Martian Technology offers something that's this close to my ideal home server.

What it lacks is web-oriented services, but obviously one could buy it and then install the services one's self.

[via Cringely, who saw it in the NYT but do not link over theah.]

I blog this so I can find it easy again when I beat Ken in online poker.

Scheduled posting for Movable Type!

Trickle is a perlscript by blogneighbor Jim Flanagan of Everything Burns that enables publish-on-date style posting to the future under MT, my personal biggest missing feature. The script was developed in response to requests from another blogneighbor, Dan Sanderson of BrainLog.

Now I just have to go back and figure out why vanilla cron misbehaves on my OS X box. It's surely aslo an excuse to finally install Cronnix.

Jim's solution is elegant and simple, but like all users, my inelegant and complex needs stub a toe. In this case, it's the use of a category as the publication key. Jim asks users to assign a new category, "Deferred," to the draft entres you're queueing up. However, even if I assign a dual category to my post-to-the future, I'll still wind up with a new category and category achive page, "Deferred," unless I rummage around to ensure that that specific category is treated in a special way.

It should be noted that Jim's made the category assignable and configurable as an independent variable at the top of the script.

Perhaps that's my key: can I assign the variable to ALL categories, such that any post in Draft mode with a future date will render under Trickle the next time after that date? I bet so. Can I do it via "*"? One way to find out.

Alternatively, I could just comment the category test, maybe.

UPDATE: rowsabowsa ragga fragga, I've burnt my twenty minutes with no love. I shall return. I believe I'm bumping against some of the same issues that frustrated me previously regarding cron and OS X, and not issues in Jim's code.

On proofreading this piece, maybe I've brought a typo to the table. Fumblefingers!

UPDATE II: Point one: Jim actually notes in the code proppah that the script will strip the Deferred category from the entry.

Point two: the script needs to be in the same directory as your mt.cgi stuff (although I'm sure that's hackable).

Point three: for the record, "*" is not a valid value for the Deferred category. It's not necessary to worry about entries piling up in your Deferred archive, though, as MT won't render empty categories. This does mean one should assign dual categories to your entries.

Point four: The execution problems I was having were a combination of pathing and permission problems. The successful use of the script I'm describing above was manually triggered from the command line. When I get it to run using Cronnix I'll add an update here.

UPDATE III: manually via Cronnix, yes; scheduled via Cronnix, not yet.

UPDATE IV: scheduled via Cronnix, if Cronnix is currently loaded as an active application, yes; scheduled via Cronnix for cron to run solo, not yet.

UPDATE V: Success! Cronnix skedded-jobs ran independently via cron, just as one would want them to. I deleted several (but not all) test posts.

UPDATE VI: reset creation time to force to lead story slot.

Cory at Boing Boing links to Brad Templeton's reflections on and survey of spam and how we got here. Cory highlights a part of Templeton's essay that echoes my own interest in the subject: spam has the power to contort consistent rhetorical and political positions into their logical opposites. Since Boing Boing uses an inline permalink system I'll actually run Cory's excerpt:

Spam fascinates me because it sits at the intersection of three important rights -- free speech, private property and privacy. It's also the first major internet governance issue (possibly in tandem with DNS) that the members of the internet community have been so deeply concerned with.

The reaction to it has been remarkable. By attacking something we hold dear, and goading us by using our own tools and resources to do it, spam generates emotion far beyond its actual harm, even though that actual harm is quite considerable.

Spam pushes people who would proudly (and correctly) trumpet how we shouldn't blame ISPs for offensive web sites, copyright violations and/or MP3 trading done by downstream customers to suddenly call for blacklisting of all the innocent users at an ISP if a spammer is to be found among them. People who would defend the end-to-end principle of internet design eagerly hunt for mechanisms of centralized control to stop it. Those who would never agree with punishing the innocent to find the guilty in any other field happily advocate it to stop spam. Some conclude even entire nations must be blacklisted from sending E-mail. Onetime defenders of an open net with anonymous participation call for authentication certificates on every E-mail. Former champions of flat-fee unlimited net access who railed against proposals for per-packet internet pricing propose per-message usage fees on E-mail. On USENET, where the idea of canceling another's article to retroactively moderate a group was highly reviled, people now find they couldn't use the net without it. Those who reviled at any attempt to regulate internet traffic by the government loudly petition their legislators for some law, any law it almost seems, against spam. Software engineers who would be fired for building a system that drops traffic on the floor without reporting the error change their mail systems to silently discard mail after mail.

It's amazing.

Oh good god, I gotta get to work.

pf.org: Nomen, Prenomen: the 2003 All-Name NFL Draft Team.

Geez, I'm linkin' up a storm here today.

KRAZY KAT: an epic post from the redoubtable y2karl. Each letter in the actual post itself is a link to a Krazy Kat resource; Karl quixotically annotated each link via mouseover text.

In the discussion partway down he discusses his technical procedures on the post. ;)

Didja hear that the Canterbury tales are now online?

I have to transcribe and transcribe and transcribe today, and MT twiddles certainly constitute procrastination.

Testing!

Just a quick jaunt up the timestream to check on Ken's winnings and to drop in on Future Jahna. I'll be back in normal temporal reality Monday.

And did I tell ya? I got SIFF press creds! I'll be blogging it, baby! 'Course, I got the cred based on Cinescape and I will be developing a polished piece for them as well, and maybe some stuff for Tablet locally.

A couple of weeks ago, Dale Lawrence and Jake Smith (of, respectively, each other's bands: Dale's The Vulgar Boatmen and Jake's Mysteries of Life - got that? There will be a test.) were here in Seattle for the EMP's second annual pop conference. Jake was presenting on the advent of video games as a central pop concern of the kiddies, displacing pop music, to the concerned clucking of old fogeys like me. I'm far from being in a position to discuss that perspective, though – I never spend time around young people anymore, so I have no idea.

Dale's presentation, though, was on mashups, presumably based on his mashups piece on the No Nostalgia website. Viv and I had dinner with Jake and Dale while they were here, and really enjoyed the too-brief time spent discussing home and music and friends and so forth.

As I've noted before, Dale's music - from his very earliest record, recorded live at CBGB's Max's Kansas City in 1978 to current bootlegs of live dates in the Midwest - is the most important material to me personally of all American pop. I grew up with it, I learned about song structure and playing techniques by listening to it, and decoded the antecedents and relationships with other musicians that helped form it. I came to Buddy Holly and the Velvet Underground through listening to Dale's reactions to these artists.

So, when Dale takes the time to write about other people's music for publication, I'm going to pay attention to what he has to say.

While here, Dale had intended to drop off a mix CD of mashups for me to check out so I could have some context for his piece. After this delay and that delay, I'm listening to it right now.

Dale's arguing that the intersection of blanderized pop vocal performances and often less polished backing musical tracks (but frequently also from a well-known source) creates something new and better than the initial work. "They might be the freshest, most exciting records being made right now," he says in the piece.

On the disc there's a mix that employs The Stooges "No Fun" backing the vocals from Salt-n-Pepa's "Push It", which immediately stood out. Other tracks that have had an impact include, well, basically anything with Eminiem's infuriatingly amusing razor-sharp wordbombs ("Without Me" atop Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag", for example) and a track called "Superbike Party" that places Pink's "Let's Get This Party Started" atop the music from one of the Superbike video games from Electronic Arts.

So are these mixes better? Do they define a new direction for pop music? I think I have a difference of opinion with Dale on this. The Stooges/Salt-n-Pepa thing is a rawer, better version of Run DMC's fifteen-year-old collision with Aerosmith. So what am I actually getting out of the material that's new or resonant?

I think the answer is not much: I'm bathed in the warm glow of being a lifetime listener to the Stooges and an early appreciator of Salt-n-Pepa's brainy, self-assured pulchritude: good for me, I'm a music geek! I think the same is true when I listen to "Without Me Rag" (actually titled "Marshall Gets Snookered", as the rag concludes with the telltale sound of the click of billiard balls, cueing us to the The Sting, situating Eminiem as a winking, grinning scam artist). However, in this case, the reflective material available to the listener is greater than the simple pleasure of the absurdity of the mash, which leaves one chuckling in shock.

The real content of the piece is in the reiteration of the history of American pop music the track represents, something Eminiem actually directly addresses in the lyrics for "Without Me:"

And though I'm not the first king of controversy
I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley
do black music so selfishly
and used it to get myself wealthy
Here's a concept that works

Scott Joplin, of course, was among the first popularizers of black music, being a black man himself. Yet he did it by presenting his material in the context of a system that had previously been largely restricted to white artists: as an author of sheet music, rather than as a performer.

Hearing this dialog between black music and white performers and interpreters presented with such a sense of sly wit – only appropriate to Eminem's undeniably funny writing – elevates the piece.

Chuck D steps up to the plate next with "Rebel in His Own Mind" over the top of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Chuck and the other members of Public Enemy helped to define the potential of layered sampling, a creative approach that Chuck, as well as numerous other commentators, now claim is impossible without recourse to violations of copyright. Which, of course, brings us to the encore.

