❮❮prevnext❯❯

Oh wow - someone posted Euclid High School's 1992 Senior Talent Show:


Aficionados of Kirk-ish cringe will appreciate 32:30, where, accompanied by Martin Witczak, I perform Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". While it's not quite as deeply awful as I had feared... late 50s drawing room novelty songs might not have been reading the room that well. (Also now I love pigeons!)

I also am in the jazz/stage band at 1:16:16 - I think we called ourselves "Shh - it happens" and we played Theme from Shaft and... MacArthur Park? Really?

I do like my tuba behind the opening "Muppet Show Theme" act at 00:30 (along with seeing a gal I was probably dating then, Marnie S) and there's "Lion Sleeps Tonight" at 20:00 - I wasn't involved but the act comes to mind from time to time.

Some pretty decent if very 90s, Boys 2 Men-influenced crews, synchronized dancers, and rockers.

Overall the energy is a bit "Napolean Dynamite Dances at the Rally" but I'm glad to see it.

---

They say music calms the savage beast.

Wait, what? On my devblog, the potential trauma of 'on this day' features, and the general weirdness of taking memory in that kind of seasonal cross-section.

---

Sophie pointed me to Pitch Meetings - like CinemaSins but funnier. Definitely wouldn't need to binge too too many at once, but each one really points out the weirdness and plot holes of the film it's focused on in a funny way. Mocking film plot holes is tight!

---

My friend Sophie made WaPo's current-event song parody of the week!

I helped with a few of the lyrics and some of the shooting (I tossed vacation props to her Dr. Fauci) and a few other misc things, like the layout of the hypodermics on the title.

---

It has been determined that Humans are no longer an endangered species. Earth is no longer a restricted zone and open hunting may begin.

Remember give up on all your dreams now while you're still young!

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Photo by Jonathan Richmond
More photos here (on FB, but works even in an incognito window)

My horn and its rain shadow...

---

simplify.thatsh.it - dynamic, intriguing generation of extremely simplified abstract art from photos,

---

I just read David Sedaris' Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002). Made me realize how anemic my own journaling is... I don't put much effort into thinking of evocative scenes, it's more just to provide a footprint for the day.

Some excerpts:

from the Introduction:

That's the thing with a diary, though. In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it's so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.

from May 5, 1987:

I told Dad I was disappointed that I wouldn't be graduating in a cap and gown-- the Art Institute doesn't swing that way-- and he said, "I've got your old cap and gown from high school. Want me to bring them when we come up?" Then he said, "Do you think it will still fit?"

A person would be in pretty serious trouble if his graduation gown no longer fit. It's like outgrowing a tent, basically.

He predicts the emoji keyboard on November 4, 1987:

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read I LOVE KILLING COMMUNISTS. The word love was replaced by a heart shape I'm guessing they'll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point.

from March 31, 1989:

"So I said to him, 'Well, money's not everything.' Then he said, 'Maybe not, but it's about ten thousand goddamn miles ahead of whatever it is that comes in second.'"

from December 7, 1990:

I got yelled at twice today, once when I was working as an entrance elf. The job amounts to hustling up visitors, and I thought I did a pretty good job. "Patronize Santa," I said. "Behold his chubby majesty. Santa was born and raised in a small home. Hail him. Santa's patience is beyond your comprehension. Come test it."
I'd been at it for ten minutes when a manager came by. Then he went and rounded up two other managers and the three of them brought me to the desk for a scolding.

from November 9, 1991:

I worked for Alba, who was sick, throwing up all day. At a party last night she had eleven Bellinis, those peach-and-Prosecco cocktails. These were followed by three tallboys. Yikes. You'd think an adult would know better: Beer on wine, you're fine. Wine on beer, stand clear. But eleven Prosecco cocktails should not precede anything, not even a twelfth.

from September 9, 1996:

I walked so long and hard in Paris the other day that my overgrown toenails rubbed against one another and started to bleed. Before leaving for the airport, I went to cut them and, finding no clippers, I used a pair of Colette's poultry shears. That is exactly why you don't want people staying in your apartment when you're not there, or even when you are, really.

