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4 star:
* Miss Cindy (The High Decibels)
Most interesting new song this month. I like the mix of southern gritty guitar and beastie boys style end-of-line-echoing
* Beware of the Boys (Mundian to Bach Ke) [feat. JAY-Z] (Panjabi MC)
Love the India music (and the tiger roar) and I think Jay-Z's flow goes well with it.
* You've Got the Love (Florence + the Machine)
* Flagpole Sitta (Harvey Danger)
* Katebegia (Broken Brothers Brass Band)

3 star:
* Goodbye My Lover (James Blunt)
* Days Like This (Dermot Kennedy)
* C64, More Like C Sixty-BORE (Beeble)
* Bad Breath (Willie Nelson)
* Music! Music! Music! (Teresa Brewer)
* Tired of Being Alone (Al Green)
* Broken Man (St. Vincent)
* Straighten Out the Rug (Maurice Jarre)
* Feel Again (Yarin Primak)
* Big Bottom (Spinal Tap)

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As a kid I wondered if you could make a robot trumpet player. The answer is now yes. I wonder how the cyber-embouchure works... (you can google up a robot sax player as well...)

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Related:

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Taiwan Earthquake dashcam footage wowowowowow -- when the road ahead looks like a video game level, what with all the boulders.

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definitely sounds like a very stable genius who is definitely in a good state of mind to be president

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Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

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A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

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Manson's Law of Avoidance: The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.

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I remember that we were playing "So What", one of Miles' compositions - from, you know, late 50s, I guess. And Tony Williams was playing drums, Ron Carter bass, Wayne Shorter saxophone. And it was a really hot night, the music was tight, it was powerful, it was innovative... and FUN. We were having a lot of fun and the music was ON.

Tony Williams was banging on the drums and right in the middle of Miles' solo when he was playing one of his AMAZING solos, and I'm trying, I'm in there, and I'm playing... right in the middle of his solo I play the WRONG CHORD. A chord that was... it just sounded COMPLETELY wrong, it sounded like a big mistake... and I did this and I went like this [gasps] and I put my hands around my ears and Miles paused for... a second.

And then he played some notes that made my chord right, he made it correct, which ASTOUNDED me. I couldn't believe what I heard. Miles was able to make something that was wrong into something that was right, with the power of the choice of notes that he made and that feeling that he had.

And so I couldn't play for about a minute, couldn't even touch the piano. But what I realize now is that Miles didn't hear it as a mistake. He heard it as something that happened, just an event, and so that was part of the reality of what was happening at that moment and he dealt with it. He... found something that since he didn't hear it as a mistake he felt it was his responsibility to find something that fit and he was able to do that.

That taught me a very big lesson about not only music, but about life. We can look for the world to be as we would like to be as individuals, make it easy for me, that idea, we can look for that. But I think the important thing is that we can grow. And the only way we can grow is to have a mind that's open enough to accept situations, to be able to experience situations as they are, and to turn them into medicine, turn poison into medicine. Take whatever situation you have and make something constructive happen with it. That's what I learned from that situation with Miles.

Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at Georgetown University.

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Even Major League Baseball can see it, folks. This is disgusting

Republicans in Georgia are making it harder to vote.(Except in the rural areas that are more populated by white folks) These laws affect democrats and black voters a hell of a lot more than anyone else.

One party is coming closer to admitting they deeply need less democracy; they look to cement their minoritarian rule as best they can.



Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.
There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots.
It's now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.
Drop boxes still exist ... but barely.
Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned.
Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones.
Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges.
If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote.
If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.
With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.
Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories).
With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline.
The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board.
The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board.
The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.
Runoff elections will happen faster -- and could become harder to manage.

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Not a bad month! Can't believe I hadn't heard of Beyoncé's Homecoming before now... also I found out I am re-empowered to rip youtube to MP3s, thought that's always, always a last resort for me... but I had a backlog of things to check out.

