2019 September❮❮prevnext❯❯

Also, the photos of the month:

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everybody needs a tuba for a pillow, everybody needs a tuba

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my pals think living in scotland is all beautiful rolling hills and friendly patter when in reality it's a junkie shouting 'ye goin for a shite hen?' at me because i'm carrying a 16 roll pack of toilet roll

Light month for the still new summary format... Janelle Monáe is superb as always, and the "Caravan" by The Mills Brothers was a great bookend.

	Make Me Feel Janelle Monáe	Love the almost ASMR sound of the mouth clicks - and this song has so many small little twists, I love it- Strong "Prince" vibe. Some tumblr entry. Like her stuff in general.
★ ★ ★ ★	Saber Dance Harry James and His Orchestra	Heh, remember Peewee's Big Adventure? I played this in college, maybe some other places...
	Rock Star (Jason Nevins Remix Edit) N.E.R.D	Uptempo remix Liked this song, ran into the remix in this All iPod Ads video...
★ ★ ★ ★	Paagal Badshah	Blend of traditional India music and hiphop - was playing at Melissa's exercise class. Saw something online about this - controversy where the video is maybe being discriminated against and deserves some record for most views, or maybe there was click-buying, or maybe every big video does that...
	Something About You (Single) Level 42	Famous 80s new wave The brilliant Cary Bros cover of this made me look for other variants, so I went to the original.
	I Think I See the Light Cat Stevens	Harold+Maude's soundtrack had way too much Cat Stevens, though this one is pretty ok.
	Hole In The Bucket Spearhead	90s hiphop with a protest edge. References in a band email thread about how to use our funds.
★ ★ ★ ★	True Colors (Film Version) Anna Kendrick & Justin Timberlake	An episode of "Superstore" had the original, thought this cover seemed more promising. Deep ambivalence about Lauper's original...
	Blurred Ice (Vanilla Ice vs. Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell Williams & T.I.) Ed Home	Mashup of some problematic songs. I've had "Best of Booty" (pop-mashups, some truly inspired) tracks sitting around waiting for a quiet month for a while.
	Them Basses Big Top Orchestra	Marching / Circus Band music. My bass buddy Kevin C posted: "Unpopular Opinion: Them Basses is not a very good march." But I remember playing it once or twice.
★ ★ ★ ★	Gittin' Funky Kid 'N Play	80s hip hop - missed the music back in the day, but now I think they were one of the bigger influences in the Christian rap I was listening to around then. Work buddy Mifi was going to see "Hammer House Party", MC Hammer and a pile of 80s/90s artists including these guys.
★ ★ ★ ★	Get Up Get Out (feat. Jstlbby) Born Dirty	Big motivational music. Someone on work slack did a push to all servers and sent a Spotify link to this, since it seemed thematically appropriate.
★ ★ ★ ★	bad guy Billie Eilish	The kinda sexy song that knocked "Old Town Road" off the perch. Love the "Duh". Friend was playing during a getaway weekend
	Nobody Mitski	Song sounds a bit too studio clean. The line "Give me one good honest kiss And I'll be alright" was on tumblr - here and here
★ ★ ★ ★	Caravan The Mills Brothers	Vocal-instrumental version of a jazz great. Doing Blog cleanup I ran into it while doing blog cleanup - on /2010/02/15 my mom mentioned by grandfather Papa Sam liked the group.

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Let's leave aside the fact that no divine entity or precept of natural law gives anyone the right to own an assault weapon. Let's also ignore the fact that it's entirely likely that gun control solutions would have denied the Odessa shooter easy access to the firearms with which he carried out his killings.

The most interesting question here is about evil intent. If human evil is the ultimate cause of gun violence–rather than the shocking ease with which modern firearms allow tense situations to escalate into deadly violence and unbalanced individuals to become mass murderers in a matter of seconds–then presumably there must be more bad people in America than anywhere else in the world.

I've been hearing "God-given right to own guns" in a few quarters. How the hell does that work? Either it's "well everything comes from God" (all things good and ill, I guess, if God is all powerful and lets 'em happen... and Gun Control would come from God too) or maybe just "well there's this amendment about guns and militias in the Constitution, and that especially in particular came from God".

