We have all been there: staying up 3 days in a row trying to force Websphere or BEA or ASP.NET or Python or PHP or Ruby-on-Rails to do what thousands of existing websites already do with AJAX and CSS and XML and so on, but with that little twist in design or business plan that ensures we will not be sued, or that we, unlike the creators of the other 999 web sites, will turn a profit. We have lost spouses and significant others, been written out of wills, found the decomposed remains of forgotten and neglected pets under piles of laundry. We have eaten Hot Pockets. We know it could be better. That's why we're here.
1) Stop writing code.
Just stop it. There is already enough code in the world. Almost all of it is very, very bad. Everybody writes code. True, everybody shits, too, but the plumbing industry is much more mature than the software industry. If you must stay in software development, take some existing code and shuffle it around a bit. Make the error messages more pithy. That sort of thing.
2) Devote at least 20% of your time to evaluating Life Improvement Strategies.
There are many of these floating around. Many, many blogs like Lifehacker, Dumb Little Man,
and Zen Habits present great life-improvement strategies and tactics. There's lots of software to help you put together to-do lists, identify patterns in grocery shopping that correlate with peaks and valleys in your mood and sexual potency, and determine whether that special somebody has DNA that complements yours well, or you should cut your losses now and move on. 20% might not be enough, but if you can achieve this you'll feel the satisfaction and pride of achievement, which might motivate you to put in the extra 5-10%. When you've reached this level, start writing your own life-improvement blog, because there really can never be too many of those.
3) Stop following professional sports, or pretending to
Pretending to is worse than doing it. Really, it is a big waste of time, unless you are betting on it, and then it's a big waste of money, too. And $7 for a fucking hot dog, what the fuck is that? What is this, Iceland?
4) Build your post-apocalyptic survival community
In the event of an civilization-shattering emergency or extinction level event, you will NOT make it on your own, Ayn Rand. Cultivate friends with diverse and complementary skills: sharpshooting, hunting, trapping, hide-tanning, identifying edible plants, hand-to-hand combat, interrogation techniques, purifying urine into drinking water, installation and maintenance of solar power systems.
This is far more important than establishing a good retirement savings plan, yet nearly nobody does it. After the bombs have gone off, it will be too late. You'll be like one of those people who has their first child when they're 50. You don't want to be like that. Speaking of which, this is an area where kids come in handy, and can really start to pull their own weight.
5) Eat less
By restricting your caloric intake to P.O.W./hunger strike levels, you will extend your life span. This has been proven in many studies involving rats. All that extra life span will give you more time to de-clutter your work-space, become debt-free, visualize the completion of big projects, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.
6) Exercise more
Magazines like Men's Health can help you here. Men's Health is particularly good as while nothing is more boring or painful than abdominal exercises, every month they present a new plan to achieve washboard abs. If you are still bored after exploring the rich variety of ab workouts Men's Health has shared with flabby men throughout the years, maybe it's really just that you are a boring person.
Conclusion
I hope you've found this entry helpful and that it enriches your life. More importantly, I hope in the event of accidental nuclear holocaust you don't find yourself imprisoned by cannibals who use your limbs for meat, like in that Cormac McCarthy book, The Road. I did not read The Road, and Nick Hornby in a recent column has assured me that I don't want to. Oprah put the book in her book club, ensuring many uneasy nights and much psychological scarring for countless Moms and Grandmas across our great land, but gods bless that Nick Hornby, he's one of the good guys. Even hearing about the stuff in that book second-hand creeps me out and fills me with gut wrenching despair, the kind of despair only a mind-blankingly intense ab workout will banish.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
What's Going On In Iceland
I was only in Iceland for 4 days, yet I find myself saying 'in Iceland they do this' or 'in Iceland it's like that' like I went to school or worked on a fishing boat there or such. I did enjoy the brief time I spent there, and it did feel like being on another planet when we left the city to check out the glaciers, so it made an impact. Also, I didn't try rotten shark while there, so there are no bad smell-related memories (the strongest kind, supposedly) to detract from the good visual and taste memories.
Anyhow, w/ the US $ only worth 62 ISK (vs. 67 when I was there a couple months ago), I will need to save up some money before I go back. Of course, as Auður Ösp reports in her one fish no bike blog, with unemployment below 1%, employers have been reduced to begging customers to work for them, so there's that option. Or, if I were feeling ambitious, I could push for our company to open a subsidiary there, but they have got Japan and China on the brain these days.
Iceland's Sigur Ros is the subject of a documentary called 'Heima'. The trailer is heavy on footage of Reykjavik and some beautiful Icelandic scenery. You can certainly find worse ways to spend 5 minutes on the internet. Yes, the lead singer's hair is a bit reminiscent of SCTV's Ed Grimley, that's very observant of you.
Anyhow, w/ the US $ only worth 62 ISK (vs. 67 when I was there a couple months ago), I will need to save up some money before I go back. Of course, as Auður Ösp reports in her one fish no bike blog, with unemployment below 1%, employers have been reduced to begging customers to work for them, so there's that option. Or, if I were feeling ambitious, I could push for our company to open a subsidiary there, but they have got Japan and China on the brain these days.
Iceland's Sigur Ros is the subject of a documentary called 'Heima'. The trailer is heavy on footage of Reykjavik and some beautiful Icelandic scenery. You can certainly find worse ways to spend 5 minutes on the internet. Yes, the lead singer's hair is a bit reminiscent of SCTV's Ed Grimley, that's very observant of you.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Flying over Greenland - a welcome distraction from in-flight movies
The highlight of yesterday's flight back from Ireland was the 30 minutes or so where we flew over the southern tip of Greenland. It was like flying over a new planet, looking for signs of life (some of the icebergs looked a bit like boats, and I saw what looked like a town, but was probably seeing things as the 'town' was surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Did a plane drop some crates of supplies in every couple of weeks perhaps?)
I took many, many pictures, with somebody else's camera (travelling w/ many people, almost all of whom took their cameras with them, I didn't bother to take my own and thus got to experience everything at the time it was happening rather than having to wait until it was up on flickr). One I get a hold of the better ones I'll put them up, in the meantime check out this grainy, postage-stamp sized video a guy put up on you tube: here. This one, though the camera work suggests the guy was sharing the plane with several thizzing squirrels, is also nice.
I took many, many pictures, with somebody else's camera (travelling w/ many people, almost all of whom took their cameras with them, I didn't bother to take my own and thus got to experience everything at the time it was happening rather than having to wait until it was up on flickr). One I get a hold of the better ones I'll put them up, in the meantime check out this grainy, postage-stamp sized video a guy put up on you tube: here. This one, though the camera work suggests the guy was sharing the plane with several thizzing squirrels, is also nice.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Where2 fails it and other stuff from our trip to Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill
A co-worker and I spent a week in Raleigh, which was cool overall. In an effort to mitigate tedium we tried out a different restaurant every night, but we were amazed at how often Google or our GPS system (where2) sent us to a place that was no longer in business, for example:
MVP Sports Bar (colleague is football-obsessed.)
2 Bar-B-Q places (Bar-B-Q and Ribs (?), Cooper's (in a seemingly dodgy part of town, first of all, and devoid of any signs of life when we got there)).
Some Indian restaurant w/ 'Sitar' in the name (fortunately 'Bombay Kitchen' was close by and made for a very satisfactory plan B).
On Wednesday we tried out NC-style BBQ at Smithfield's Chicken in Wake Forest (recommended by a classmate from the area). NC-style BBQ is vinegar-based, it's not the sticky, messy, but transcendantly delicious BBQ I was used to. It was good for what it was, but I'm not a convert; I still prefer the tomato-based approach. Anyways, since we were in Wake Forest we decided to check out the Wake Forest campus. The Where2 computer voice lady directed us to the center of a really beautiful little town, past a seminary we at first thought was the campus. We arrived at our destination to find a plaque marking the place where the Wake Forest campus WAS, before it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956. D'oh!
On Thursday I made my 15-years-too-late pilgrimage to Chapel Hill, a capital of indie-rock goodness in the early 90's (Polvo, Superchunk, etc, etc). As Steely Dan says, those days are gone forever, over a long time ago, but they did still have several Polvo CDs at Schoolkids records. I bought a Thee Hypnotics (early 90's Stooge-Hendrix rock) CD for $3, the new Cinematic Orchestra CD, and the new Aesop Rock CD. This signalled to the clerk either a) I have diverse musical tastes or b) I have an shakily ill-defined personality as these choices cancel each other out. Anyhow. My colleague was not much into the Schoolkids Records scene, but is a good guy and let me do the aimless shelf perusal thing for a bit, and took the opportunity to check in w/ his mother, I think (he was speaking Gujarati during the call).
The campus was really nice, just crawling with attractive, seemingly bigger-than-average young people. Bigger as in taller, as in scaled up in all dimensions. Half the kids had cell-phones to their ears, which looks weird to somebody who graduated from college 17 years ago. Some juggling club had a tight-rope strung between two trees. A guy fell off, the boingy sound of the rope followed by the thud as he hit the ground (he was OK, folks). The campus is really beautiful (the non-people part, too).
We ate at 'top of the hill', a brewpub establishment 3 stories up, with an outdoor eating area overlooking Franklin Street. When we got there the football coach was doing the live show college football and basketball coaches at all schools do, hosted by a guy with a voice identical to every other host of one of these shows in every town everywhere in the USA. 'Top Of The Hill' was another classmate recommendation. UNC seemed really cool and gave me a sense of optimism about America's young people, cell phones notwithstanding, or maybe that was the beer at Top Of The Hill (colleague consumed one beer and drove).
A couple other things we learned (aside from how to leverage SQL Server for yr BI needs) in our week in Raleigh:
MVP Sports Bar (colleague is football-obsessed.)
2 Bar-B-Q places (Bar-B-Q and Ribs (?), Cooper's (in a seemingly dodgy part of town, first of all, and devoid of any signs of life when we got there)).
Some Indian restaurant w/ 'Sitar' in the name (fortunately 'Bombay Kitchen' was close by and made for a very satisfactory plan B).
On Wednesday we tried out NC-style BBQ at Smithfield's Chicken in Wake Forest (recommended by a classmate from the area). NC-style BBQ is vinegar-based, it's not the sticky, messy, but transcendantly delicious BBQ I was used to. It was good for what it was, but I'm not a convert; I still prefer the tomato-based approach. Anyways, since we were in Wake Forest we decided to check out the Wake Forest campus. The Where2 computer voice lady directed us to the center of a really beautiful little town, past a seminary we at first thought was the campus. We arrived at our destination to find a plaque marking the place where the Wake Forest campus WAS, before it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956. D'oh!
On Thursday I made my 15-years-too-late pilgrimage to Chapel Hill, a capital of indie-rock goodness in the early 90's (Polvo, Superchunk, etc, etc). As Steely Dan says, those days are gone forever, over a long time ago, but they did still have several Polvo CDs at Schoolkids records. I bought a Thee Hypnotics (early 90's Stooge-Hendrix rock) CD for $3, the new Cinematic Orchestra CD, and the new Aesop Rock CD. This signalled to the clerk either a) I have diverse musical tastes or b) I have an shakily ill-defined personality as these choices cancel each other out. Anyhow. My colleague was not much into the Schoolkids Records scene, but is a good guy and let me do the aimless shelf perusal thing for a bit, and took the opportunity to check in w/ his mother, I think (he was speaking Gujarati during the call).
The campus was really nice, just crawling with attractive, seemingly bigger-than-average young people. Bigger as in taller, as in scaled up in all dimensions. Half the kids had cell-phones to their ears, which looks weird to somebody who graduated from college 17 years ago. Some juggling club had a tight-rope strung between two trees. A guy fell off, the boingy sound of the rope followed by the thud as he hit the ground (he was OK, folks). The campus is really beautiful (the non-people part, too).
We ate at 'top of the hill', a brewpub establishment 3 stories up, with an outdoor eating area overlooking Franklin Street. When we got there the football coach was doing the live show college football and basketball coaches at all schools do, hosted by a guy with a voice identical to every other host of one of these shows in every town everywhere in the USA. 'Top Of The Hill' was another classmate recommendation. UNC seemed really cool and gave me a sense of optimism about America's young people, cell phones notwithstanding, or maybe that was the beer at Top Of The Hill (colleague consumed one beer and drove).
A couple other things we learned (aside from how to leverage SQL Server for yr BI needs) in our week in Raleigh:
- Seemingly 90% of the people in Raleigh are in some branch of the military, or were at one time.
- Downtown Raleigh seems eerily abandoned. You could fire a cannnon down the street and not hit anyone.
- I have no idea what Research Triangle Park looks like, even after driving through it. It's obscured by trees, unlike Silicon Valley, the place too busy to give a shit what it looks like.
- Like everywhere, when you go out to lunch in Raleigh you overhear computer-related conversations all around you. It's pretty boring. People need to get hobbies, in Raleigh and really everywhere. You'd think they could relive their military days of flying helicopters and blowing shit up. It would be more entertaining for people in the vicinity to hear about that sort of thing.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
In Raleigh, NC This Week
I am in the land of 1000 Universities (+ Research Triangle Park) this week for training.
The trip down went well, aside from the Rental Car place. When we tried to save a couple bucks by not upgrading to a Charger, they threatened to put us in a PT Cruiser. Neither of us has a uterus and grandchildren, so we caved in and upgraded to the Charger (also, the Charger is black). They also tried to nickle-and-dime us on several other things. I hate people.
Anyhow we are here and there's wireless in the hotel and and the training is in the hotel (we won't be using the cool black car that much). It is an industrial park kind of place, but with a lot of trees hiding all the bleakness and grayness that industrial parks in Indiana just flaunt like it's the milkshake that brings all the drones to the yard or something. We ate at a place that was pretty nice, but I'm kind of embarassed to even say the name (it was not Bennigan'z at least).
