❮❮prevnext❯❯

---

---

---

how most of the "founding fathers" owned slaves. but abolitionists knew they were wrong. Music I added last month - pretty good selection, really. A lot from that "Inventing Anna" documentary...

★ ★ ★ ★	Bayraktar Ukraine Russia War	Catchy little tune making the rounds in praise of the Turkish Drone being used by Ukraine forces to destroy Russians from the sky.
	Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home Bobby Darin	High energy version of old classic, grabbed it after playing it at a mardi gras gig. Fun for me to sing solos to.
★ ★ ★ ★	Fictional Aisle Tall Boy Special	Funny song about impossible or at least very unlikely foods, from Dog Eggs to Celery Farts and Reverse Watermelon... From a tiktok where one of the musician's partners is amused by it from the other room.
★ ★ ★ ★	100 Miles and Running (feat. Wale & John Lindahl) Logic	Funky hiphop (I think sampling "Apache" ala Young MC's Know How) with some TRULY incredible stunt-FAST lyric delivery (go to like 5:17)
★ ★ ★ ★	UNSTATUS QUO DUCKWRTH	Hiphop do heavy samples of James Brown esp "Good Foot", found it on the Netflix "Inventing Anna" series about Anna Delvey.
	Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition! Kay Kyser and His Orchestra	Novelty WW2 song, the title has been in my head for awhile, probably inspired by thoughts of Ukraine.
★ ★ ★ ★	Spiderman Young Fellaz Brass Band	Great NOLA Street Music - big stuff.
	Own It Rico Nasty	Hiphop from that "Inventing Anna" documentary.
★ ★ ★ ★	East West Omer Agca	Excellent little "middle eastern" crossover(?) beat used when Anna Delvy goes to Morocco in that Netflix documentary.
★ ★ ★ ★	Always Be You Montaigne & David Byrne	I love the idea that "A Writer At Pitchfork Critically Said [[David Byrne]'d Collaborate For A Bag Of Doritos", and I know Montaigne from her MBMBAB cover. I like the line about This Daniel Kitson quote which is astonishingly beautiful.
★ ★ ★ ★	La La Blues Pokey LaFarge	Sophie mentioned this song when I brought up Bill Bailey... guess LaFarge is known for doing this old style really well.
	Drum Cadences The Ohio State University Marching Band & Dr. Jon R. Woods	This SNL skit on OSU's cover of Don't Stop Believin' made me search... I didn't go for the song but the drumline from the same album. is pretty dope. "Do you guys hear it? Its TUBAS playing the BASSLINE! Like, who thinks of that?"
	Drunken Sailor (feat. Bobby Waters) MALINDA	This tumblr video - a farmers sea shanty - made me look for a cover of this song (which I sang in Elementary School) I do love the seep bass voice of the guy singing on this...
★ ★ ★ ★	Friends Like Us Danger Twins	Kinda corny retro honky tonk piano modern piece that I heard playing at a CVS.
	Raising Hell (feat. Big Freedia) Kesha	Somehow this video made me want to hear some bounce music, so I looked around - this song is a nice mix.
★ ★ ★ ★	King Florence + the Machine	"We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children, about the world ending, and the scale of my ambition" is a helluva lyric, recommended from here on the McGST blog

---

---

Really interesting mini-comic with a GREAT physical/visual metaphor for resiliency (err, in the good sense, don't want to get into the discourse of how it sucks that people have to be resilient.)

It's very similar to the Two Big Things that helps me get along: one is the idea of Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D......Plan Z. Whatever. With the assurance that I might not get the Plan A or B I want, but it's unlikely that I will even get to C or D. But it's ok if I do, I'll survive.

Which brings me to the second of the Two Big Things: I'll survive. And also, I won't survive! Nothing is Life or Death; everything is Life AND Death. And through a lot of thinking and mindfulness (and writing my own damn comic book) I've come to peace with how This Too Shall Pass, whether I would prefer it pass or not.

