PKhurana.com

Thinking back to a discussion I had with Moiron, I came to the realization that my fastidiousness regarding moderating my writing was a major reason behind my infrequent posts. I often surmise a string of thoughts that I *consider* posting about, but never get around to publishing for one of two reasons. First, I feel as though I don’t have the time to diligently organize and explicate my thoughts. Second, even if I feel like I have the time, I feel burdened by the repetitive cycles I must spend on editing, re-editing, and analyzing my words.

I favor qualitative posts over quantity, a major reason behind the concerns above-mentioned. However, I’ve come to realize that I’m not getting much bang for the buck out of my blog, and I’m not using it as the type of online memorandum that I partially meant for it to be. To actively address these concerns, I’m creating a new category called “processed.” If I tag a post under the processed category, the nomination entails the fact that I’ve conducted due diligence in re-organizing the post to reflect what my selective mind wants to convey. If the tag isn’t present, basically, it’s verbal diarrhea. This would be useful, I would think, in case one is interested in reading only the properly digested material, as opposed to not. For me, it would allow for an avenue to express varying thoughts, as well as one through which to preserve my self-important identity as a literary aficionado.

“In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man.
Now I’ve reached that age, I’ve tried to do all those things the best I can.”

What a fitting set of lyrics to start the show. Judging from the youtube videos alone, the two hour set that Led Zeppelin performed was worth all the anticipation.

I’ve heard people claim that it’s insane to pay thousands of dollars to watch a band whose collective age is almost 225. I’ve heard people call them overrated. These people obviously don’t know $hit about rock n roll. Granted the fact that I play guitar and listen primarily to the Zepp brand of rock, I’m biased towards this reunion gig and everything it means. But whether you’re a fan or not, you can’t possibly negate the impact they’ve had on thousands of musicians. If that’s not enough, just watch the videos… Jimmy Page, at age 63, delivered cleaner and more amazing riffs on this night than most of today’s musicians can dream. You can pay $60 on a normal night and watch a subpar performance from washouts like Creed, or a popwhore like Justin Timberlake. But this show…. man.

Here’s the setlist:

‘Good Times Bad Times’
‘Ramble On’
‘Black Dog’
‘In My Time Of Dying’
‘For Your Life’
‘Trampled Under Foot’
‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’
‘No Quarter’
‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’
‘Dazed And Confused’
‘Stairway To Heaven’
‘The Song Remains The Same’
‘Misty Mountain Hop’
‘Kashmir’
‘Whole Lotta Love’
‘Rock And Roll’

As I write this post, I still don’t know how to explicate how I feel about this event. I know “it’s just music” to most people. It shouldn’t be something to get so hyped about, in the grand scheme of things. But, this is Zeppelin. I’ve dreamed of watching these guys play. There are times that I’ve felt that I was born 20 years too late. Let’s put it this way: if most people had access to a time machine, they’d probably go back to an important historical event. Lincoln’s assassination? Go back and meet Beethoven? Da Vinci, perhaps? I wouldn’t care for any of that. I’d go back to see Zeppelin at Knebworth. I don’t know. I’m at a loss for words. Maybe the right explanation to myself will come to me later.

If there is a US tour, I don’t know to what degree I would go to purchase tickets. It’ll probably be very high, and I’m certainly going to try. A few hundred? A few thousand? I don’t know. But my God, it’ll be a dream come true.

But right now, I just bask in the glory of these youtube videos. I’m getting chills down my spine just hearing the opening drum beats. Man, those attendees were lucky sons of bitches.

Links to videos:

Good Times, Bad Times

The Song Remains the Same

Stairway to Heaven

EDIT: Don’t be surprised if the links suddenly stop working. The diligent folks at Warner Brothers are doing a great job of forcing youtube to take down fan-made videos due to copyright infringements. I hate record companies.

EDIT 2: The bootleg is available here: Link
Enjoy the grooves!

Alas, my love affair with Typo is over. While it was nifty to get rails installed, and to work with ruby in getting the blog running initially, I’ve been bogged down by slow rendering pages, SPAM, viagra, cialis, nexium, and ads for whatever other drug one can possibly think of… not to mention the ever-so-popular “increase your penis size by 11 inches” spam. UGH!

But now, spam no more. I’ve moved the blog to wordpress, with Akismet as my ally. Little did I know, this $hit is pretty darn nifty in itself. Installation took a surprisingly short time, the plugins are abundant, and good lord, I love this theme. Furthermore, in the weeks I’ve lazily spent migrating my posts from the old blog to here, Akismet has successfully done away with over 500 spam comments. *ucking brilliant.

As mentioned regarding the migration, all the posts from Typo have been imported. I’m considering moving the legitimate comments here too, but haven’t done so yet.