Dale hears this dialog as a call to current guitar rockers to bring the black back and to bring the punk back to the funk:

"Listening to Freelance Hellraiser's 'A Stroke of Genius' or McSleazy's 'Don't Call Me Blur,' one realizes how much more that bands like the Hives or the Strokes could be doing -- particularly if they didn't so consistently turn a deaf ear to black music. The cross-pollination of black and white sounds has virtually defined American pop, but in today's indie-rock scene, funk (or its first cousin, rap) is about the only trace of R&B you're likely to hear. That strict musical segregation is the key subtext of Best Bootlegs. Many of the tracks are textbook examples of how exciting the collision of black and white rock can be."

He concludes that the music is "punk that likes to dance as much as it likes to fight," a precise, accidental description of Dale's early work with the Gizmos, no question about it. Additionally, it may sum up some things about what Dale finds worthwhile in music. Listening to the live Boatmen show I recently cut up for MP3 hosting, it also applies to his current performances.

Mashups and remix culture present opportunities for new kinds of creativity and comment that are as valid and challenging and could be as resonant as other kinds of more traditional music creation strategies. Can mashups present the individual-to-universal emotional landscapes that have traditionally been the purview of pop and singer-songwriter musicmaking?

With the possible exception of the U2-Missy Elliot (? I think)-Whitney Houston mashup "I Wanna Dance with Some Bono", by Go Home Productions, which injects a cellophane party song with a desperate longing that transcends both source songs, the answer appears to be no. Why? I believe it's the symbolic freight of the material that is employed to create the tunes. Instead of just grooving to "No Fun," I was thinking about the tension between Iggy's angular white-boy fear and repulsion toward his own body and Salt-n-Pepa's round and bodacious sex-positive embrace. My experience of these songs was in my mind, not in my heart or in my body. My appreciation of them depended on my scholastic appreciation of the source material, of my ability to contextualize it.

Does that mean that the basic technique – layering two independent melody lines together – is irretrievable or can't be used to create work with the vigor that the juice of two melodies can promise? The answer to that is clearly no.

Interestingly there's at least one major pioneer in that technique in post 1960's pop – The Grateful Dead. However (and whaetever your opinion of their material is), in their application it's actually two independent rhythm lines, under improvised melodies, as opposed to the single beat, two-melody approach. Other big names in pop have worked with the technique (specifically, Brian Wilson and the Beatles in their grand studio manners) but because they were emulating classical models rather than pop ones the use of it is unheard, subsumed into the orchestral projects they were pursuing.

Dale himself could put his money where is mouth is – making vocal-only tracks to some of his songs available, to see what might come of it. For that matter, I could construct some myself on Dale's music, employing the material of persons whose influences are so clear to my ear in his music.

Another possibility – the one I'm most interested in, in fact – is for an accomplished songwriter such as Dale to mash his own songs up – just sit down with an acoustic and ProTools, record fifteen two-track songs with fully separated vocals and guitar, and start mashing.

I'm thinking "Katy's Heartbeat" might be interesting. Of course, to really do it up right, I should be looking at running Dale's high sweet tenor on top of George Clinton. Don’t touch that dial!

(Corrections via Dale, updated - ha! look at the posting date - 04/26 7a)

Alright, the votes are in, the discussion didn't materialize like I hoped, and I'm here to blow the lid off my Seven Truths and One Lie. But first a few prefatory remarks.

First. Overall, I don't think I accomplished exactly what I had hoped to. I sought to pull the wool over my own eyes and generate at least one micro-short story. Unfortunately, the problem that dogs my writing – and other parts of my life – came to the fore. I'm a profoundly passive person, who finds observation, description, and analysis more interesting than any kind of action.

In my anecdotes I found it interesting that there is exactly one active character, my father, who in two stories variously drags me fearlessly into the middle of the Mexican desert to La Cantina or perilously pulls an imperialist prank on a hapless East African. Although I wrote in first person, there is never any interaction, and in three of the stories my seeking solitude is the primary motivation of the observations that comprise the bulk of the tales.

Certain persons who know me well in real life – *cough* Eric and Ken – will probably find themselves bemused by this. Ken's followed me into an active riot zone, clouds of tear gas brilliant white against the night sky, illuminated by banks of playfield lights as bright as day. This was at my initiative, following a boisterously contentious dinner among activists and residents of Seattle during the WTO events here. "Bang!" went the grenades in the distance, and I had to be physically restrained from charging off to the scene.

Eric's not only heard my travel tales but my many misadventures as a callow yoot, some of which I should probably develop. There's the time a certain person (a convicted murderer on the lam from Florida, the grapevine later insisted) held a kid out the second story apartment window by his feet in a dispute over drug monies said to be owed, for example (I was nether present nor involved, may I hasten to add).

I was surprised to see themes emerge with such clarity: imperialism and colonialism, war and military might, solitude, the desert, and flight are clearly the things I have been thinking about ever since I was a child.

My personal favorite – and the piece which is most fully developed – is The Wind and Rain. Still, the piece is just the setting for a short story, the armature and stage on which persons might sing their little songs of mating and death. And that's the problem with all these pieces. There's no actor, just a setting.

That said, you people elected The Tumor head of the class. This story is not the lie. Each observation in the piece is factually a part of my memories of Japan. I do have recollections of the outdoors in Japan – usually in the context of a visit to a tourist destination, such as the temple complex at Nara – but because the memory of that man's face was so stark and uncomfortable, I deliberately chose to write about what I perceived then as the Great Indoors. To this day when the SF trope of the world-city passes under my eyes in reading, it is the endless layer-cake of under Japan I visualize.

Felicity, bless her book lovin' soul, fingered the ringer, but was buffaloed by what she visualized as a Deltawinged dive-bomber screaming down at my family by their car. In fact, the bomber was simply flying as low to the ground as possible – possibly approaching us from below the crest of the hill on which we'd parked, at a potential altitude of as low as 25 feet. Which is why we heard it so long before we saw it. The plane had probably begun to pull up a bit when he saw us, before clawing his way back up to the sky just after.

The lie, dear hearts? Well, it's two-fold. I was frankly disappointed that no-one noticed my giant sign, planted in the Ethiopian highlands on the road to Axum. The sign? My father, after all, told the collector of The Toll a sort of lie with his crazy, dominant jabbering. That lie, as all good lies, encapsulated the truth: white men who gesture angrily on dusty third world roads are best heeded, as history has shown. Unspeakable violence may ensue.

My own lie, however, is of a different order. My parents lived and worked in Addis Ababa in the early 1960s, before I was born. The story as I wrote it here is almost exactly as my father can still tell it, to great comedic effect, amazing, pseudo-linguistic jabbering included. The details of my mother's distress, and the need to keep the car from bursting into a storm of questions are my own fabricated contributions.

So, thanks again to those of you who dropped by and registered a vote or a thought on these, and thanks also to those of you who were interested enough to link over. I will be conducting more exercises in fictioneering here; I'm far from ready to discuss the techniques and goals I want to pursue, however.

A few days ago (prior to Seven Truths and One Lie), I ran a piece noting a specific article in local alternative paper The Stranger, covering the crushing death of Olympia native Rachel Corrie. I used the article as a jumping off point to praise and criticize the paper, crediting editor Dan Savage with displaying renewed creativity in editorial choices at the paper at the same time as I noted and lamented some lapses and a general sort of malaise the publication has presented over the past few years.

What should land in my email last week but a detailed series of comments on my piece from none other than Mr. Savage himself. It was unexpected, to say the least.

I clearly need to adjust my expectations on these matters. When I commented on last year's redesign of Wired, the designer responsible dropped by to correct a misstatement of mine (see the comments).

When I incidentally noted a local man's interview and picture in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (stemming from a recently-settled terror case), he wrote in to express his displeasure at my characterization of the interview.

John Ashcroft, President Bush, Tom Ridge: I didn't mean it! I take back all the nasty things I'm afraid to write! Please don’t strip me of my rights!

In all seriousness, what this means is pretty simple: I can't practice casual, un-fact-checked writing here anymore, and it was a mistake to believe that this forum is a casual one, like a journal. It's clearly not, and I promise to shape up and fly right from now on.

That said, I have asked Dan for permission to publish his letter, and haven't heard back. So I'll summarize his corrections and observations – not, it should be noted, with his customary wit.

First, he notes that he's been the editor for two years there. Second, he notes that arch-rival Seattle Weekly only hired one writer away (George Howland) in contrast to my impression that the Weekly had "cherry-picked" the writers at The Stranger and furthermore, that The Stranger is now the home to Christopher Frizelle, who came from the Weekly.

Deservingly, he takes me to task for praising only the national-scope writers (except for Eli Sanders, who wrote the Corrie piece), and like a champ, lists his stable with pride: ". . . sandeep kaushik, amy jenniges, zac pennington, megan seling, jennifer maerz. . . actually, going around the edit office, we have more new people in editorial now than old timers."

Additionally he notes that Sherman Alexie is now a regular contributor with a biweekly column, "Reservations," to which I say hoo-HA, may have some more, please!

