r o t b r a i n

More stuff on my mind - 24/10/24

So this post is gonna be way more scattered, and I have no clue how to tie it all together or do segues, so have fun reading I guess.
On the day I'm writing I recorded a few things on my bass, the first time I actually record what I play since I broke some shit on my first bass, which was acoustic. I'll pepper this stuff throughout this post.
I guess I'll order these topics from least to most unhinged.

Devices which emit sound with the purpose of being listened to by human beings

A couple days before I started this blog, I broke my pair of Koss Porta Pro headphones, which I loved dearly. They were lightweight to the point of being kinda flimsy, but they packed some serious punch despite how they looked. They were very warm and bassy.
After having broken them, my mom gave me some cheapo wireless earbuds, I'm grateful but dear god it was such a downgrade it hurt my soul. Sound-wise, they're way too thin, the bass is quiet and if you try turning it up, you get blasted by screeching highs, it makes everything you listen to sound like Nattens Madrigal by Ulver. They run out of batteries after 90 mins and take 30 mins to recharge, and if they fall out of your ears or their case, you better hope they end up somewhere easy to reach.
A few days ago, I bought some cheap wired headphones for a game night so I wouldn't have to worry about batteries running out. They actually got bass, but the highs are muffled like you're listening from inside a coffin, probably cuz they're closed-back. They just broke a couple hours ago at the time of writing this because I did the absolutely CRAZY maneuver of spreading them apart, you know, the thing you do to put headphones on your head? So that fucking sucks.
Out of desperation for that bass, I decided to listen to music via the aux input of my bass amp, and it's actually pretty damn good, after years of almost exclusively listening to music through headphones, it's pretty refreshing to actually feel the kick drum through my body.
My ideal headphones would be similar to the Porta Pros, but less flimsy.

"Alternative Lounge"

Recently, I've been dreaming about starting an "alternative lounge" band, in less pretentious terms, live barber-beats.
I've been listening to quite a bit of barber-beats as-of-late (like punishment by Oblique Occasions), I love the heavy but still relaxing atmosphere of some of this stuff, but the very minimal sample manipulation without credits kind of turns me off, the reason an album like Floral Shoppe is good is because Vektroid, the artist behind it, manipulates the ever-living shit out of her samples in fairly unique ways.
When listening to music, it's more fun to imagine a more involved process for making it than slowing it down and adding reverb in Audacity.
In the meantime, I'll be listening to genres with that sorta vibe: Lounge, RnB, smooth jazz, muzak, downtempo, trip-hop, shoegaze, dub, drone, ambient, noise, other styles of vaporwave, etc...

A cool site I found

Last week, I discovered internet based ghosts and I love it, the part that appeals to me the most is the huge repository of underrated music.
It got me into listening to shortwave radio in the evening again, which is peak comfy activity.
I also found this ambient/drone sesh that was broadcasted on NTS that I really enjoy, I'm a fan of how the sample peeks through all the noise, gives the listener something to latch onto.
I'm definitively gonna include his site button on the home-page when I'll add a section for it.

HCRAESDROW

I have a small word-search game book that is absolutely battered to shit, the covers are barely hanging on, it has been through hell and back.
It was given to me a couple years ago, but I started going through it regularly about 1.5 years ago, got a bit tired of it, and I'm starting to get back into it, I have about 30-ish puzzles left to do.
My usual method for going through a grid is starting with horizontals, then with verticals, and finally doing what's left.
There are a couple variations of the game in there, but the only one that's noteworthy is number-search, which is so much more tedious and methodical than normal word-search since you have to go through both diagonals, you can't rely on recognizing words.

In the Bocchi sauce

I just watched Bocchi The Rock, and I don't want to say Bocchi is "literally me" buuuutttttt...
This show's premise is really relatable to me, WORRYINGLY SO (am i being stalked????). Though I suppose that goes to show how many people are in the same situation as me, people who have social anxiety but still yearn to make themselves heard and to connect with other people.
Bocchi The Rock is genuinely heartwarming and inspiring, it may be one of my favorite animes of all time (Along with Mushishi, Samurai Champloo and others...)
As-of-late, I've taken on a mildly unhinged undertaking. I've been going through a lot of Bocchi The Rock fanfics on AO3, starting from least to most recently updated. I don't read everything though, but I think I'll have read around 50% of all Bocchi The Rock fanfics on AO3 by the end.

And that's all for this post! I hope you enjoy the new style of images, I prefer it since I don't have to worry about making stuff look "perfect" since it all gets abstracted away.
Fun fact about this post and the last one, I worked on the outline of these while hanging outside in a park, I didn't take any pictures so here's an artistic rendition of what it was like.