The trip down went well, aside from the Rental Car place. When we tried to save a couple bucks by not upgrading to a Charger, they threatened to put us in a PT Cruiser. Neither of us has a uterus and grandchildren, so we caved in and upgraded to the Charger (also, the Charger is black). They also tried to nickle-and-dime us on several other things. I hate people.
Anyhow we are here and there's wireless in the hotel and and the training is in the hotel (we won't be using the cool black car that much). It is an industrial park kind of place, but with a lot of trees hiding all the bleakness and grayness that industrial parks in Indiana just flaunt like it's the milkshake that brings all the drones to the yard or something. We ate at a place that was pretty nice, but I'm kind of embarassed to even say the name (it was not Bennigan'z at least).
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Sunday, September 02, 2007
People need to take this shit seriously, I broke this story months ago
Back in May I wrote about 'True Hip Hop Facts', including this one:
Some people in the forums are filled with doubt that the person they saw when they saw Doom months or years ago was really Doom. Others wonder if Doom died and the Doom organization is trying to keep the meal ticket going for a while.
I continue for now to think Doom is brilliant. 'Operation: Doomsday' is a classic, even if it's built around uncleared and strangely lightweight samples. His lyrics are among the funniest and most interesting in hip-hop, and his story before this was one of an artist making an unexpected comeback after a tragedy (the death of his brother and fellow KMD member Sub-Roc, killed in a car accident at 20) and years of obscurity. Anyhow we shall watch and see. I hope Doom's OK and that's the end of the pranks on the fans.
MF Doom is actually 5 people who take turns wearing the mask for performances and 'featuring' appearances on other peoples' records.Now, some people thought that was just some jokey material I made up because I was bored, but look at this article posted August 24 on the Paste magazine site: 'MF Doom imposters perform shows?' It seems somebody way too skinny to be the real Doom took the stage at a performance at the Independent in San Francisco for about 20 minutes, did some lip-synching, and left, much to the crowd's dismay and general rage. They dispersed to WiFi hotspots and hit the message boards to spread the word. Byron Crawford, for example, calls him 'The Gallagher Too' of rap, which, well done Byron Crawford, everybody else went for the obvious Milli Vanilli comparison, and you dug a bit deeper. (Gallagher Too is Gallagher's brother, who also does the same watermelon-oriented act). 'Dan' on the SF Weekly blog gave this account:
If the real Doom was watching cartoons and smoking a blunt in NYC while all this was going down, that makes him a great prankster at least. It's punk rock, a great rock-n-roll swindle for our times ('Ever had the feeling you've been ripped off', and all that)....lots of signs pointed to the fact that we all got hustled by Doom. Prior to the show, all independent employees (and signs posted) were adamant about no pictures whatsoever. Standard practice in itself, but never have I seen a place go out of their way to enforce. in retrospect this leads me to believe that the club had advance knowledge of this shady event. In typical doom fashion, he appears on stage roughly 2 hours after the opening act completed. He comes out looking blatantly skinnier (and shorter) to any die hard doom fan. In fact, my first comment to my buddy before I knew what was going down was: "Wow…that doesn't even look like Doom!" He comes out to Benzie box (off of DangerDoom) and no one can hear him as it sounds like his mic is off, (or he's not actually saying anything). All we could hear was his hype man. Even this didn't immediately set off a flag, because sometimes there can be sound issues obviously. After the song completes, he goes right into another song, also inaudible. this is when I started to raise my eyebrows. At every Doom show I've attended, where he's "actually" performed, he has always addressed the crowd and interacted. In fact, one of the best parts of his shows, in my opinion, are his interactions and mannerisms up on stage. unparalleled even, in my 15 years as a hip hop live show attendee. None of this is present. He's just walking back and forth on stage with no visual excitement…just rapper hands. So after 3 songs of this, I go up to the sound guy and let him know that no one in the audience can hear Doom, and ask him if he's aware. Here is his direct response to me: "Yea, I know you guys can't hear him. It's not Doom, and the guy who is up there is lip synching" My response was something to the effect of "yea right…who would do that to his fans?" Especially in the era of illegal downloads…how can he expect to keep a following large enough to pay his bills without a strong stage show? not to mention the legality behind the situation…I mean, if I could personally sue Mr.. dumile, I would. I'd love to get the G back that I spent just to see his sorry ass. I digress. So I go to the bar to cool my nerves, by this time he's muting his way through his 4th song. About halfway through the song, homeboy walks off stage. Done. No words to the crowd, no "peace out," no nothing. Boo's rained down. I had never seen anything like it before. And we're talking about an underground legend here, not just the 7pm opening act from the local high school. Then they told us show was over. that and I couldn't get my money back. The worst part about this is maybe Doom's signature trait: his mask. It provides the perfect alibi for him…no one can really prove any of this, because he hides behind that thing. If I didn't get hustled myself, I would almost respect his game. It's pretty brilliant. But now, as I've been doing more research into this, I've found that he pulled the same thing in LA a couple of nights earlier, and again with Scratch magazine for a photo shoot. To further raise suspicions, he was also a no show for the Rock the Bells show. (him and Nas: the only reasons why I actually made the trip). Magazines, I can understand, but the people who buy his music? The fans that have followed him since KMD? The fans that to date have supported his every move. The ones that travel hundreds of miles to see him? that is MAJOR disrespect. I still can't even believe it.
Please keep me posted on this if you are able. I WAS one of Doom's biggest fan, and now, all I just feel like he spit in my face. We all got hustled that night. Especially me and my girlfriend who spent some hard earned cash just to see him in California, because he didn't schedule anything in the NW. I have legal counsel here in Portland, and have actually already started to explore what kind of options I may have for legal action. Any information (including Independent OR Doom management contact info) you can provide to me would be a tremendous help. Thank you for helping expose this debacle. It needs to be prevented from happening again. Let me know if there's anything else I can provide you.
Some people in the forums are filled with doubt that the person they saw when they saw Doom months or years ago was really Doom. Others wonder if Doom died and the Doom organization is trying to keep the meal ticket going for a while.
I continue for now to think Doom is brilliant. 'Operation: Doomsday' is a classic, even if it's built around uncleared and strangely lightweight samples. His lyrics are among the funniest and most interesting in hip-hop, and his story before this was one of an artist making an unexpected comeback after a tragedy (the death of his brother and fellow KMD member Sub-Roc, killed in a car accident at 20) and years of obscurity. Anyhow we shall watch and see. I hope Doom's OK and that's the end of the pranks on the fans.
Friday, August 31, 2007
'You know, it's one of those 'wonder of me' things'
Here's the artist cloud generated for my alter-ego at last.fm using the tool from silverferret:
Aceyalone Autechre Beastie Boys Beck Björk Cadence Caetano Veloso Charles Mingus Charlie Christian Cocteau Twins Count Bass D DJ Danger Mouse DJ QBert DJ Shadow DJ Vadim Damon & Naomi Deerhoof Devo Gorillaz Griffin Technology J Dilla J Dilla (Jay Dee) Jaylib João Gilberto Lily Allen London Funk Allstars MF DOOM Madvillain Mylo Negativland Oh No Ol' Dirty Bastard Os Mutantes Pavement Quasimoto RJD2 Shu-De Shuggie Otis Sonic Youth Spoon Steely Dan Super Furry Animals The Herbaliser The New Pornographers Tom Zé Tortise Tortoise Tricky Various Artists µ-Ziq
Aside from QBert, who's good and all but I rarely listen to him (he's just been lucky to come up in random shuffle often), it's not a bad representation. 'Griffin Technology' is from when I use the iTrip transformer thingy. And 'Various Artists' just has that universal appeal, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're in more clouds than not.
Aside from QBert, who's good and all but I rarely listen to him (he's just been lucky to come up in random shuffle often), it's not a bad representation. 'Griffin Technology' is from when I use the iTrip transformer thingy. And 'Various Artists' just has that universal appeal, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're in more clouds than not.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Passive Leech of Entertainment Product: Amusements Free and Otherwise to Mitigate my Sufferations
Thank Jah for the library. They don't have the coffee drinks you can get at Borders, but the whole 'Free Books' thing feels revolutionary, in a somebody from the publishing industry is going to sue me for using it. Due to my tragically ravaged attention span I've been going for graphic novels lately, and picked up both Embroideries and Chicken And Plums by Marjane Satrapi. Embroideries revolves around a group of Iranian women spanning 3 generations telling really personal stories about their run-ins with men both Iranian and Western, mostly sexual in nature, and at the end you find out the title means something completely different from what you'd originally thought. In Chicken and Plums heartbroken tar player Nasser Ali decides to die, and succeeds. Very sad, and it also contains unconventional parenting tips which require finding a source of opium. Persepolis was made into a movie, but I have no idea when it's coming out. 'Sometime in 2007' says the site. Well, who knows, I guess we can't have Americans loving Iranians and developing crushes on Marjane Satrapi if Cheney is itching to bomb Iran, as the song by John McCain goes, so maybe it won't come out too soon, which would be a shame. Ah well, those of us brought up through nun-run Catholic schools can relate, some things are universal.
I'm in the middle of 'Petropolis' by Anya Ulinich, part of the young-writers-from-the-ex-Soviet-Union-whose-novels-have-Jewish-protagonists genre I became enamored of after reading Gary Shteyngart's 'Absurdistan', which simultaneously portrayed the ex-USSR as a highly depressing hopeless place and managed to be very funny. Similarly, Ulinich's novel leavens the absurdity and hopelessness with some much-needed humor, and I am battling my attention span limitations to make my way through it.
I also got the graphic novel version of Malcolm X's biography, which looked cool, but I haven't started it.
There has been much listening to podcasts lately, including exploration of 'dubstep', which seemed promising having 'Dub' in the name, and I've decided I like it well enough, although the genre is totally unsuited to the mp3 and the iPod. It seems like something that must be listened to in a dark room with the bass loud enough to throw off your heart's rhythm. Dubstep.fm's podcast is good though long (2+ hours), and actually there's a good Dubstep DJ in Indianapolis, DJ Shiva. Her set was noticeably better than the other DJs on that episode, anyway.
Also good is the Blentcast, which delves into the grime thing I was aware of but not so much into until hearing it in this context. Sick Girls from Germany did a recent set starting with that 'My Neck, My Back' song and wrapping things up w/ Lady SOV's 'Hoodie', which led me to buy 'Public Warning' by SOV on iTunes. I'm not about to go out to catch a 2-song SOV set, but the album is great and the price was nice. I fear a Lindsay Lohan future for Louise Harman, though. What the hell is wrong with you people? Why must you destroy people who make a life of music, like Lady SOV and Nasser Ali? To hell with all y'all.
I'm in the middle of 'Petropolis' by Anya Ulinich, part of the young-writers-from-the-ex-Soviet-Union-whose-novels-have-Jewish-protagonists genre I became enamored of after reading Gary Shteyngart's 'Absurdistan', which simultaneously portrayed the ex-USSR as a highly depressing hopeless place and managed to be very funny. Similarly, Ulinich's novel leavens the absurdity and hopelessness with some much-needed humor, and I am battling my attention span limitations to make my way through it.
I also got the graphic novel version of Malcolm X's biography, which looked cool, but I haven't started it.
There has been much listening to podcasts lately, including exploration of 'dubstep', which seemed promising having 'Dub' in the name, and I've decided I like it well enough, although the genre is totally unsuited to the mp3 and the iPod. It seems like something that must be listened to in a dark room with the bass loud enough to throw off your heart's rhythm. Dubstep.fm's podcast is good though long (2+ hours), and actually there's a good Dubstep DJ in Indianapolis, DJ Shiva. Her set was noticeably better than the other DJs on that episode, anyway.
Also good is the Blentcast, which delves into the grime thing I was aware of but not so much into until hearing it in this context. Sick Girls from Germany did a recent set starting with that 'My Neck, My Back' song and wrapping things up w/ Lady SOV's 'Hoodie', which led me to buy 'Public Warning' by SOV on iTunes. I'm not about to go out to catch a 2-song SOV set, but the album is great and the price was nice. I fear a Lindsay Lohan future for Louise Harman, though. What the hell is wrong with you people? Why must you destroy people who make a life of music, like Lady SOV and Nasser Ali? To hell with all y'all.
Friday, August 17, 2007
My Job gave me ADD: in which I admit to watching 'The Flavor Flav Roast' + MORE!
When I was younger I thought it'd be cool to be the guy who knew stuff, that people went to with their questions about stuff. I could not have been more wrong. So far the highlight of my professional life involved holing up in a little office in the basement of a Mega-Pharma's HQ, probably getting accidentally irradiated and exposed to antibiotics floating around, cranking out code at a furious pace. Those were happy times. Now if I get 10 minutes to think about the same thing without an interruption, it's like I took a vacation to fucking Disneyland and they were giving out Vicodin on the monorail. Not that I have a Vicodin habit. That would be wrong.
I watched 'The Flavor Flav Roast' the other day. I remember being very obsessive about Public Enemy starting around the time of 'Do The Right Thing'. In the car, we listened to 'Fight the Power', and occasionally another song. The album 'Nation Of Millions' was also great, hooking us white boys with the Slayer sample in 'She Watch Channel Zero ?!??!?!' and somehow entering our minds and altering them until we thought the abrasive air-raid siren noise of 'Rebel Without A Pause' was really wonderful music. Flavor Flav had an essential role of adding a modicum of levity to the proceedings, without which everything would have collapsed under the weight of taking itself entirely too seriously (scientists call this the prog-rock effect).
Unfortunately even around that time Flav did not seem overburdened with self-awareness. In an interview he described his role as being 'the guy who breaks it down for the man on the street' as opposed to 'the guy who says "YEAHHH BOYEEEEEE!"'. At the live show we saw during Black Expo one year (the same concert where Trouble T-Roy of Heavy D and The Boyz died after a tragic fall from the upper levels of Market Square Arena, which is now a Parking Lot), Flav gave a rambling speech about the media being out to get us and stay in school. He also did the 'Yeah Boyeeeee!' bit.