	Wynona's Big Brown Beaver Primus	Driving indie. Freaky video! From this tumblr post but I think the band was a favorite of my ex Mo.
	Volare Gipsy Kings	A more authentic feeling version than Dean Martin's... Just randomly started singing it one day...
	News Background A Sammy Burdson	Sneaky sounding music... a little manufactured but good. Background music in the movie "Logan Lucky"
	Atomic Power The Buchanan Brothers	Bluegrass with a cornball modern apocalyptic edge... Like I write here, from the Hidden Brain podcast...
★ ★ ★ ★	Crazy in Love Sofia Karlberg	Total How To Make A Blockbuster Movie Trailer energy... Maybe some show had it on?
★ ★ ★ ★	Make Way For the King Ohana Bam	Awesome big horn hip hop. Some show I guess...
	Mama Doh Like (Bubalups Riddim) Flava	Some kind of carnival music... I've heard HONK variants "Mama Don't Like" that must have similar roots. Lua in my band mentioned he had a cassette tape of this, youtube was the only place I could find it.
★ ★ ★ ★	The Suburbs (Continued) Arcade Fire	Such a haunting song. One of the youtube rips. I think Amber was a big fan of these guys.
★ ★ ★ ★	Still Alive (From "Portal") The 8-Bit Big Band	Big Band cover of the brilliant video game song - really captures the sense of menace in it. I think this was on the youtube list, but I was able to find a copy to buy.
★ ★ ★ ★	Movin' On Up Mama Digdown's Brass Band	Cover of the old Sitcom Theme - I had thought it would be a good band song for a long time. A recommendation from the automated music system gnooisc I think I seeded it with Deee-lite, Pomplamoose, Rebirth Brass Band
	Claw or Friend Robbie Down	Indie sound. Another recommendation from the music system gnooisc...
★ ★ ★ ★	Tennis Ball [Explicit] Hello Peril	Funny hiphop From the movie "Always Be My Maybe"
★ ★ ★ ★	Welcome (Homecoming Live) Beyoncé	Intro to her Coachella show - loved the giant band version "Do Watcha Wanna" I can't believe this musical goddess going full on HBCU Marching Band flew under my radar!
★ ★ ★ ★	Catastrophe Theme Youtube	Theme to the show Catastrophe... eclectic mix, banjo, yodeling... there's a lot going on here... Another "find or rip"
	Formation (Homecoming Live) Beyoncé	More Marching Band cover.... always love "Come on ladies, lets get in formation... come on ladies lets get information..." Adds some slow ponderous weight to the original.. From her Netflix special.
★ ★ ★ ★	No Children The Mountain Goats	Kind of beautifully cynical and bitter indie song. From this tumblr entry "why would you watch marriage story when instead you can get just speedrun the experience of divorce angst by listening to the mountain goats’ ‘no children’ which is both more dramatic and also under 3 minutes long"
★ ★ ★ ★	Sweet Dreams Seven Nation Army Mashup Pomplamoose	Great mashup - love how it swaps one melody with the other's bassline... JP Honk plays both of these... maybe we need to try this mashup...
★ ★ ★ ★	Lilac Wine Nina Simone	Stunningly haunting... Used during the behind the scenes part of Beyonce's Homecoming
	No One Lives Forever Oingo Boingo	New Wave... I like the macabre lyrics a lot more than the sound. This tumblr post.
★ ★ ★ ★	Way Down in the Hole (87) Tom Waits	Man, Tom Waits. Background music in "Tiger King"
★ ★ ★ ★	How Naked Are We Gonna Get (Live at Trainstation) The Blow	Beautiful trainstation cover of their own song... I just love the gentle, tentative sexiness of it. Youtube rip, from way back.
	The Gunslinger Tommy Guerrero	Like "News Background A", this seems suspiciously background-music friendly...I still dig it. Background music in "Tiger King"

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We are star mud, just a little wet star dust.

(responding to the Bokonist and Babylon 5 quotes on my mortality quotes page)

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me in front of my new virtual wallpaper, in a zoom hangout...
I had a thought: Love and Support are basically placebos.

But it's not a true thought. People think placebos are "remedies that shouldn't work, but do anyway" and that isn't what I mean. Rather say: I, Kirk, have middling-poor instincts (and thus distrust) about "remedies" where the primary workings are internal to the "patient", and so are not amenable to externalized examination, and explanation - and classic expressions of love and support are in that category.

See, when people talk, it's rarely starkly forthright. They're not just telling you the objective facts, the speaker has in mind what they want you to know - and if they care about you, what they believe you want to hear. There are those touches of agenda, always.

Both of those kind of agendas (selfish and selfless) come into play when a supportive person (call them "the helper") goes into "advice mode" when a person going through tough stuff (call them "the helpee") just wants to be heard and validated. The helper wants to offer tangibly useful suggestions -
that's a more or less selfless agenda. But also: they don't want to be reminded that they might be helpless to tangibly help! (thus, the selfish aspect).

The helper needs existential fortitude to accept being in a world where their friends and loved ones suffer in a way the helper can't fix, even though the helper desperately want to. So would-be helpers need to cultivate the "internalized medicine" of listening and offering reassurance.

But man, sometimes those reassurances seem so hollow to folks like me, who look for objective, rational measures for everything.... "Everything's going to be ok", "This is temporary", "You'll get through this". The speaker doesn't objectively know this stuff is true, except in high-falutin' existential and long-run senses (to quote Keynes - "Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.")

