Project 86 is looking for funding support for a new album.

It looks sweet as hell too.

They've been one of my favorite bands since high school. The 503 is replete with Project 86 references, up to and including putting their frontman Andrew Schwab in the comic for Strip 300. The Project 86 froams (sic) were the second messageboards I ever posted at. They are, all around, a fantastic band whose brilliance hasn't diminished with time. Not only that, but they did it all with very little label support (back when that was a necessity) and in a scene with very little acts that could hold a candle to them. (One of the few that could, Anberlin, recently announced that they're breaking up after a farewell tour.)

Basically, their music kills, killed and will kill to come. Just about anyone who listens to harder stuff has dug them after I played a few songs of theirs. And their latest crowd-funding project is a fan's dream. For $25, I'm getting a signed limited-edition copy of the album, and a bunch of additional stuff. If you look on the list of perks on the Indiegogo site, it's nuts just how much they're willing to do for their fans.

I really really hope this thing works, which is why I'm spreading the word. It's got 38 days left to work, and they're over halfway there, but I wanna make sure they reach their goal. I'm currently reading a book for class called Who Owns The Future? by Jaron Lanier, and one of the points he makes is that the digital network economy has hollowed out the middle class, and one of the places it started was the music industry. It's harder than ever before to eke out a living playing music, but I think and hope that Project 86 will be one of the rare acts that manages to not only pull it off, but to do so on their own, without having to rely on a label. The future of the music industry is going to increasingly look like this, and as a multi-medium artist myself, I want to support other artists trying to make it work.

Dark Christ Apocalypsos, lol.

Looking through a friend's Facebook tonight, I saw this pic. Hooooooly crap!

Yes, that's me, albeit over a decade ago. I was still a teenager! And also the lead vocalist in Dark Christ Apocalypsos. The dude to the left of me in the pic, with the cross, is Tribble, the lead guitarist. The big dudes in the back were both drummers at different times... the guy on the left is Chris, our first drummer; the guy on the right with the spiky hair is Jeremy, our last drummer. The curly-haired dude to my right is David, Jeremy's brother and our sound guy. The chick in the pic is Leanna, who attended a practice or two and almost filled in for Amber as our pianist for a show, except Amber made it at the last minute.

If Amber was in this pic, that'd be the whole group! Damn.

Something to get you through the hump day.

I really wish there was an animated Calvin and Hobbes series.

Took an online IQ test.

I remember being IQ tested at Minot State University when I was a little kid, and being told that I had an IQ of 144. I saw an IQ test online, and it didn't look like the typical spammy bullshit, so I gave it a whirl. Ten minutes later, I found out I have an IQ of approximately 162 on the European/Cattel scale, or 141 on the Stanford-Binet/USA scale.

The standard caveats apply: intelligence quotient tests are designed for a Euronormative notion of "intelligence," online tests should be taken with a grain of salt, etc. But it bears out what I remember being told as a kid. I'm glad my years of rocking beyond reality haven't really done much to hurt it.

Also, the test itself says it's pretty useless beyond scores of 160 on the Cattel scale, so I might be smarter than that. Couldn't say.

Grad Council.

Not, apparently, an adjunct of Student Council.

Far more important, in fact.

Grad Council determines the course offerings for graduate level, the prerequisite courses necessary, it approves waivers for transfer credits, and takes care of graduate commencement. I'm one of two students on a 14-member body that's mostly professors and then the dean.

All of this is to say that I'm actually very happy to be a part of it. I was worried it'd be some kind of Prestwich-run rubber stamp committee, but it's nothing of the sort. I mean, a lot of it is pro forma, but that's an outgrowth of most professors understanding their own department and not really anyone else's, so when they bring proposals and explain them, nobody really knows enough to argue with it, and generally if they do know enough they agree anyway because most of the proposals make sense.

Thunderstorms on the horizon. Also Minecraft.

I'll have a picture for you all once I get to work. (EDIT: And now I do.)

It's a fitting metaphor. I was up until 5:00 AM playing Minecraft for the very first time. The game's addictiveness was not why. It was a decent way to pass the time while my lungs threw a hissyfit, saying "IF WE CAN'T SLEEP THEN NOBODY SLEEPS." So that's fun. Asthma is one of the few things about myself that I genuinely hate.

Note to myself.

Go to Burkheiser 210 at 11:00 AM next Tuesday. You're on Grad Council now.

Just got a call from Dr. Hyer about it. And I've had Dr. Knight talk to me about it as well. I was on the fence for a while - I didn't want to make a commitment and then walk it back, but with the easing up of my schedule lately I think I'll be able to do this.

So I'm now a part of student government. I have no idea what this means. I know Aaron Prestwich (the guy who had a Vewy Sewious Talk with Nate when he wrote about how bad the campus wifi was) went all banana republic and dissolved the Student Finance Committee last year, which was unfortunate, undemocratic, and possibly even unconstitutional in a literal sense, under state law.

The government shutdown thing.

Pretty entertaining article's up on Slate right now, covering the government shutdown thing in the way that news media typically covers similar government dysfunction in Third World countries. It makes obvious that journalistic standards need to be raised, and foreign countries treated in the press with the same gravity and seriousness that we treat our own.

But enough about that. This isn't the first government shutdown that's ever happened, and unfortunately it probably won't be the last. All I can hope is that the Republicans actually do it. That way the country - the whole country, not just the people paying attention - will finally realize how deranged they've gotten, and will turn out en masse to return the Democrats to power in the House in 2016. Divided government is shitty government when one party refuses to negotiate, and the Republicans need a time in the wilderness before they can be trusted with power again.