Don Burrows is a swell guy about to retire as maintenance supervisor the Glens Falls Salvation Army. He was there when my family was there in the mid-80s, I remember him helping me with a pinewood derby car and his little side electronics business that let my family buy our first color TV.

---

The Second Amendment's Second-Class Citizens Right now FB is in a weird place where you still see a lot of content post-Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, MN but before Dallas.

In a weird and ugly way, the Dallas incident may seem like a 2nd Amendment, a more-well-organized-than-"usual" militia fighting back against what they see as government persecution and targeted abuse. There's no defense for what the shooters did (besides my general opposition to eye-for-an-eye, Dallas was supposedly pretty advanced with their Police Department) and it makes the situation much worse for every one except the gun manufacturers and sellers, but it is hard not to see it as part of the gun landscape.

---

Police used an bombsquad robot as an unmanned, treaded drone to kill the Dallas attacker? Slate rips into Ernest Cline's "Armada". "Ready Player One" was the most self-indulgent, nostalgia-coasting, Marty-Stu, spot-the-80s-reference, 'weren't we just the awesomest? well weren't we?' piece of crap I've ever read. (The only semi-redeemable bit was an enjoyable Kaiju Big Battel that coasted on mashing up all these characters you know from other, better works of pop culture) Apparently "Armada" shows that one weird trick might be the only trick this author knows.

I'm not generally one to judge so harshly; any popular book is doing SOMETHING right, but what this book does well is so not worth doing that I get upset how it has grabbed attention that would have better gone to other superior musings on video games in sci fi (like Leonard Richardson's Constellation Games, a book that really made an effort to thoughtfully speculate about what the games of a starfaring alien society's distant past (i.e. when they were roughly at our level of technology) might have been like. (Disclaimer: I did some reviewing/suggestions for that title... but it really is fantastic.)

In other genres, it's nice to know Milan Kundera is back

---

To get married today is to announce, to yourself and to the world, your belief that you are a coherent person capable of extrapolating your current wishes, priorities, and motivations into the future. To get married today is to recognize yourself as a grown-up at a time when other ways of enacting adulthood are notably limited.

---

Charles Dickens would stockpile names for use for characters...

Boys' Names: Robert Ladle, Joly Stick, Bill Marigold, Stephen Marquick, Jonathan Knotwell, Philip Browndress, Henry Ghost, George Muzzle, Walter Ashes, Zephaniah Ferry (or Fury), William Why, Robert Gospel, Thomas Fatherly, Robin Scrubban

Girls' Names: Sarah Goldsacks, Rosetta Dust, Susan Goloring, Catherine Two, Matilda Rainbird, Miriam Denial, Sophia Doomsday, Alice Thorneywore, Sally Gimblet, Verity Mawkyard, Birdie Nash, Ambrosina Events, Apaulina Vernon, Neltie Ashford

If you think fertilized eggs are people but refugee kids aren't, you're going to have to stop pretending your concerns are religious.

---

Programming is secretly about people and not computers

---

So, iPhones will buzz me about random "flood warnings" but not a peep about tornadoes?

---

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes". And Enterprise frameworks requiring new syntax. Lookin' at you, Angular.

---

These toolkits that want you to make your own tags remind me of COBOL... "why now we can program without programming!" Unfortunately, the code to support programming without programming is immense, and difficult to mentally model. I like this cover of Easy Like Sunday Morning

---

First US Aerial photo, of Boston:


--via

---

http://www.thisismyjam.com/kirkjerk/_2btilm6 - fun song, and the video is the most fun with censor bars ever

Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo. Man it's good to get a reminder we're just clinging to a little ball zooming through space.

