P.C. Shannon

Caroline sent me an e-mail this afternoon and asked:

i like fugazi, sunny day real estate, weezer, and modest
mouse. what does this mean?! you like rainer maria and
at the drive-in. i think we might like emo :S

I guess she had been taking a look at the Emo page on All Music.com (search for “emo” as a style — I can’t link directly into their content). What follows is my response.

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Emo is hard to pin down. If Weezer is emo, then every halfway indie band of the nineties is emo, which just isn’t the case. The problem with All Music.com is that its all written by freelance, self-appointed “experts.” I think there’s some editorial oversight, but I don’t know how deep or critical it goes. The problem with rock criticism in general is that any asshole with an opinion and the conviction to get heard can be a rock critic. It’s not like film, where there are whole, respectable degree programs dedicated to its study. People with degrees in musicology are generally viewed as underwater basketweavers, and there’s not very much scholarly work on the subject — and what does exist is largely written and read by academicians. Your average Rolling Stone reviewer, let along the collective mind of the Internet, probably couldn’t or doesn’t care to understand it.So back to emo: do we like it? I like some bands that are clearly emo, like Modest Mouse. But we could spend the rest of our lives debating the exact classification of At The Drive-in or Fugazi. I think of emo as being pop-song lyrics without the pop-song music. But to say that anything that’s kinda punk-y and either addresses emotions or has inscrutable lyrics is “emo” is a gross generalization. The bottom line is this: do you like Dashboard Confessional?

As long as you answer, “No,” you’re still cool.

I’ve been looking for a way to play BattleTech with Jeff for some time. For various reasons, I’ve limited my search to play-by-e-mail (PBEM) solutions. There aren’t really any specific for BattleTech, but there’s Cyberboard, which is a good “electronic cardboard” tool. We would still have to keep track of everything manually, plus check each other’s calculations by hand. And with the way the turn sequence works in BT, it’s just way more work than it’s worth. So I’ve decided to write one on my own. Wesley’s friend Andrew has generously offered to help on the server side. I’ve been doing a lot of background work lately, laying out a strategy and whatnot. I will have to learn some new languages (Javascript, PHP, and a little MySQL basically), but I already understand the programming concepts involved. I wrote a decent little n-tier app when I was still doing IT stuff, and this isn’t too different. It’s just that implementing all the game rules will be a little tricky. I’m looking forward to it, and most of all, to finally whooping Jeff’s ass good.

For my third rotation, I am in Alan Lambowitz’s lab working on the group II intron stuff. It’s nice to be finally doing, you know, actual molecular biology after more than six months in grad school. I’d kinda forgotten how much I enjoy pipetting DNA and setting up reactions. Maybe the novelty will wear off before too long. The biggest complication at this point is that the post-doc with whom I was assigned to work went home to the Czech Republic for two weeks. That was four weeks ago. When he tried to come back, his papers weren’t in order or something and they sent him back to Prague. I’ve heard horror stories about Chinese students being stuck out of the country for four months. Welcome to Bush’s America. So it goes. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to get by without the post-doc and vote Democrat.

I guess March and April have been really busy. There was Spring Break, which was followed by three very busy weeks. I guess I’ve been recuperating since then. But have no fear, there’s a deluge of posts coming. Until then, I must quote Dave Chappel: “I’m back, bitches!”