---

@theovtnetwork

The #explanation of #PollenSeason. #pollen #pollenallergy #americanhistory #edutokers #edutok #blacktiktokcommunity #blacktiktoks #blacktikok #blm

♬ original sound - J.C.

---

Why must a movie be "good" ? Is it not enough to sit somewhere dark and see a beautiful face, huge?

---

Asteroids by Vipin Chandran

---

5 Days til we move but starting to make it like home...

---

5 Days til we move but starting to make it like home...
Trigger/Content Warning: weight loss.

So, about a month into Quarantine/WFH and I've lost about ten pounds.

I have very mixed feelings about that.

I know for some people, it has been going the other way, and understandably so - life is that mix of extremely stressful and extremely boring that, combined with stockpiles at hand and a more sedentary lifestyle, means there's a tendency to gain.

For me, it seems to be in line with a few theories about me and eating:

1. I'm an opportunistic eater. So these days are a combination of "I should try to make our hoarded resources last" along with the selection being limited - tasty, but repetitive.

2. Exercise is important for many reasons, but not for weight loss, at least for me. (Possibly for more sustainable weight loss.)

3. A few times, I've noticed feeling distinctly unwell if I haven't eaten enough during the day. I don't have too many recollections of this happening before, at least not without band parade exertion, so I guess the theory is... I usually eat pretty steadily.

4. Conjecturing: when life returns to normal, my weight will probably rebound, at least somewhat. I mean, this kind of a lean time is just what our bodies are designed to cope with, to make adjustments when food is more scarce, followed by piling on pounds when it can

That first point is the most philosophically interesting to me. When I say "I should try to conserve", that's an objective, God's-eye-view sense of "should" - and I've worked out that in many aspects of life I feel compelled to subordinate any innate desires to that objective yardstick.

But most times, a wide variety of delicious food is more readily at hand - it's like the Universe is saying "Eat, Eat" and surrounding me with tasty things... those time it's really taxing to muster up the willpower to limit myself.

Anyway, thank heavens we didn't ditch the old Cuisinart coffee maker! Two mason jars full of Chock full o' Nuts (the coffee that has to constantly proclaim how it's actually nut-free) Arabica "New York Roast" put in the fridge once every 2 days is a fine ritual.

(In other health news: my pulled back mercifully ran its course in about a week.)

---

Husband just told me, "watching the federal government deal with COVID-19 is like watching the Ministry of Magic deal with Voldemort's return," and damn if that isn't the best take I've heard this month

---

'Outlook not so good.' That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.

---

I did not forget your name, it's just that my ears are possessed by a name-eating goblin and any name that reaches my ears are devoured by the goblin before it can reach my brain.

I feel like this is true-er than it sounds - at least for some people - my theory is people who are fast readers etc tend to kind of skim the world of information, and if the low level reader flag something as "not really pertinent", the detail doesn't make it up the stack of cognition - and too often people's names are of this category. (I think here, for me, "peterinence" is defined as "informs on how this thing interacts with the world, or how I interact with it". And a rose by any other name would interact as sweet, you know?) Was trying to think of my view that "Ok, there is Objective Truth, but it gets into Gödel Theorem territory (that in any usefully complex truth system, there will be true statements you can't actually PROVE in that system) and so you can never KNOW if you KNOW what that Truth is, and it is desperately important that you fight anyone who claims they CAN be certain about the perfectness and universality of their connection to the truth" in terms of certain pop-culture statements. In this case, it's ... antifaith. (And it has a very troubled relation with the idea of "well so we make our own Truth", because if you stray too far from that guessable Objective Truth, that's clearly bad.)

Long story short (or at least medium-length), this tattoo idea: "ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE MY POOR LIFE DECISIONS".

"Sir, could you give us the secret of your longevity?"

Well, the major thing is that I never ever touched fried food. I don't eat it, wouldn't look at it, and I don't touch it. And I never run for a bus. There'll always be another. Even if you're late for work, you know, I never run for a bus. I never ran, I just strolled, jaunty-jolly, walking to the bus stop.

"Well, there were no buses in the time of ..."

No, in my time...

"What was the means of transportation then?"