---

First games can't be art, now thinking computers wouldn't actually think- Roger Ebert hates geeks- http://bit.ly/qv7XgB

---

"Ready for great big Kirk news? I'm going to swap my pockets, and always have my wallet and iPhone in my RIGHT, and my camera and keys in my left."
"Oh man that's going to destroy the whole system!"
"Or SAVE IT! I mean it should be much less confusing when I go to swipe at the Charlie Card reader."
"Wow, maybe you should have done this ages ago."
"Baby, genius works on its own schedule."
"And so do you."

---

Gah -- last shuttle launch?? Damn it where's our space planes.

---

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

---

RUN DMC's "Peter Piper" coming up on shuffle let me know it's an 80s hiphop kinda day. Yay for Genius Playlists! #dontjuststandtherebustamove
--via this Gizmodo page which has a link to the original set of comic panels this is based on.

---

http://www.twitchasylum.com/jsvecx/ - WOW - A Vectrex Emulator in Javascript!

---

Bleh- sore neck makes me feel just a little nauseous all day. Plus more comfortable to walk head bowed, adding downward tinge to day.

---

Damn, sometimes I wonder just how falling apart the Red Line is...

---

Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.

Rules for Poets,
Now That Anyone Can Write
Timothy Shortell

1. If you use the word 'soul,' you will be shot.
   
   
2. Rhymes are appropriate to children's books and high school creative writing assignments. Formulae are beautiful only in mathematics.
   
   
3. Repeat after me: "Revolutionary content, revolutionary form."
   
   
4. All nights are not endless; all rains not gentle; all skies not azure; &c. &c.
   
   
5. It is not a poem just because the line ends before the
   punctuation.
   
   
6. Some writers toss down whatever words come to mind. Others spend hours, weeks, months looking for just the right word.
   
   No wonder we are not all poets.
   
   
7. If it hasn't been edited, it is not a poem. It is a draft.
   
   
8. It is as difficult to write a poem as it is to write a symphony.
   
   Don't kid yourself.
   
   
9. The importance of a private memory doesn't justify art.
   
   
10. Have you ever torn up a sheet of paper into small pieces, so bad was the poem written on it? It is a good habit to start.
    
    
11. If the artist doesn't distinguish between good and bad work, someone else will.
    
    
12. Remember: even a monkey can mimic a poet.
    
    
13. The world does not need another poem about a bad relationship. Save it for the diary.
    
    
14. Poetry is about words, not ideas. If you want to make a point, write a manifesto.
    
    
15. Speak every poem aloud. If is doesn't sound beautiful, it isn't a poem.
    
    
16. Sylvia Plath used to get up at 4am and write until her children awoke at 8. She labored over every word. She rewrote and rewrote. She managed about a poem a day during this, her most productive time.
    
    How many do you write in a day?
    
    
17. You would not invite your friends over and serve them rancid food and sour wine. Why not? Because you care about them, and you don't want to see them suffer.
    
    Have mercy. Discipline yourself.

--I remember seeing this years ago, and found it again after the line about "using the word 'soul'" was rattling in my brain. This list is exceedingly pretentious, but has some good points.

---

Today's date is a punchline. Why was six afraid of seven? Because...

I swear Mission Hill parking is a cruel game.

My current favorite are these temporary "no parking on either side of the street" signs, showing the two dates they'll be doing work. (generally today and tomorrow.)

Rather than, you know, actually fixing the street, they seem to be enjoying just coming back every other day, covering up the old dates with white tape, and then writing in the next two days. (So in theory there's no weekday parking at all, except some people seem wise to or utterly ignorant of this game, to the extent they still parked there following the street cleaning side restriction.)

Half the streets in Mission Hill seem to be in this twilight zone of non-parking.

So this morning I got called by my Uncle, who told me a cop stopped by and asked that I move my car from what I thought was a safe spot since they might want to move the dumpster that day. I had to travel back home and prowl for a street unwatched by the steely gaze of whoever's putting up those "don't park here for two days" signs.