But I need to remember, that's just me, I'm a bit of an outlier. Not everyone is as muddled by attempted rationality and external validation as me - and I need to remember the internal states of suffering loved ones may be maelstroms of irrational confusion and mislogic anyway - there's a good chance my "you're going to be ok", while still a bit of a platitude, is more true and honest than the helpee's view of the situation at that moment... and the sugar pill wrapper of real love and support might be medicine in and of itself.

(As to why I'm such a "rational" outlier - I think somehow in my youth I absorbed too much of the judge-y aspects of religion - that at the end of it all, I was going to be called into account for what I did in life, and so I trained to make my inner self and desires subservient to and explainable by the external / objective rationality that would hold sway in that final Divine Court, and thus avoid an eternity of hellfire torment.) Dreams are fascinating, and I wish I knew reliable techniques of recalling them more often. While sometimes seemingly mere flights of fancy, they can be a way for the wordless emotional brain to collaborate with the narrative self to reveal truths that would otherwise lie dormant. For instance, last night, the truth that, barring traumatic injury, you generally can't stick your toe in your own butthole.

Thank, conscious and subconscious minds! Great teamwork.

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More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.

The other day someone posted this Wikiepedia entry:

L'appel du vide, literally "the call of the void" is a French phrase used to refer to intellectual thoughts, or the urge to engage in destructive behaviors during everyday life.[1] Examples include thinking about swerving in to the opposite lane while driving, or feeling the urge to jump off a cliff edge while standing on it.

It's weird how much that's a thing? There's this weird endless series of "what-if" I guess people play...I remember asking my dad wouldn't be kind of cool to just push everything over in a ceramic shop we were in and he assured me no, it wouldn't. That Arroz con Leche Popsicle, from an ice cream truck here in Austin was the best ice cream thing I've had in a year. Also the weather here is a bit better than Boston today.

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kulfi cardamom popsicles from the Bollywood movie place are a close second. The Bitmap Brothers were (are) a video game house from the UK; I really liked their name and logo...

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Slate on changes in the body language of losing basketball players.

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http://kirk.is/2004/03/10/ - 15 years ago I noticed I wasn't listening to music much, and didn't have enough music in my life in general. Thanks to technology and a honk band, I am happy to have fixed that problem. Justice John Roberts is The Lord Tywin Lannister of the Supreme Court.

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Creepy mildly interactive photorealistic in-browser 3D head.

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ASCII Webcam from grumdrig

I would seriously kill to see an urban fantasy series where fairies and demons are in awe of humans: our inventiveness, our creativity.

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The days of the digital watch are numbered.

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Do you think the Aryan Brotherhood counts as a "well-regulated militia" that is the justification for our 2nd Amendment?
--via 22 words (update: or at least something like it)

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http://mosaicboston.com/ -- this church has an understanded billboard "Help My Unbelief". I know faith is a complex, multi-faceted thing, but some how it reminds me of that Niels Bohr's horseshow story:

Upon seeing it hanging over a doorway someone said, "But Niels, I thought you didn't believe horseshoes could bring good luck." Bohr replied, "They say it works even if you don't believe."

Ah well. At least it's helping to fund the T!
via. I liked the attempt to mask the transitions...

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Windows Vista PC looks like it would be a decent TV PC, but hibernate option is hidden and sleep wakes back up immediately. So much fail.
--via

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WTF - with youtube's redesign, sometimes the smallest embed code is for 560 across, bigger than the 500 that's pretty common for blogs...grr

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iPad comes with a fully charged battery but will not let you do ANYTHING until you synch with iTunes. Sucks if you're on the road! Kind of a fail... (though I have my main laptop and can likely synch tonight.)

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It's like 'after-zombie-attacks' deserted around here- it's creepy.

--Making the rounds, Star Wars as "Dallas".

Looking at the Dallas Original Intro - it seems kind of weird how it fetishizes the city and American Big Oil.

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http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Unemployment-rate.aspx?Symbol=USD - didn't notice how much worse the unemployment rate is than in the dot bomb. Still, not as bad for tech workers I'd say.

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With my new contractor gig suddenly I'm on the other side of the phonescreening. Conceptual whiplash!

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At Tufts seeing a concert of my old group sQ. Am suddenly aware that I am now twice the canonical age of a college freshman.

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Strolling the old campus on a damp spring night. Thinking of some of my old stories, but humbled that there were probably better and more interesting stories that happened in those places since. Sigh, I hate when this becomes a what-I-had-for-lunch-blog but man, the Park Square building has like the sketchiestly managed Subway ever.