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Oh wow - MRI videos of what's going on with the mouth and tongue and throat when a trombone player is doing their thing! Here's my favorite:

So we turn to the second conservative talking point - that it stops urban areas from overrunning the rural ones, by having more people. (And we'll leave aside that that was a concern largely for less-populated states that wanted to keep their slave-owning ways) I think Jamelle Bouie put it pretty well: "[Abolishing the Electoral College means that politicians will only campaign in (and listen to) urban areas.] is wrong on the impact of ending the Electoral College. A presidential candidate who focused only on America's cities and urban centers would lose -- there just aren't enough votes. Republicans live in cities just as Democrats live in rural areas. Under a popular vote, candidates would still have to build national coalitions across demographic and geographic lines. The difference is that those coalitions would involve every region of the country instead of a handful of competitive states in the Rust Belt and parts of the South."

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That the first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think. What you think next defines who you are.

That is such an interesting thought about identity and our relationship with our subconscious selves and the implications for change and growth. Sometimes I can have such ugly initial thoughts - (a bit like the french term L’appel du vide, the call of the void.) It does raise the question: what's the realest you? Is it that conscious voice that steps up and corrects the first bad thought it, like the quote implies? Or are you not "authentically" changed until you've successfully reconditioned yourself?

Building a giant statue got Ozymandias into a poem which will in fact outlast "The Lone and Level Sands" that "Stretch Far Away" [...] Immortality is basically free now except that you still die.

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Only jailers believe in jail.

Someone mentioned this quote to me, attributed to I forget whom, but I can't google it, so now I'm wondering.

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Interesting Quora answer to Why aren't Canadian doctors moving to the US en masse for better pay? most relevant bit:

She said it wasn't worth the hassle. She made more money -but she also had more expenses, including hiring 5 additional individuals as well as her office staff just to deal with all of the different insurance companies and payments and collections!

She found her medical options for her patients compromised by decisions enforced by these same insurance companies that she felt prevented her from giving her patients the medical care they needed.

I've heard a range of opinions from Canadians about their healthcare, ranging from "meh and annoying" to "great!". But the non-stop crap about "US healthcare is the envy of the world!" needs is nonsense. Yes, free markets can get to lost of efficiencies, but I don't think that overcomes the zero sum game aspect of how the less healthcare the insurance company gives me the more money they get to keep. Our system's reliance on Urgent Care-based response and GoFundMe for procedures are indicative of a system that needs to be supplemented.

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Boris Johnson loses his majority:

via b3ta.com/ Interesting piece on Mayor Pete's religiosity vs the apocalyptic view in some quarters on the right - the idea that the world can't or won't be better 'til we burn down the current one his horrifying.

I sort of hate how popular "When The Saints Go Marching In" is for NOLA-inspired bands, because it has that apocalyptic message baked in (I especially didn't want to play it for the counter-rally, where you have some idiots marching and thinking they're special messengers.) Like I say: "You know, in the movies, you can tell the bad guys - they're the ones that are plotting for and rejoicing in the end of the world. Turns out, same thing in real life."

I guess there's some privilege in that - when the world is treating you pretty well, there's probably "no place but down from here". But even taking that into account, it's easy to think that people who want to burn it all down are WAY overestimating the chances of it being replaced by something better. Reminds me of the quote:

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

That's one of the reasons why I put stock in "the system", as flawed and prone to abuse and exploitation as it can be. It needs reform, not demolition.

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18 years ago my then 5 year old car hit 50,000. Last night, my 15 year old car hit 130K:

(Check engine light comes on a lot if a full-service gas attendant doesn't do the cap properly.)

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All The Ways Brexit Could Go Now, Explained For People Who Are Confused "We're in the endgame now. Or maybe we're not."

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Some other Car Talk words and phrases The Boston Globe identified: "dope slap," or a quick, corrective slap to the back of the head in punishment of stupidity; "urgent haircut," or the need to relieve oneself; "T.S., Eliot," or a public-radio friendly way of saying "tough shit"; "schnerdling," a word with Icelandic origins to mean toilet; and "boat payment," a unit of measurement arising from Ray's discovery that the least scrupulous mechanics he knew all owned boats.

Ha, did not know "Urgent Haircut" (as in Urgent Haircut Productions" was a euphemism!) The Warren Peace Band (get it?) was the first outing of "Boston For Fun", an offshoot of other HONKish groups for more casual get togethers...

