❮❮prevnext❯❯

BABAM at Today's SAG-AFTRA rally at Parkman Bandstand - Sophie, Ken, Courtney, Reebee. Huh. On the one hand I've been grabbing a lot less songs lately, but most of it is pretty good! Not sure if it's because of the other media I'm consuming or what.

Also I've gotten really good at ripping songs straight outta the browser via "Audio Hijack" - as long as the song is under 10 minutes you can use the free version.

★ ★ ★ ★	Dig Down Muse	Lots of George Michael callbacks here, heard about it on the "Strong Songs" podcast.
★ ★ ★ ★	Rice Krispies Rolling Stones	Cracked thinks this might be the actual Rolling Stones doing a 30 second spot for Rice Krispies.
	Americus (Religious Right Rock) Grand Buffet	Parody of rightwing dumbassness, on a Suicide Girls dvd some of the performers are having a shout sing of it.
★ ★ ★ ★	Insane Dryer Noise Remix Tik Tok	Someone found their washer machine making a funky beat, and musicians riffed on it.
★ ★ ★ ★	Just a Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody Louis Prima	Checking in on the "Diamond Dave" version of this, it's almost surprising how little it adds. Anyway grabbed this because one band I sometimes swing with wants to try it.
★ ★ ★ ★	Mario Raceway Magnificent Danger	Fun HONK-ish cover of Mario 64 music. Ripped this MP3 from the video, don't think they've release it for reals... saw MagDan at a recent brass afternoon at the Medford Condon hatch shell.
★ ★ ★ ★	Special Powers Grand Buffet	from the Americus folks - love this song a lot more, REALLY strong mid-era Beastie Boys energy.
	What's Inside a Girl? The Cramps	Surfer Punk or maybe "haunted house" vibe - I remember being a bit scandalized by a xerox'd 8.5x11 poster for this song, some woman standing provocatively w/ a bunch of question marks around...
★ ★ ★ ★	It Comes in Waves Long Haul Paul	Heartbreaking song about a father losing his sun to drugs, via the Over the Road podcast about long-haul truckers

---

"Look, I don't want any wounded guys in the parade," Trump said. "This doesn't look good for me." He explained with distaste that at the Bastille Day parade there had been several formations of injured veterans, including wheelchair-bound soldiers who had lost limbs in battle.

Kelly could not believe what he was hearing. "Those are the heroes," he told Trump. "In our society, there's only one group of people who are more heroic than they are--and they are buried over in Arlington." Kelly did not mention that his own son Robert, a lieutenant killed in action in Afghanistan, was among the dead interred there.

"I don't want them," Trump repeated. "It doesn't look good for me."

---

It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The President's loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: "You fucking generals, why can't you be like the German generals?"

"Which generals?" Kelly asked.

"The German generals in World War II," Trump responded.

"You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?" Kelly said.

But, of course, Trump did not know that. "No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him," the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military.

---

Interview: Jon Freeman & Anne Westfall (Archon, Archon II) - I found a link to this interview (grabbed off of Usenet) in a tweet to the Wayback Machine's view of alienbill.com... deserves a slightly less defunct home! I was yesterday years old when I realized that those "thin blue line" defacements of the American flag are very literally the banner of the police state. Like it couldn't be more on the nose than that.

by HappyToast on b3ta

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

---

In any case, [my father] put down his cup of coffee and said, "Listen. You don't live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home."

That was what he said. This was what I heard:

1. Whatever the work is, do it well--not for the boss but for yourself.

2. You make the job; it doesn't make you.

3. Your real life is with us, your family.

4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.

---

Toni Morrison published her first novel at 40. You have time. Your thing won't be nearly as good but hey, that time though

---

Trump, big smile and a thumbs up with the El Paso surviving baby the baby's uncle had to bring to the hospital, because the survivors who could actually talk didn't want to see him. Great showman, that Trump guy! (I mean, not everyone gets a photo with the president of the US! It’s gonna almost make up for not having parents from a shooter whose manifesto shows deep alignment with Trump brand messaging. )

---

I'm more sober now than I was when not drinking.

The neural net does sound effects

---

I found this picture of Elvira dancing with Erik Estrada for Melissa but I thought it was too important not to share with you all (via This CHiPs episode page . That is also good to see if you want to see Ralph Malph from Happy Days play a regretful version of a Gene Simmons-type Satantic Rocker)

A tuba player holds a weighty object and breathes deeply.