---

Movie Dialog of the Moment

"Have you slept with anyone?" "No. Have you?" "...No." "That was a long pause... [...] ...I guess it doesn't really matter" "No it doesn't" [...] "You got bruises on your body." [...] "...Whatever happens in the end I don't want to lose you as my friend." "I promise... I will never be your friend. No matter what. Ever." "If we fuck I'm going to feel like shit tomorrow." "That's okay with me." [...] "I love you. I never hurt you on purpose." "I don't care." [...] "Want to see my view of Paris?" "-ok."

Really odd detail in a dream, apparently I was given the superpower of performing any normal human skill but only "moderately well". So I could, say, speak a bit of Chinese, but not, say, fly.

It wasn't quite clear if these skills came at the cost of the things I feel I actually do well, if programming "moderately well" would override my hard-won Java mojo.

---

Chicago Photos of the Moment

Today's theme: color.







You know what job I'd be good at, I think? Film Continuity Editor. Assuming the job title is what I think, namely the guy who looks at series of shots and makes sure nothing has moved between any of them. It drives me completely nuts when the body language of a character in a movie or TV show changes from shot to shot.

---

Quote of the Moment

It doesn't take all kinds to make a world, we just have all kinds.

---

Gadgets of the Moment

--Matthew Irvine Brown has some interesting ways of helping begining brass musicians... Finger Finger Revoluion, in effect, with a variety of cute virutal instruments, like the trumpet shown here. It looks like there's some other cool stuff in his portfolio as well. (thanks xoxoBruce)

Very strange dream last night...there's some kind of 2-bus tour group travelling around the USA with the pope, and I'm on it...except I'm one of a small group who has to stop the three suicide bombers. The good guys have some kind of x-ray to see the vests of explosives the three are wearing....and one of the three is my girlfriend from high school, "Randi". (In the dream I ask if she still goes by that name like she did in high school, rather than her given name, which caused everyone to do a bad Sting impression and tell her that she don't have to put out the red light.) The funny thing is, at one point I don't even need the X-ray information to know she's one of the bombers, her tanktop is riding a little low in front and I can see the blue roll-of-coins-like explosives right there. I remember trying to think of a way of stopping them without having to take the blast myself.

---

Idea of the Moment
I've been stuck at my current weight for way too long...I had an increase around the holiday season of 2003 and I'm cruising at about 20 pounds more than I had been for some years before that. I'm thinking about seeing if bribing myself works; I've been on the fence about getting a new PC, so maybe I can say "lose 10 pounds and you get to buy the PC, lose the next 20 and we'll think of something more". I dunno, can that work? Along side my mantra of "I'm just tired of being this heavy".

---

Geekery of the Moment
They said it couldn't be done...they said it shouldn't be done...but Fred Quimby is starting work on a BASIC compiler for the Atari 2600...it takes programs written in a very specific subset of BASIC and converts it into the assembly code needed to make a game that can run on an actual Atari. I'm trying to figure out how I can help this effort...to make truly impressive games you need to work at lower levels, but this idea has a ton of potential, helping newbies get started and all that.

UPDDATE: Actually I've started making the Semi-Official Batari BASIC homepage...check it out!

Link of the Moment
Peterman pointed out Japander, with lots of videoclips of Western celebes doing Japanese commercials. The Schwarzenegger page is one of the most popular...both because of his political office, and also many of the ads are delightfully weird. (Some of the other celeb's do spots that are pretty pedestrian.) The one labled "A Classic" is great, showing off his mighty mighty biceps as he swings around some giant tea kettles. The Simpsons were worth a glance, but interesting to see how they don't bother to keep anyone in character because not many people have watched the show.

---

Funny of the Moment

<stops using punching bag> Oh. [ahem] Hello. [ahem] So many rice crackers claim to be low-cal, but only Fujikawa Rice Crackers make your interiors go bananas! <to self> What did I do to deserve this? ..... Oh, right.