I used to get ticked when I'd order a cheese pizza there and they'd charge me 50 cents for adding tomato slices to it; it wasn't the money, but the principal of the meaning of a sign that says "Cheese Pizza $3.50 (Choice of Veggie)". Tomato isn't a veggie? What? Today I noticed they blanked out the "Choice of Veggie" which is fine, at least they have a policy, even if most places charge less for veggies than they do for meat.

But now the wacky thing is now they have big signs saying "All Footlong Subs, $5 or less!" and some "Some Limitations Apply" in small print. Then there's a small sign inside that says it doesn't include steak, pastrami, etc -- as far as I can tell, all the subs that cost more than $5. So I guess the meaning of the sign is "We have a lot of subs that cost around $5, give or take!"

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Dream of the Moment

...last night I had a dream about food. I was the only person hired for the busy grand opening of a self-serve gas station/gourmet food shop named "Squobo!" While I ran register, the owner gave out free samples of Squobo! Soup. Everyone grimaced in disgust at the taste, but since they were told that it was gourmet, they all pretended that they liked it and bought it by the gallon.

After closing, I took the day's profits to the owner, and discovered that the soup was fishtank water, cloudy with live mosquito larvae. The owner explained what "Squobo" meant. "I bought the tank from a squalid hobo!" he laughed as he counted his cash.

I was glad that it had been too busy for me to try the soup.

Man I wish my dreams were so detailed and dream-logical!

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Freakiness of the Moment

--Real life Homer and Mario, via Pixeloo. They also have an animated GIF of Homer showing the cartoon model sliding into this creation.

While I enjoy the covenience of my "tap and go" subway pass, some how the Valid Until:
04/30/2007 that flashes on the screen makes me feel as if I'm living on borrowed time.

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Panel of the Moment

--from Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels. I'm not sure they're all that unintentional, but the comment for this one ("Rod! Rod! Rod!: I can't tell if she's hoping for it or is suddenly surprised by it") made me laugh. (via Bill the Splut)

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Passage of the Moment

[On a Braun Handheld Mixer]
"Is it a classic instrument?"
"What?"
"Is it timeless or is it likely to go out of style in the next... 20 years?"
"I would say it's a new classic. But 20 years is a long time. I think everything is going to be computerized in 20 years."
"Soup won't be computerized."
"Why not?"
"It's a liquid."

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Sports of the Moment
Not a good day for me and sports yesterday... Red Sox drop the opener to the frickin' Royals, and then Ohio States completes a matched set of losing the national football AND basketball championship to the Florida Gators. I don't have particularly strong feelings for the Buckeyes, but when you go to an Ohio high school you get exposed to it a bit. Plus, all else being equal, I'll cheer for a cold location over a warm one any day.

More odd dreams last night! This time I was some sort of liason to (a presumably pre-war) Iraq. Saddam was showing me around a rather college campus-like collection of buildings, and showing me where he did some light martial arts training etc. But overall he was just kind of dumb old guy.

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Link of the Moment
Completing the miniset of game links, I was Googling up some information on Archon and came up with this page, The Secrets of Archon. For the most part it's not so much secrets as in-depth analysis, but still. Archon was a great game, sort of like that little "hologoraphic monster chess" game R2D2 and Chewbacca play in Star Wars come to life in the early 80s. (BTW, someone should really try to make that game a reality...I think the problem is it's not clear what that game is called, it's tough to Google for) Archon was a good example of balanced-but-not-mirrored forces and one-on-one combat that appeared again in "Star Control" (by some of the same people, by and large.)

Anyway, that article is from a newish site, VintageComputing.com. It's a well-written blog about our not-too-long-ago electronic past, both with home computers and with gaming.

Daylight Saving Time! Alright! An extra hour of useful daylight, it rocks.

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Pirate Art of the Moment

--For some reason I found this plastic bag from Russia with Strawberry Shortcake and Garfield together jarring...I was amused by my own sense of "this can't be, they're from two different universes!"

Stories of the Moment
Tragic Animal Love Stories...I'm not sure, but I think they come from shirts in Becky Brisco's "True If Destroyed True If Not Destroyed" line of artsy clothing. Anyway, a nice morning read. If you're in a hurry just check out Giraffe & Planes.

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Link of the Moment
LAN3 and I were chatting about sites we keep up with, I'm not sure if I realized the Amazing Randi has regularly updated (and fun) content on his site.

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Motivational Passage of the Moment

Resentment serves no useful purpose. The more you can let resentment go, the faster you will move ahead.