Mostly fear.

"Fear transported you?"

Fear, yes. You would see... an animal would growl, you'd go two miles in a minute. Fear would be the main propulsion.

"I think most people are interested in living a long and fruitful life, as you have."

Yes. Fruit is good, too, you mentioned fruit. Yeah. Fruit kept me going for a hundred and forty years once when I was on a very strict diet. Mainly nectarines. I love that fruit. It's half a peach, half a plum, it's a hell of a fruit. I love it! Not too cold, not too hot, you know, just nice. Even a rotten one is good. That's how much I love them. I'd rather eat a rotten nectarine than a fine plum. What do you think of that? That's how much I love them.

via "The Big Book of New American Humor", got in high school and have loved it ever since. Anyway, both that thing about the nectarine - it IS a hell of a fruit, and the advice about buses hops into my head whenever I'm looking for a piece of fruit or trying to catch public transportation.

---

Six photos from my School of Honk trip to Austin for HONK!TX...

Today's 2²/2³/2⁴ if you didn't know.

---

The Price is Right Theme 800% Slower:

"Slowed down 800%, this song becomes an ambient, lush and soothing experience"

---

My slow plan of self-improvement continues. (Sometimes I try to remember if I engaged in similar plans in my 20s and 30s. I should check my old blog rambles and see.)

Recently I started embracing "Amor Fati", love of ones fate, embracing the circumstance because - regardless if you can dig up a silver-lining for it or not - it IS The Current Circumstance, there is no other. This is painful for us to believe, because or imaginative brains are SO GOOD at thinking up hypothetical alternate realities-- realities much like this one, but a bit nicer: without this badly designed redlight holding us back, without this T pass lost, without this toe stubbed. Those other realities simply don't exist, and we must learn to love what actually does, because it does. ("People don't think it be like it is, but it do.")

In practice, though, it's not always easy to dredge up that feeling of "Amor" fast enough, so I've been exploring supplementary models. My current favorite has to do with an illformed memory of a friend describing someone else: "he's just like, you know, 'super chill'?" Some how I find that phrasing weirdly evocative, despite its lack of detail. I can think of various tropes and characters from literature that exemplify that.

I doubt that "Super chill" is a phrase that most friends would use to describe me, but I still, I would like to be more unflappable, taking things more little pitfalls in stride. In theory I have enough existential philosophy to back that...("in theory, Communism works. In theory.") But mostly it's a model I can quickly apply - I feel a flash of anger or fear, I think "what would this like, super-chill guy do?" and try to be that. There's still that flash of negative emotion of course, but maybe in time that can be quelled a bit, much like my libido seems to have to get pre-approval before it can make me even 'feel' anything...

When I think about self-improvement like this, I always have a note of caution. There's the thought that being uptight and anxious may have served me well over the years, given me a backbone to not give into more of my baser instincts; maybe my ingrained, apocalyptic fear of eternal hellfire has done me a service, keeping a bit closer to the straight-n-narrow. But now, at 42, I think I'll be ok. And there's always the hope that I might be even better, that if I can shake my flinchy fear about "well what if this next technical bit doesn't work out and I don't know how to fix it???" I can achieve more and more interesting things.

Also, I wouldn't want "super chill" to swamp my general happiness and enthusiasm for things I like... I don't think they're incompatible, though there's some creative tension there.

---

TIL (reading an Updike novel) that, shortly before the assassination, JFK and Jackie had a son, but who died after 2 days after being born premature.

I'm not sure what feels weirder to me; not having heads of this or just the idea of having a child while being president.
underseetoo While collaborating with EB's older daughter, the younger (Kindergarten age) wanted in on things, and worked a bit more independently to provide the source art. Hers features an octopus and a ghost with a popsicle stick. The direction she provided for the critter movement was more organic than her sister's, but probably because I was less trying to make it a pedagogical event.

---

I have a song I just ripped from an old mix tape - Leprosy by "Eu-Four-Ia" (I think). I can't find it anywhere else online - the tape was from a bunch of Dr. Demento songs Major Schenk​ made for my dad when was sick.