Sen. @ewarren supporters have come out in full force, including the “Warren Peace Band” 🎶 pic.twitter.com/wHWlNcxKX4

— Marianna Sotomayor (@MariannaNBCNews) September 7, 2019

Melissa and I went for a hike, the "Great Blue Hill via Skyline Trail" according to AllTrails, the counter-clockwise loop with just a small shortcut back to where we parked and avoiding the final hill.
Medium level hike, some clambering up and down.


Not the finest picture, but
A. tough to get light exposure on clouds properly
B. oh and we are panting like lizards



Panoramic View from Eliot Tower. It doesn't do justice to hell well you can see Boston from there. Also, I would say I really prefer hikes with interesting goals. (And kayaking with fireworks)

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Churchill said "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." I sleep soundly in my bed because I've had a wank mate.

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getting a crop top that says "you are not immune to propaganda" with matching booty shorts that say "propaganda" on the ass

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Really bummed about the MIT Media Lab thought that article pointed out things were grossly mercantile there - "The Media Lab has long been academia's fanciest glue trap for morally elastic rich people." It's that "can you separate appreciating the art from condemning actions of the artist" question that is so much at play these days, but on an institutional level, and for tools I really appreciate like Processing and P5.

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the idea that anti-depressants are supposed to fix you is like rehydrating a raisin and calling it a grape

My dad woulda been 70 today! (he died in the late 80s).

Over the years I've learned how to calculate milestones, so over the years I've made entries on some of his birthdays, his death date anniversaries, and the other odd milestones like "I'm exactly twice as old as I was when he died, so as long without him as I had been with him" and "I'm as old as he was when he died." Some of those days I made little tribute-y essays - (he was a really interesting guy, champagne on a beer budget where I'm sometimes the opposite) - kirk.is/tag/dad

Bummer he wasn't around doing needlepoint when I figured out about pixel art, and could make tools to help convert images or otherwise find source material like retro video games, woulda been interesting to collaborate with him!
UPDATE: Deb, a woman who knew my dad in Salamanca, replied on FB:

I remember him well and I never laughed so hard until he was boiling hotdogs and he said the hot dogs are having an erection they must be done. I was kind of shocked he said that and then again not. He was a good man.

Funnier to remember he was her pastor! And her brother worked with my folks and became a Salvation Army minister himself.

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--Donkey King by Jason Edmiston via

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Prime Minister, negotiating FTAs with the EU and the US and securing their ratification in less than three years, I think is going to be a Herculean task for you. But we do want to be your friend, and your ally; your Athena in doing so. And I think the manner in which you leave the European Union will determine whether that's possible.

That's a brilliant burn - Athena helped Hercules on many of his tasks, but most famously, knocking him out after he went tragically went mad and had killed his own children but before he could kill his own father...

"I know what you're saying. But it isn't because words are inadequate. I won't go that far."
"Certain things words can't convey."
"Oh, but they can. Because those things you're referring to are . . . well, if they're not actually made of words or derived from words, at least inhabit words: language is the solution in which they're suspended. Even love ultimately requires a linguistic base."

but the poet, Andrei Codrescu, once wrote that 'Physical intimacy is only a device for opening the floodgates of what really matters: words.'

(Man, language. Great quotes but makes me wonder... is it just the linguistic / narrative part of my brain telling me that language is so important? )

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Laura Ingraham Schooled By Benjamin Watson In Deeply Satisfying Fox News Segment HA. Go Patriots, and go thoughtful athletes! Stayin' Alive, played on finally detailed robot piano... it's weird because you can totally hear the lyrics that aren't there.

via Cracked.com's 5 Surprising Ways Your Senses Are Lying To You
Perfect shot of a swimmer just before the water's surface tension is broken, via reddit

I saw it paired with a similar shot here with @Hookzilla asking "What if water just don't let you out one day..."

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i think every day about how cable internet is IP over MPEG. this is a literal fact. DOCSIS sends downstream data in MPEG frames because that's what the cable networks are optimized for and what all the switching equipment understood when cable broadband took off

(Later followup: "important note: i'm told docsis 1 and 2 were burdened like this but the current standard has probably done away with it. It appears that it WAS like this for many years though.")

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Since the turn of the century, the Red Sox have won more World Series titles than anyone, but generally stumble the following the year, like how this year they're reigning champions but unlikely to make the postseason. It's kind of like they took the old "Just wait 'til next year!" line and turned it from a promise into a threat...