The Roast was star-studded, mostly with 1993 stars. Peers Ice T and Snoop Dogg were there, some tiny comic named 'Katt Williams' (?) was there as host. There were several white boy comedians including Patton Oswalt, Jimmy Kimmel, Carrot Top(?) and some guys I've never heard of, and a white woman comic named Lisa Lampanelli(?).
Things got off to a shaky start with the Pimprechaun laying into my man Patton Oswalt, one of my favorite comedians, mainly because Patton is an atheist and doesn't really make a secret about it. He (Katt(?)) was making jokes supposedly, but was having a hard time hiding the fact that he pretty much wanted to tie Oswalt to the stake and light him up, ruling out 'Ratatouille II' (which would be a shame, I liked that movie). P.O. took this in stride and later got his licks in against 12 ounce mouse when it was his turn.
Actually there was many a good insult joke lobbed about that night, although I felt guilty about laughing, kind of like I felt guilty watching Flav on 'Surreal Life' and later 'Strange Love' (I tuned out completely by the time 'Flavor Of Love' came around.) 'Ice T's so old, the first thing he bought with his record money was his freedom' some white guy with an Italian name said. 'Why are you wearing that clock? You haven't had to be anywhere for 13 years!' Lampanelli asked. 'Chuck D. couldn't be here tonight. The D. is for dignity' said somebody else (it doesn't really matter who. I'll never see most of those people again).
Everybody ended with 'aw man I'm just kidding you're great' and a hug for Flav, wearing a comical gold crown (kings lose crowns, but teachers stay intelligent, KRS-One once observed). When Flav got his turn he lobbed a couple of insults of his own, singling out the comedian with the stubble (he's Bennigan'z) for the harshest abuse: 'I'm giving you a rap name: old ugly bastard! Your jokes were racist, straight up, simple and plain, mother-fuck you and John Wayne!' he cried, quoting the aforementioned 'Fight The Power'. Bennigan'z shouted something back, which I couldn't make out.
So that was the Flavor Flav Roast. I feel bad for Flav. He was out there in the 80's and early 90's doing his thing, trying to set a good example, and everything went to hell. Public Enemy's DJ, the enigmatic 'Terminator X' (he only speaks with his hands) last I heard was an ostrich farmer in South Carolina, good honest practical work, but all you hear about or see is Flavor Flav's televised trainwrecks.
I picked up a CD today: 'Dr. No's Oxperiment' by a guy named 'Oh No', who's actually MadLib's brother. It's good instrumental hip-hop, in the vein of Jay Dilla's 'Donuts', only in this case he goes for really out-of-the-way samples (psych from Turkey, Lebanon, Greece and Italy) instead of the over-fished breakbeats we've heard plenty of times by now. Recommended!
I watched 'The Flavor Flav Roast' the other day. I remember being very obsessive about Public Enemy starting around the time of 'Do The Right Thing'. In the car, we listened to 'Fight the Power', and occasionally another song. The album 'Nation Of Millions' was also great, hooking us white boys with the Slayer sample in 'She Watch Channel Zero ?!??!?!' and somehow entering our minds and altering them until we thought the abrasive air-raid siren noise of 'Rebel Without A Pause' was really wonderful music. Flavor Flav had an essential role of adding a modicum of levity to the proceedings, without which everything would have collapsed under the weight of taking itself entirely too seriously (scientists call this the prog-rock effect).
Unfortunately even around that time Flav did not seem overburdened with self-awareness. In an interview he described his role as being 'the guy who breaks it down for the man on the street' as opposed to 'the guy who says "YEAHHH BOYEEEEEE!"'. At the live show we saw during Black Expo one year (the same concert where Trouble T-Roy of Heavy D and The Boyz died after a tragic fall from the upper levels of Market Square Arena, which is now a Parking Lot), Flav gave a rambling speech about the media being out to get us and stay in school. He also did the 'Yeah Boyeeeee!' bit.
The Roast was star-studded, mostly with 1993 stars. Peers Ice T and Snoop Dogg were there, some tiny comic named 'Katt Williams' (?) was there as host. There were several white boy comedians including Patton Oswalt, Jimmy Kimmel, Carrot Top(?) and some guys I've never heard of, and a white woman comic named Lisa Lampanelli(?).
Things got off to a shaky start with the Pimprechaun laying into my man Patton Oswalt, one of my favorite comedians, mainly because Patton is an atheist and doesn't really make a secret about it. He (Katt(?)) was making jokes supposedly, but was having a hard time hiding the fact that he pretty much wanted to tie Oswalt to the stake and light him up, ruling out 'Ratatouille II' (which would be a shame, I liked that movie). P.O. took this in stride and later got his licks in against 12 ounce mouse when it was his turn.
Actually there was many a good insult joke lobbed about that night, although I felt guilty about laughing, kind of like I felt guilty watching Flav on 'Surreal Life' and later 'Strange Love' (I tuned out completely by the time 'Flavor Of Love' came around.) 'Ice T's so old, the first thing he bought with his record money was his freedom' some white guy with an Italian name said. 'Why are you wearing that clock? You haven't had to be anywhere for 13 years!' Lampanelli asked. 'Chuck D. couldn't be here tonight. The D. is for dignity' said somebody else (it doesn't really matter who. I'll never see most of those people again).
Everybody ended with 'aw man I'm just kidding you're great' and a hug for Flav, wearing a comical gold crown (kings lose crowns, but teachers stay intelligent, KRS-One once observed). When Flav got his turn he lobbed a couple of insults of his own, singling out the comedian with the stubble (he's Bennigan'z) for the harshest abuse: 'I'm giving you a rap name: old ugly bastard! Your jokes were racist, straight up, simple and plain, mother-fuck you and John Wayne!' he cried, quoting the aforementioned 'Fight The Power'. Bennigan'z shouted something back, which I couldn't make out.
So that was the Flavor Flav Roast. I feel bad for Flav. He was out there in the 80's and early 90's doing his thing, trying to set a good example, and everything went to hell. Public Enemy's DJ, the enigmatic 'Terminator X' (he only speaks with his hands) last I heard was an ostrich farmer in South Carolina, good honest practical work, but all you hear about or see is Flavor Flav's televised trainwrecks.
I picked up a CD today: 'Dr. No's Oxperiment' by a guy named 'Oh No', who's actually MadLib's brother. It's good instrumental hip-hop, in the vein of Jay Dilla's 'Donuts', only in this case he goes for really out-of-the-way samples (psych from Turkey, Lebanon, Greece and Italy) instead of the over-fished breakbeats we've heard plenty of times by now. Recommended!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Learning about Learning LSL in Second Life
The Second Life backlash is in full effect, thanks in part to an article in Wired (How Madison Avenue is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life) by Frank Rose, a journalist who made the shocking discovery that people don't want to spend their free time exploring the 'Coke Pavilion' or the 'Quaker Oats Hall Of Dietary Fiber' or other marketing efforts in this new space.
Further, the article implies that the companies that've sprung up to build these spaces for marketeers for stodgy companies that want to be cool might be taking advantage of misplaced enthusiasm. Sort of like the web design houses and professionals that took advantage of all the suckers wanting to get in on the irrationally exhuberant Web boom of the 90's, which I seem to recall Wired Magazine being around for. They weren't around for the California Gold Rush, where the people selling the pickaxes and such were the only ones making money, but they sure milked that analogy for all it was worth then, especially as things started to really turn to shit.
But I'm not here to defend SL, Wagner James Au will do that at New World Notes. This entry is about LSL, the Linden Scripting Language, and if it's true that SL is abandoned, you can probably find a nice quiet place to do some experimenting with building 3-D shit and then giving it functionality, which is one of the fun 'anything is possible' aspects to SL that people like Frank Rose are missing when they aren't missing their own reflection in a mirror.
Anyhow, with LSL basic programming (not necessarily BASIC programming) skillz are handy, but not necessarily required. It is not the prettiest language around. 'The New Hampshire Coder In Linden Lab's Court' calls it 'JavaScript after a lobotomy'. And it's true, it is not going to support large-scale development efforts. However, for some quick fun with 3-D graphics without having to blow the dust off your C++ book, it works nicely.
The LSL Portal is an obvious starting point (it's also an item in the help menu). The 'Scripting Guide' also under the Help Menu will be valuable as a reference (what are the arguments to that function?, that sort of thing), but as an intro, it's not so great. In fact, the intro caused me to completely lose interest in the idea of doing anything with LSL for months, until it crossed my mind again.
Actually, probably the best intro I found was this tutorial at the Kansas Board of Regents. As most people in the other 49 states can imagine, I was really shocked to discover I could learn something from the state of Kansas, but this guide is a nice intro to many aspects of scripting (particles, objects rezzing other objects, commands via chat, 'physics', etc), with examples. Of course there are millions of scripts on the wiki, but it's nice to get the info in a tutorial format.
As far as tools go, aside from the editor inside the SL client, there's an Eclipse plugin for scripting, which could prove to be handy for some off-line editing. There's also an LSLEditor which gives the developer a very rudimentary framework for debugging, however, there's really no substitute for trying out scripts in the 3D environment where you can interact with the objects you are scripting.
Finally, a particularly good sample script (set of scripts actually) is the sailboat library. Sailing is popular in SL as it is not whiplash-fast, but still requires skill since you are at the mercy of SL weather patterns, and can't just point in the direction you want to go and accelerate. Anybody can take these scripts as a starting point for building a sailboat of their own. For an airborne version, you can build a balloon or dirigible with your mind, or create robots which do bizarre stunts, or fireworks and the like with llParticleSystem, or whatever. The 'build it yourself' nature of SL is as I mentioned earlier both a really cool (because there's a ton of potential, and people do make some cool stuff) and horribly aggravating (people make some really hokey shit - scientists call it the 'MySpace Effect') aspect of SL, something marketeers have not figured out how to tap into or incorporate into a marketing effort at all (to be fair, it's not a trivial problem, or somebody would have figured it out by now). Anyhow, have fun, just don't create grey goo, scripts that hassle people, or the like, nobody needs that.
Further, the article implies that the companies that've sprung up to build these spaces for marketeers for stodgy companies that want to be cool might be taking advantage of misplaced enthusiasm. Sort of like the web design houses and professionals that took advantage of all the suckers wanting to get in on the irrationally exhuberant Web boom of the 90's, which I seem to recall Wired Magazine being around for. They weren't around for the California Gold Rush, where the people selling the pickaxes and such were the only ones making money, but they sure milked that analogy for all it was worth then, especially as things started to really turn to shit.
But I'm not here to defend SL, Wagner James Au will do that at New World Notes. This entry is about LSL, the Linden Scripting Language, and if it's true that SL is abandoned, you can probably find a nice quiet place to do some experimenting with building 3-D shit and then giving it functionality, which is one of the fun 'anything is possible' aspects to SL that people like Frank Rose are missing when they aren't missing their own reflection in a mirror.
Anyhow, with LSL basic programming (not necessarily BASIC programming) skillz are handy, but not necessarily required. It is not the prettiest language around. 'The New Hampshire Coder In Linden Lab's Court' calls it 'JavaScript after a lobotomy'. And it's true, it is not going to support large-scale development efforts. However, for some quick fun with 3-D graphics without having to blow the dust off your C++ book, it works nicely.
The LSL Portal is an obvious starting point (it's also an item in the help menu). The 'Scripting Guide' also under the Help Menu will be valuable as a reference (what are the arguments to that function?, that sort of thing), but as an intro, it's not so great. In fact, the intro caused me to completely lose interest in the idea of doing anything with LSL for months, until it crossed my mind again.
Actually, probably the best intro I found was this tutorial at the Kansas Board of Regents. As most people in the other 49 states can imagine, I was really shocked to discover I could learn something from the state of Kansas, but this guide is a nice intro to many aspects of scripting (particles, objects rezzing other objects, commands via chat, 'physics', etc), with examples. Of course there are millions of scripts on the wiki, but it's nice to get the info in a tutorial format.
As far as tools go, aside from the editor inside the SL client, there's an Eclipse plugin for scripting, which could prove to be handy for some off-line editing. There's also an LSLEditor which gives the developer a very rudimentary framework for debugging, however, there's really no substitute for trying out scripts in the 3D environment where you can interact with the objects you are scripting.
Finally, a particularly good sample script (set of scripts actually) is the sailboat library. Sailing is popular in SL as it is not whiplash-fast, but still requires skill since you are at the mercy of SL weather patterns, and can't just point in the direction you want to go and accelerate. Anybody can take these scripts as a starting point for building a sailboat of their own. For an airborne version, you can build a balloon or dirigible with your mind, or create robots which do bizarre stunts, or fireworks and the like with llParticleSystem, or whatever. The 'build it yourself' nature of SL is as I mentioned earlier both a really cool (because there's a ton of potential, and people do make some cool stuff) and horribly aggravating (people make some really hokey shit - scientists call it the 'MySpace Effect') aspect of SL, something marketeers have not figured out how to tap into or incorporate into a marketing effort at all (to be fair, it's not a trivial problem, or somebody would have figured it out by now). Anyhow, have fun, just don't create grey goo, scripts that hassle people, or the like, nobody needs that.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Feel Good Hit of the Summer 2007
In '96 I took a job with a consulting company in South Jersey. I took it to get away from a job with a defense contractor that paid peanuts and caused untold grief as it was a pit of despair, fit only for masochists and people with psychology degrees.
I only stayed with the Jersey job for a couple of months, but that was long enough to know what 'Cracked Out' is referring to in their song 'Bennigan'z', a cross between Run-DMC's 'You Be Illin'' and Jeff Foxworthy's 'You might be a redneck' routine. Only in this case it's 'you might be a wanna-be Gotti boy'.
You got the highlights hair, barb-wire tattoo, You're Bennigan'z
You just bought the brand new Dave Matthew(s), You're Bennigan'z
You can see Rapzilla and MC Record Deal perform it here on MTV's 'the human giant show' (the actual performance doesn't happen until a couple minutes in).