---

Exercise is boring. Everything is boring that does not happen in a chair (reading and writing) or in bed. Sculptors and painters and musicians live longer than writers, who exercise only their fingers with pen or on a keyboard. Sculptors chisel or weld or mold clay. Painters work standing up. They drink quarts of cognac every night but return to physical activity the next morning. A tuba player holds a weighty object and breathes deeply. Even a harmonica requires more fitness than writing.

(Context for the tuba reference.)

---

Also, Donald Hall quotes Henry Moore quoting Rodin quoting a stonemason:

Never think of a surface except as the extension of a volume.

---

Stupid Human Tricks!

---

I made a simple countdown timer to count down to 00:00:00. You can pass in simple RGB colors for the background and foreground for the start and once it hits zero, e.g. this link. See my devblog for more info. This was the year I started doing "One Second Everyday", and I feel like the peak of photos was 2009-2012 or so, maybe? That I'm less thoughtful and anxious to make good images because I'm taking so many little videos...

---

Easy to watch but not dumbed down History of the American Civil War.

---

First Person Squirrel!

---

From womenburningthings.tumblr.com

---

First Seven Jobs:
Pharmacy Stockboy/Clerk
Salvation Army Christmas Kettle Worker
Camp Counselor for Special Needs Kids
Dorm Mailman
Computer Lab User Consultant -> (to Manager)
Computer Programmer (On Campus)
Computer Programmer (For Reals)
#firstsevenjobs

---

I am not your Watson, a**hole!

Relevant to my interests. (I always like Douglas Adams more when he put things back on Earth, than when he was in "zany adventures in space!" mode.)

bouncy house! bouncy house! bouncy house!

from a BoingBoing theory on Christian Fundamentalists and their distrust of Set Theory... man, most of us can't hate something so abstract!

---

Kinda liked this from-the-trenches view of coding for the various video game consoles from the mid-90s on.

Trim from Petey Boy on Vimeo.

---

What I value more than all things, good humor.

---

Love is like hash. You have to have confidence in it to enjoy it.

---

I don't believe in an eye for an eye. Oh no, I believe in an eye for two eyes... Or better yet... an eye for two eyes, and an ear, and a spleen, and maybe a new shirt because this one is COVERED IN ENTRAILS!

---

Yes, when love goes bad, it can fill an apple with yelling.

--Jonathan Winters, back when prop comedy was based more on imagination and less on wacky oversized props. Funny how low key stuff was back then - and also, as one commentator noted, how Robin Williams stole his shtick. Also I really like his sound effects. (via)

---

New kitchen device: the kvetchen oven. "what? You've left me on? You want dry turkey? AND you run the AC? You think we're made of money?"

---

Rinku is like "I made a game from dreams and fears and starlight and it's kinda neat but I have no idea what you all are so obsessed with"

---

http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2010/08/08/what-the-hell-fox-news/ - Fox News takes on Mr. Rogers. Yeesh.

---

Factoid:[Tchaikovsky] would often hold his chin with his left hand while conducting after once imagining his head falling off his shoulders.
--on the offchance you don't get it

---

So like I mentioned I've been loving that Appigo Todo list. I think assigning dates to tasks, even arbitrary ones, helps create an appropriate sense of urgency and I'm getting things done that I wouldn't without such a system. And it's funny, Palm had added due dates, but because it didn't collate things in a sensible way (here's what's overdue, here's what's due today, due tomorrow, next 7 days, future) I never assigned dates to tasks, because after all most everything is due "as soon as you can get around to it"...

It's funny how system and software can modify your outlook. Between finally getting a really good ToDo app and also being a good mechanism for adding to my Twitter-based sidebar, I finally have a device that's as core to my life (maybe even more so!) as my Palm was before 2000, when I gave it up as a journal because of the overlap with what I was doing on this website.

---

News of the Moment
Er, I wasn't sure if this should have been my hold everything sole part of the kisrael entry but holy frickin' cow, Georgia declares war on Russia??? I'm not even going to for the stupid "what will happen to Atlanta?" type jokes, and just wonder, is this as hold-everything omigosh as it might look?