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supper mario broth. Guess I just love random off-model images of Donkey Kong

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via the-ice-castle

Two children found a bag containing twelve marbles. They argued over how to divide the toys and finally went to see the Mulla. When asked to settle their disagreement, the Mulla asked whether the children wanted him to divide the marbles as a human would or as Allah would.

The children replied, "We want it to be fair. Divide the marbles as Allah would."

So, the Mulla counted out the marbles and gave three to one child and nine to the other."

A repeat, but man is it a good reminder that in some ways our moral aspirations transcend what the universe and god seem to have set up for us.

I like to think that the house I grew up in dreams about me sometimes, too.

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Sequin pillow magic.

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Play Chess and Lose Weight! Albeit at the grandmaster level. I had no idea it was so gruelling!

I never got deeply into chess - probably because I wasn't naturally great at it once I learned the moves, and too full of myself to struggle with getting better. I think I had a handheld game of it that I could beat, and an Atari 800XL program that I couldn't. I remember by friend Beau was terrific at it.

I wonder what percentage of people who grew up in the USA know all the chess moves? Saturday was a busy day for JP Honk... we started with the Augment parade- here's a close up of my favorite tuba accessory, the piles of cheap Mardi Gras style beads, $1 for about a dozen strands at Dollar Tree...

photo from Now+There's twitter feed that has some good photos. Also, see Donna Dodson's video of the band.

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Oh and earlier that day I posted this, with my usual selfie joke "feeling cute, might delete later" which is two half-lies.

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Next time I'm explaining why the concept of "well now it's a level playing field across these demographic groups" is false I should remember to link to these 3 paragraphs of Fran Lebowitz where she puts it rather well... Probably bad idea: had a momentary flash of wanting this as a tattoo...

The phrase just popped into my head, as I find myself getting all tightened up about conflicting band schedule issues... such a good reminder from Porkypine there. I just reread "A View From A Broad", about The Divine Miss M's 1978 world concert tour:

(I think this scene is from a later tour of hers, but the Delores character and the harlettes were very present in the book.)

The book is full of wild prose and photos. For me it's one of those books you find on your parent's book shelf as a kid, and it shows you a part of the world you just have no idea about, and then lots of little tidbits just stick with you or generally inform your view on certain topics - for example, she signs a letter in it "Your everlovin' sometimes blondie" - I've always been awkward with signoffs on letters, so I stole that and devolved it into "Your Ever Lovin' Kirk" for emails to my mom during college days, and now I'm YELK and my mom and Aunt Susan are MELM and MELAS in our mutual correspondence and texting.

The passage I've been thinking of the most over the years is this, where she sneaks into a generally off-limits-room at a library in Hawaii when she is ten and finds a book that had been left out:

Of course, [The Decay of Lying] wasn't about telling falsehoods at all. It was by Oscar Wilde and it was really about masks and how the only interesting thing about someone is the mask he wears--not the "real" person behind the mask. The persona was what mattered, not the person. According to Wilde, all that someone had to do to be devastatingly exciting was to make up a fabulous mask.

(She goes on to say "All I needed was a great persona, and that I could invent.)

I find the concept resonates with me, and my current view that it's mostly the interactions that matter - surface, not essence. (In this stance, the internal life only is interesting to the extent it informs what mask and set of interactions we undertake...)

Another passage from when she's in Paris shopping at Les Galeries, having tussled with the clerk about her French, and then checking if the basket she's trying to buy would fit on a boy's bike...

"Ah, mon Dieu! Boys' bikes! Girls' bikes! We have no such things here," he almost shouted. "Only in America do bicycles have gender. It's just another part of your obsession with sex."

"Oh, really?" I said, incredulous that we were going at it again. "The French ain't exactly slouches in that area."

"Ah, but for us sex has always had its time and place. Lovemaking is an art and, like a great painting, should have a frame around it. You have lost that notion in America. It spills over into everything."

I think about this passage a lot. Having a mildly repressed childhood, I've always liked it when I see that frame erased a bit, where you can see a hint of a connection between normal commonplace life and sex - say, a preference for the stretchy cotton tanktop to the fancy black lingerie that declares "now we are in the time of sex".

Also the book lists 4 of those great "I will never forget it" Soph and Ernie jokes, and I think it was where I first encountered Spring and Fall ("Margaret, are you grieving"...the first poem I remember calling a favorite poem.)

Other bits:

I'm as confident as Cleopatra's pussy

(The hypothetical interviewer claims that this is either a way for Miss M to hide her true feelings, or maybe just a total disregard for the simplest rules of civilized conversation.)