(Anybody else enjoy that Alexie piece in The New Yorker? Beautiful and sad, just like the town. While I can't speak to the actual reality of Big Hearts, the Indian bar near Pioneer Square, the rest of the terrain of Seattle depicted – from the viaduct to Real Change – was authentically rendered. Hey look! An interview!)

He cops to the drinking issue (ha-ha! cops to the drinking issue! get.. oh, never mind) but insists it contained valuable social satire (mmm, you be the judge) and takes the time for a swipe at the Weekly that's amusing enough to cite under fair use:

"as for the weekly condos-and-benz stuff, that didn't stop in the early 90s... they just did a 'home' issue with lots of great news in it for 'high-end' condo buyers. did you catch that? howzabout their spring fashion issue? i don't buy a t-shirt before April, you know, until after the spring fashion dictates come down from the weekly."

So, to wrap up, Dr. Savage stood up for his team, and pointed out several incorrect statements and assumptions in my piece for which I can only say "thank you!" As a direct result, I now formally eschew off-the-cuff statements of fact in the context of this website, and will endeavor faithfully to note when I'm speaking from ignorance or without a specific source when I'm discussing matters of fact.

Tangentially, fezellow bloggaz, am I uniquely cazizursed with this? When you make off-the-cuff remarks about this and that in the larger media sphere, do your subjects write in to set you straight?

Deep Throat Identified ... again.

Didn't we hear of this of this and then dispose of it last June?

It IS verrrry interesting, though, that Ken "scheduled" his "trip" to "Vegas" to ...coincide with this announcement.

[raises eyebrow theatrically, puffs pipe, surreptitiously checks elbow patches on tweed jacket]

Six Apart Milestones is MT parent company Six Apart's public announcement of a hosted blogging service based on MT, to be called TypePad..

The very first trackback notes that FOAF will be a part of it.

The new venture also brings Ben and Mena VC money, which translates into bodies, all of which also appear to be bloggers (Joi Ito's VC fund is the cash, Anil Dash is the new hire).

Interesting. I've been nursing the strong suspicion that venture captial is poison to good software. This could be great for MT (it certainly will be for the Trotts) or it could be the beginning of the end. While certain engineering problems centered around communty-building features are certainly most easily addressed by centralizing, the revenue-producing reason to do so is probably audience aggregation and remarketing, an inevitable consequence of large user-bases.

All those email adresses are a natural resource, just waithing for a marketing department to strip-mine 'em. I have to say I anticipate that the polish, craftsmanlike devotion to detail, and strong user orientation that MT - and the Trotts - have demonstrated to date is likely to suffer.

Shifting Six Apart's focus to the design, development, deployment, and support of a hosting service is also a big change in direction, one that appears to challenge some of the thinking behind the current incarnation of the MT project. I know I adopted MT because I don't trust hosting providers to do a good job with user support even when the subscription fees are astronomical.

There's been so much VC-driven instability in the ISP and hosting markets that I just decided i could do a better job, with more accountability, if I bought a junk laptop on ebay and went to work. I'll tell you this - I sure don't have to worry about storage space anymore. Backup and bandwidth, well... I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

I certainly do hope I'm wrong, and God knows, if the Trotts want to buy some toys and a big old house, they're entitled - MT is already a far superior product to many, many things that made huge piles back in our days of tulip-mania.

poupou: i, blogger: Poupou reflects on some of the things that, in their more abstracted ways, Eric and Chris have been thinking out loud about.

Eric and Chris are thinking about social software and collaboration behavior as developers and academic theoreticians, citing papers and so forth. Poupou's posing the questions in a way which reflects a user orientation. Good for her!

She forecasts the imminent death of chat and notes the need for audience-sensitive content filters; a kill-file the blog author controls; then, huzzah, she points to a roll-your-own implementation for MT under PHP from the aptly self-proclaimed Scriptygodess, savior of all MT users and guiding hand behind the MT Plugins page.

Personally, I fall in to the 'anonymity? why?' camp; but in the entry and in some thoughtful comments by Coop my 'why' is answered.

It's true I won't be publishing material here I don't want my parents to read; but it's also true I have not published material here I don't want the DOJ - or Rush Limbaugh - to read.

In the first case, it does mean I haven't sat down and devoted an hour of serious writing to, for example, an intimate sexual encounter. Does it also mean I never will? That's uncertain.

In the second case, I've already noted that I'm unhappy with this self-imposed restriction; however, it's organic and not strictly a reflection of blog-ness and the age of zero anonymity.

There is a third case of content filter which determines what goes up here and what does not, and that's the desire not to publish fairly finished source material - quotes, mostly; interviews, as being largely quotes, fit this rule - prior to professional publication of pieces drawn from the source matter.

That is to say, the blog supports professional activity, and is intended to act as a point of presence for both Mike Whybark, who woke up one day knowing he was a fool to not have thought seriously about writing; and Mike Whybark, underemployed webchicken.

In which case, um, maybe the sex writing shouldn't appear there ayway, yes?

There's more for me to say about this, but I've been told it's time for bed.

Stuff: Alien Food Symbols: [via the estimable danelope] Look. Learn. Lick. Terrifying secrets of our alien overseers and their secret food-package symbology revealed.

There were no sources of meat protein available for under $2.99 a pound at the grocery store yesterday. Suddenly, the whole vegan thing pops into clarity for me.

Seriously, I remember being able to buy 99-cent ground beef here in Seattle ten years ago. It was the 23 percent lean variety, sure, but my unscientific sampling would indicate a ten-year inflation rate of 200 percent.

I switched to ground turkey when the beef went over two bucks - now, ground turkey's appearing as some kind of boutique meat and runs $4.99, which is just ridiculous.

They do say that rice and beans are nature's perfect food.

RECAP TIME!

I hope you enjoyed my travel stories.

To review: last Saturday I announced a weeklong special, Seven Truths and One Lie, in which I proposed a fiction-writing excersise for myself that you were invited to observe and comment on. Specifically, I was hoping to fool myself into crafting some fiction based on one of my many travel experiences.

Unfortunately, the name of the event led more than one person to expect that I would write eight essays, one crafted from whole cloth. I had never intended to do so, but by the time I realized I'd confused some readers, I was deep into the project and didn't wish to explain here.

At any rate, now you know: there are only seven tales. So where's the lie? It's there; but to be sure, each of the seven tales is also a true and factual account. In a way, I'm disappointed in myself for not being able to get fictional enough, but as I noted at the beginning of the project, I freeze when I think I'm going to "write fiction," absurdly enough for the man who chronicled the history of Kensapoppin'.

So here's what I'd like you to do.

Look over the list, with my one-sentence summaries, and compare the stories in your mind. Was there one in particular that felt different or rang false in some way? Feel free to ask questions in the comments section, preferably in this entry so that everyone can benefit. I'll answer in the comments section, truthfully, and with reasonable helpfulness.

At the same time, feel free to vote in the poll, just below. Currently I have not activated the poll's lock-out, so those of you who'd like to indulge in the great American tradition of stuffing the ballot box may fire away. The poll also links to the entries. I just set it up; and while the code is straightforward enough it's, uh, rather tersely documented, so if it blows up real good, I may disappear it.

(near the Outer Banks, North Carolina)

The day after Christmas we drove out to the coast, the countryside slouching to card-table flats, tin-roof tobacco barns dotting the plain. An angry-looking white man in a rust-specked Cutlass insistently refused to let a black family in a late-model Ford pass, changing lanes with vitriolic swerves. We came across the first of the many coastal inlets that add hours to any coastal drive in the Carolinas and I eagerly examined the maps to learn if it was this inlet that held Teach's Hole, where Blackbeard met his end. We were far afield.

We drove on through the quiet, bare-limbed landscape, ancient cemeteries flashing in the slanting winter sun, to arrive at the colonial capital of North Carolina, a Georgian mansion dressed in holiday finery, wreaths of real fruit and evergreen atop the locked gates and fences. We strolled through the herb garden, cold, considering our options.

We determined to head north, passing by the site of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, near the location of Teach's Hole, before seeking a hotel on one of the Outer Banks themselves. By late afternoon we'd reached the first of these destinations. Pulling into the park, we were taken by surprise to note that we were the only people about. It was a holiday, after all.

We wandered around the park, noting the signage and general lack of reconstructions and archeological digs common in such places, before coming to a surprising edifice partially cantilevered out beyond the rocky shore of the island itself. It was an elaborate stage set, constructed solidly of wood, designed to give the impression of a pioneer stockade and blockhouse. We clambered about it, peeking backstage, bemused by the irony of finding the Lost Colony abandoned, no mysterious "Croatan", no "McDonald's," no "Wal-Mart" carved into the wood of the stage. The moment of my culture's troubled birth enveloped me.

The park itself came into being as a result of a summer-stock drama reimagining the story of the vanished colony on the very spot where the 1500-odd colonists lived, and vanished. In respect of the heritage of the production, the park co-exists with the play.

As I trod the boards, musing on the theatrical fertility of Elizabethan England, I gazed north and west to see the low, sandy line of the Outer Banks wink in the unseasonably bright sunlight. As I looked, I saw a white tower blink as clouds scudded by the sun. I took it for a lighthouse, but then reconsidered: the object did not sport the iconic striping of the Banks' lighthouses, familiar from menus, signs, rural mailboxes, windsocks, bumper-stickers, and so forth. It was a pale cream color, not quite the yellowish tone of sand.