So yeah, the job in New Jersey was straight Bennigan'z, I stayed in a Bennigan'z hotel (Hampton Inn) and ate at a Bennigan'z restaurant (Chili's). Bennigan'z sales guys decided my fate. (You can maybe get in on the ground floor on the Bennigan'z thing. At this writing, Google only brings back 1,100 results for 'Bennigan'z').
Back to Cracked Out. Lazy music reviewers sometimes say things like 'Kelly Clarkson could sing the phone book and I would listen'. Cracked Out spits the numbers from 1 to 100, and damn, that shit is dope. Kind of like DJ Shadow's 'The Numbers Song', but with more numbers. Another video here. This one has an ad at the beginning. Fuckin' MTV.
Here's what those Lebowski costumes were about:
I only stayed with the Jersey job for a couple of months, but that was long enough to know what 'Cracked Out' is referring to in their song 'Bennigan'z', a cross between Run-DMC's 'You Be Illin'' and Jeff Foxworthy's 'You might be a redneck' routine. Only in this case it's 'you might be a wanna-be Gotti boy'.
You got the highlights hair, barb-wire tattoo, You're Bennigan'z
You just bought the brand new Dave Matthew(s), You're Bennigan'z
You can see Rapzilla and MC Record Deal perform it here on MTV's 'the human giant show' (the actual performance doesn't happen until a couple minutes in).
So yeah, the job in New Jersey was straight Bennigan'z, I stayed in a Bennigan'z hotel (Hampton Inn) and ate at a Bennigan'z restaurant (Chili's). Bennigan'z sales guys decided my fate. (You can maybe get in on the ground floor on the Bennigan'z thing. At this writing, Google only brings back 1,100 results for 'Bennigan'z').
Back to Cracked Out. Lazy music reviewers sometimes say things like 'Kelly Clarkson could sing the phone book and I would listen'. Cracked Out spits the numbers from 1 to 100, and damn, that shit is dope. Kind of like DJ Shadow's 'The Numbers Song', but with more numbers. Another video here. This one has an ad at the beginning. Fuckin' MTV.
Here's what those Lebowski costumes were about:
- The monkey with the napkin and spork represented the line 'you gotta feed the monkey'
- The Irish caricature was a reference to when the guy in the VW thought the Dude was a 'brother shamus' (an Irish monk?)
- The new piece of shit carrying the flashlight symbolized the line 'new shit has come to light'
- The globe that beat on the guy inside w/ the hammer and axe was the 'world of pain'. He entered a world of pain, see?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
You see what happens, Larry? - Lebowski 'Fest '07 at Executive West in Louisville
Back when The Big Lebowski came out in 1998, I went to see it on its opening night with my now-wife and always-sister. All of us being big Coen brothers fans, we were eager to see their follow-up to 'Fargo' (it's a mistake, though, to compare/contrast 'Lebowski' with other Coen Brothers films in Lebowski fan circles. It is a self-contained entity), and were not in any way disappointed. Somewhat bewildered, and definitely amused, but not disappointed. The movie is a favorite, but both my wife and I (and I would guess the Coen brothers) were surprised to find that the movie sometime in the 9 years since then became a Cult Classic of Rocky Horror Picture Show proportions, inspiring a legion of dialog-quoting fans who attend conventions like last weekend's 6th annual Lebowski-fest in Louisville (if you missed it, there are fests in Scotland and England next month).
Tipped off to this development by our friend L., my wife and I along with another friend T. got tickets for this year's fest. I grew a goatee in a half-assed attempt to achieve dude-dom (the long blonde hair has been there since, well, 1998) and the 4 of us got in the Prius and went south. It was the second time in my life Louisville was a destination, and not a place to pass through (the last time: a 1981 trip to Churchill Downs with dad, who introduced my 11-year-old self to betting on horse races).
Our first stop in Louisville was 'Lilly's' for lunch. L., sharing our interest in finding good food, had made a reservation there. It is highly regarded, and a bit pricey. I had the Price Fixe(?) menu, featuring the Caprese salad (a summer staple), a warm Nicoise salad, and the Lemon Verbena ice cream for dessert. I admired a wall-spanning painting of various attractive and topless women on the way out.
Next stop was the 'Executive Inn West'. Inside, a sign welcomed X High School's 50th Reunion. 'John' at the desk informed us actually the Lebowski Fest crowd was at the Executive Inn, but we decided to stay at the West in the interest of getting sleep Saturday night, operating on the assumption that the 68-year-olds might party less hard. John had attended past fests, but unlike me, he married a woman who did not get 'The Big Lebowski', so his festing days were done.
After admiring the signed pictures of celebrities including Charlie Daniels and the Blues Brothers 2000 (featuring John Goodman, Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski), we went up to our rooms and made some White Russians (the Dude's drink of choice, though he sometimes refers to them as 'Caucasians'), then headed across the street for the 'Garden Party'.
The party was a great place to check out the costumes people had put together for the fest. By far, the character we saw most was Walter Sobchak. Pulling off Walter required having the right physique for the role, and a lot of guys were very life-like Walters. Following Walter in popularity was 'The Dude', and many guys with sunglasses and robes as well as goatees and long hair could be seen. Many women came as Maude, some taking a stab at the Valkyrie outfit Maude sports in a dream sequence. Several men in white suits and red shirts impersonated porn magnate Jackie Treehorn, and a few brave souls took on the role of Coen brothers stand-by and national treasure John Turturro's brief but memorable role in the film: the purple-jump-suit wearing, bowling-ball-licking convicted pederast "Jesus". You could, and we did, buy a bumper sticker reading "It don't matter to Jesus".
Some people had more conceptual costumes based on catch-phrases or dialog from the film. A guy wore a monkey mask and carried plastic eating utensils. His friend was dressed as an Irish stereotype. A young woman appeared to be dressed as a piece of shit with a 'NEW!' sign, and she carried a flashlight. A guy got inside a globe that had a hammer and ax that swung down at his head when he pulled some levers inside. Answers to what the hell these costumes meant in my next post.
We saw a couple guys wearing jellies, like the Dude sports at the beginning of the film when he's checking out milk at the grocery store. One was a pretty convincing Dude, and in fact was a returning champion 'best Dude'. His friend was going to dress up as Walter for the competition in the evening. We commented on another Dude's sweater, which resembled the one he's wearing when he has his run in with the sheriff, but were informed that the pattern and the color were all wrong, and champion Dude had a much more accurate sweater in his possession. 'We don't half-ass it' he said. I of course, half or even quarter-assed it. On the other hand, I wasn't wearing a sweater or robe in the middle of July. And really, wouldn't the Dude, as the laziest man in Los Angeles County, have half-assed it?
There was also music there. 'Lucky Pineapple' (I think) did a fun instrumental rock thing (dressed as Uli and the other nihilists' late 70's Kraftwerk-like band 'Autobahn'), and 'Th' Legendary Shack Shakers' brought us a hybrid of punk and rockabilly. The punk/rockabilly thing has been mined before, more than a few times (Elvis Hitler, Shockabilly, the Reverend Horton Heat, 'Jesus Built My Hot Rod', The Cramps, etc, etc) but in this case the lead-singer's (Col JD Wilkes) Johnny Rotten stage presence combined with the way he played the harmonica through one of those vintage mics that distorts the hell out of it lifted the band above the punk/rockabilly pack. He also sang into the distorto-mic at several points for that 'Jesus Built My Hot-rod' vocal sound.
After checking out the Shack Shakers and loading up on 'Achiever' t-shirts, stickers and various other souvenirs, we headed into town for dinner. I had a nice corn-dog at the Garden Party, but nobody else went for a corn dog, so my travelling companions were hungry.
While walking along Bardstown Street, we ignored the 'B' in the window when we passed the 'Cafe 360', focusing instead on the sight and smell of Indian food on one of the outdoor tables. The 360 refers to the fact that although Indian food is featured and the owners (and the intimidating guy who sat on the hood of a car making sure nobody dined and dashed) are of Indian descent, they have pretty much every kind of food on the menu, including Philly Cheesesteaks, which T. opted for. I had the Tandoori Chicken. Everything BUT the Philly Cheesesteak involved what looked like the 'Mixed Asian Frozen Vegetables' assortment. Everybody had beer. The table next to us had a hookah brought out to them, so we had to inquire about that. 'It's not that good' the waitress informed us. I'm not sure if she meant there was no weed in it, or what. We didn't see her again, so she was probably in a back room getting the coffee is for closers lecture. Anyhow, monkey see, monkey do, we had to try it out for ourselves. Apparently this is something the youngsters have been doing for a couple years now, and with us 30-plus types trying it out, it's probably safe to say the fad is over now. We opted not to go for 'Strawberry' flavored tobacco, and chose 'Cappuccino' instead. Yes, we did. The strange thing about it was how mild it was. I guess I didn't get as much college bong experience as I should have. It did smell very nice, and the taste was interesting.
On our return we went to Executive Strike and Spare. It was after dark, so we all were honoring Walter's rule about 'not rolling on Shabbos'. The lanes were crowded, but it was more fun checking out everyone's costumes and partaking of the White Russians, scooped out of huge bucket-like containers. After 4 or 5 of these, I got an opportunity to bowl, with predictable results.
The costume competition happened, and we talked to the Jelly-wearing dude we had met earlier, now dressed as Walter. He was a convincing Walter, but did not win. He was particularly proud of the fact that his Folger's coffee can had a BLUE lid, like the one in the movie (the cans ordinarily have clear lids). While he was going on about this, none of us pointed out that Walter in the movie did not have a metal stud in his lip, like he did.
There was a bowl-off between the best Walter, Maude, Dude and Jesus for the coveted Publisher-Clearing-House sized check for 69 cents (like the one the Dude writes for a carton of milk). Walter won.
The celebrity guest was Jim Hoosier, aka 'Liam O'Brien', Jesus' bowling partner. He is a semi-regular at the fests. At previous fests, Jeff Bridges has appeared and played a song with his band, and David Huddleston once shouted 'The Bums Lost!' at a Fest for the adoring crowd.
We wandered back to the hotel after midnight and the last call for White Russians (down to 2-for-1 in an effort to unload them, but I had reached White Russian saturation by then), got some sleep and headed for home the next day. All in all, much fun was had, and I really need to watch that movie again now.
Tipped off to this development by our friend L., my wife and I along with another friend T. got tickets for this year's fest. I grew a goatee in a half-assed attempt to achieve dude-dom (the long blonde hair has been there since, well, 1998) and the 4 of us got in the Prius and went south. It was the second time in my life Louisville was a destination, and not a place to pass through (the last time: a 1981 trip to Churchill Downs with dad, who introduced my 11-year-old self to betting on horse races).
Our first stop in Louisville was 'Lilly's' for lunch. L., sharing our interest in finding good food, had made a reservation there. It is highly regarded, and a bit pricey. I had the Price Fixe(?) menu, featuring the Caprese salad (a summer staple), a warm Nicoise salad, and the Lemon Verbena ice cream for dessert. I admired a wall-spanning painting of various attractive and topless women on the way out.
Next stop was the 'Executive Inn West'. Inside, a sign welcomed X High School's 50th Reunion. 'John' at the desk informed us actually the Lebowski Fest crowd was at the Executive Inn, but we decided to stay at the West in the interest of getting sleep Saturday night, operating on the assumption that the 68-year-olds might party less hard. John had attended past fests, but unlike me, he married a woman who did not get 'The Big Lebowski', so his festing days were done.
After admiring the signed pictures of celebrities including Charlie Daniels and the Blues Brothers 2000 (featuring John Goodman, Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski), we went up to our rooms and made some White Russians (the Dude's drink of choice, though he sometimes refers to them as 'Caucasians'), then headed across the street for the 'Garden Party'.
The party was a great place to check out the costumes people had put together for the fest. By far, the character we saw most was Walter Sobchak. Pulling off Walter required having the right physique for the role, and a lot of guys were very life-like Walters. Following Walter in popularity was 'The Dude', and many guys with sunglasses and robes as well as goatees and long hair could be seen. Many women came as Maude, some taking a stab at the Valkyrie outfit Maude sports in a dream sequence. Several men in white suits and red shirts impersonated porn magnate Jackie Treehorn, and a few brave souls took on the role of Coen brothers stand-by and national treasure John Turturro's brief but memorable role in the film: the purple-jump-suit wearing, bowling-ball-licking convicted pederast "Jesus". You could, and we did, buy a bumper sticker reading "It don't matter to Jesus".
Some people had more conceptual costumes based on catch-phrases or dialog from the film. A guy wore a monkey mask and carried plastic eating utensils. His friend was dressed as an Irish stereotype. A young woman appeared to be dressed as a piece of shit with a 'NEW!' sign, and she carried a flashlight. A guy got inside a globe that had a hammer and ax that swung down at his head when he pulled some levers inside. Answers to what the hell these costumes meant in my next post.
We saw a couple guys wearing jellies, like the Dude sports at the beginning of the film when he's checking out milk at the grocery store. One was a pretty convincing Dude, and in fact was a returning champion 'best Dude'. His friend was going to dress up as Walter for the competition in the evening. We commented on another Dude's sweater, which resembled the one he's wearing when he has his run in with the sheriff, but were informed that the pattern and the color were all wrong, and champion Dude had a much more accurate sweater in his possession. 'We don't half-ass it' he said. I of course, half or even quarter-assed it. On the other hand, I wasn't wearing a sweater or robe in the middle of July. And really, wouldn't the Dude, as the laziest man in Los Angeles County, have half-assed it?