She quotes from what turns out to be Tom Waits' song "Shiver Me Timbers" (a piece Midler covered) - ... I really like this cover by Katie Ferrara On an anecdote that had a woman planning to name a line of pro-woman diapragms and douches after Dido the queen:

Somewhere in the back of my mind I seemed to recall that Dido killed herself unloved and untouched, but I thought it best not to mention that to Cecily.

Being moral isn't what you do, I have often tried to tell her, it's what you mean to do. And, naturally, I always mean the best.

Hitler had only one big ball.
Goering had two, but they were small.
Himmler had something sim'lar,
But Goebbels
Had no balls
At all!

"I don't take anything. I'm high on life."
"Where can I get some?"

Death is to the dead as life is to the living.

Finally she signs off:

You know, I wanted to leave you with the memory of the good beneath the gaudy, the saint beneath the paint, the pure little soul that lurks beneath this lurid exterior . . . but then again I figured:

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!

Bette Midler and Fran Frank, her dresser, portrayed in the book as a uptight and Boston-y.

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Love is like a flower bending towards the light: stupid

Listening to the Judge John Hodgman podcast (recommended) and the topic is saying God Bless You after someone sneezes. As a precocious kid I was all too happy to explain that I said "Gesundheit" instead, that it was the German word for health, and "Bless You" was based on old superstition about demons getting in or out during the sneeze or something, and was therefore a little spiritually suspect. (These days I prefer "Gesundheit" just because it's more fun to say loudly.)

I guess that's an early instance of me favoring objective Truth (i.e. the nature of God and demons) over cultural practice.

Actually, I'm still a little fuzzy on the verb "to bless". Like, asking God to bless us or someone else makes some sense (even if it's asking God that whatever his preordained divine plan was, couldn't it pleased be tweaked a bit in our favor?) but then in the Bible you see people called upon to Bless the Lord, etc. Is that a reference to some kind of inner divinity humans carry? Or, is it from God to human a blessing is like good fortune or happy attribute (in the "she was blessed with a keen wit" sense) but from human to God it's like general praise and thanks?

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a great response to Shane Gillis and the art of the non-apology.

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Saw David Byrne's "American Utopia" the other night.... balcony seats at the Colonial - not good if you have vertigo!

Fun show - I didn't really grow up with Byrne's music, but some of his later collaboration songs like "Toe Jam" and "Lazy" were included. The set was a giant bead curtain, that framed the stage like the back and 2 sides of a giant cube with the main performance in the middle. Some of the songs had a lot of fun with light and shadows - making figures giant or distored or in one case like a b+w TV screen ala poltergeist. Successful, yet pointless quest: I finally found this Arby's commercial that I saw in Cleveland in the 80s, and is what I think of during any mention of the word beef:

I remember writing about it 11 1/2 years ago and looking for it every once in a while since. (I misremembered the yee-arr as being earlier in the spot, when he proclaims how he wants lots of beef...)

"Small Government" means "a government small enough to spend my money only on things that I am interested in and not tax me for the rest". It is used by political opportunists to unify a diversity of short-sighted, selfish people under a common flag, expending the gathered political capital to achieve their own agenda. It results in the three D's: deregulation (usually the first victim, can't make money if the government is limiting profits on necessary services), degradation (of the existing infrastructure and services benefitting the bottom portion of society), and deception (of the middle class, telling them everything is looking rosy while the stability of the class below them crumbles).

While it may mean a specific policy within different Libertarian camps, its abuses by the the current [Bush] administration are well documented. The "small government" promised by the president in the 2000 campaign has devoured the entire surplus and increased debt to record levels. Many of our safeguards of a civil society have been removed or gone wanting for enforcement while this "small government" parades around the globe on the cheap capital it flooded the market with between 2001 and 2005.

"Small government" is a complete red herring, uttered by those who would make the government subservient to the capital it creates and defends. This self serving attitude would have prevented the National Highway System, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Hoover Dam, and the eradication of Polio.

From this day's blog entry when my blog's daily comment section was a small community, pre-Facebook. That day had some decent followup debate and dialog.

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BABAM closing yesterday's climate strike at the Boston Statehouse:

Life is a journey to nowhere. If you want a change of scenery, you have to find your own way there.

At work we had a reading group on Angela Duckworth's "Grit" - here's a thoughtful response to Duckworth's book -- Is Grit Overrated?