With a start I realized I was looking at the 60-foot granite monument erected at Kill Devil Hills to commemorate the first flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, 96 years and nine days prior. As I stood on the empty stage of the Lost Colony, the very birthplace of the Twentieth Century was visible across a few miles and five hundred years.

The next day, the unseasonable weather was gone and the more usual spitty, wind-blown conditions prevailed. We parked in the lot and noted that the park was open, and filed into the interpretive center to observe the Wrights' memorabilia, including a full-scale operational reconstruction of a 1902-season glider. A park docent demonstrated what the Wrights' guidance technique of wing warping truly meant. The wings twisted organically as he slipped his hips from side to side, bowing like giant cupped hands with a great woody chunk.

The grounds about the center were empty due to the wind and rain, chilly and strong, pinking the greetings of the winter Atlantic into my face. I leaned into the wind, working my miserable way down from the 90-foot hill on which the monument stood, supposed by the builders to be the very place that the first flight took place. The information at the park, however, claimed the dune had migrated by the time the pylon was raised in the 1930's and that the tiny canvas-and-wood shack visible to the seaward of the great dune was the most probable location of the Wright's winter camp and first flight. From the height, I had been unable to spy the stage on which I'd stood the day before, my peerings defeated by the misty white lashings of the weather.

Gratefully, I stepped out of the wind and rain into the careful recreation of the 1903 cabin, each item neatly stocked and ranked with the appropriate precision of the engineer. Turning to look back into the blow, I noted a short, metal-topped wooden rail a few feet beyond the door of the cabin, about an inch wide along the top surface and about two-and-one half inches tall, running for fifteen feet or so in the sandy scrub. I took it for a path boundary from an earlier landscaping effort, overlooked by strapped groundskeepers.

For no particular reason I walked out to the rail. I began to teeter my way along it, balancing arms out, leaning into the wind.

The wind caught me and steadied me as I moved down the rail; I raised my head and the rain spattered my glasses and stung my face. Suddenly, I realized this rail was a recreation, as the cabin, of the rail the Wrights rode into the sky on December 17, 1903. The river of wind I faced and leaned on was the wind that launched us to the sky. Since earliest childhood, I'd ridden its' tributaries around the world. The rushing sound of it ouside the portholed cabin remains a drowsy lullaby for me to this day.

I let the wind take my arms and raise them above my head.

(Along the border of France and Germany, on the way to Calais)

As we drove through the countryside, the green of high summer on the rolling hills, glistening like jewels in the sunlight, I noticed odd, rounded depressions in the verdant slopes. As we continued along, I began to realize they were everywhere.

The plantings on these hills appeared to be primarily grasses, and here and there farm equipment and picturesquely abandoned stone houses stood marooned in the fields. The frequency of the mysterious bowls increased as we moved further north and east, toward the Channel crossing between Calais and Dover.

Around a bend and off across a couple of fields stood not a single house, but a cluster of buildings, tumbled into ruin. With a start I realized that the tallest of the buildings was the remnant of a church, and the rest of the buildings about it had once formed a village center.

The meaning of the circular depressions surrounding us came into focus. These were shellholes, huge divots of earth from bombardments past. Romantically, I thought to associate them with the first World War. When one of the abandoned examples of farm gear proved to be a Sherman tank, slumping into rust amid the waving leaves of grass, I realized the unlikelihood of that.

It's possible, however, that the battle whose traces I was seeing was indeed from the first war, and not the second, despite my recollection of the tank. There are memorial parks in France in which Great War shell holes remain visible, around the site of the great battle of the Somme.

I don't recall any further discussion of this at the time. We drove on through the peaceful, prosperous landscape.

(I've violated my word count rule, apologies. The anecdote was thematically appropriate to follow yesterday's; and after all, brevity is good, right?)

(under Japan, geography uncertain)

The fantastic subterranean cities we passed through amazed me. Countless levels, each side of the corridor packed with every conceivable kind of business, from barber shops and restaurants to toy stores and pet emporiums, the streaming crowds of Japanese seemed, to me, to live their lives in the future, in the ground, in space.

Some of the wide, low-ceilinged corridors even sported a slight concave curve, the rushing crowds of transiting people appearing from beneath the ceiling's corresponding outbow, the curve appearing to me like a prophecy of a great wheel in space.

It was common practice for restaurants in the transit warrens to feature, in their window or near the entrance, full-scale, elaborately realistic sculptures of the food that they serve inside. Not, mind you, one or two dishes, but more or less every single item on the menu is reproduced in plastic and shellac.

So common was this practice that among the haberdashers and tobacco stores and stationers and hardware merchants we eventually noticed entire stores devoted to selling these models of food – the individual items could be purchased singly or in lots. Twelve-piece sushi assortment, 700 yen. Single scoop of rice, 150 yen. One egg, 50 yen. Seven gyoza, 450 yen.

I carried my rubber egg about with me, thrilled with the incipient gag. Hey Dad! Catch. Ha-ha! Look out! Eventually begrimed, a molding seam appeared; the model lost its' veracity and I lost interest.

Elsewhere hundreds of thick, black-and-white comic books were inexpensively available. Often stores that carried the books also offerred merchandise that featured characters from these books. At the time, I didn't know they were manga, or much about them. I recall Captain Harlock's greatcoat flaring against the blackness of the interstellar reaches of a child's lunchbox. The striking image of a Second World War battleship refit as a starcruiser voyaging among the nebulae and and planetary systems of deep space, available as models and on posters. A slender, automatic-toting fellow with skinny tie and square sideburns who appeared to be a spy of some sort was clearly the star of the moment, however, despite my own interest in the space opera material.

Curious, I picked up one of the books (probably a Golgo 13 book) featuring the gun-wielding man, and was shocked and titillated by the violence, sex, and misogyny displayed within. Quickly, I was overcome by guilt and fear that my mother would come across me flipping the pages of the magazine, clearly not age-appropriate for me at 12, and put it down.

Not only were the Japanese sending battlecruisers to the stars and living in enormous experimental space stations, the country had experienced the use of atomic weaponry. The future and the war were everywhere, just beneath the surface of Japan's cacophonously ordered society. When I held my head at the right angle, I could see it, feel it, practically smell it. This way, the past; that, the future.

The image of the Yamato is a compelling vision of renascence. I was already familiar with the disturbingly casual use of nuclear weapons as plot devices in imported after-school anime fare such as Battle of the Planets. Orange fireballs crop up as predictably as Scooby-snacks, at 20 minutes in, end of act two.

So when our travels brought us through one of the two nuked cities for a train connection, I was hypervigilant. What does an atomic city look like? How do the people who live there act? Is it still radioactive? Will we be safe there, as citizens of the nation that bombed the place? A host of questions raged in my mind, some ignorant, others not. I could tell that my folks were uncomfortable under the onslaught and so I subsided into silence, many questions unanswered.

For many years I have placed this memory in Nagasaki. In preparing for this essay I have concluded that if it ever actually took place in one of the two cities, it must have been Hiroshima. My parents certainly do not retain a recollection of having passed through either of these locales, at least not on that trip. Wherever it is that it occurred, I know that I made the experience into something about the bomb on my own.

From the sea of bobbing heads, the old man hove into view, moving slowly, his grizzled, round face neutral, yet seeming happy. He was not dressed in rags, but he was clearly impoverished.

At first I had a hard time understanding what I saw as I looked at the side of his head. Maybe something, like a small monkey, was seated on his shoulder. I considered that perhaps it was a hat or a hood, or even something behind him that distance and a quirk of perspective had misled me into seeing as an element of his body.

There was no mistake of perception on my part. The man moved by, slowly, age and a lack of urgency marking him as surely as his disfigurement. On the right side of his face, an enormous black tumor clung, the size and shape of a matte-black summer eggplant, malignant-seeming and menacing.

I stared and tugged my mother's arm, who, noting my wide-eyed gaze and concern, gently scolded me and directed me to keep from staring. As the old man passed behind us, I immediately opened up with my many questions about the use of atomic weaponry and wanted to know if such a growth could result from the use of the bombs. My mother, of course, was unable to answer these questions and again urged me to keep these questions to my self, at least right then.

After all, if my memory is correct, answering your American twelve-year-old son's questions about the bombing of Hiroshima while within that city's subway network as her citizenry stream by on the way to their lives is probably one of parenthood's rarer, less-coveted experiences.

(pre-revolutionary Ethiopia, on the road from Addis Ababa to destination unknown)

The rutted one lane road outside Addis wrenched the wheel of the four-wheel drive travellall, bucking and jouncing along as we headed somewhere that I was too small to understand. In hindsight, I suppose we were headed for Axum. My father was working with Ethiopia Airlines as an aeronautics and business consultant on sabbatical from Purdue University. I believe the car was either an International Harvester or a Land Rover, those proto-SUVs we all know from countless Wild Kingdoms - at any rate, there was room for my mother and father and a pair of colleagues as well.