There was also music there. 'Lucky Pineapple' (I think) did a fun instrumental rock thing (dressed as Uli and the other nihilists' late 70's Kraftwerk-like band 'Autobahn'), and 'Th' Legendary Shack Shakers' brought us a hybrid of punk and rockabilly. The punk/rockabilly thing has been mined before, more than a few times (Elvis Hitler, Shockabilly, the Reverend Horton Heat, 'Jesus Built My Hot Rod', The Cramps, etc, etc) but in this case the lead-singer's (Col JD Wilkes) Johnny Rotten stage presence combined with the way he played the harmonica through one of those vintage mics that distorts the hell out of it lifted the band above the punk/rockabilly pack. He also sang into the distorto-mic at several points for that 'Jesus Built My Hot-rod' vocal sound.
After checking out the Shack Shakers and loading up on 'Achiever' t-shirts, stickers and various other souvenirs, we headed into town for dinner. I had a nice corn-dog at the Garden Party, but nobody else went for a corn dog, so my travelling companions were hungry.
While walking along Bardstown Street, we ignored the 'B' in the window when we passed the 'Cafe 360', focusing instead on the sight and smell of Indian food on one of the outdoor tables. The 360 refers to the fact that although Indian food is featured and the owners (and the intimidating guy who sat on the hood of a car making sure nobody dined and dashed) are of Indian descent, they have pretty much every kind of food on the menu, including Philly Cheesesteaks, which T. opted for. I had the Tandoori Chicken. Everything BUT the Philly Cheesesteak involved what looked like the 'Mixed Asian Frozen Vegetables' assortment. Everybody had beer. The table next to us had a hookah brought out to them, so we had to inquire about that. 'It's not that good' the waitress informed us. I'm not sure if she meant there was no weed in it, or what. We didn't see her again, so she was probably in a back room getting the coffee is for closers lecture. Anyhow, monkey see, monkey do, we had to try it out for ourselves. Apparently this is something the youngsters have been doing for a couple years now, and with us 30-plus types trying it out, it's probably safe to say the fad is over now. We opted not to go for 'Strawberry' flavored tobacco, and chose 'Cappuccino' instead. Yes, we did. The strange thing about it was how mild it was. I guess I didn't get as much college bong experience as I should have. It did smell very nice, and the taste was interesting.
On our return we went to Executive Strike and Spare. It was after dark, so we all were honoring Walter's rule about 'not rolling on Shabbos'. The lanes were crowded, but it was more fun checking out everyone's costumes and partaking of the White Russians, scooped out of huge bucket-like containers. After 4 or 5 of these, I got an opportunity to bowl, with predictable results.
The costume competition happened, and we talked to the Jelly-wearing dude we had met earlier, now dressed as Walter. He was a convincing Walter, but did not win. He was particularly proud of the fact that his Folger's coffee can had a BLUE lid, like the one in the movie (the cans ordinarily have clear lids). While he was going on about this, none of us pointed out that Walter in the movie did not have a metal stud in his lip, like he did.
There was a bowl-off between the best Walter, Maude, Dude and Jesus for the coveted Publisher-Clearing-House sized check for 69 cents (like the one the Dude writes for a carton of milk). Walter won.
The celebrity guest was Jim Hoosier, aka 'Liam O'Brien', Jesus' bowling partner. He is a semi-regular at the fests. At previous fests, Jeff Bridges has appeared and played a song with his band, and David Huddleston once shouted 'The Bums Lost!' at a Fest for the adoring crowd.
We wandered back to the hotel after midnight and the last call for White Russians (down to 2-for-1 in an effort to unload them, but I had reached White Russian saturation by then), got some sleep and headed for home the next day. All in all, much fun was had, and I really need to watch that movie again now.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Shrek tried to kill my daughter
There are a couple of things you can depend on with a Mike Myers movie: you'll get characters with funny accents, you won't be made uncomfortable by jokes that are not already familiar to you, and the movie will be accompanied by a marketing and merchandising blitz that sucks the oxygen right out of the atmosphere.
Such is the case with 'Shrek the Third', released 2 months ago. Shrek is everywhere. Shrek in the U.S. is like Kims Il-Sung and Jong-Il in North Korea. Shrek is like Saddam Hussein in pre-2003 Iraq, or Austin Powers in 1999 U.S.A. So when my daughter was given a Shrek fishing pole for her birthday, I didn't really think anything of it. It makes sense, a Shrek fishing pole. I am admittedly pretty sick of Shrek and his Donkey, but the 'Kid proof design lets you spend more time having fun and less time untangling line!' So where's the harm?
Then I read the back of the package and found this ominous message:
WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive harm.
The bit about California was especially mystifying. If we were to get in the car and head west, would we unlock the cancer-and birth-defect causing powers of the fishing pole by crossing the border? Is California trying to show off that they know something the hicks in the other 49 don't? It's especially worrisome as DreamWorks, who brought us Shrek, is based in California. So they are knowingly subjecting non-Californian kids to some toxic death compound.
The item itself, like all items that are sold in the U.S., was made in China, the nation that recently brought us poison pet food (although they then applied the same punitive tactics they use against people who think maybe democracy just might be a nice thing to the guy who sold us the poison food, and executed him).
To point the finger at China is probably letting DreamWorks off too easily. Why attach their name to toys that California knows are unsafe? It raises a lot of questions. What kind of marketing tie-ins can we expect with Shrek 4? Shrek-brand menthols? Crack Pipes featuring Donkey? The merchandising folks really need to be reeled in.
Such is the case with 'Shrek the Third', released 2 months ago. Shrek is everywhere. Shrek in the U.S. is like Kims Il-Sung and Jong-Il in North Korea. Shrek is like Saddam Hussein in pre-2003 Iraq, or Austin Powers in 1999 U.S.A. So when my daughter was given a Shrek fishing pole for her birthday, I didn't really think anything of it. It makes sense, a Shrek fishing pole. I am admittedly pretty sick of Shrek and his Donkey, but the 'Kid proof design lets you spend more time having fun and less time untangling line!' So where's the harm?
Then I read the back of the package and found this ominous message:
WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive harm.
The bit about California was especially mystifying. If we were to get in the car and head west, would we unlock the cancer-and birth-defect causing powers of the fishing pole by crossing the border? Is California trying to show off that they know something the hicks in the other 49 don't? It's especially worrisome as DreamWorks, who brought us Shrek, is based in California. So they are knowingly subjecting non-Californian kids to some toxic death compound.
The item itself, like all items that are sold in the U.S., was made in China, the nation that recently brought us poison pet food (although they then applied the same punitive tactics they use against people who think maybe democracy just might be a nice thing to the guy who sold us the poison food, and executed him).
To point the finger at China is probably letting DreamWorks off too easily. Why attach their name to toys that California knows are unsafe? It raises a lot of questions. What kind of marketing tie-ins can we expect with Shrek 4? Shrek-brand menthols? Crack Pipes featuring Donkey? The merchandising folks really need to be reeled in.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
I'm happy to report I am rabies free
I just finished reading Rant by Chuck Pahlihalinukanukaluau. It was perhaps in some ways a mistake, given my hypochondriac ways, as the title character is a venom-addicted redneck who spreads rabies to the masses (a superspreader - patient-zero is an obsolete term). Chuck P. being a writer who does his homework (most writers do their homework, but the proliferation of books by people who never should have written books like Sean Hannity and Shaq, and the festering cess-pools of blogs by graphomaniacal opinionated jerks has diluted the quality of the term 'writer'), the reader is treated to all the essential details about the effects of rabies, and he throws in info about other deadly diseases and plagues on top.
The 'Party Crashing' business in the book makes one think of a guy pitching a movie ('It's like 'Fight Club', but WITH CARS'), and throughout I couldn't help but think, yeah, sure, you feel alive in that moment when your car hits another, and then you get 40+ years of your lower back killing you. It's entirely unglamorous if you screw it up and don't manage to obliterate yourself, James Dean style. I am old and risk-averse, though, so fuck what I think. Did I like the book? Yes. SPOILER ALERT: Chuck does some interesting and unexpected things over the course of the book. END OF SPOILER ALERT.
The book has made me paranoid about my cats or insects in the house giving me a horrible illness, but I've been paranoid about my cats ever since reading about how Toxoplasma from cats can make people...paranoid.
The 'Party Crashing' business in the book makes one think of a guy pitching a movie ('It's like 'Fight Club', but WITH CARS'), and throughout I couldn't help but think, yeah, sure, you feel alive in that moment when your car hits another, and then you get 40+ years of your lower back killing you. It's entirely unglamorous if you screw it up and don't manage to obliterate yourself, James Dean style. I am old and risk-averse, though, so fuck what I think. Did I like the book? Yes. SPOILER ALERT: Chuck does some interesting and unexpected things over the course of the book. END OF SPOILER ALERT.
The book has made me paranoid about my cats or insects in the house giving me a horrible illness, but I've been paranoid about my cats ever since reading about how Toxoplasma from cats can make people...paranoid.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Book lust: The Codex Seraphinianus
The Believer is not merely a magazine, to me it also serves the role of a cool friend who tells me about music, books, etc I would never have known about otherwise. You can't really put a price on it, but they did, and I subscribe. I'm not really as sad and lonely as that makes me sound, honest. The point is, I love that magazine.
In a recent issue there was an article about the Codex Seraphinianus, a surreal and puzzling book by the Italian artist Luigi Serafini. Today, in general use, 'surreal' means something horrible you don't believe is happening. 'Being in a car crash, it was so surreal.' 'September 11, that was just surreal.' 'Spending the morning on the phone with tech support, it was surreal'. But this is surreal in the original artistic sense of something being mind-bending bewildering, art that defies rationality or understanding. According to wikipedia, surrealism is a movement that oh, I'm just playing, I'm not going to quote wikipedia here.
The CODEX is an encyclopedia for an imaginary world, complete with an entirely made-up language (which no-one has managed to figure out in the 25 years since it first came out) and base-21 (fingers, toes, and nose?) number system. But this imaginary world is not full of elves and hobbits and magic jewelry. A couple doing the beast with two backs thing morphs into an alligator. Strange mushroom-headed individuals fit skeletons with skins hanging from hooks. Trees uproot themselves and swim across lakes. A special bowl can be plugged into the wall, and it will chew your food, so you can drink it thru a straw. And, a personal favorite, on the signal, capsules walking around on human legs burst open to reveal...angry leopards.
Some nice person scanned the entire thing and put the pictures on flickr, but I wanted to see it for myself. Pictures on computer monitors can suck. They are small, they lack detail. One doesn't feel the paper or the weight of the book. If you read things on the computer, you are cheating yourself, unless it's a rinky-dink blog or such.
I first checked with IU's Lilly Library, the place in Bloomington to go if you're looking for rare books. The helpful person I spoke with told me they didn't have the book, and actually, no library in Indiana had it. That was not too surprising, as the book is rare and has a tendency to disappear from libraries. Copies can go for $300-$500. The guy told me I could probably get it through an inter-library loan, so I called the Monroe County Public Library, and they found a copy in the library of a college in Tennessee (I won't say which one, don't want any of my Tennesseean readers ripping off the library to make a few bucks on eBay).
Last week, I got an email notice that the book was in, so I grabbed it and was immediately glad I'd gone through the trouble. I saw many thing's I'd missed in the reprinted pictures and the flickr images I'd seen. Flipping pages is much smoother than pointing and clicking (the lack of comprehensible page numbers makes navigation tricky, but there is a bit of logic to the way the book's laid out). Leisurely flipping through the pages and taking in the sometimes mind-blowing images has been fun.
In a recent issue there was an article about the Codex Seraphinianus, a surreal and puzzling book by the Italian artist Luigi Serafini. Today, in general use, 'surreal' means something horrible you don't believe is happening. 'Being in a car crash, it was so surreal.' 'September 11, that was just surreal.' 'Spending the morning on the phone with tech support, it was surreal'. But this is surreal in the original artistic sense of something being mind-bending bewildering, art that defies rationality or understanding. According to wikipedia, surrealism is a movement that oh, I'm just playing, I'm not going to quote wikipedia here.
The CODEX is an encyclopedia for an imaginary world, complete with an entirely made-up language (which no-one has managed to figure out in the 25 years since it first came out) and base-21 (fingers, toes, and nose?) number system. But this imaginary world is not full of elves and hobbits and magic jewelry. A couple doing the beast with two backs thing morphs into an alligator. Strange mushroom-headed individuals fit skeletons with skins hanging from hooks. Trees uproot themselves and swim across lakes. A special bowl can be plugged into the wall, and it will chew your food, so you can drink it thru a straw. And, a personal favorite, on the signal, capsules walking around on human legs burst open to reveal...angry leopards.
Some nice person scanned the entire thing and put the pictures on flickr, but I wanted to see it for myself. Pictures on computer monitors can suck. They are small, they lack detail. One doesn't feel the paper or the weight of the book. If you read things on the computer, you are cheating yourself, unless it's a rinky-dink blog or such.
I first checked with IU's Lilly Library, the place in Bloomington to go if you're looking for rare books. The helpful person I spoke with told me they didn't have the book, and actually, no library in Indiana had it. That was not too surprising, as the book is rare and has a tendency to disappear from libraries. Copies can go for $300-$500. The guy told me I could probably get it through an inter-library loan, so I called the Monroe County Public Library, and they found a copy in the library of a college in Tennessee (I won't say which one, don't want any of my Tennesseean readers ripping off the library to make a few bucks on eBay).
Last week, I got an email notice that the book was in, so I grabbed it and was immediately glad I'd gone through the trouble. I saw many thing's I'd missed in the reprinted pictures and the flickr images I'd seen. Flipping pages is much smoother than pointing and clicking (the lack of comprehensible page numbers makes navigation tricky, but there is a bit of logic to the way the book's laid out). Leisurely flipping through the pages and taking in the sometimes mind-blowing images has been fun.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
No Practical Applications
In a previous entry I expressed my sincere admiration for my great-grandfather's quote that he'd rather be poor near a great library than wealthy in some land of ignorance (specifically, Oklahoma ca. 1920). Another great quote I've always loved is this one from mathematical god G.H. Hardy:
I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world."