Betteridge's Law of Headlines ("Any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered by the word no.") not withstanding, I think it's a thoughtful article, pointing out that that kind of single minded perseverance might make pivots that much tougher - being able to change direction and developing a knack for finding the most promising, highest-reward-to-work ratios is important in a quickly changing environment.

The article also touches on something that came to me as I was reading the book, about the way we are biased towards respecting people who look like they're displaying natural aptitude vs "strivers" - it's not quite as mean or as irrational as it looks. There's a temporal element that gets left out when you assume people who don't prefer "strivers" are missing the point; these judgers intuitively know the hard work has already been done, the relevant selection process already applied, and now we are looking at the result.

I know some people like the message of "Grit" because of optimism - no matter how frustrated you are with your current achievements, all you have to do to achieve is just keep at it. And keeping at it is SO important - and people with "fixed mindset" might not understand that deeply enough. But being wise in choosing what you are "keeping at it "on is crucial as well - there's an almost Taoist principle of finding the natural course of things.

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Not that I'm very far along the spectrum, but I wonder if there could be a connection between the classic autistic difficulty with seeing other points of view and my homegrown intuitions that individual subjective views and preferences don't matter; that only the objective view really has meaning. The classic subject with autism has trouble recognizing that their view isn't the de facto objectively correct one - my variant knows that my view isn't complete, but that there is a objectively most correct one to be had, and confidence comes from consensus - or else you have to explain why your own view is more likely correct.

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My two current main problems with Marie Kondo and her famous method - and decluttering in general -
1. I kind of respect the Shintoism light aspect of it all, but throwing something in the garbage feels so disrespectful - yeah "thank it for its service", but then, into the trash? (And that whole justification of like "is this article really happy in some duty old drawer? Let it go!" Well - assuming it's not good donation fodder- I'm not sure if it's going to be happier in some dump.) And for something that truly carries personal energy, like an old photo... yikes!
2. So much clutter represents artifacts from my aspirational self, what I'd like to do or be given enough time and energy, and throwing that stuff away feels like murder of that future self. Or at least more firmly closing doors of potential that are hanging partially open.

Relevant quote:

For every yes there must be a no. Decisions are so expensive. They cost you everything else.

Lovely little instagram chapbook on loneliness

Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn't just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it's because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles, tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they don't really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they're as likely as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn't actually happen to anyone else; it's literally *just* Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.

>So to everyone else in the galaxy,
>all humans are basically Doc Brown.

Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don't realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They're just like "yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience".

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It's so weird how you guys use Jesus like a college football mascot. You ignore the sermon on the mount, you step on the meek, you vilify the stranger, you ignore the poor, then stand up w your bruised egos and say, "Go Team Jesus!"

Nothing you do has anything to do with Christ.

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Why climate change isn't the end of the world. More mellow than the message I usually hear in my circles. Too blasé? I surprised myself this morning by being able to recite this poem that I hadn't thought of in a decade:

Higgledy Piggledy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
I just loved Mom."

Looking around a bit, I probably got it from the old Unix fortune program. I guess it's an example of the double-dactyl form... (I know it's good because almost everything I can google up has a "~" in the URL path) My band JP Honk is thinking about getting T-shirts made up, here are some designs I'm playing with...

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From my company's engineering blog, Why devs should embrace project ownership and swift iteration.

The essay is legit, and I would say that if you're A. looking to buy a car, we're the best place to start (CarGurus became #1 in a crowd of sites who will help you find a new or used car in the area by being the first to not be afraid of calling a car overpriced when that was the case) or B. if you want a job in Cambridge - either tech / engineering, or in sales / getting dealers on board (or whatever job listings are on it - hit me up, for reals, it's a great place.) Was thinking about dirty versions of popular songs - my dad was a fan, I think.
(WARNING, PG13 or slightly worse content follows)

Like for the show Howdy Doody and its theme song, I think there's a story where he regaled my mom with

It's Howdy Doody Time
This show ain't worth a dime
And as for Clarabell
Well he can go to hell

and she said "I didn't know there was a dirty version!" and he said "I didn't know there was a clean one!".

I thought of that this morning with the naughty version of "Lady of Spain"... (PG13: "Lady of Spain I adore you... Pull down your pants, I'll explore you")

Of course what I really wish I could get a recording of is the naughty version of "You're The Top", attributed to Israel Balin...