No-one had been in the country long enough to have developed a good command of Amharic. While there were as yet no rumblings of the 1974 revolt that would displace Hailie Selassie, the hinterlands were a place that my parents recall to me as little seen.

At any rate we were some distance out from the precincts reckoned as safe. My mother was somewhat nervous, concerned about the advisability of this drive out into the unknown. The fascinating reality of Ethiopia's relationship to both the Christian and Judaic cultures of Europe was too powerful a draw, overcoming her concern with curiosity.

Within Ethiopia, it's long been a point of pride of the Christian kings to claim custody of no less a relic than the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the law. Archeological evidence has come to light that at least makes a possible case for the presence of this relic – or stand-ins for it of genuine ancient heritage – in the town of Axum, in northern Ethiopia.

The theoretical provenance of the Ark begins in the Old Testament, when the contents of the Holy of Holies in the temple at Jerusalem were removed for safekeeping, probably not from the Romans but from an earlier conqueror.

The Old Testament story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (I Kings, 18-19; 2 Chronicles 9) is held in Ethiopia to recount a historical event which led to the founding of an Ethiopian Judaic kingdom under Menelik, the son of Solomon. The descendants of just such a culture group were largely evacuated to Israel both in the 1980's and again in the wake of the collapse of the Ethiopian revolutionary government in the early 1990's. The oral traditions of the Ethiopian Jews recount that the Ark came to Ethiopia through Egypt.

Sometime thereafter, A Christian kingdom arose in northern Ethiopia. The Christian Ethiopians defeated the Ethiopian Jews militarily, and both peoples agree that this is how the Ark came to be in Axum, under the protection of Ethiopian Copts.

As I recall my parents explaining this to me, they politely withheld judgement of the possibility that the Ark might factually have become part of the patrimony of contemporary Ethiopia. Yet, they always carefully noted to me that the narrative is of crucial import to the idea and cultural identity of Ethiopianness, and made it clear to me that the tale deserves the respect due to oral histories and religious beliefs.

The intricate, fascinating wall hanging depicting Solomon and Sheba, and Menelik's visit to Solomon and return home which returned with us to our home fascinated me. Using figures and a layout strategy drawn from eastern Christian traditions and anticipating comics in the use of captioned serial narrative, I longed to be able to read the Amharic words under the feet of the persons depicted in golden, brown, brick, and coffee colors.

Of course as we jounced along the track, none of this information was available to me, small as I was. We came to a halt. A tree lay across the road. A man emerged from cover by the side of the road, carrying a weapon, a rifle of some sort.

Through the lowered window, he made it quite clear he intended to collect a toll.

My father left the car, and went around the front of the hood to speak to the man. Pulling out his wallet, he cascaded an accordion-folded document out for the man to inspect. Festooned with ribbons, stamps, and signatures, the document measured a good foot-and-a-half in length, six or seven folds zig-zagging in the African sun.

My father began to jabber, angrily, poking his finger abruptly at the document, then at the car, then the road, then the man with the gun. His tone of voice was outraged, commanding.

My mother's hands flew to her face, and she went pale as the blood left her cheeks. The interior of the car was deadly silent, the only sounds my father's bewildering stream of incomprehensible syllables through the window and the engine of the auto.

With a final flourish, my father gestured angrily at the tree.

As my father had spoken, the man with gun had listened with growing amazement, his eyes widening in concern and alarm. He shouldered his weapon and moved quickly to move the tree out of the road as my father got back into the car, shushing the passengers curtly as he seated himself again.

As we drove by the baffled, worried toll-collector, the man snapped a salute to the car. A salute! As we sped away, someone naturally thought to ask what my father had showed the man. He pulled out his wallet, and with a huge grin, displayed his Ethiopian driver's license and travel passes, multiply endorsed, stamped, sealed, and signed.

And what had he told the man? "I told him to move the tree," my father said, his tone of voice implying how obvious that was. Yes, but in what language? No one in the car had been able to understand it.

"Oh, that?" he said, "I just made it up."

Whereupon he began to chatter and jabber away, demonstrating his ability to do just that. Laughter filled the car as it continued down the road, rooster tail of dust marking its' passage.

(Llanberis Pass, Snowdonia National Park, on the border of England and Wales, near the northern edge of the boundary)

We'd pulled the car over to read the sign which marked the border – there were no other cars around and the extremely broad valley through which the road ran didn't seem so much like a mountain pass as a hill-pass or something. Of course, the mountain passes we'd been driving through all year are those in Switzerland and environs, so my misapprehension of the pass is an error of degree.

It was cool and grey, probably a result of altitude. Sadly I can't recall the information on the sign – I suspect it may have been an appropriately tricky Welsh name that caught our attention. I recall my mom and Suzy staying in the car, possibly erroneously. There may have been a stream and or a railbed all running parallel to the road. I clearly recall striated gravel next to the road, more than the shoulder accounts for.

As my father and I stood, car running, we heard a noise, like a large thunderstorm in the far distance, but unaccountably sustained, and growing rapidly louder. We looked around in confusion – it was impossible to tell which direction the sound was coming from. It continued to grow louder and louder, until we could feel it through the ground, still with no associated source. Was it an avalanche?

There were no peaks visibly near enough to provide for the rapid approach of the rumble. An earthquake, high in the mountains between Wales and England, seemed such an absurdity that it didn't merit consideration.

My memories of the May 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens – or rather of the impact that the eruption had on relatives living in Washington State – led me to directly ask my father if the mountains we were in were volcanic or contained volcanically active features. Of course, I suspect my question was rather briefer than this description, and possibly less accurate.

The sound continuing to build, my father considered briefly, frowning, and then began to allay that possibility. Just as he began to say, "No, I don’t think so," the noise increased to the point it was impossible to hear what he was saying, and hearts racing we turned to see a dinosaur of the sky racing toward, then above us. My father dove behind a rock. He says today, "It scared the whiskers off me."

As the delta-winged jet scraped by less than 100 feet above us, the hammer of sound and wind that marked its passage hit us, releasing a great tidal wave of testosterone into my body. The Avro Vulcan climbed and banked in acknowledgement of the pilot's prank. Grey and green stripes of midaltitude camo became visible as the top surface of the great wings inclined above us. I burst into the capering, leaping dance of the excited hominid, screeching and whooping in excitement, even joy. I tossed my arms above my head as language and culture fell away.

Just the experience of writing that paragraph charged me up again with the adrenaline rush of the moment. For a peacenik, I sure do love my flying military hardware, and I always have, ever since I was a child. I don’t recall my father's reaction, but he helped design planes of the same generation as the Vulcan as a young man.

(My mother, who keeps detailed notes about more or less everything - love to see her blog - reports that there were two planes. I considered a rewrite, but I honestly don't recall two planes. Is that a lie? Her notes, taken that day, are almost certainly correct.)

The Vulcan was the most prominent true delta plan aircraft ever placed in production, by virtue of the numbers produced. The nearly triangular plane is an ancestor of the just retired Concorde, also a true delta, a plane design with no independent tailplanes. In researching this piece I learned something that makes the fleeting experience of this anecdote that much more savory – between the June of 1982 and 1983, the RAF's Vulcans were removed from active service, and as far as I can tell, the airbases used for their decommissioning are the RAF bases in Wales.

The delta that hotdogged us on the road that day was flying towards Wales, from somewhere else in England. In the mid-80's, while Maggie was firmly entrenched in 10 Downing Street, there were incredibly huge protests all over Europe and England regarding the installation of U. S. Pershing missles, and in such a climate, it was unusual to see military gear employed with the sort of swagger that might cause spilt tea and noise complaints.

Returning to the car, my father noted, above my excited babbling, that he had been about to suggest that mountains that contain substantial coal deposits such as these were unlikely to be volcanic in nature. We then wondered, without resolution, how and why the pilot of that plane had felt empowered to pull a flyboy stunt like that. As we motored on, we were not to resolve that question at the time, the summer of 1982.

My hypothesis, freshly half-baked as I write this, is that we happened to see that bird's final flight, and Group-Captain Hawley Reefer-Botch was wringing the old girl out once more as a salute and farewell. I was happy to see it at the time, and choosing to believe this latest bit of conjecture casts the whole thing into a new, even tastier light.

(Ghardaïa, Algeria, at the northern edge of the Sahara, 300 miles south of Algiers.)

We arrived after what seemed an endless drive through mountainous dunes, reddish gold and impossibly huge on either side of the blacktop. As usual I wandered away, avoiding social interaction, and came upon a door, weatherbeaten and green. It hung loosely, and peering through the gap between the frame and the plywood itself I was startled. I stepped back, and without thinking about it, opened the door and stepped through.

To one side, the wall I now stood beyond angled in, defining a corner. To the other, it stretched away, marking an organic boundary. In that direction, several hundred yards away, a few palms nodded in the breeze. Turning back and craning my head I saw the top of the wall well above me, fifteen or twenty feet high. The irregularly-shaped crown of the wall looked rounded and human: regular projections and depressions bespoke fortification.

