Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in margaret pi ratt's LiveJournal:

Monday, October 6th, 2008
5:25 pm	wow I have a blog again I have a blog again, and this isn't it. It's over at Birds Before The Storm. [http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net] (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 9th, 2006
2:37 pm	don't really use this hey, I have no real intention of ever updating this. I pretty much keep it around so I can post comments. but check out the projects that I contribute to, www.tangledwilderness.org and www.steampunkmagazine.com thats all (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 18th, 2005
6:35 pm	obnoxiously difficult writing. I've discovered that nothing is better for postponing working on 'said the pot to the kettle: feminist theory for anarchist men' than checking both my myspace accounts, 5 different emails, friendster, and livejournal. also, its important to check up portland.indymedia.org and infoshop.org... I mean, what if something happened in the past hour. christ. anyway, soon enough i'll have this long theory zine out. and then nobody will read it, and i'll be like 'fuck this, i'm just going to write more comics. every seems to like them okay. especially the people who took them out of my mail enroute.' and 6 months of writing will be about as read as the previous 6 months of writing 'the hall of the mountain king' the 50page zine that i think maybe 2 people read once. maybe. but comics... normal people like them, liberals get annoyed at them, and anarchists like them. I dunno how right wing people feel. and somehow, magically, one of my shipments of comics to the east coast ended up without the comics by the time it reached brooklyn. i wrote another pirate song. its sweet. i'll probably record it in april when I return. tom frampton's music is awesome. (Comment on this)
6:33 pm	hah. i got commercial radio play by accident. i can't tell if thats good or not. but 'attack attack attack' got the song 'this factory was a field' on the morning show of a hip-hop station in portland a couple times. fuckin weird. totally without my doing. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 22nd, 2005
10:39 pm	the anatomy of industrial songs so I spent the past couple of hours mapping out industrial songs, and i've come to realize the standard industrial song [mid-90s and onwards, i believe] has a few certain parts. theres the 'swooshy' or pad synth, generally fairly low, used to give atmosphere particularly in the begining of the song. this is soon replaced by the 'gleep', or panning synth effect that has noise parts in it. there is a second gleep which comes in to replace the first gleep occasionally, that is about an octave higher and slightly more intense. there is the 'twiddle' which is of course, the higher pitched twiddly synth part that is used in the introduction, dropped at the first breakdown, and reintroduced halfway through the first vocal part. it's used of course to add intensity and danciness. then there is the 'boom' which is the drum part used before the 'oontz' is reached. the 'boom' is of course, just a synth bass kick every beat. the 'oontz' can be a little more complex, but is based around the 'boom' with an open hat added for the 'tz' to add to the 'oon' the oontz stays until certain breakdowns. then there is the 'bass'. i put 'bass' in quotes cause usually its pretty loud and higher pitched than expected. it is the same 16th note repeated, shifting notes every bar. of course, there are the vocals. they are usually men trying to sing in ways that sound better when women do it, or if you're lucky, women singing well. sometimes though they are gravelly men. those are okay too. there is also the rare 'synth' which is basically the 'bass' but higher. it is used at the height of tension... aka after the second breakdown halfway through the vocals. now of course, the breakdown is when it goes to just the oontz and the bass, with the gleep fading out, until the oontz drops and the bass does the 'fancy bass' which is the same as the bass but with a few notes changed, one bar, then the bass returns, and then... the 'buildup' which is either a synth ascending in pitch, volume, or both, or it is a drum going faster until it goes really fast at which point the vocals and oontz come back in, the gleep, twiddle and synth soon to follow. but the boom will not be heard again. and the swooshy won't be around until the end. sometimes theres the 'sample' in which some random TV person says something random and 'deep' but these are mostly for the weird bands. so there it is... in order to write industrial songs you need swooshy gleep fancy gleep twiddle boom oontz bass fancy bass synth vocals buildup and possibly sample. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 24th, 2004
1:39 pm	we had some good machines but they don't work no more to sound like a dumb fan, especially of my friends'/mentors' band, I saw ego likeness play in DC last night and it was awesome. granted, I've seen them play a whole lot, since I used to do their lights and photography, but still. mostly because they covered 'faded flowers' by shriekback, and when I was like 16-17 I heard their old band [seraphim gate]'s cover of that song and fell in love with the song, bought the shriekback album. I liked the seraphim gate version better. but it was a crappy recording. and so they played faded flowers last night as ego likeness. and I was filled with joy. anyway. it was weird being at a goth club again. I usually prefer punk shows, not because I prefer punk music [no offense to it, but I dont] but because I prefer DIY spaces and shows. I feel more connected to people in some loft or warehouse or whatever somewhere where I know I can get in without paying if need be cause its not about the money. of course, I'm also much more likely to have malt liquor spilled on me at DIY shows. I heard about some kids in SF who were trying to start a goth/industrial night at a DIY space for this very reason, but I never heard about how it went. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004