If nothing else, it's almost refreshing for Georgia to declare war, I'm getting sick of metaphorical "War on ____"s and Police Action and "Conflicts" every from our country...

Oh, and Olympics. Yay. I can't believe how blasé I've become about them... I think the 2 years, Winter Games, 2 years, Summer Games schedule hurts that, because now every other year, something is going on.

---

Game of the Moment

Galcon on iPhone

For PC and, I found out much to my delight, iPhone, Galcon is pretty nifty. (It's kind of one of those things where I'm late to party, I guess it's gotten a fair amount of attention especially for an "Indy" game.)

It's a very back-to-basics RTS (Real Time Strategy) game, a bit like Risk in real time, with Asteroids Ships. (Also a bit like that Dice Wars game I was so enamored of a while back.) You capture planets by throwing ships from your spacefleet at them, the bigger the planet the more ships it produces for you, while your opponent does the same. Its simplicity is such that it kind of feels just like the game I would have envisioned back in the day...

I especially enjoy how the sound effects in the iPhone game are blatantly the programmer or his buddy recording little "kapow! kapow!" effects in a microphone... I can totally get behind that.

This was my response to a post on a small private-ish conversation website a friend of mine runs... the original poster linked to this article on the need for universal healthcare. Many of the posters there seem to be libertarian in leaning, and so that influences my tone a bit.

Canadian's healthcare seems reasonably popular among most Canadians I know personally, though there's certainly a group of loudmouth activist detractors from the area.

Public health and sanitation has done more to increase life spans and quality of life than most other individual advances in medical technology, no matter how many anecdotes you think of to the contrary.

I certainly think the freemarket isn't living up to its hype when it comes to say, researching new drugs: the incentive is for companies to tweak old formulas and spend bajillions promoting the hell of stuff (including almost bribing doctors) before it becomes generic, so relatively little money and effort is spent on original, risky, ground breaking research, in lieu of these minor patentable improvements and marketing, marketing, marketing.

(generics; an interesting area for the laissez-fairest. Should we have drug patents or let anyone make any product they can figure out how to duplicate? Who will then bother to research new products? Should the protective role of the FDA go away, replaced, hopefully, by some private concerned folks looking to make a buck? Or just rely on quackery and reputation of medicine providers?)

For myself... well, if I had a reasonable healthcare system to fall back on, I'd feel a bit less constrained as to career paths. Right now, I don't consider any job w/o a big package of medical benefits, but if there were an acceptable fallback, and I mostly had to just plot out rent and food, my life would more free.

One time my doctor (whose practice is an awesome blend of hardcore western medicine rounded out by a respect for and use of some of the best of that hippy stuff; the dude was also my yoga instuctor for 3 years) complained that people accept that they might have to pay a couple hundred for a new exhaust system, but are very uptight about the same kind of money for appointments and treatment and what not. I pointed out to him later that, that's because car costs are ultimately bounded, but health care is not. Worst case scenario, a car is totaled and you have to buy a new one. For medicine though, even if "regular maintenance" is affordable, if something goes wrong, it might go really wrong, and since you can't buy a new body, you're going to be desperate for any treatment that holds promise to fix you. This is why people cling together for health insurance, and why some people think we might get better value-for-money and economics of scale by doing so on a national level.

Assuming that no film exec already has his eyes on "The Tragedy of Flight 66" documentary, I should stumbling into Boston this morning.

UPDATE: I'm back safe and relatively sound but rather weary. Why on earth is what sounds like a practicing bagpipe player at the church across the street? Shouldn't he go very, very far away to refine his craft?

Why is the USA seemingly so much more into "Laissez-Faire" than Europe? Is it our history of "rugged individualism"? Some hangover from the red scares of the 50s? I guess it predates that.

It's funny to realize that "it doesn't have to be this way". I'm sure libertarians think it's not nearly enough that way, and other groups might wish there was more co-operation in general.

I guess in general our system tried to minimize the "Tragedy of the Commons"... it's "sink or swim" for many of us, but with enough legislation to try to avoid the abuses that a completely hands off system might lead to.

---

Art of the Moment

click for fullsize "September", by Timna Woollard from Where The Heart Is.

So.

