So, I explained Zippy's miraculous save of the situation he created to Mrs. NFB last night. How even though he technically destroyed the servers he was being praised for hanging in there and getting them running again. And the company bought him lunch as the engineering department and Destro sat at his table and patted him on the back for a job well done and all that.

And how Destro spent any time not spent praising Zippy yesterday tearing BB and myself down.

And Mrs. NFB proposed that maybe it's like the special kid in class. Maybe so little is expected of Zippy that any little accomplishment is a major huge deal and he needs extra praise for it just because so little is actually expected of him. Meanwhile, we're expected to do great things, and so when we only do slightly above average things, we're told how horrible we're doing for it.

Made me feel better for almost five whole seconds before I realized it still means our boss isn't the brightest bulb in the light fixture.

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On other unmentionable sites I hang out on, where music is the focus, there's an entire forum dedicated to discussing amp tones. It's basically devolved into a metal only babblefest. Which wouldn't be so bad, but there's so god damn much comedy involved in it. . .

See, there's not much in this world funnier than a bunch of metalheads trying to find the most soulful, crisp, clear, and meaningful tone that's possible just so they can play 1/64th notes at 220 beats per minute. It's like watching a bunch of bluesmen talk about how to get more gain out of their 5150s (an amp now considered super br00talz for metal). It just shouldn't happen.

There was a time when metal was about finding a way to aggravate people. You didn't need soulful. You needed aggression. At some point that attitude fell by the wayside in favor of being toneful, soulful, whatever. But then the vocals went to hell. Now it's not considered metal unless the singer sounds like his vocal chords are being destroyed.

And when confronted with the stupidity of it, the defensiveness. . . . Non metalheads told some metalheads that the music they were listing to was really pretty good up until the singing started. Then, then singing just destroyed the goodness. Something I've been saying since the whole screaming thing started. The reaction is, "you just have to tolerate the singing at first, and eventually you'll love it." I've been tolerating the singing since the early nineties death metal bands started to dwindle and change from the guttural growl to the over-the-top scream style. I still don't love it. In fact, it's usually enough to turn me off from a band altogether that I would otherwise like.

All of which means precisely shit because it is what it is and we're stuck with what is unless we're going to change it ourselves. And my power is over this circle about an armspan in radius.

In that circle, I finally went back to the song I previously posted here last night and hashed out what was bothering me about it. No more mud in the drums. The bass is distinct from the guitar. There's a grumbling growl in the low end that wasn't there before. And the guitars don't sound quite so hairy. Plus I added a full-room low-level reverb that's barely discernable in the mix, but seems to add just a shade of smoothness to it all.

All I needed was a few days away from it to figure it out I guess. This one I'm happy with, and the only possible tweak I can see in the future is pushing the bass drum up a touch. Maybe.

If you dug it before, try it now. Better yet, listen to them back-to-back and hear the difference. It's quite a shift.

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ATTENTION FUCKERS WHO OWE ME MONEY INFIDELS!

Pay up or fuck off. When I put that item on hold for you, it was so you could take the thirty seconds it requires to send a paypal payment, not so you could go find a job so that you could get the money to make the payment. Consider me a store, not your personal buddy who's gonna sell you something in the future when you get around to paying him.

Now to re-write the above into something a tiny bit less combative.

Whatever happened to The Terrorists anyways? Did he finally try to hook up with that married chick and get his head sawed off for his trouble? All we're left with is the legacy of "ATTENTION . . . INFIDELS!

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ATTENTION NAIL CLIPPING AT WORK BASTARD INFIDELS!

I will find your nail clipper when you leave your desk and do naughty things to it before tossing it outside. That is, if BB doesn't beat me to it.

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Break? Don't mind if I do.