Looking again before me and around, I saw rubber tire tracks in the dust at the base of the wall, where I stood; near the palms in the distance I could make out evidence of other people. Here and there in the tire tracks dates lay, covered or squashed, some with flies on them. I can still taste the incredibly rich and complex flavor of the dates I ate while in Algeria. It's a powerfully concentrated sweetness, very different from the bright, juice-filled flavors of oranges or pears; there's a pastry-like quality to the depth of the flavors in the soft, oblong fruits.

We'd traveled to Ghardaïa with a pleasant and social man who had the peculiar mannerism of smacking the palm of his hand against his forehead with great force to emphasize a rhetorical point. "SMACK!" would echo in the car as he exclaimed, "My GOD!", his dee-sounds sharpening into tees. He'd recounted the tale of his unfortunate cousin, who, on seeing a date lying in the dust as I was then, picked it up, brushed it off, and took a bite.

SMACK! He exclaimed, of course, "My GOD! It was the leavings of a donkey!" The car filled with laughter. Recalling this tale I did not pick up the dates for closer examination.

Mohammed (our companion's name) may have been a government-sponsored guide and translator for the trip – I can't recall. Algeria in 1982 was not the civil-war scarred country it is today, although it retained deep wounds from the early 1960's war of independence against France. The post-colonial government in place was like that of many African and Midlle-eastern post colonial governments – modeled on socialist ideals, with close economic ties to the former colonial power, and with a very troubled economy challenged by many, many factors.

Ghardaïa, as I recall, was where Mohammed's family was, and were to visit them for a day before driving back north to visit close family friends, Berbers, in their home in the mountains. I was fascinated by the visit, and in contrast to my time in Mexico, spoke one of the major languages of the country, French. We'd spent a day or two in Algiers with our Berber friend (and, yes, we spent an afternoon wandering the mazelike streets of the Casbah, one of the cradles of Algeria's revolution and a neighborhood that may date back to the time of the Islamic conquest) before embarking on the drive south.

We stopped, probably for lunch, at an oil refinery. We visited with some of the people who worked there. They very proudly showed us their house, a very nice modern place. The particular, indelible image I retain from that visit was a young man excitedly showing me his bright-red electric guitar.

Somewhere between the oil refinery and Ghardaïa we'd stopped to climb the dunes and gaze upon the sea of sand. We'd laboriously made our way up the dune and looked out at the desert, dunes rippling to the horizon. My sister and I, and I think our mother, filled small bottles with the pinkish sand, long since lost but for one small canister currently in the hands of my friend Spencer. Entertainingly, he's not sure how he came to have it.

I stood beyond the city wall, reflecting on these matters, smelling the winter wind off the desert, and turned to go back into the city.

(Outside of Guadalajara, in Nayarit, in western central Mexico)

Every day that week I would wander out behind the edge of the garden's irrigated area to stand on a narrow strip of dry, reddish-gold dirt at the edge of the whitewashed stucco. The wall of the building – indeed, the entire area of the compound – defined the crest of the high, steep hill. If the compound had been built to face outward, it would have commanded a sweeping view of the rugged desert terrain on all sides. Instead, the brick, tile, and stucco of the buildings and walls faced in, to the cool and watered restful gardens, fertile and green under the hot Mexican sun.

Each day, standing on the edge of the desert landscape, I would make my way to a little patch of crumbling adobe-brick wall to sit on the dusty, sun warmed bricks. I'd sit and study the scrubby hills, well-grown with a mix of desert plants. I recall prickly pear cactus; small, spiny bushes; the sage I knew from my father's home of Yakima, Washington; dry and brittle pale-yellow tumbleweeds, still anchored to the earth; the spiny urchins of yucca, arrow-leafed explosions in the dust.

The hills – nearly mesas - overlooked a basin, angling, arroyoed, steeply down. Eventually, I had to show this special place to my father, this little corner of a gringo's idea of Mexico. We were staying at this place because he was teaching at a conference with one of his colleagues, a man whose family I later lived with for a month in the city, in Guadalajara. My father, it should be noted, speaks Spanish fluently and in my youth his professional relationships with colleagues in several locations of Latin America brought our family to many places in that part of the world. Reflecting, I think it's possible I had already lived with them in their lovely house on the heights overlooking the city – but I don’t know for certain. Perhaps this conference and that visit took place the same summer.

At any rate, my father indulged my desire to show him the corner overlook and expressed his appreciation and admiration for the view as I'd hoped he would. To my surprise, and possibly to my concern, he suggested we should climb down the steep and rugged slope through the desert flora, and with that, he began to navigate down the near-vertical hill. I have an image in my mind of his short-sleeved white button-down shining in the sun, as he carefully stepped down the scree and dust amid the cactus and brush.

Sadly, I cannot recall with any accuracy my emotional state right then, but I sure did follow him. My dad's innocent and adventurous curiosity has always frightened me a little bit so I think it's possible that I was feeling some filial embarrassment as I worked my way down the slope in the hot, hot sun. My father's physical vigor and appreciation for exertion and exercise have never been traits I shared with him, and so I believe I probably became cranky as we worked our way down into the valley. I'm certain, for one thing, that we had no water.

I don't recall the details of the descent beyond the start. Eventually we arrived in the valley, a broad floor in which substantial numbers of small to midsize rocks had gathered. I think there must have been a road, but I don't recall it in my visual memories of the scene. What I do recall with unusual clarity was the surreally isolated cinderblock building a few feet up the other side of the broad bowl of the valley. In my mind's eye, it's a perfect cube, unpainted and windowless, slanting upward in perspective from my vantage point below it. I don't see a sign or any indication of the building's purpose. There are no cars or indication of human habitance other than the building itself and its' closed door.

Terrifying me, my father walked up to the building's door, and with me right behind him, opened it and walked into the fluorescent-lit space within.

My reluctance and fear were wholly overcome as the building's refrigerated chill spilled out on me at my father's side. We walked into the spare construction, and I collapsed into a metal folding chair at a metal folding table. The building's minimal decor consisted of posters and vinyl pennants advertising varieties of Mexican beer. There were five to ten of the lightweight metal table-and-chair sets I currently occupied ranged widely around the sparsely populated room. My father was gleeful to have stumbled on a cantina like this in the middle of the desert – I was grateful for the air conditioning and the possibility of some cold mineral water or a Fanta or Coke.

He was mildly perturbed at my peevishness and went off to the bar to get a beer for him and my drink, whatever it might be. Understandably in hindsight he took his time at the bar, speaking amiably with the barman and a customer or two and thoroughly enjoying himself. I, of course, was ever-more irritated, as only a preteen on the verge of adolescence can be, my thirst certainly adding to the edge of my emotions. In the end, he finally returned with something for me, for which I'm certain I did not express appropriate gratitude. I don't remember the walk back to the compound, or however we got back.

Over time in my memory this has become one of my favorite experiences, one for which I am deeply indebted to my father. I find a great deal to admire in his actions in this anecdote, even as I might wish we had actually brought along water for a hike in the desert rather than trusting in fate's providence.

One last thing to squeeze in here before I get going on the special. My friend Jason Webley recently announced his first concert of the season here in Seattle on May 3. He won't be playing in Seatle again until July, so you'd better grab tix if you're interested in seeing whether or not he lost any fingers or toes to frostbite at the last show.

If you're not sure who Jason is or what is music sounds like, there are links to all of his recordings as RealAudio files on his site.

I have a pre-blog account of his final show of the year at Halloween, 2001 up (lots of pictures: towers, giant human hands, a torchlit parade, fire, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci all play a part), and Karen has a description of last year's final show up (hours of silent freezing in the midnight cold with one crazy accordion player tied to a tree in subfreezing temperatures wearin' his skivvies, among other mind-bending peculiarities).

So, to summarize: go to this show!

A few days ago I noted that my personal fictions include a narrative whereby I cannot construct the fictional as a deliberate act of creation - I can lie, sure, but ask me to write a short story or develop a script for comics and I just shake my head, mute.

Actually, that's not what I noted. But whatever I said, if you read it, I choose to believe that is what you understood me to say.

Being of sound mild intoxication, I propose that I will inagurate a week-long project, starting tomorrow, in which each narrative will be a wholly factual recounting of some vignette from my life as a traveler. Save one, into which I will inject a fictionalizing lie. My experience of travel begins early and has yet to stop, so there's a fair amount of material to work with.

Here are my rules.

Each piece will roll to between 500 and 1000 words.

One piece will be posted daily. As is usual in my week-long specials, barring extremely notable events in RL, I'll blog naught but my narrative.

You, cher googleurs and dear readers alike, are invited to opine as to whether or not the narrative of the day contains the lie, which I shall endeavor to cache from casual observation. However, I will not pursue detective-fiction rules: you'll have to determine the falsity from the true on the basis of the clarity of emotional tenor, dear hearts. On April 20th, I'll review the contenders and possibly come clean. If I don't fess up right then, it will be shortly thereafter.

Two more points: this little literary game begins on Sunday, April 13 (no numerological or religious symbology intended) and will close on Saturday, April 19.

Everybody ready? GO!

DefenseLINK News has pdfs of that intruiginug playing-card deck of most-wanted Ba'ath mooks here (27k) and here (704k).