What's the best way to put in online? If I put it on Youtube and someone complained, would my whole account be at risk, or could I just remove the offending material? Or is there another place to go?

FWIW, here is my best pass at a tracklist: (and RIP Stan Freberg...)
Side A
Leprosy (Eu-Four-Ia)
Hal and Lulu (The Amazing Pink Things)
Valking in my Vinter Undervare (Stan Boreson)
The Ballad of Irving (Bob Booker / George Foster)
Masochism Tango (Tom Lehrer)
Banana Boat (Steve Freberg)
---
Side B
Dead Puppies (Ogden Edsel)
The Dingy Song (Ruth Wallis)
Little Blue Riding Hall (Stan Freberg)
Oh Boy (Allen Sherman)
Shticks And Stones (Allen Sherman)

Most of the other ones I can find around, but not that version of Leprosy (they weren't the only ones to make the same kind of parody of "Yesterday")

This tape was pretty influential to me growing up... thanks Major Tom! http://www.lostinmobile.com/home/lim-reader-interviews-kirk-israel Haha, in my "reader interview" at Lost in Mobile I managed to plug both The Jamaica Plain Honk Band and The Exploding Voids...

---

Kirktrivia -- for years I've vaguely been wondering about this one organizer I had before I had senior year of college. I couldn't quite remember the name or the brand, but I remembered the color scheme, and that it was flat and had a "clip in frame" that let it ride easily in a 3 ring binder... turns out it was the Texas Instruments PS-9500 TimeRunner (with optional PS-9010 Clip-In Frame, natch) MOMFILTER highlight to read "Life is hard and filled with failure. Think of it as a raging erection, but replace the forthcoming ejaculant with failure. Did that help? Somehow I don't think that helped."
--Gladstone, in Cracked.com's 6 Seemingly Simple Tasks Everybody Sucks At

---

via
--My Aunt got me this awesome inflatable shark for my birthday... the way it swims through the air is kinda uncanny. (Makes me sad helium is going away!) Here's an attack, with tuba soundtrack.

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGbpucWLfpE - James Brown, not Mr. Humanitarian but man could he dance

---

Daring Fireball rah-rahing the Yankees is just as awesomely awesome as WEEI's morning sport show going on and on with blowhard politics.

---

Yours 'Til Niagara Falls of the Moment
After the SkyWheel we went to Brick City, an interesting lego exhibit thing...

---

The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.

---

Man, I can't find an iPad sketch app with really good webpublishing options... Some of that critique of it not being a creating tool is true

---

My kingdom for a pixel-centric iPad sketch app... I want flood fill, cropping, and resizing/anti-aliasing as the last step, damn it.

---

At Michael "Iron Chef" Symon's restaurant "Lolita" (corner of "Professor" and "Literary"). I'm like the Humbert Humbert of Cleveland dining!

---

Man- between being a bit more southerly than Boston and more westerly in the time zone, Cleveland is much lighter later. 8pm was still light!

Certain moments will never change nor stop being -
My mother's face all smiles, all wrinkles soon;
The rock wall building, built, collapsed then, fallen;
Our upright loosening downward slowly out of tune -
All fixed into place now, all rhyming with each other.
That red-haired girl with wide mouth - Eleanor -
Forgotten thirty years - her freckled shoulders, hands.
The breast of Mary Something, freed from a white swimsuit,
Damp, sandy, warm; or Margery's, a small caught bird -
Darkness they rise from, darkness they sink back toward.
O marvellous early cigarettes! O bitter smoke, Benton!
And Kenny in wartime whites, crisp, cocky,
Time a bow bent with his certain failure.
Dusks, dawns; waves; the end of songs. . .

I found reference to this work on this page that reprints his "There is a gold light in certain old paintings" - something I saw in the New Yorker in the 90s and has stuck with me ever since, with the title, and stunning lines like "Orpheus hesitated beside the black river. / With so much to look forward to he looked back." and "I say the song went this way: O prolong / Now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong."