When he said this, he was mainly expressing his relief that his work hadn't been used to find newer, bigger, better ways to separate large numbers of people from their lives. Aside from that, it's a nice 'fuck you' to the people who ask the budding mathemagician 'Oh, you study math? What are you going to do with that?
Then there's this one from Richard Feyman, for the Physicists:
Still, the need and drive to do entirely useless things is strong with the mathematically afflicted (hence this blog). Among other entirely useless and completely unmarketable skills I also juggle, ride a unicycle, and for a while was obsessed with running. Even in my field, I find myself reading about and learning languages I will never use (Haskell), just because they are more interesting than their more established counterparts (Java - simple, practical, mind-numbingly tedious).
In recent years, I have become results-oriented, and to a large degree it's made me miserable. I tend to find getting results entirely unsatisfying. They're a nice by product of doing interesting things, and that's it.
I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world."
When he said this, he was mainly expressing his relief that his work hadn't been used to find newer, bigger, better ways to separate large numbers of people from their lives. Aside from that, it's a nice 'fuck you' to the people who ask the budding mathemagician 'Oh, you study math? What are you going to do with that?
Then there's this one from Richard Feyman, for the Physicists:
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Most budding mathemagicians (and physicists) eventually find 'real jobs' when the constraints of wanting money for food and such force them to do so. Some do become math professors, sure, in the way that some kids fucking around with a guitar in their parents' basement eventually get recording contracts, and some kids eventually get to spend a couple years playing AA, AAA baseball, maybe even making it to the major leagues.Still, the need and drive to do entirely useless things is strong with the mathematically afflicted (hence this blog). Among other entirely useless and completely unmarketable skills I also juggle, ride a unicycle, and for a while was obsessed with running. Even in my field, I find myself reading about and learning languages I will never use (Haskell), just because they are more interesting than their more established counterparts (Java - simple, practical, mind-numbingly tedious).
In recent years, I have become results-oriented, and to a large degree it's made me miserable. I tend to find getting results entirely unsatisfying. They're a nice by product of doing interesting things, and that's it.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
American White Boy Minstrel Show
We had esteemed colleagues from Ireland visiting this week, and a veep had the idea to take them all for drinks at Bloomington's 'Irish Lion', the local approximation of an Irish pub, complete with menu items like 'Blarney Puffballs', 'Leprechaun Wings', and (they really loved this one) 'Offaly Salmon' (Offaly is landlocked, and has no major rivers). This was after he took them to the local steakhouse, 'Janko's Little Zagreb', where John Mellencamp occasionally eats. I've never eaten there, not in my 13 years of living in or near Bloomington, and since I wasn't invited for that bit, the streak continues.
The veep in question is much loved by the people at the European subsidiaries. He's in several photos on the walls at the facility in Limerick, and people have stories to tell about hanging out with him. A prevailing theory to explain this popularity is that he plays into those cherished American stereotypes with his full-on Hoosier accent with vulgarian tendencies, and his impressive gun collection (a favorite cherished memory for some of our European counterparts is going shooting with him. I did my part to reinforce the American gun-nut stereotype by lighting up and saying 'yeah, going shooting, that's a real American thing to do!' when I heard a story about a shooting outing). So he can get away with anything. I can hardly wait for the Australians to visit, we can all go for Bloomin' Onions at the Outback Steakhouse and maybe watch 'Crocodile Dundee' in his home theater (or, if he's really wanting to push the envelope, maybe 'Kangaroo Jack').
There is something to be said for playing into and reinforcing stereotypes as a way to get people to let their guard down and feel more at ease (but mostly, superior) around you. Actually a couple things can be said: that there's something artificial about it, that it's a lazy way to establish a superficial and weak rapport, that it's, in a word: pathetic. As Colonel Jay Garner, who was the interim president in Iraq for 3 weeks once said: we should all look in the mirror and say 'Damn, we're Americans!' But not while the superior programmers trained at the Indian Institute of technology are around, because they'd put that shit on YouTube, and suddenly a billion people are laughing at your sorry Yankee ass.
Of course, I could be totally wrong, and it could all be genuine. I have a Hoosier accent and vulgarian tendencies. I like to shoot guns when the opportunity comes up. I have been failing to appreciate classical music for almost 40 years now.
Tony Soprano reminded us all recently that ''remember when' is the lowest form of conversation'. The exception to this is when meeting with people from foreign lands. Then 'do you have XBox in Ireland?' is the lowest form of conversation. Sadly, the conversation never really rose above that level, but the Irish folks had a good sense of humor about the whole thing, and actually at one point a couple of them started singing some traditional Irish songs because the music ('that shit they play in tourist places') was getting on their nerves. Much beer was consumed, but nobody spilled the beans about the inner workings of either place, we were all too professional for that (in my case the need to drive home limited the beer consumption, and I refrained from telling too many tales as a result). They will return home to tell their friends about the silly place with the Leprechaun Wings and wonder at how much cheese Americans put in their food.
The veep in question is much loved by the people at the European subsidiaries. He's in several photos on the walls at the facility in Limerick, and people have stories to tell about hanging out with him. A prevailing theory to explain this popularity is that he plays into those cherished American stereotypes with his full-on Hoosier accent with vulgarian tendencies, and his impressive gun collection (a favorite cherished memory for some of our European counterparts is going shooting with him. I did my part to reinforce the American gun-nut stereotype by lighting up and saying 'yeah, going shooting, that's a real American thing to do!' when I heard a story about a shooting outing). So he can get away with anything. I can hardly wait for the Australians to visit, we can all go for Bloomin' Onions at the Outback Steakhouse and maybe watch 'Crocodile Dundee' in his home theater (or, if he's really wanting to push the envelope, maybe 'Kangaroo Jack').
There is something to be said for playing into and reinforcing stereotypes as a way to get people to let their guard down and feel more at ease (but mostly, superior) around you. Actually a couple things can be said: that there's something artificial about it, that it's a lazy way to establish a superficial and weak rapport, that it's, in a word: pathetic. As Colonel Jay Garner, who was the interim president in Iraq for 3 weeks once said: we should all look in the mirror and say 'Damn, we're Americans!' But not while the superior programmers trained at the Indian Institute of technology are around, because they'd put that shit on YouTube, and suddenly a billion people are laughing at your sorry Yankee ass.
Of course, I could be totally wrong, and it could all be genuine. I have a Hoosier accent and vulgarian tendencies. I like to shoot guns when the opportunity comes up. I have been failing to appreciate classical music for almost 40 years now.
Tony Soprano reminded us all recently that ''remember when' is the lowest form of conversation'. The exception to this is when meeting with people from foreign lands. Then 'do you have XBox in Ireland?' is the lowest form of conversation. Sadly, the conversation never really rose above that level, but the Irish folks had a good sense of humor about the whole thing, and actually at one point a couple of them started singing some traditional Irish songs because the music ('that shit they play in tourist places') was getting on their nerves. Much beer was consumed, but nobody spilled the beans about the inner workings of either place, we were all too professional for that (in my case the need to drive home limited the beer consumption, and I refrained from telling too many tales as a result). They will return home to tell their friends about the silly place with the Leprechaun Wings and wonder at how much cheese Americans put in their food.
Monday, May 14, 2007
In the shadow of the library
'I'd rather die a pauper in the shadow of the libraries of Chicago than roll in wealth in Oklahoma.'
That's what my great grandfather wrote to his (relatively) wealthy family in Oklahoma. To me, it's a really defiant and cool thing to say: knowledge (and maybe even more importantly, the pursuit of knowledge) is worth more than a fancy house or the envy of the other folks in town. He got his wish, actually, dying in a flophouse that was walking distance from a really great library.
I respect the guy tremendously for doing his thing, but I seem to have fallen pretty far from that tree, spending a fair amount of time in Martinsville, IN enjoying a lake house and hot tub and all that noise instead of strugglin' in some metropolis or another. But we do have the internet, wikipedia, all that good stuff now. There's no substitute for a good library (or restaurant, come to think of it - Golden Corral just wasn't doing it for us, and has as much to do with our Exodus from Martinsville as anything else), but if you want to learn a thing or two, or escape from people who don't, you can, easily enough.
He also wrote a book that he believed debunked the theory of evolution, and spent considerable time orating and debating this topic on Bughouse Square in Chicago. He'd be pretty disappointed in my heathen ways.
His was also one of those strange stories where his son, forced to step up because Dad was so often off writing or debating or drinking, turned into a truly amazing individual. WWII veteran, steady provider for a ridiculously huge and coincidentally Catholic family, greatest generation and all that. Maybe a crappy childhood is good for kids? Not unlike in the book Dune, where the Sardaukar are raised in an environment where 6 out of 13 die before the age of 11, so the ones that survive are incredible, merciless warriors? My wife's childhood wasn't always Full House with Bob Saget, and she's pretty amazing, too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still taking my daughter for ice cream this weekend, I just hope I don't ruin her future by doing so.
That's what my great grandfather wrote to his (relatively) wealthy family in Oklahoma. To me, it's a really defiant and cool thing to say: knowledge (and maybe even more importantly, the pursuit of knowledge) is worth more than a fancy house or the envy of the other folks in town. He got his wish, actually, dying in a flophouse that was walking distance from a really great library.
I respect the guy tremendously for doing his thing, but I seem to have fallen pretty far from that tree, spending a fair amount of time in Martinsville, IN enjoying a lake house and hot tub and all that noise instead of strugglin' in some metropolis or another. But we do have the internet, wikipedia, all that good stuff now. There's no substitute for a good library (or restaurant, come to think of it - Golden Corral just wasn't doing it for us, and has as much to do with our Exodus from Martinsville as anything else), but if you want to learn a thing or two, or escape from people who don't, you can, easily enough.
He also wrote a book that he believed debunked the theory of evolution, and spent considerable time orating and debating this topic on Bughouse Square in Chicago. He'd be pretty disappointed in my heathen ways.
His was also one of those strange stories where his son, forced to step up because Dad was so often off writing or debating or drinking, turned into a truly amazing individual. WWII veteran, steady provider for a ridiculously huge and coincidentally Catholic family, greatest generation and all that. Maybe a crappy childhood is good for kids? Not unlike in the book Dune, where the Sardaukar are raised in an environment where 6 out of 13 die before the age of 11, so the ones that survive are incredible, merciless warriors? My wife's childhood wasn't always Full House with Bob Saget, and she's pretty amazing, too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still taking my daughter for ice cream this weekend, I just hope I don't ruin her future by doing so.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Little Shopworth of Horrors
Yesterday we stayed at the West Baden Springs Hotel as part of its soft-opening. It is a site to see, and has not been a hotel since 1932 (a combination of the Great Depression and modern medicine sunk it, but it was a Jesuit Seminary for a while anyhow). The dome in the center is amazing. You could re-enact the Battle of Britain inside with radio-controlled squadrons of Spitfires and Messerschmitts, maybe have a Churchill look-alike hanging out at the bar on the periphery.
On the way down we stopped at a Shopworth because we needed Goldfish crackers and water. It looked like it was a grocery store from the outside. I stepped inside and entered a post-apocalyptic, 28 Days Later, mostly empty grocery store. Also, it smelled very strange inside. Somewhere between urine and cleaning fluids.
Where there'd ordinarily be produce, there was nothing but that green astro-turfy lining. They didn't even have the couple token un-rotten apples ('irradiation!') our protagonists in 28 Days Later were able to score. The whole back half of the place was a white expanse of empty shelves. I tried and failed to find Goldfish, having to make due with 'Wheatables' with a December '06 expiration date. They did have water, though.
The whole time I was there I felt a sense of dread that was even worse than the low-level panic attacks I suffer at Best Buy. I was really happy to get the fuck out of there. I don't know what was going on. I know there's a science to the layout of a grocery store, product placement, the order you encounter different products. It's the sort of thing you laugh about because it seems like such a trivial application of mental energy, until you stumble on a place that looks like it was designed to fool you for a second into thinking everyone you've ever cared about is dead.
The rest of the trip was a lot of fun, though, especially the train trip past Larry Bird's boyhood home.
On the way down we stopped at a Shopworth because we needed Goldfish crackers and water. It looked like it was a grocery store from the outside. I stepped inside and entered a post-apocalyptic, 28 Days Later, mostly empty grocery store. Also, it smelled very strange inside. Somewhere between urine and cleaning fluids.
Where there'd ordinarily be produce, there was nothing but that green astro-turfy lining. They didn't even have the couple token un-rotten apples ('irradiation!') our protagonists in 28 Days Later were able to score. The whole back half of the place was a white expanse of empty shelves. I tried and failed to find Goldfish, having to make due with 'Wheatables' with a December '06 expiration date. They did have water, though.
The whole time I was there I felt a sense of dread that was even worse than the low-level panic attacks I suffer at Best Buy. I was really happy to get the fuck out of there. I don't know what was going on. I know there's a science to the layout of a grocery store, product placement, the order you encounter different products. It's the sort of thing you laugh about because it seems like such a trivial application of mental energy, until you stumble on a place that looks like it was designed to fool you for a second into thinking everyone you've ever cared about is dead.
The rest of the trip was a lot of fun, though, especially the train trip past Larry Bird's boyhood home.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
True Hip Hop Facts
Inspired by the 'Hip-Hop Nuggets' issue of 'Stop Smiling Magazine - the magazine for high-minded low-lifes', and the fact that I got 50 million search hits for mentioning 'Ghostface Killah' in the last post:
- Many people know about the tragic deaths of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, but a little-known hip-hop tragedy was the fact that Ol' Dirty Bastard died only a few days before a blueberry-flavored crack was released on the streets of New York.
- In fact, if you speed up the croaking sound at the beginning of 'The Drunk Game' from Return To the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, it's ODB saying 'I wish there was blueberry-flavored crack'
- Many hip hop heads stopped smoking marijuana after the release of Method Man's 2nd LP, Tical 2000: Judgement Day, although no anti-drug messages appear in the lyrics or liner notes.