I want more of these - what a great idea. How about Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and Linux personality identification cards? GOP personality identification playing cards. Et cetry.

Of course, the big question of the day is what did they give MSS? Apparently, he didn't make the, er, cut. Or I'm blind.

In The Post-Modern, Deconstructed, Gritty-but-Sensitive Bear, Anne recalls what was my favorite issue of Bears on Text, number two. Of course, a cover drawn by me helps, but the real star of the show is Ed Emmer's no-holds-barred pay-per-view all-singing, all-dancing clothesline-and-piledriver takedown wetjob on Tom Wolfe.

Sadly, it doesn't appear to be online. It's a shame, because Ed takes one look at that white suit and recognizes it as an invitation to sling the mud, blood, pee, puke, piss, and poo.

Actually, he is perfectly well-mannered in the essay, but O My Lord.

By the end of the essay every little nagging doubt you ever experienced while reading a Tom Wolfe essay, book, or novel ("hm, that's kind of self serving. Oh well, it's pretty witty." or "heh, nice phrase. But wait, isn't that a lie?") has been outed, drafted, put through basic training, and rushed to the front.

Of course, it's not as though Mr. Wolfe ever saw the thing, or that more than a couple of hundred other people ever did. But believe me, those of us who read it don't see Wolfe as the court jester of the avant-garde, or even a standardbearer of the New Journalism. Nope, he's a bootlickin' toady, working with great vim to establish his title at a different court.

Ed's a highly conceptual creator and part of his deal was that the piece be framed as an answer to a ballyhooed essay that Wolfe published around the time of "Bonfire of the Vanities" original publication, in which he laid out a "Painted Word" style assault on pomo writing in general, criticism and theory or otherwise (this part of the essay is well viewed as a companion to "The Painted Word") and followed it up with a prescriptive towards The Great American Novel, in which he says, observe the world and write what you see, as Zola did.

Which is fine, even deep advice.

Well, I'm going on and on about something you'll never get to read, that execrable old-school rock-critics trick, so I should shut up now.

However, Anne asked my to scan and post some material from BOT 1, and I also have the prep-work for the cover.

First, Gus (The old perfesser, I think) cribbed a sketch by his brilliant collaborator Tim Hittle and captioned it as you see at the top of this entery: "Bears on Text, the magazine with GUTS," atop a cheerfully smiling view of viscera.

The cover to BOT 2 was by yours truly. It began life as marginalia in my notes on Hellenistic art theory (you see, "Plotinus rejects symmetria" - he does, too, arguing in favor of emanation, a doctrine, as it happened, that fit the rhetorical needs of early Church fathers such as Constantine, which is why I know now who Plotinus is, see).

Little rats, and a bear eating a burger and a shake.

When he made it to the cover, he got a dunce cap, for who knows what reason (perhaps he's played the fool?) and as Anne notes, I inscribed the words "Glasnost for all but US and Panama" along the interior border. I don't know why. I suspect it was a comment on the US invasion of Panama under Poppy (in hindsight some kind of dry run for the events of the past two weeks - are there other odious men the Bush family seated once and shall now redress? Not for eighteen months or so, I bet) and the desire for change here at home I felt, watching the reforms begin in the East. But it was really just some toss off, a casual, contextless remark that I can't accurately situate.

There is also an arrow on the cover pointing to a blank spot labeled "tape." For no particular reason, I was really into visually-evident paste-up as a design element at the time.

(If you don't know what paste-up is, you may have had trouble following my remark about Panama, above. Panama was a famous song by Van Halen in the eighties.)

For this cover, I used masking tape to put the pieces in place on the board - something that did not reproduce in the final edition, to my disappointment.

I had fun with a real wowser of a copier located near the fine-art library, though - all-digital, this baby could halftone, invert, and zoom up to several hundred percent, most of which I did in getting the image large enough to use and clear enough to reproduce via conventional photocopier.

(Dear god, I fear the search referrers this entry will garner. Cher googleurs: no Disney porn here, nuh-uh, just an over-clever title.)

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is, of course, boingboinger Cory Doctorow's novel, released not too long ago in print and online in a plethora of free formats.

Just about at release, I grabbed it in a Palm-readable format, figuring, rightly I think, that this was the proper aesthetic choice for the novel, at least until I can pickup a tiny eye-glass mounting wireless HUD on ebay for twenty bucks. I didn't really want to wait a whole year, though, so I went with it.

The experience of reading the book on a backlit Palm V had the satisfying quality of virtuality I was looking for. Green text on a darker background scrolling by in the night on a three-inch screen above my head.

I liked that enough I'm considering looking for other aesthetically apropriate material to read in that manner. Mind you, a book - a real, paper-and-print book - remains technologically superior in every respect.

But it was still enjoyable.

I thought I'd decided to forego a bareknuckle review of Down and Out, however, largely because I feel that Doctorow simply never went far enough. Looking over this, it seems I went right ahead and worked out.

Where Gibson uses invented terminology, some of which has become real, Doctorow often uses real terminology, some of which has been around since the mumble-mumbles, such as 'grepping.' When he does not, and instead invents a term ("whuffie," apparently now in the proces of being adopted), the etymology is either too clear ("utilidors") or never clarified ("whuffie," again).

Finally, and in common with some other post cyber-punk writers, (Stephenson's Cryptonomicon LEAPS to mind), Doctorow's cheerleading for a post-capitalist economy based on something other than the physical production and accumulation of goods is both internally incoherent and (to me, anyway) unconvincing. I think the parts of both writers' works that leave me the coldest are the celebration of hyper-competitive economics as in some way inherently guaranteed to produce better stuff, better lives, better community, etc.

History, as I read it, stands against this particular rhetorical point. Increasing competitiveness in large scale economies both increases overall wealth and the concentration of that wealth, which produces power imbalances that are remedied by, well, wars. And plagues. And so forth.

Even without these misfortunes, the process of capital concentration produces extreme social stresses and upheavals, such as famines, mass migrations, and so forth. Our culture educates us to believe that this particular kind of upheaval is both natural and inevitable, something that I think is simply an example of taboos presented to discourage inquiry and experiment.

One of the things that bothers me about SF that engages in this kind of cheerleading is that the ecomomies of plenty generally imagined, while laudably looking for economic mechanisms that resolve these issues and challenge this perception - that is to say, plenty is envisioned as the solution to problems of hunger and war and so forth - I can't recall any that actually reimagine the economic practice of our time - at best they magnify it. Mind you, I'm excluding old-time utopians from this discussion!

In Doctorow's novel, he depicts a popular uprising in favor of "the reputation economy" and kind of anarchist takeover of Disney World, both valid imaginings that situate his tale and make the story possible. Unfortunately, I can't imagine change in either case would be as unmessy as he depicts it, and this seriously undermined my willingness to take the ride.

On another point, I suspect that Doctorow is capable of more ambitious prose and structuring techniques. I wish that he'd attempted to imagine the formal, technical changes in grammar and spoken communication that might occur one we all have personal hyper-contextual access to all the data in the world that we woould like to see at any time. While he makes reference to transhumans and extreme body modification, there's no effort expended to describe the effect that such physical modification might have either on the social interaction of the body-modifiers or their psyches. As mind is symptom of brain, and brain is part of body, re-engineered bodies produce re-engineered minds.

(Wait, yes there is. A character is shown entering into a failed marriage with someone who has effectively rebuilt themselves. She's depicted as having nearly abandoned the habit of speech. I guess I wanted more, and more language play, instead of non-verbal people.)

On the plus side, I have no idea if Doctorow's ever actually participated in the goofy giddiness of a mid-to-large scale technology development process, but he absolutely nails it. Although he's describing two things - a physical rehab of the Haunted Mansion and a wetware-type reimagining of the late, lamented Hall of Presidents (the attraction is gone from Disney Land, at least, or never existed there) - the production process, political backdrop, and egocentric jockeying for position were all nailed, not neglecting even the put-upon, wool-blinded VP of Engineering buffaloed by management into giving a production timeline estimate of eight weeks, whittled down from his initial 'five years.'

When I read that discussion, I laughed out loud, having previously experienced both sides of the chat.

I also enjoyed the Disneyalia greatly, as I share Doctorow's boundless enthusiasm for the parks themselves, and in particular for the remarkable and unique works of art which we refer to as the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion.

My own belief is that Pirates kicks the pale, ghoulish stuffing right out of the completely unscary Mansion, but this is a Religious Matter. Doctorow's fearless charge right into the heart of the buzz about the twin films currently in production by the Big D based on these rides is admirable. Is it coincidence? Did he plot the novel before the films were greenlighted? I don't know.

The heart of these issues is fan concern and fear of creative innovation in beloved pop-culture objects, and Doctorow looks closely at what it's like to be a creative person whose job is to balance these competing demands.

So, in sum, the book's enjoyable, a quick little read, and just because I wanted more from it does't mean you will.

The Cradle of Recorded Jazz - Gennett and The Starr Piano Company provides a detailed overview of what was at one time one of the the largest audio recording and disc production facilities in the United States.

