Like snow in California

Those who have driven in my car know that one of my favorite possessions is my XM radio. In my opinion, they do a terrible job marketing this thing, because it is just a fantastic service. Now, it's true that I mostly listen to the Comedy channel (and let me tell you, that ALONE would be enough for me to pay the monthly fee), but my tastes rotate. 

For months, I've been content to listen to people making dirty jokes. But Fall is here, and with the change in season comes a change in taste. I want music, I want chord progressions and interesting lyrics and in particular, I want to hear stuff I've never heard before.

This was satisfied for awhile with the purchase of an LP from a local (well, Virginia Beach) band called "Tokyo" which opened for Oppenheimer a month or so ago -- but there's just so many times that you can play a five-song album before you get a little bored with it.

A good friend proclaiming that it was "bland" certainly hastened my boredom.

In terms of discovering new music, XM does me proud. Every time I surf through the 15-20 channels dedicated to the various forms of "rock," I see artists and tracks I've never heard of. I often find myself exercising my short term memory as I frantically try to store the names of artists and songs in my head to download (and yes, pay money to) as soon as I get to my destination.

The other main benefit of XM is the quality. It's not great, certainly not CD quality, but better than you'll get from terrestrial stations (and better quality streams are available online). So I can, in fact, turn up the volume and hear some sort of vibrancy in the music that traditional radio is missing.

And really, what is the point of listening to music if you can't hear the highest highs and the lowest lows?

Perhaps now you can possibly understand my frustration when I turn up a song that is particularly groovetacular and I hear a loud annoying buzz somewhere to my right. At first I believe it's just something loose on the dash or in one of the pockets.

Nope.

Busted a speaker. This can happen for many reasons, but if I had to choose one, I'd have to say it was due to my awesomeness.

Or just the fact that I like to play music pretty loud with factory speakers.

So I'm left listening to the radio at a totally reasonable volume -- that is to say a totally unreasonable volume for me -- until I find the time to get my car into the shop and fixed up.

Bugger.

Mission Statement

I've had a lot of different web presences in the past. My internet identity started out with a Geocities account back when they assigned web addresses based on the idea of communities with streets and house numbers -- I was on 3976 Maze street, Times Square.

Or something.

After I grew bored of working with frames and bullshit banner ads (and when the technology became available) I eventually got myself a Livejournal and fully bought in to the emo-teenager lifestyle. I never wrote poems on my Chucks (I never even owned Chucks to begin with), but I did write long diatribes about how Terribly Horribly Awful my life was.

Mmmmmmm, diatribes.

In college, I finally bite the bullet and bought space on a REAL server and a domain name -- keatnet.net. I had (and still have, to be honest) grandiose plans for that address, but instead of the Awesome Keaton-based Community I dreamed, it became more of a storage facility -- holding little gadgets and files for me as well as some subdomains for my various hobbies.

I wanted to start a new blog there, with full control over the features and the layout and everything... but come on -- a domain name based on a take-off of my NAME? Who DOES that?

Oh. Right. I did.

Again.

Well, this one has a history, at least. Last year I wrote a column for The Daily Cardinal called, you guessed it, Miller's Genuine Drafts. It was at least partially funny and so here I am again, writing some random shit into the ether.

There are, in fact, "deeper" reasons. I'm not sure what direction I'm going to take this piece of my online identity. I've been following politics very closely and it'd certainly be nice to have an outlet for some of those thoughts that isn't Big Orange or the comments section of CNN. On the other hand, the election is soon and who knows how much interest I will keep after then -- I imagine I'll still follow politics but then again I used to be obsessed with the Starcraft ladder.

There are also other things that happen in my life that I can certainly use an outlet for. Though I'm pretty sure divulging Trade Secrets will get me fired faster than you can say "what's in your wallet, a pink slip?" but day-to-day tales of the Office life are probably kosher.

Probably.

So it'll be a mix, a range, a variety, if you will. Some days you'll get the politics, others I'll be detailing my experiences trying to make a decent meal without spending hours at the stove.

And I'm sure it won't be too long before I'm off discussing the pleasures of a good ironing.

Tonight I'm in a political mood, but I'm not going to go off into some liberal manifesto right now -- it's coming, I assure you -- so I will leave you with this.