- Although the looped sample of Minister Farrakhan laughing on the now out-of-print 'Edutainment' CD by Boogie Down Productions makes him sound equal parts creepy and insane, this wasn't KRS-ONE's intent.
- Ghostface Killah has the diabetes, just like Wilfred Brimley and 20.8 million other people in the U.S.
- Ghostface Killah pronounces it 'die-a-bee-teez'.
- MF Doom is actually 5 people who take turns wearing the mask for performances and 'featuring' appearances on other peoples' records.
- Ice Cube considers these the 3 greatest challenges of his life: growing up in South Central Los Angeles, writing lyrics the untalented but wealthy Eazy-E could deliver, and thinking up good things to say about his latest movie 'Are We Done Yet?' for his appearance on 'The Today Show'
- Proof that hip hop artists are smarter than their colleagues in the entertainment world: no prominent hip-hop artists are Scientologists.
- Eminem was fined $20,000 for shoving an e-meter up a Scientologist's ass, and was required to attend anger management training.
- KRS-ONE's toenail clippings have written better rhymes than Paul Wall.
- D.J. Screw got the inspiration for his trademark 'screwed and chopped' style from country music sensation Mel Tillis.
- Many music journalists are surprised and bewildered to learn Big Boi from Outkast is a big fan of Kate Bush, because at a meeting of the music journalist's guild in the early 80s, they decreed that black people aren't allowed to listen to Kate Bush.
- Ghostface Killah
- Ghostface Killah
Friday, April 13, 2007
Ghostface Killah Apologizes to Imus and his Family
Don't play me like I got a flower pot head, kid
In response to the widespread conservative outrage at rap lyrics following Don Imus' recent firing for referring to the Rutger's women's basketball team as 'a bunch of nappy headed ho's', Ghostface Killah stepped forward to issue an apology:
"Yo yo yo God check it. When I wrote my lyrics in '93, boom, I never thought they'd be firin a n%*(*% for callin women hos in 2007, boom. I had crazy visions son, boom! I was ready to rock n%(*$(*%, for real. Those were the cream joints, boom. But then some old white n*(*(%, here he comes with my word, tryin to flip it and bounce it, not usin it right, first of all, next thing you know, m5%(^$*(* lost his $*%#(*( job, kid."
'...like a werewolf who didn'thave the energy to complete
the transformation' - Dennis Miller
re: Imus
At this point fellow Wu-Tang member U-God asked "Is he dead?"
"No no no, he just old, he looks like that. So yo, I'm very sorry for any trouble I may have caused this n$#(*#$(*% and his family. I was just a knucklehead out to make some money for my family, yo, knamsayin? How I was gonna know a 70 year old white m$*%($*#( with 50 years of radio experience was gonna use my words and lose his job?
Ol' Dirty used to say 'Everything Wu-Tang does is for the children', but now, Wu-Tang is gonna do some shit for old rich white n$(*(*$s on the radio, too. One love!"
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Reykjavik Part 3 of N: Before the Memory Fades
The day after the encounter with the drunk Swedes and the drunk Icelanders we planned to make a serious effort to see the Northern Lights, but that wasn't going to happen until nighttime. We were there at the tail-end of winter, and it got dark between 7-8, so it was definitely not round-the-clock darkness time.
We started off at Siggi Hall, where breakfast was free and consisted of an assortment of breads and cheeses, boiled eggs, fruit, smoked salmon, and more skyr. We sat near a window and watched people stumble home from the night of drunken revelry.
We marvelled at this as while food in Iceland is expensive, liquor is even more so. Icelanders explained to us a lot of pre-loading happens before people head out for the evening. We also heard some grumbling as to the price of a dinner in Reykjavik from natives. A little digging around on the intarnets (especially this site, 'Statistics Iceland') shows the average income in Iceland for 2005 was ~3.1 million ISK, somewhere in the neighborhood of $45,000 (also we find women's average income is 63.7% of men's - this is up from 57% in 1998 though). So things are expensive in Iceland. On the flip side, unemployment is 3%. Also, and though this is less easy to quantify, Iceland is said to be one of the happiest nations around. Journalist Eric Weiner attributes this in part to a culture that embraces risk taking and doesn't stigmatize failure. Maybe it's the sense of independence that comes from being self-reliant combined with the benefit of having the North Atlantic to separate you from pesky neighbors.
By the way, here's a blog (Iceland Report) by a guy who moved from Boston to Iceland, and must be one of the happiest people on Earth. He notes that often American tourists will ask him why Icelanders are so happy, but then will try to refute any answer he offers:
So, when in Iceland, resist the urge to debunk their happiness (other topics to avoid, I am told: elves/hidden folk and Vikings.)
Anyhow, much exploration of Reykjavik happened. We saw the famous babies left in strollers parked outside stores. They were cute and content. We saw a couple young graffiti artists headed out to do some work, pens in hands. We saw some other graffiti artists who'd been busted washing a storefront under the supervision of an older guy. We checked out the Viking Ship sculpture near the harbor, which begs to be climbed up on. We had hummus and coffee at a cafe that doubles as an anarchist bookstore and library. The shelves were full of back issues of Anarchy magazine and various publications by Noam Chomsky. A flyer for a punk rock show featured Condoleeza Rice shouting something in Icelandic in a talk balloon. I picked up a pamphlet in Icelandic featuring a cute cartoon bunny holding a monkey wrench on the cover.
We went to the semi-famous KaffeeBarinn. This is the bar partially owned by the Gorilla's (ex-Blur guy) Damon Albarn, but that's a bit of a joke. Being a Bloomington resident, I've probably eaten at an Arby's partially owned by John Mellencamp, and it wasn't a big deal. I got served a Big Beef 'n' Cheddar by Henry Lee 'Wish I had A Girl that walked like that, oh yeah' Summer, and that also was not a big deal. But, being a fan of some Icelandic musicians (Bjork, Sigur Ros, GusGus, probably others) I had to check the place out. Outside, the American photographer from the bus ride from Keflavik was taking pictures of some guy who looked like Cold Play's Dad. I have no idea who he was, but judging by the number of pictures taken, he must have been somewhat famous or wealthy. Perhaps he bought out Damon Albarn's share. The woman from the bus was there too. It was underwhelming, but of course it was still daytime. It's quite small inside, and people were hanging out doing the lap top thing. We had coffees and went on to the next thing.
We found a used-record store. I had to check that out, and found a bewildering assortment of CDs by regional bands I'd never heard of. They also had American stuff, including DVDs of the forgotten 2000 Eminem movie 'Da Hip Hop Witch' and the movie version of the video game Doom (a local laughed and told us 'It sucks.' when I picked it up out of curiosity). I pondered but did not purchase a book on Meteorology written in Icelandic. My wife ended up picking up a Eurythmics CD we'd never heard of (In The Garden) for 500 ISK ($7.50). The shop owner had a turntable near the register and was playing 'Abbey Road' on vinyl. In the back was a room behind a curtain, where they had all the porn, which possibly kept the place in business, God bless it.
Following dinner at Tivoli (featuring inattentive wait staff, but good food - a scallops/mussells/fish and pasta dish in my case with a Pinotage and some Creme Brulee), it was time for our Northern Lights Excursion, but first we were to check out the ghost story tour in a building which used to be a warehouse where frozen fish was stored. Our tour guide, Brahin or Ibrahim (I wasn't sure) picked us up at the hotel and we left Reykjavik. More in the next installment.
We started off at Siggi Hall, where breakfast was free and consisted of an assortment of breads and cheeses, boiled eggs, fruit, smoked salmon, and more skyr. We sat near a window and watched people stumble home from the night of drunken revelry.
We marvelled at this as while food in Iceland is expensive, liquor is even more so. Icelanders explained to us a lot of pre-loading happens before people head out for the evening. We also heard some grumbling as to the price of a dinner in Reykjavik from natives. A little digging around on the intarnets (especially this site, 'Statistics Iceland') shows the average income in Iceland for 2005 was ~3.1 million ISK, somewhere in the neighborhood of $45,000 (also we find women's average income is 63.7% of men's - this is up from 57% in 1998 though). So things are expensive in Iceland. On the flip side, unemployment is 3%. Also, and though this is less easy to quantify, Iceland is said to be one of the happiest nations around. Journalist Eric Weiner attributes this in part to a culture that embraces risk taking and doesn't stigmatize failure. Maybe it's the sense of independence that comes from being self-reliant combined with the benefit of having the North Atlantic to separate you from pesky neighbors.
By the way, here's a blog (Iceland Report) by a guy who moved from Boston to Iceland, and must be one of the happiest people on Earth. He notes that often American tourists will ask him why Icelanders are so happy, but then will try to refute any answer he offers:
I have had now had variations of this conversation (about why Icelanders are happy) so many times with American visitors that I try to ensure the topic never comes up.
So, when in Iceland, resist the urge to debunk their happiness (other topics to avoid, I am told: elves/hidden folk and Vikings.)
Anyhow, much exploration of Reykjavik happened. We saw the famous babies left in strollers parked outside stores. They were cute and content. We saw a couple young graffiti artists headed out to do some work, pens in hands. We saw some other graffiti artists who'd been busted washing a storefront under the supervision of an older guy. We checked out the Viking Ship sculpture near the harbor, which begs to be climbed up on. We had hummus and coffee at a cafe that doubles as an anarchist bookstore and library. The shelves were full of back issues of Anarchy magazine and various publications by Noam Chomsky. A flyer for a punk rock show featured Condoleeza Rice shouting something in Icelandic in a talk balloon. I picked up a pamphlet in Icelandic featuring a cute cartoon bunny holding a monkey wrench on the cover.
We went to the semi-famous KaffeeBarinn. This is the bar partially owned by the Gorilla's (ex-Blur guy) Damon Albarn, but that's a bit of a joke. Being a Bloomington resident, I've probably eaten at an Arby's partially owned by John Mellencamp, and it wasn't a big deal. I got served a Big Beef 'n' Cheddar by Henry Lee 'Wish I had A Girl that walked like that, oh yeah' Summer, and that also was not a big deal. But, being a fan of some Icelandic musicians (Bjork, Sigur Ros, GusGus, probably others) I had to check the place out. Outside, the American photographer from the bus ride from Keflavik was taking pictures of some guy who looked like Cold Play's Dad. I have no idea who he was, but judging by the number of pictures taken, he must have been somewhat famous or wealthy. Perhaps he bought out Damon Albarn's share. The woman from the bus was there too. It was underwhelming, but of course it was still daytime. It's quite small inside, and people were hanging out doing the lap top thing. We had coffees and went on to the next thing.
We found a used-record store. I had to check that out, and found a bewildering assortment of CDs by regional bands I'd never heard of. They also had American stuff, including DVDs of the forgotten 2000 Eminem movie 'Da Hip Hop Witch' and the movie version of the video game Doom (a local laughed and told us 'It sucks.' when I picked it up out of curiosity). I pondered but did not purchase a book on Meteorology written in Icelandic. My wife ended up picking up a Eurythmics CD we'd never heard of (In The Garden) for 500 ISK ($7.50). The shop owner had a turntable near the register and was playing 'Abbey Road' on vinyl. In the back was a room behind a curtain, where they had all the porn, which possibly kept the place in business, God bless it.
Following dinner at Tivoli (featuring inattentive wait staff, but good food - a scallops/mussells/fish and pasta dish in my case with a Pinotage and some Creme Brulee), it was time for our Northern Lights Excursion, but first we were to check out the ghost story tour in a building which used to be a warehouse where frozen fish was stored. Our tour guide, Brahin or Ibrahim (I wasn't sure) picked us up at the hotel and we left Reykjavik. More in the next installment.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
In Search Of Excellence: BioMedenetix
BioMedenetix is on the cutting edge of the growing Biotech industry and promises to bring much-needed hope to a region gutted by the ongoing elimination of American Manufacturing jobs. Led by a man with a Hobbit-like mischievous grin and over 35 years of being allowed inside one of America's largest pharmaceutical companies by Security, it is definitely a company to watch.
Watching it is what we did on a recent visit to the campus. On arrival we noticed a shuttle bus. At first we thought: what a good corporate citizen BM is, providing transportation to employees in the area to cut down on fuel costs and pollution in the community. Then we noticed the bus never left the parking lot, which was approximately the size of the parking lot at an average American High School. Actually a small to mid size High School, or perhaps a church parking lot in a small town, a church for one of the smaller denominations, like Seventh Day Adventists maybe. If nothing else, it showed a commitment to employee's well being, assuming the employees get exercise in some other manner than by walking from their car to the front door.
We decided to try out this bit of corporate pampering for ourselves. While this is not on the level of the on-site masseuse of the dot-com era, nor Google's fabled chef who used to be THE CHEF FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD, it is something anyway. We appreciated the heating on the brisk, 42 degree Midwestern day, and enjoyed 23 seconds of some inoffensive pop music played on the bus's sound system. Neither the bus driver nor the riders emitted any offensive odors, and in general it was nothing like the horrific experiences chronicled in Wesley Willis' lyrics, like these from 'Get On The City Bus':
Next time: Pre-chewed food: the next big thing in corporate food service?
Watching it is what we did on a recent visit to the campus. On arrival we noticed a shuttle bus. At first we thought: what a good corporate citizen BM is, providing transportation to employees in the area to cut down on fuel costs and pollution in the community. Then we noticed the bus never left the parking lot, which was approximately the size of the parking lot at an average American High School. Actually a small to mid size High School, or perhaps a church parking lot in a small town, a church for one of the smaller denominations, like Seventh Day Adventists maybe. If nothing else, it showed a commitment to employee's well being, assuming the employees get exercise in some other manner than by walking from their car to the front door.