5:11 pm	oh god. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20752-2004Dec22.html so uhm. bush finally did it. He's been working on it for years. but now [probably because of the republican house and senate]... okay so before, when a timber company wanted to log on public land [which isn't neccesary for america's timber needs, there are enough private tree farms for that. most of this wood is shipped to asia] they had to go through certain hoops that allowed the public a say in the use of their land. the forest service, for example, had to release an enviromental impact statement [EIS] that analyzed the effects of the cutting. but... who needs forests anyway. its not as if biodiversity is essential to the continued functioning of a collection of organisms [like the planet]. I mean... who cares if there are no forests left, and therefore no wolves or elk or bears or any of those dumb animals anyway. at least we'll have cows still. with the legal recourses to prevent forests from being destroyed [at taxpayers expense, by the way... timber companies are heavily subsidized because they don't make enough profit... so fiscal conservatives should be against this too] gone, pretty much the only thing left to do... is up to your imagination. (Comment on this)
2:41 am	wishing I was better at this music/sound thing okay so I was trying to figure out how to cover skulls[misfits], and it sounded by my count that the notes were changing every second, so 120bpm. but then the drums were more like 160bpm. so I figured, what the hell. and I recorded all the midi shit at 120bpm and the drums at 160bpm. and I uploaded the results earlier today. and then I realized that it sounded like shit. my current theory is that this has something to do with time signatures. and I only know how to program 4/4 and on guitar I can play 2/4 and 3/4 and 4/4 but I don't know what the hell skulls is. maybe i'm wrong. anyway... so I rerecorded drums at 120 and 240bpm and changed the vocals to be more electro [IE distorted poorly]. see, i couldn't figure out the rhythm of how to sing along with the mess i had created originally, so I just sang along to the original and hacked that to where it was supposed to sorta be. and then i blamed the poor results on the fact that I was singing into a pair of headphones [microphones are the the bouegiouse classes, of course] whereas really what happened was that I suck. it still sucks now but hopefully its an endearing suck. which is important because its my christmas present to my friend bethzig [who, as you might be able to guess, is fond of danzig] the lesson learned today is that its not what equipment you have, its how you use it. unless you don't have any equipment. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004
11:05 pm	protest warriors! man, protest warriors are so funny. its funny to watch the right being as dumb as the left. but I really want this t-shirt... http://www.protestwarrior.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=0041 the thing I can't get is how right-wing conservative people spend all their time hatin on big government, but are all about the armed forces and patriotism. I hate on big government [er... government in general] and hate on the armed forces and patriotism too. that seems to make more sense to me. you either like the state or don't. sorta. something. I dunno. but pointing out the hypocrisy in the left is damn fun too, so for that i commend them. (Comment on this)
6:33 pm	i need your skulls okay so I was bored the other day and I was like.... hrmm... i'll cover Skulls by the Misfits, for no other reason than I sorta like that song, its short and pretty simple, so it seemed within grasp. and I guess I sorta succeeded. i mean it definitly is techinically a cover of skulls. www.myspace.com/attackattackattack I need to get a microphone. and find the wires to hook up my midi controller instead of clicking little keys on the computer. and probably what I need to do is get a real synth and an electric guitar. and a new computer. and a pair of wings and a wand that shoots lightning bolts for 3d6 damage. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
2:01 pm	i quit drinking I guess i'll actually start using this, even though nobody reads it [because nobody reads it?] I quit drinking. I'm sick of my friends and myself talking about getting shit done [social activism, anarchism, fun, pranks, whatever] and instead getting drunk. I'm sick of waking up in the morning and asking whoever is lying next to me what I did the night before [that isn't as sexual as it sounds, i'm good about that] I'm sick of fighting my insecurities and anti-social nature with alcohol. So I probably won't really be partying too much anymore cause I still have those insecurities and that anti-social nature. I also realize i'm not good at drinking only moderately. and baltimore sucks for trying not to drink in. at least among the anarcho-punks. where the hell to go? maybe back to the west coast. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
3:47 am	i thought of a second reason. the other thing to do would be to plug 'attack attack attack' the most amazing band named 'attack attack attack' i know. www.myspace.com/attackattackattack if anyone knows a place that hosts more than 4 mp3s, let me know. since somebody is reading this. right. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 11th, 2004
5:45 pm	the only reason I got a live journal The only reason I got a live journal is so I can post to Ego_Likeness's comments and not have to be 'anonymous' (4 Comments |Comment on this)