I've put off seriously getting to seekin' new romance 'til the divorce was final. There were some some practical reasons for that: there would've been an emotional baggage, not to mention having to explain it ("well, we're practically divorced...no, really!"), some dating services just won't deal with you until you're really in the clear, marriage wise, plus it was good to have some time to let the makeover sink in.

But now it's final, and I gotta figure out "what now".

Before I rush into anything, I think I should ask myself: am I anxious for new romance? And if so, why?

Sometimes I feel like I have a dollop of "been there, done that", at least relative to some other single folks I know who haven't been married. (Like they said on Will & Grace: "I want to marry...'the one.'" "And well you should, honey. How else are you going to get to 'the two' and 'the three'?") It's like I've proven something to myself, or maybe the world.

Now that's an idea that's going to get me into trouble and make everyone think I'm a shallow jerk and maybe stop me from finding True Love: I can't shake a concern for "what the world thinks".

I mean, what do we look for in romantic partners? You want someone smart. And funny. And attractive. Having some kind of career is a plus. And then there are those incredibly crucial but hard to gauge intangibles: they have to like you. At some point, you have to be able to figure if they're going to able to commit and be reliable. And you have to make sure your life goals are compatible. (And, in my case, that they're compatible with my lack of life goals...)

Anyway, the world looks to much at that set of tangibles, because it's easy to be shallow. And that affects how the world deals with us, and that can be profound. (Or is that all a cover, an excuse for me saying "dang it, I want a cute girlfriend!"?)

Back to the central point; why do I want romance, and what do I want out of it? Companionship is a big chunk of that, emotional, intellectual, physical. And for strengths that complement my weaknesses (me being wishywashy comes to mind) and strengths that complement my strengths and maybe a few minor weaknesses so I can feel useful too. And someone to show the stuff I think is cool to first.

(Great line from The Opposite of Sex: "Look for me first, in any crowded room, and I'll do the same.")

Eh, that's enough rambling for today. Tomorrow: thinking about strategy in the harsh worlds of dating, Internet and otherwise.

---

Pixels of the Moment
Eboy's Ecity is full of that big pixel, 3/4 angle goodness. It's funny how evocative the style is, I can't think of any videogame systems that ever really looked like that, it's kind of a self-contained but very cool style.

---

Followup of the Moment
In the comments the other day I mentioned people with the abilility to read other people very well...the link I was thinking of was from last September and the term I couldn't remember was "microexpressions". Anyway, here's a more recent article about people detecting lies. Turns out some Secret Service guys might be really good at it--is it their training, or their selection I wonder...

---

Link of the Moment
Beds for the Paranoid. Sleep tight! Don't let the axe-wielding murdering maniacs bite! Link of the Moment
Why not start your morning with Undeniable Forensic Proof that Paul McCartney really was replaced with a Look-Alike in 1966? Interesting animated GIFs, though obviously I don't find them that convincing...but I don't know enough about photography to refute them.

---

Photos of the Moment
Image of the Moment

I think this cloud looks like an elephant on a rock. Taken yesterday from my car. My alma mater would be proud.

---

Link of the Moment
Ranjit msg'd me with FLYING SNAKES...so wonderfully nightmarish! They even have their own web site--be sure to check out the gliding footage on the videos page. As long as you don't mind not sleeping for a few nights...

---

Quote of the Moment

No one can say Dallas doesn't love and respect you, Mr. President.

Tonight Bush announces his decision on federal funding for stemcell research. Let's hope he doesn't screw up (hee hee, Ruben Bolling sums it all up)

---

Quote and Link of the Moment

I hope fox starts "a room with a bunch of knives and a pile of money"

This wish (from the KHftCEA) about all those "reality" shows is that much closer to being granted with a new show Danger Island-- convicts and manhunters on a big island... neat! It's still in the planning stages (hoping to get picked up by a network) so if you're a felon or a bounty hunter, there's still time to get on board! (via cruel site)

---

Quixotic Art
Wouldn't it be cool if we could get a bunch of people with laser pointers and paint a spot on the moon with light? They're aren't sure if it could actually work, but it's cool that they want to try. Maybe I'll join in. I remember wondering if I could signal aliens with an upward pointing flashlight at summercamp. With my luck I'd probably send the alien morse code for "Attack us! Please! We're barely post-nuclear with our technologies!" (but I'll fool them and upload a virus to their main computer with my buddy's Titanium Powerbook.)