---

http://www.slate.com/id/2214067/ - Howard the Duck, now on DVD. Terrible movie, but the novel based on the movie was actually pretty decent!

---

Last night, an older lady came up to me at Staples: "Kirk!...You don't remember me at all, do you? I was at Cindy's dinner." "Cindy?"-didn't have the heart to ask.

---

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2009-04-08-turtle-ninj
a-suit_N.htm?csp=34 - "Ninja suit helps one-flipper turtle swim". I am not making that up.

---

"Good lord, what is that inky black puddle Marvin's mom is cleaning up? Does the awful tyke piss out pure evil?"

Any recommendations for a local bank?

I've been using AmEx online banking for a long while, something Mo set up years and years ago. It's ok, I kind of dig not having to look for a specific brand of ATM (though it took me a while to realize that the ATM reimbursement was capped at $6 monthly) but I just realized some of the checks I sent in for deposit via mail didn't get there. I didn't make enough records before I sent, so I think it's time to look for a bank with a physical presence.

I think there's a Bank of America ATM around the corner from where I'll be moving to, so that's one obvious candidate. I just want a bank with a minimum amount of nickel and diming, plentiful ATMs, and where I can set up my bill paying electronically... suggestions?

(For the meanwhile I have a Watertown Savings Bank account, but they're not going to be convenient for me once I move.)

---

Video of the Moment
360° Immersion Video videosift.com... amazing. I've seen the technique for still photos but never like this.

---

Quote of the Moment

The hippies had in mind something they wanted, and were calling it "freedom," but in the final analysis "freedom" is purely a negative goal. It just says something is bad. Hippies weren't really offering any alternatives other than colorful short-term ones, and some of those were looking more and more like pure degeneracy. Degeneracy can be fun but it's hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation.

Happy Easter!

---

Video of the Moment

--via B.K. on the Blender board... WARNING CONTAINS BUNNY PEEP SEX

Driving Directions of the Moment

You'll be on 3N for about 11 miles. Go past the Lowell connector. Then past the 495 exits, under the underpasses. Don't go over the underpasses, I can't stress this point enough, the underpasses are for going under.

...for some reason "underpasses are for going UNDER" comes to me everytime I hear the phrase underpass... it was an especially lovely bit of gratuitous goofiness, since there was no way in particular to get over on those underpasses from that road. Dialog of the Moment

"I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favorite word."
"Do you know what that means, ambivalence?"
"I don't care."
"If it's your favorite word, I would've thought you would..."
"It means I don't care. That's what it means."
"On the contrary, Susanna. Ambivalence suggests strong feelings... in opposition. The prefix, as in "ambidextrous," means "both." The rest of it, in Latin, means "vigor." The word suggests that you are torn... between two opposing courses of action."
"Will I stay or will I go?"
"Am I sane... or, am I crazy?"
"Those aren't courses of action."
"They can be, dear - for some."
"Well, then - it's the wrong word."
"No. I think it's perfect."

I've been thinking about this dialog lately, thinking about the things in life I'm actually ambivalent about. That's the problem with bring pretty good at seeing both sides of most issues.

---

Thought of the Moment
Cellphone connections are often a little bit crappy, but speech is so redundant often it doesn't even matter in terms of comprehension. However, "hold music" can sound awful...you hear ever little bit where the connection momentarily drops out. I wonder if the increasing use of cellphones will eventually lead companies to just have silence with the ocassional "still holding" message, or if cell connections will improve.

Of course, nothing is more annoying than on-hold music that's periodically interrupted by an automated voice...you can just tune out the music, but the voice keeps grabbing your attention...

I have to ask: what the hell are we doing in Iraq? Are we still the good guys?

---

Conversation of the Moment
sarah: You know, if you truly enjoy a crazy italian fiesta in your mouth you might enjoy the crazy polish mexican mouth fiesta that Wes calls "Ross Pierogies"
sarah: Pierogies, cooked with Salsa on top!
sarah: Yummy!
kirk: Buying and cooking pierogies is completely foreign to my experience.
sarah: really?
kirk: I think i mighta bought some in NYC from a vendor
sarah: If you enjoy good stodgy potato-filled pasta things, then you'll love pierogies
sarah: I think that was actually the slogan of the Pierogie Council for a while

(Obviously based on yesterday's journal entry that I asked Sarah to preview. Man, I miss having her and Dylan around for snarky kitchen table conversations.)

