52 Weeks of Music and Lunch: Week One (Everybody Hates You by Combichrist)

The Food
(Tuesday Feb 23rd)
Orichiette with mock chicken, spinach, peas, and sun-dried tomatoes. I added extra salt and hot sauce, knowing that the original was a touch on the bland side. That said, the mock chicken is pretty good, and it's hard to go wrong with sun-dried tomato. The percentage of calories from protein is not as high as I would ideally like, but that's a minor complaint for some tasty leftovers.

When we had this for dinner, we added pine nuts and grated parmasan cheese to it at the plate - I should have thought to add some to the leftovers this morning.


The Music
Everybody Hates You by Combichrist

Genre: "AggroTech", which wikipedia lists as an offshoot of Electro-Industrial, itself spawned from "Industrial", and defined in opposition to EBM. In short, AggroTech is fast-paced, aggressive techno with lots of yelling and sci-fi movie samples. In the "music made by people with computers" terminology, AggroTech is like angry people having kinky sex with computers.

Similar Bands: Suicide Commando, God Module, Grendel, :wumpscut:, Alien Vampires

Review:

The album featuring club hit "This Shit Will Fuck You Up". Much like that track, pretty much every track on this album is very, very dancable. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, and occasionally problematic to the point of bordering on icky - there are ways to read it so that it's not icky, but several ways to read it that are. Still, I don't listen to AggroTech for the deep, thoughtful lyrics, I listen to it because it makes me want to move as fast and hard as possible. In that regard, this album is an unqualified success. This is music that will get my heart rate up into the endorphin zone (for me, if I can get my HR over 160 for a minute or more, I get the endorphin buzz.)

Lyrics like "Next time you open your mouth/I'll ram my fist down your throught/So far you cannot swallow/I'll make your body hollow" give you an idea of how over-the-top aggressive this album is. This is not a subtle piece of work.

iTunes in general failed with this album - the tracks are mis-labeled. Though, since the lyrics are simple, that's easy to fix. Also, the review on iTunes was apparently written by someone who doesn't like Industrial music in general. I am not sure why someone whould bother to write a review for music they would have known in advance they wouldn't like.

Playlist Potential: This part of the review will call out any songs that I think need to end up on one of my specialty playlists. My Workout, Bedtime, Meditation and Driving playlists are all subject to occasionaly additions to keep them from getting stale. "This Shit Will Fuck You Up" is already on my workout playlist, as well as my workout (heavy) playlist, for those parts of the workout when I want my heart rate to soar and my face to snarl.

"Today I Woke To The Rain Of Blood" may also end up on the Workout list.

Good/Bad

Good/Bad:

Good: Shipment from ThinkGeek; I now have a samurai umbrella, 3 monitor mounted mirrors for work, a coffe cup power inverter that gives me 1 usb power socket and 2 standard power plugs for the car, two power squids, and laser scissors.

Bad: My lungs hate me today.

Good: Managed three good solid workouts this week. In bodycombat, the instructor took my request and worked one of my favourite song/exercise combos in. Also, next time the schedule shifts, she's also taking my suggestion to have a thursday night class, which a) works perfectly with my schedule, and b) means it'll be a full hour class instead of the truncated 45 minute classes we have at lunch.

Bad: Due to excessive caffeine, my guts also hate me today. (The caffeine usually helps with the lungs).

Good: Contact Dance is coming along well. I think by the end of this course, I might actually feel comfortable enough to try a Jam. Though the timing sucks for me.

Bad: The appartment is reaching terrifying levels of messy. We have a moth infestation, though I think (hope!) that they're the sort that eat our food instead of our clothes.

Good: My Indigo shipment also came in - a book on electronics, Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, and a couple non-fictions on superheroes.

Bad: Still having periodic issues with the jaw. Hopefully the dentist on Tuesday will help.

Good: Cafeteria food this week has included meatloaf wrapped in thick slices of bacon with mashed potato and veggies, and veal saltimbocca (sp? basically veal cutlets with fancy ham on top) with a baked potato and veggies. This is why 52 weeks of music and lunch will be hard - the cafeteria food here is *good*.

Good: Despite the good food, I seem to have lost a little bit of weight.

Bad: Despite having just moved into this cube on Monday, I am moving again March 5th, and probably again two weeks after that. I found out about the second move after I'd unpacked everything. The new cube has two walls instead of the three I am used to.

Good: The number of moves is to ensure that we don't end up in "tripods", where they cut the current cubes to 2/3 of their original size, so you can't back up without smacking into the person behind you (where the third wall ought to be). Move 2 has our current cubes tripodded, while move 3 has us move over a couple desks to cube that will not get the tripod treatment.