Resentment builds a wall between you and the incredible power of gratitude. Knock down that wall, and let gratitude fill the space where resentment once lived. Resentment hides life's abundance from you. Drop the resentment, and fully live the abundance.

Think of all the things you make even more difficult because you dislike doing them. Does it make sense to punish yourself so?

The next time you feel resentment welling up within you, ask yourself a question. What good will it do you to put your precious time and energy into resentment, when such resentment disconnects you from life's goodness?

Resentment will get you nothing. Let it go, and feel the sweet, powerful freedom.

Someone posted this on the loveblender and even though later, when I realized that motivational stuff is what this guy does and so I felt...I dunno, vaguely shnookered, being the kind of guy who doesn't put much stock in "feel good phrases", somehow this passage really moved me, thinking in terms of my upcoming divorce. Maybe it helped that it was in the middle of a sea of love poems. It also kind of invoked the last voiceover in American Beauty.

Actually, my instinctive dislike of this sort of motiovational stuff is interesting, because I do think being a little stupidly happy is a really good idea. I guess there's just something so bourgeois about it.

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Annoucement of the Moment
This month's love is sufficiently blended. Image of the Moment

--American Soldiers through the years, a cellar.org Image of the Day, from a previous pro-war demonstration in Denver.

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Spoken Word Lyrics of the Moment

If the Drum is a Woman
don't abuse your drum, don't abuse your drum,
don't abuse your drum
I know the night is full of displaced persons
I see skins striped with flames
I know the ugly dispositions of underpaid clerks
they constantly menstruate through the eyes
I know the bitterness embedded in flesh
the itching alone can drive you crazy
I know that this is America and the chickens are
coming home to roost on the
MX missile.

But if the Drum is a Woman
Why are you choking your drum
Why are you raping your drum
Why are you saying disrespectful things to
your mother drum, your sister drum, your wife
drum, your infant daughter drum
[...]
your Drum is a Woman
so don't reject your drum
don't try to dominate your drum
don't become weak and cold and desert your
drum
don't be forced into the position
as an oppressor of drums

(Mo's mom wanted to know if we wanted this cool tall bongo, and I always love percussion, so we said yes. She also gave us some CDs, including this one, but most of the percussion on the CDs is just kind of loping rhythms that fills in all the spaces, not the cool reserved funk that I really like.) Anyway, I thought these lyrics were really-- uh-- something. It's even better when you hear it out loud.

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Comments Board Feedback of the Moment
Today: I don't think a "pro-war" rally is as warmongering as you make out. Even if it's not just a "support our troops (and our president)" kind of event, I suspect that very very few people will say war is fun or good or their first option, but they might think it's the correct option in this case, given how we perceive our interests and Saddam's threat. I don't agree with that, but I don't mock people for showing up to support that tradition.
Wednesday: Eric, "pixel design" is just my term for that style (that Mr. Wong's Soup'partments are in)...in general, it's marked by use of a small amount of colors, and is often in a 3/4 perspective with a lot simple surfaces. Jason Mohr who did a lot of work on the old Word.com site used it there (click on Works, then Word.com or sissyfight under 2000.) Jason designed pixeltime, which inspired me to try doing more of that (scroll down past the 'photorealistic' stuff.) There are some other fun examples of the style at Flip Flop Flyin', especially the "minipops". I'd say the style has some of its roots in video games, especially the NES and SNES era. I think MegaMan is a great example of it, and here are some previously posted MegaMan Kirk and MegaMan Mo images I made.
Sunday: Deevaa, drop me a line, maybe I can get you copies of those mixes. Political Quote of the Moment

"No. 7, I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason: Because God said so. As I said a minute ago, look it up in the book of Genesis. It is right up there on the desk. In Genesis 13:14-17, the Bible says: The Lord said to Abram, 'Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward, and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever ... Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it to thee.' That is God talking."

Providing an object lesson in Why Religion and Politics shouldn't mix, from this Salon piece.

From the article: He's listing "seven reasons to support Israel and reject the Saudi peace plan, the plan proposed that Israel return the territories it occupied after the 1967 war in exchange for peace -- a position that, with the exception of the United States, Israel and one or two Arab rejectionist states, reflects the international consensus since 1967."

You know, it's things like this that make me start signing e-mail "Kirk I."...I don't want any association with the whole situation right now.

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Quote of the Moment

[On the teams' 18-0 loss.]
"Come on, fellas. Rome wasn't built in a day."
"Yeah, it took several hundred years."

Whoops... between a phone interview and a real one I forgot to put anything here til 8:30pm. So here's Esquire, publishing the short story Memento Mori that the movie Memento is based on.