---

Article of the Moment
More neurosis fodder, but interesting The Ends of the Earth, 5 odd phenomena. I really like how scientists have no idea why the rotation of the earth is speeding up...

---

Toy of the Moment
Speaking of things science can't hope to understand: Burger King's online Subservient Chicken. (UPDATE: Actually, science seems to have it down...here are all the things you can get it to do.)

---

Music of the Moment
BoingBoing linked to this lovely Electronica cover of "Man of Constant Sorrow" from "O Brother Where Art Thou". Jeez, I love electronica covers of almost anything. I really am most delighted with music when it's just a melange of rhythm and "hooks".

---

Photo of the Moment

--There is this excellent stone wall near the Big Yellow House where Mo, Peterman, Sarah, myself, et al. used to live. This kind of wall where they work on stacking the stones by shape is so much cooler than when they just slather it all together with concrete or whatever. A fullsize version of this has been added to my desktop wallpaper page. Grrr. Sick of dragging my PS2 around I get a Wireless Ethernet Bridge. Works for like 5 minutes and now my Wireless Router is dead. All Linksys stuff too, which previously seemed pretty good. (Comments Feedback: Bozo, yeah, we've had a good experience with our Linksys router up until this... I don't know how another Linksys product killed but it seems as if that's just what happened.)

---

Link of the Moment
Making the rounds is that picture of the guy in the "real time camouflage" rainjacket, with a projector that puts a view of the scene behind him in front of him. I hadn't previously seen this movie page, which is a quite a bit more impressive.

---

Vocabulary of the Moment

Maybe this class of vehicle should be called FUVs.

from this New Republic piece. (via this Slate.com article on commercials for the behemoths.)

---

Geek History of the Moment
The author of VisiCalc speaks. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program. Interesting for a certain type of history-minded geek. (Also see a more comprehensive history page. Note that they didn't go for a patent, because software patents were extremely rare those days. How times have changed.)

---

Quote of the Moment

"While the topography of the human face is the hardest to simulate digitally, it turns out to be one of the easiest to map photogrammetrically. It has fewer shadows and occlusions than, say, the city of Paris. The language of the face communicates maximum information through the subtlest inflections. The interfaces of our souls are designed to be read in a heartbeat."

Great article. Extended Old Joke of the Moment

> The Buddha walks up to a hot dog stand and says,
> "Make me one with everything."
And after paying for it with a 20, gets no money back.
When he asks, he's told that 'Change comes from within.'

---

Art of the Moment
I've always appreciated the artwork of Guy Billout, frequently appearing in "The Atlantic Monthly". They're very playful in a formal kind of way, often with architectual or aquatic themes, demonstrating impossible things, or otherwise giving reality a bit of a twist. I was trying to find prints of his online (still looking, actually) when I found his own website with many examples of his work. Great stuff...makes me wish I had pursued art other than music and doodles. To any blender readers here, I am working on getting a Digest out... somehow it's so hard to be productive when you have extra free time!

---

Exchange of the Moment
ranjit: i scanned some raw fish on my brand new scanner earlier. Gotta start it off with a bang.
kirk: wouldn't that make your later scanee items smell like raw fish?
ranjit: if only there were some way to clean objects!
kirk: this is why you should rely on restaurants for fish
kirk: I extend this philosophy to cooking in general
ranjit: Maybe someday someone will invent a spray for cleaning glass. They should make it blue!
kirk: the power of producing streak free glass pales compared to the olfactory force of the dark side of the fish.
--Kirk and Ranjit on AOL-IM. Screen names changed to protect the innocent.

---

Slashdot Scavenged Link of the Moment
There was an interesting read posted on slashdot, William Gibson on Japanese and British culture.