Growing up in Southern Indiana, I often wondered how it was possible that the state had contributed such large numbers of musicians and composers to American popular music early in the century. Hoagy Charmichael is the best known example, but there were more.

It was a minor mystery, one that grew in prominence as a young adult when it became clear that the relative isolation of the state made it difficult for the cultural ferment in places like Bloomington to bloom into economic opportunity in that location for creators, musical or otherwise.

Looking back, it appeared that was not always the case; that while artists might still emigrate to the coasts in search of more opportunity, once, there had been more, back home in Indiana.

I filed that away as I split town myself.

As the years have rolled on here, I've increasingly come to believe that there is a distinct Hoosier sound, a sensibility that unites and underlies even the disparate work of the Indiana punk bands of my youth with both Carmichael's elegant melodies and the frenetic oldtime music of Bill Monroe (partly from Bean Blossom, near to Bloomington), among other threads.

The links, however, were missing. As a child and youth, I felt truly isolated and disconnected from both the local culture and the larger one - the American suburban isolation, I suppose. The blank past still rankles, frankly.

This past September, I think, I heard a feature on the radio about Starr Recordings and Gennet Records, in which the Starr-Gennett Foundation and mission were described and the history of the company discussed.

(Part One of Rick Karr's six-part "Secret History of Technology and Pop Music" for Morning Edition. Scroll down a bit to the part one link and bend an ear, it's neat.)

I felt like I'd been cheated. This crucial part of both American and Hoosier history wasn't forgotten, exactly - it had basically never been recognized.

At any rate, the story of the Starr and Gennett facilities helps explain several things about Indiana music history to me, at least.

First, because of Richmond's location at the eastern edge of the state, touring artists would have had several routes to pursue on their way up from St. Louis or Cincy to Chicago, and Richmond would have been a reasonably important stop.

Second, the presence of musicians crossing the state, east to west or west to east, would have attracted the interest of people like Hoagy, and certainly others. It's clear that that's where "Stardust" came from, for example.

These two things provide a basis for what now to me looks like a very fertile musical soil. I just happened to grow up at a time when it was unfashionable to see, seek, or support regional diversity in music, creating the artifically depressed and oppressive conditions for working musicians that were so prevalent at the time.

Finally, I think that this sudden historical perspective allows me to understand how a regionally distinctive set of sounds could have developed - without economic evidence of practice, commerce, and cross-pollination, my hypothesis was stillborn.

Now I have a potential mechanism that might - just maybe - connect Hoagy to Bill and these folks to all the other Indiana musicians I still listen to, carefully, attentively. The Starr-Gennett Foundation has chosen to emphsize the jazz heritage of the material recorded there, but I recall hearing that all kinds of music was recorded there.

How much of Harry Smith's Anthology might have stemmed from there, I wonder?

Now I have another reason to listen, and another thing to think about. Maybe you will too.

Bears Explained (sort of) is part two of Anne's examination of a three-ish zine she helped instantiate circa 1990-91.

I contributed variously, and am enjoying the rummage. I've dug out my copies and will scan this and that from them.

The zine was called Bears on Text and consisted of loose xeroxed sheets in mylar bags. It was somewhat more intellectual than many other zines but just as personal and oriented to the idea of a small, probably personally connected audience.

Hey Eric: Jerry Kindall saith TiVo Desktop for Mac OS X.

Anne, your husband may be occupied for a day or two. Who knows, maybe you, too!

Geez, it never rains but it pours.

Lots of stuff in the fire. All for upcoming publications so I can't really talk about it. But still. I believe my long-mulled interviews project is beginning to boil and bubble away. The last piece for the puzzle is a tech publication that might be interested in material drawn from q-and-a's with various prorgammers and UI people.

See, I think there's a link of some kind between the music I like and the computer programs I enjoy using, and that link is, essentially, individuals with a creative vision anchored by community. That could be the blogging community or the Mac user community or the punk rock community or the bluegrass community or even, for god's sake, the stochastic recording artist community.

(cite: Iannis Xenakis. Man, nothin' gets my toe tappin' like the sound of an SM-58 roasting in an open fire. Uh, yes, it's in French. Here's something in English.)

Anyway. I'm kind of excited. Now to think long and hard about how to turn this neat stuff into the long green so I can keep doing it.

Asterix: Anthea Bell, a translator of the innumerable Asterix books from French into English, explores the process in some detail.

Via Open Brackets, which Jim pointed out t'other day.

Now if someone would only get going on Franquin's Gaston books.

M'enfin! Mais qu'est-que-c'est? Looks like, maybe, they did!

Alas, the "gag of the day" link returns a bad ODBC call. Foo. But go here anyway and rummage around.

Gaston was the officeboy for Belgian kid's comics publisher Spirou, and first showed up in anecdotes that Spirou himself, the magazine's lead character, would write and publish as prose supplements in the magazine (imagine a two-page story written by Peter Parker appearing in The Amazing Spider-Man, telling about an amusing ineraction with JJ, and you'll be in the neighbrhood). Eventually, he graduated to a full page gag strip drawn by Andre Franquin for years, and in Yurp, the strip is well known as one of the gems of gag cartooning. To my knowledge, with the exception of a very few pages that were published in Fantagraphics omnibus mags years ago, he's never been translated into English. It's certainly our loss.

The Next Big Thing has just been slotted locally on KUOW at 8pm Fridays, following the irresistable undertow of This American Life.

The host of The Next Big Thing is Dean Olsher. The show comes from the "new school" public radio tradition that kicked off just before the last Gulf War with the late lamented Heat, a long-format variety show that featured unpredictable and rotating guest hosts, such as Billy Bragg. (Last time I went looking for this show's traces on the web, I got a goose egg - I'm happy to see it here!)

The wars over NEA funding prompted an on-air farewell from that show, (as I recall, mandatory content guidance was being called for in Congress or something), and then the war happened, which led to the improvised special programming that became Talk of the Nation. One aspect of that early incarnation of the show was that callers were often patched through direct to reporters in the field, truly compelling radio.

Finally, on these themes, I was pretty fascinated by some of the material at Transom, an umbrella site for this kind of documentary radio (as I recall, I heard about it on TAL). Oh look! I'll be spending part of next week EQ-ing a redlined live tape of a rock band in performance: here's a handy guide to EQ!

Anyway, I've been staying the hell away from the desktop box today, defragging the disks, getting the gear ready for the remastering thing, so I've been listening to the radio instead of websurfing and writing.

You know what would be cool? If the CBC would post all the Glenn Gould radio documentaries. But alas.

I had overlooked a search template pathing issue when I upgraded - sorry about that, searchers. All should be well now.

Was This House Worth Her Life?: Eli Sanders reports from the Gaza Strip on the death of Olympia's Rachel Corrie.

With this long, well-written, and unsentimental news feature, which anchors this week's issue of The Stranger, Seattle's once-beloved but lately somnambulant weekly, it's clear that long-time editor in chief Dan Savage is now once again paying attention.

The article is a straightforward piece of first-person reportage, written by a Jewish man who notes that he's visited Israel several times but never the occupied territories.

Sanders spends time with an IDF publicity guy, Corrie's comrades in the ISM, and Dr. Samir and family, the residents of the house that Corrie died in front of.

What's successful in the piece is that while Sanders is critical of the anarchist politics of the ISM people he speaks to, describing them as having a "confused ideology," he's nonjudgemental in general, not caricaturing any of the participants in the events as evil or buffoons.

A bit of background on The Stranger of late: when Village Voice Media acquired Seattle Weekly a few years ago, the better financed Weekly cherry-picked some of the more aggressive writers from The Stranger, and founding writer and then-til-now editor Savage didn't seem to care, judging by the decline in cogency and quality of the paper.

Prior to Savage's record-shattering tenure as editor, the paper had rotated the top editorial slot quite regularly. Now, Savage has been busy over the past few years, building a national media profile, writing a book, and so on, and frankly, I think that had much to do with the slide in the paper's quality. The staff writers also settled in, there was little turnover, and the writing and content of the paper suffered greatly. This culminated recently in the biggest waste of newsprint the town's ever seen, in which the primary staff of the paper was sent out to get drunk while being followed by another member of the paper's staff, who then wrote the main feature recounting the event.

That's right: that week, the paper's primary subject matter was "Our friends got really drunk." Who cares? Granted, it's not as though it was the flaccid, self-congratulatory condos-and-Benz writing of the early 90's Weekly, but still, with the Rocket gone and the new Weekly apparently offering alterna-culture scriveners a career path, The Stranger was adrift.

I totally wrote the paper off.

Then, as the war engine revved up, things got interesting.

One week Christopher Hitchens wrote a scathing, ill-mannered indictment of community activism as a means to political ends under the guise of chiding food-not-bombs grannies for their anti-war stance.

(Sadly, the website's search engine is keyword-based and returns too large a result set, so no link for you!)

The next week, Sherman Alexie weighed in against the war. The week after that, Neal Pollack stopped by to say: "Shut the fuck up," or more correctly, he was commissioned to write a piece espousing silence on the war.

Savage was up to his trickery, finally, and it showed. Pollack is back this week, by the way, describing how he himself has gotten into two bar fights over the war and h