You're The Top!
You're a gin and tonic
You're The Top!
You're a high colonic
You're the burning heat
Of a bridal suite in use
You're the mound of Venus
You're King Kong's penis
You're self-abuse!
You're an arch
In the Rome collection
You're the starch
In a groom's erection
I'm a eunuch who
Has just been through an op
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're The Top!

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I liked hearing Tony Hawk talk about tricks from the "simple" to the mind-bogglingly athletic.

Fascinating that he isn't 100% consistent on even the "low level" stuff like a "frontside 180 ollie" - I've never skated but had assumed at some point for a pro the simpler stuff became trivial.

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*all the animals gathered around Adam*
Lion: Tell us again how you named us
Deer: Yes tell us tell us!
Adam: Well I-
Lumpsucker fish: boooo
Adam: I just-
Cockchafer beetle: BOOOOOOOO

Yesterday I went with Melissa and Ariana to Mt Auburn Cemetery - feeling a bit remiss in not having lived near Boston for years without going there... it's quite restful and lovely, besides seeing some graves (like Isabella Stewart Gardner's mausoleum) it's an arboretum,has a few ponds, boasts some plants hosting lovely butterflies, and has a small hilltop tower you can climb to get one of the best views of all of Boston and the 360 area around... all for free, but buying a $1 map makes it even better, pointing out some historically important graves (besides Gardner, I has us go to say hi to Buckminster Fuller's grave, which sadly only has a picture of a geodesic dome on a rather humble and prosaic marker) and sculptures... (you can either navigate with the map alone or it pairs well with google maps)

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I'm making "cheat sheets" for BABAM for tubas (and hopefully eventually other parts) - taking our main 10 or so songs and putting the relevant sections on one page that can be printed onto a sheet or so or peeked at via phone. Things are geared at novices, so I'm putting in the fingerings (might make up a set with trombone slide positions as well)

It's amazing how sensitive my ego can be... I've had a few false starts and dead ends in making a workflow for assembling the cheat sheets (messing with using my ipad as a touch screen to draw in the numbers, and also whether I should use screenshots from existing sheet music or just re-enter notes into the composition program musescore). But it's so weirdly difficult for me to admit "yeah, that earlier idea was gonna be pretty clutzy" without feeling like I'm harshly criticizing my past self. (even if some of the "fault" was with the technology - I would not recommend "duet display" for using an ipad as an extra screen drawing pad)

Isn't that weird? I can't even celebrate "oh, here's a hacked together method that works pretty well" without being annoyed at me not seeing the best path immediately. (And also without considering how someone more adept would have an even slicker path.) It's fixed mindset writ small.

Been thinking on two related quotes lately:

If you get the least bit bored,
just flick the nudity switch
and remember that everyone around you
could possibly get nude at any moment.

The epigraph for "Schnick Schnack Schnuck", a German indie porn film - very women- and people-in-general- friendly relative to most porn, I'd say.

"Rach, ya know, I can see you naked any time I want."
"What?"
"All I have to do is close my eyes. See? Woohoo!"
"Ross! Stop that!"
"Ah, I'm sorry."
"Come on! I don't want you thinking of me like that any more!"
"Uh, sorry. Nothing you can do about it. It's one of my, uh, rights as the ex-boyfriend. Oop... oh yeah!"
"Stop it, cut it out! Cut it out!"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, it will never happen... Uh-oh! Wait a minute! Wait... wait... now there are a hundred of you--and I'm the king."

Been thinking about this lately. Is it ok to do that? It's interesting because if memory is mostly an act of reconstruction - as I believe it is - than the line between fantasy and memory - at least for our objective experience - is quite a bit blurred! Maybe it's fine to do so long as the people you are featuring in your naked imagings are never, ever aware of it. Which is why I'm posting this on my blog and not mirroring it on FB I guess...

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Billie Ellish defying gravity on SNL - not bad for a live show. Besides the Fred Astaire and Lionel Richie references, it's also a call back to the SNL <SPOILER>Penn & Teller magic skit</SPOILER>...

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For human kindness for people paid to interact with you, the jokes to avoid...

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I remember once upon a time I was sort impressed with Giuliani? Like in his mayor of NYC days... yeah they made mussolini jokes about him, but there was that whole clean up of times square thing...

...but now...

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I had a dream that the lil 7up dot was the KoolAid guy's son and I can't stop thinking about it

2019 September❮❮prevnext❯❯