The focus now will consist of posting about all the important stuff I’ve missed out on writing about in the past year, no thanks to my spam epidemic. Here’s hoping you the layout, and what’s to come. So far, I certainly do.

It’s the holiday season, which means it’s time to carelessly spend on material objects that we will never use to fruition… unless.

=P

Having owned the Brownsville Acoustic-Electric BCLG6CA for a couple of years now, I decided to add a little flavor in my life. I bought the Les Paul Studio model electric guitar, built by the scrupulous folks at Epiphone. I played this particular unit for about three hours at the Guitar Center in East Brunswick, and came to one immediate conclusion: the choice of guitar makes an unimaginable difference in terms of playing ability. By no means did the guitar transform me into the next Eric Clapton (the world lives on hope), but I realized a sudden burst of untapped ability that sprung forth as soon as I started strumming it. While I experienced a troublesome level of difficulty playing some chord progressions and rhythm riffs with my acoustic, the Les Paul featured a very comfortable neck and low action, esily allowing me to play faster, and with fewer errors.

I purchased a Line 6 Spider II (15-watt) amplifier while I was there as well. This was where the spending splurge started and finished; in self defense, this amp purely ROCKS. There are settings for controlling Drive, Treble, Bass, and Mid levels, with extra features for Tap Delay, Echo, Reverb, Tremolo, Phaser, and Chorus.

MOST important of all, there are four presets; in Line 6 verbiage: Clean, Crunch, Metal, and Insane.

These presets allow you to emulate anything from The Beatles, to Zeppelin, to Metallica, to Nirvana. That makes me happy. Really happy.

Can they one-up themselves further with this product? Yes, they can, and they have. Line 6 has a section called Custom Tones on their site. While it’s not immaculate, it offers presets for thousands of different songs across multiple genres. This alone is extremely helpful, since I don’t want to be fiddling with the different settings while wondering if I’ve arrived at the correct tone to play some Sabbath. Everything is downloadable… free. Did I mention that I’m happy?

Pics:

Both Guitars

Epiphone: 1 2

Brownsville: 1 2

Amplifier: 1 2

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Spent all of yesterday traversing through about 75% of the island. Route 2 is both beautiful and interesting (in a negative way). Beautiful because it runs along the ocean, so it offers some spectacular scenery. Interesting… well, the road isn’t paved perfectly well, so the bumps make you feel like you’re riding on flat tires. The advantage is, though, that most parts of the route don’t have a lot of traffic, so doing 90 on the highway wasn’t unheard of.

We went to the satellite observatory in the morning (it’s a big dish), then headed off to Camuy; they have caverns there. This was the most authentic forest-like experience i’ve ever been involved in. The plant life was lush and plentiful, you could barely see the creatures that bring the vicinity to life (due to their deceptive nature), and the caves themselves were enough to make the whole trip worthwhile. I’ll write more about it when I return, hopefully with worthwhile pics to share.

In the evening, we hit up Lajas, the bioluminescent bay. The cruise ship was a nice way to relax near the end of the day.

Off to the rainforest and beach today… later.

This place is warm, serene, beautiful, and India-like all at once.

The feeling you get as you exit the airport is one of peace and tranquility. We’re staying at the Holiday Inn Express; the place took a good half hour to find, but after paying some Puerto Rican kid at the Esso gas station (where it’s 54.7 cents per liter), we ended up there.

We (Vishal, Krause & Rakesh) got beer from a ghetto as hell place called “Stop & Go” – it’s open 24×7, with no lights. mad ghetto yo.

Anyways, off to the rainforest in the morning… HAPPY BDAY Ms. Shahani!

I haven’t posted in forever… again.

I will be in puerto rico the remainder of this week, through sunday night. Will attempt to post from there.

Also, nice girl syndrome essay to come.

It took a while, but it’s ready.

What took months to deliberate and toil over has finally been completed.

Pleasant Fragrances is my new business venture. It’s a web portal for purchasing brand name perfumes, colognes, deodorants, gift sets, and other forms of fragrances.

Admittedly, the site isn’t quite perfect yet- I intend to add features such as:

• bulletin board
  
• polls
  
• blogs
  
• product ratings/reviews

So as to create a more unique venue compared to other perfume sites on the web. The barebones layout is complete, however, and ready to be used.

That having been said, please tell your friends, and BUY SOMETHING!

Why the hell does everyone own an iPod? It’s really an inferior player with cheap earbuds, a fragile/weak case design, and unbelievably bad battery life.

Yet, 9 out of 10 mp3-player owners on the PATH train have one. DAMN THAT CLICKWHEEL!

I am currently looking at buying this. The Sansa has received exceptional reviews so far, offers a far greater variety of features, and yet costs cheaper than that other player.

On that note, anyone want my iRiver?