---

On The Naming Of Things
I've realized that my previous naming of my car was a bit on the premature side. You really should see if you can get to know something at least a bit before coming up with the right name, and I'm realizing "Dogma"/"Dogmatic", despite the Scion cleverness, just isn't quite right.

So the history of possible names has been:

• "Dogma"/"Dogmatic" -- because of the Scion/Kevin Smith movie reference. Possibly influenced the color selection a bit.
• "Death Star" -- the interior has a kind of cool black-and-silver 70s-tech look, and I thought this name reflected it, and sort of fit the exterior as well...kind of a tough name for a car to pull off, and "death" and "highway driving" are two concepts best kept as far apart as possible.
• "Pug" -- Dogma/Dog reference, also a reference to the size of the thing. And can get changed to "Pugly", which fits what some people think of the car.
• "Mica"/"Nickel"/"8 bits" -- these were some ideas Peterman came up with, mostly involving the color and size and then devolving into old computer geekery.
• "Puck" -- derivative of "Pug", nicely captures the size and color as well as a reference to my lord.what.fools.these.mortals.be domain. My favorite as of last night.
• "Spruce Goose" -- I let R. drive it a bit the other night and she thought that the interior air vents were kind of reminiscent of the rotary coils on old plane engines, or something. I thought the name was a little too light in the loafers, even if people didn't think "Goose" was a weird "Top Gun" fan boy reference.
• "Sluggo" -- my favorite as of right now. Captures the squat nature of the car (which I also thought was a bit "fist like", so the name captures that) plus on a whim I bought this brass snail paperweight, which could be the car's mascot, the slug refernce. Plus, some people think the car is sluggish on the highway (though I think it's fine.)

What amazes me is that very few people I've talked to think it's odd to name your car, or to put thought into the right name. (Though with this post, I might be pushing the envelope.) Peterman noticed that there are a number of google hits for "name my car" and "name your car" has a couple hundred as well.

Let me know what you think! Here's the picture if it helps.

---

Article of the Moment
Slate on an army report about how stretched our supply lines were. Also interesting was the part about the grindingly effective A10...the politics behind that plane are really too bad, because it performs brilliantly--it's essentially huge, robust artillery in the sky...the Army can't use it because it's fixed wing and that's the Air Force's balliwick, but it's too unglamorous for the Air Force to really get behind, too similar to what the army does... (Oh, right, here's the Slate piece on the A-10 where I probably got that opinion from...what a great website.) So, I took a look, realized that the stats I was looking at were for a day, not cumulative, and figured that Ads on the Blender are making me a bit over $11/week. If I manage to keep up anywhere near that, it'll finally pay for the upkeep of the Blender, and maybe help sponsor my other websites as well.

Yay Google Ads!

---

Birthday Card of the Moment

--I made this up for Dylan (of Sidebar fame) whose birthday was this weekend. The first "My name is Olivair but you can call me your lovair" is a private joke from way back. Dylan's hanging off a diving board near his family's cabin in Lake George, New York--where we hope to restart an old annual "go to the lake" tradition this August.

---

Quote of the Moment

Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.

Did anyone in the northeast notice how yellow the sunlight was yesterday? (And also this morning, but not quite as severely...look for areas of alternating light and shadow to see it well.) I think it must have been the wildfires in Quebec, which haven't gotten much attention here besides this.

---

Quote of the Moment

That's one of the tragedies of this life - that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous.

---

Link of the Moment
Perhaps this website has ESP! Be sure to read the "Explanation of ESP Results" which is feedback people have sent in...people are so gullible! Go try it, and if you can't figure it out, here are some hints (highlight the following text to read it):
Hint 1: does the trick work if you pick 2 cards?
And if you're still stumped...
Hint 2: perhaps all of the original cardset is gone...

---

from The Once and Future King

Remember what Merlin said about learning:
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn- pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics, why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start on mathematics until it is time to learn to plough."