for the pandemic to force almost a 2 year postponement of the tour. Great album, though. My favourite track, and one of my all-time favourite songs, is "How's the Heart?". The original rocks harder and features the full band, but the acoustic version featuring Troy Donockley on guitar accompanying vocalist Floor Jansen first appeared around the same time as the album. This performance is from a livestreamed virtual show they did during the pandemic.
My in-laws couldn't come over for our wedding but we would have had the same issue. The family members who did come spoke enough English to manage.
Coffee is on. Went with a nice, basic Columbian dark roast. Yay, Juan Valdez!!
Teapots are filled up with English Breakfast and Russian Caravan.
I see the cold drinks are starting to get some use so I've mixed up fresh iced tea and lemonade along with restocking the sodas.
Hot water is available for teas or, if anyone still drinks it in April, hot chocolate.
So come on in! We're ready fer ya!
Quote by tinhatcat
I don't remember when I started writing exactly but it was before high school. Other than basic grammar and composition I haven't had any formal writing instruction, it was just something I always enjoyed. I had an awesome teacher who really encouraged me. When I was in Grade 11 I wrote a story in English class that used the word "F***", something that was absolutely unacceptable at the time. The teacher loved the story and asked me to read it in class including the f-word. I got a standing ovation from the class although I'm pretty sure it was because I got away with swearing in class rather than the story itself. I didn't think that at the time and I think the reaction was a big factor in continuing to write. It was the first time I ever shared anything I wrote publicly. (A variation of this class reading crops up in a story i am currently working on.)
Great story in and of itself. I did some writing through school but was too much of a nerdy "good kid" to have done that. Then in university I actually started toying with writing explicit sex and that sort of thing. Thanks for sharing your story and hope to see some writing from you on here.
|: Nature)