We decided to try out this bit of corporate pampering for ourselves. While this is not on the level of the on-site masseuse of the dot-com era, nor Google's fabled chef who used to be THE CHEF FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD, it is something anyway. We appreciated the heating on the brisk, 42 degree Midwestern day, and enjoyed 23 seconds of some inoffensive pop music played on the bus's sound system. Neither the bus driver nor the riders emitted any offensive odors, and in general it was nothing like the horrific experiences chronicled in Wesley Willis' lyrics, like these from 'Get On The City Bus':
The 11 Lincoln bus came to my stopAs a matter of fact, the bus driver was very courteous and professional, if slightly dizzy.
As I got off the bus, I told the male bus driver to shove a broomstick up his ass
He got so tired of my disharmonious bullshit
He threatened to clock a transfer puncher upside my head
Next time: Pre-chewed food: the next big thing in corporate food service?
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Reykjavik Part 2 of N: Friendly Drunk Swedes, Unnaturally Blue Water, Imaginative Eyewear
After being dropped off at Hotel Odinsve we decided to take a nap. We got in the tiny elevator (my experienced world traveller wife had made a point of leaving the especially big suitcase at home, anticipating this) and then checked out the room for a bit (also small, but the entire wall facing the street was a window. We could see the ocean.) and fell asleep. For a bit.
The phone rang and my wife picked up. It was some joker from work. He had a question. Nothing was particularly wrong, but he had a question. Anyhow she refused to wake me up, but I woke up anyhow and called back to find that there was no problem to get bent out of shape about.
We left to explore the city. The obvious starting point was Hallgrimskirkja. Out front is a statue of Leifr Eiríksson, who discovered North America (Vinland) around 1000 A.D. (sorry Tony Soprano). Inside is a very impressive pipe organ, with 5275 pipes, some point outward like cannons which is quite odd looking.
After reading about rotten shark, pickled ram's testicles, and the aforementioned singed sheep's heads before for our trip, we decided to play it safe for our first meal in town and ate at a vegetarian place, the 'One Woman Restaurant'. We had some curry and daal there, and a couple of lattes. The one woman, like pretty much everyone we were to encounter in Reykjavik, spoke English well.
One thing we noticed immediately were the blocky glasses many people were wearing. The frames were thick and rectangular. Despite my quasi-Nordic appearance, my wire-frame glasses gave me away as an American. I had noticed a Dutch co-worker sporting similar frames on last summer's visit to Ireland, but just figured he wore them because he was a cool punk rock guy. People of all ages were rocking these. To hell with LASIK surgery.
Later, when we were back in the U.S. eating breakfast in New York, we noticed an older guy wearing glasses like we'd seen in Iceland. Within seconds, another guy at his table jokingly referred to him as 'that Icelandic Prick'.
Our first touristy excursion was a trip to the Blue Lagoon. It's a geothermal spa next to a geothermal power plant, and it's not far from the airport in Keflavik. The water is an unnatural neon blue.
Inside we encountered more of Iceland's technological wonders. We received bracelets which both locked a locker when swept by a sensor on the door, and also could be used to purchase Viking Beer or other drinks in the lounge area. I failed to operate the lock properly, and found the door hanging open when I returned (none of my belongings were missing).
Showering naked with strangers is required before entering the Blue Lagoon, but there are partitions along the wall, so it's not some prison scene in there. From the shower area, it's possible to get in the Blue Lagoon before going outside. But we walked out on the wooden deck and enjoyed a few seconds of snow and wind before getting in. It was snowing heavily, and employees in full winter gear hovered around along the edge of the water. We relaxed in the 105F water. Some people put white mud on their faces so they could look like a photo negative of Al Jolson in 'The Jazz Singer'. Mammy!
I accidentally swallowed some water. It tasted very salty, but that was about it. I was a bit concerned about ingesting unnaturally colored water, but nothing came of it. I did not become horribly ill, nor did I develop superpowers and become Glacier Man.
Eventually we headed back inside, ate more skyr and hung out while waiting for the bus. A couple guys wearing Red Sox gear with heavy Boston accents were in our group. My wife asked one was he from Boston and he asked 'how'd you know?' My wife told them she was from Boston, but left because she married me. "Jerk." said one of them. We later wondered if they were on the run from the law, hiding out in Iceland.
The bus eventually showed up, and we asked where were we going for part 2, the 'Northern Lights Excursion'. Our Chuck Norris looking bus driver laughed and explained that was the drive back. We didn't see any Northern Lights through our windows.
As we got back to Reykjavik I again noticed some prominent graffiti in a spot under a bridge. A 'Welcome to Reykjavik' sign would have looked good there, but this graffiti said 'Supernova Sucks'. I agree, but wouldn't go through the trouble of painting it on a wall. I thought it was strange, until I later found out one of the contestants on 'Rock Star: Supernova' was Magni Asgeirsson of Iceland. He lost the competition, or didn't, depending on how you look at it.
After returning it was time to get something to eat. We had no plans, and decided to continue the risk-averse streak as far as eating went and seek out a pizza place of some kind. We ended up at Rosso Pomodoro, an Italian place that's a chain, but a good one. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with Pomodoro Rosso in New York, immortalized in Seinfeld as a good place for breakups.
Before we even sat down a very large table of men in the 30-45 age range started singing. While they didn't have fantastic voices, they sounded really good, like they'd been practicing. They were all singing in the same key and at the same tempo. They were also drinking and apparently heavily, as a couple of them fell down (but they got up again).
We decided to sit at the table next to them not in spite of the fact that they were drunk and acting odd, but because of it, but soon we started getting an uncomfortable vibe as one kept looking at us when we talked and said a couple things to the guy sitting next to him. Then one of them put his glass of wine on the table and got in our space. The waitress asked him not to put his glass on our table, so he took it off for a second and then put it back. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I just looked at him and said 'hey, how are you doing?'
He was pretty well drunk, but friendly enough. It turned out he and his compatriots were from Sweden ('the southern part'). We complimented them on their fine cars. They all were part of a 'Gentlemen's Club' called 'Round Table'. In the U.S., 'Gentlemen's Club' means a building with no windows with girls inside stripping to make college money, but in this case apparently it's a group of guys who take trips together and get drunk and sing and generally have a good time. About halfway through our dinner (I had some really good salmon), they got up, sang another song which I assume was in Swedish so nobody else in the restaurant knew what they were singing about either, and they were on their way.
We wandered Reykjavik and caught the beginning of the night's drunken revelry, but were tired and made our way back to the Hotel.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
This English Professor Hates Sam Harris
Mary Grabar has a Ph.D. in English. She wrote a screed on the townhall site about Sam Harris. Her comments on science have been dismissed by the esteemed Dr. Joan Bushwell (who has a Ph.D. in science!) as laughable. What I really loved in the article was this bit at the end:
"I have seen the customers who fondled your book and read the jacket with self-satisfied expressions...Your little tome at $16.95 graces their bookshelves along with those by Bill Moyers and the atheist authors you recommend. These progressives proudly display their reading material as they serve canapés and cocktails to similarly correct-minded, nipped and Botox-ed activists, who only really just want what is good for us. Your slim, easy-to-read pamphlet is just right for trips to the salon, masseuse, and transcendental meditation retreat. Your fans cluck over the ignorance and benightedness of those like me—their gold and diamonds shining in the ambient light of their converted warehouse condos. You amaze them with your profundity, your ability to string together clichés and tired arguments, and in 91 small widely spaced pages tear down the foundations of the civilization put in place by millennia of thinkers and the Church Fathers. For your book, they whipped out the credit cards from Louis Vitton bags."
Heh heh, no irony there with the strung together cliches. I think I'm gonna pop open a bottle of Veuve Cliquot now and have a chuckle at whatever's on CBN now, then maybe drive to Starbucks in my Volvo and buy a CD by my favorite lesbian songwriter while making a snide remark about Toby Keith to the barista. Yep.
Soon, more about Reykjavik.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Reykjavik Report Part 1of N
You can tell it's Reykjavik because of the Hallgrimskirkja back there.
We recently took a break from the corporate grind to do something completely different in a place which was completely different from our usual environment (except for everybody still speaking English), namely, Reykjavik and the surrounding region in Southwestern Iceland.
The stated goal was to see the Northern Lights, which I very much wanted to see. Given that the Northern Lights are not particularly predictable, we needed to go someplace that would still be a cool place to be if there were no Northern Lights, so we chose Iceland. Actually my wife chose Iceland. The whole thing was a surprise for me in honor of my turning 37 (time is running out, see the Northern Lights now. See the glaciers before they melt away).
We were there for 3 nights which was great, but we were sorry to leave. The past week I've been checking out various Iceland related websites (the Grapevine, Iceland's English Language newspaper, is a good one) when I need a 5 minute mental vacation from the tedium, the ongoing struggles between the fragile egos, and the ridiculous requests to do stupid demeaning shit.
We had dinner at the airport and the $8 margaritas were good preparation for the priciness of food in general we were to encounter in Iceland (the conversion rate was 67 ISK to 1 USD, which doesn't tell you much. A better way to put it is to imagine a Starbucks ($3 coffee)/Football Stadium ($4.50 hot dog) food pricing scheme generalized to everything). We eventually got on the plane, where we waited at the gate for 2+ hours while the maintenance crew fixed something or another so we wouldn't crash into the North Atlantic and find out whether we'd freeze or drown first. The flight attendants handed out a paper in Icelandic, which we looked through and wondered at all the ways there is to make the 'th' sound.
Despite the assistance of alcohol and the Dalai Lama Maroon neck pillow purchased at the airport, as always I was unable to sleep on the plane. So I noticed around 3am somebody had decided it would be a good idea to have the Dustin Hoffman transvestite vehicle Tootsie as the in-flight movie. OK.
A couple hours later while walking up and down the aisle, I heard the captain give a very long announcement in Icelandic, and figured we must be near our destination, which the follow-up in English confirmed. Having worked some of the stiffness out of my legs, I was very excited despite my tiredness and the documentary on Kenny G that followed Tootsie on the Monitor Screens.
After waiting in a couple of lines, we got on the FlyBus and made our way from Keflavik (check out the cool 'sperm penetrating the egg' sculpture) to Reykjavik. In my extremely sleepy state I did my best to ignore the American photographer and the Icelandic businesswoman trying to impress each other so I could check out the landscape, which doesn't really look like Earth. There's lots of black, cracked volcanic rock in the foreground, covered with very short green lichens that take 70 years to grow, with beautiful mountains and the ocean in the distance. There are no animals anywhere (except the occasional bird), yet there's life everywhere. Little scrubby bits of non-sentient life, but still, life.
We ended up at the bus terminal where there's a Restaurant called 'Fljott og Gott' (Something and Goat). The logo is a happy cartoon chef holding a platter which has a sheep's head on it, and the (singed) head is sporting a baseball cap at a jaunty angle. He is like the Flavor Flav of decapitated sheep. Unfortunately I can't find this image on the web, just an uninteresting alternative with a hamburger instead of a goat's head. I would like a t-shirt with this logo, but it's probably not to be.
There were no goat's heads or rotten shark (Hakarl) to be found inside, though. Just assorted sandwiches, Viking Beer (with 2% alcohol content, now you too can drink like a Viking), and skyr, a thick Icelandic yogurt which is delicious! We picked up some skyr, water, and a free copy of the aforementioned 'Grapevine', with the cover 'The U.S. vs. Laxness', which in my ignorance, I thought had something to do with American can-do spirit and perkiness conquering laziness and ennui or something. Halldor Laxness was an Icelandic author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.
Our brusque driver dropped us off at the Hotel Odinsve (Odin's Dwelling) on Thorsgata (Thor's Street). Really.
We decided to start things off by sleeping for a couple of hours as we were running on fumes at this point.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
The Ray Smuckles Google Logo Greasemonkey Plugin
Inspired by this achewood strip.
One of 5403003 Greasemonkey scripts inspired by same.
Code follows, chochachos.
---------------------------
// ==UserScript==
// @name RayLogo
// @namespace SDC
// @description achewood logo
// @include http://www.google.com/
// @exclude
// @exclude
// ==/UserScript==
var allEle = document.evaluate("//IMG[@alt='Google']",
document,
null,
XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
null);
allEle.snapshotItem(0).src ="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/393366534_d37972fd53.jpg?v=0";
One of 5403003 Greasemonkey scripts inspired by same.
Code follows, chochachos.
---------------------------
// ==UserScript==
// @name RayLogo
// @namespace SDC
// @description achewood logo
// @include http://www.google.com/
// @exclude
// @exclude
// ==/UserScript==
var allEle = document.evaluate("//IMG[@alt='Google']",
document,
null,
XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
null);
allEle.snapshotItem(0).src ="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/393366534_d37972fd53.jpg?v=0";
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Enjoy this 107-year-old cartoon
I've been a life-long fan of animation and recently have been reading the history/how-to/survey 'Animation: The Whole Story' by Howard Beckerman. The book discusses early stabs at animation, including J. Stewart Blackton's 'The Enchanted Drawing' and the jaw-droppingly racist (but that's how people were, we're assured) 'Lightning Sketches'.
Thanks to YouTube you can actually see 1900's 'The Enchanted Drawing' and marvel at how we got from there to the likes of 'Spirited Away'. It addresses universal themes like the joys of consuming alcohol.
Also on YouTube: 'The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces'
Neither of the aforementioned are quite what we think of as cartoons today, but rather film-enhanced versions of vaudeville-era 'chalk talks'. This 'Felix' cartoon from 1923 is considerably more sophisticated (and entertaining).
Unfortunately, I was unable to locate 'Gertie The Trained Dinosaur' (1914).
Thanks to YouTube you can actually see 1900's 'The Enchanted Drawing' and marvel at how we got from there to the likes of 'Spirited Away'. It addresses universal themes like the joys of consuming alcohol.
Also on YouTube: 'The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces'
Neither of the aforementioned are quite what we think of as cartoons today, but rather film-enhanced versions of vaudeville-era 'chalk talks'. This 'Felix' cartoon from 1923 is considerably more sophisticated (and entertaining).
Unfortunately, I was unable to locate 'Gertie The Trained Dinosaur' (1914).
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