Darrin Perry has passed away, notes Boing Boing.
Perry redesigned Wired in 2002, and I took the occasion to snark at the magazine. Perry gently corrected one of my mistakes in the comments, prompting me to look a bit more seriously at what he'd been up to.
RIP, Darrin. That one comment was a highly effective bit of consumer-and-critic management. I'm sure you're deeply missed by those that knew you.
sweet thunder - tape findings, via MeFi.
For balance, here are some inbound messages. Much to my amazement, I found no widespread incidence of collections of either odd messages, (such as these), or greeting messages (like the first link) as I Googled my way through my morning cuppa. This collection of outbound messages is frequently presented as traffic bait on bottom-trawling commercial sites.
Last night we went to see Neko Case at Neumo's.
Click the pic for more blurry pix. I shot a fair amount of video, too. I'll link to the clips here; they are all in quicktime format.
The show opened with the out-of-place on the bill Dexter Romweber, a true southern madman, who was in fine form. Despite this, his appearance befuddled the crowd, who were not expecting a guitar assault of such intensity. Romweber's best known project is the Flat Duo Jets, and here is an interview with him about his career.
Here's a 25-second clip (2.3mb).
The second band (and Neko's backing band) was Canada's alt-country brother act, The Sadies. They are technically polished, but the difference in aesthetic between Romweber and their approach was too great, for me, and in Romweber's favor. The cool precision of the brothers' vocal harmonies and dual-lead sound is deeply rooted in rock acts of the early seventies.
Here is 47 seconds of a Sadies song (4.4mb).
I shot a lot more video of Neko than of the other bands. We were right up front for the whole show, and it was lovely. I should note that the polish of the Sadies is an appropriate setting for Neko's towering, transcendant voice.
Here are the clips:
A false start (4.6mb, 48 seconds).
The opening song (22.2mb, 3m54).
Third clip (12.3mb, 2m10).
Fourth clip (.6mb, 7 sec).
Fifth clip (3mb, 32 sec).
First encore (21.5mb, 3m46 ).
Second encore (12.8mb, 2m15).
I haven't taken the time to track these down by song title, sorry. It took long enough to rotate them and color correct them in Final Cut Express. If one of you lovely interauts wants to, I'll happily edit the post to add the info.
Say, I should probably look into BlogTorrent for this stuff, eh?
Old habits die hard, at the Guardian, via Eric.
I was late to the party, but now the Pogues records are among my very favorites.
Help the iSight see better in the dark (macosxhints). iGlasses is a more fully-featured descendent of iChatUSBCam which unlocks the QuickTime video-quality controls in iChat and other QuickTime applications that present camera input data.
The Great Indecency Hoax, by Frank Rich in the NYT (and oddly, dated November 28) starteed my morning with as fine a belly laugh as any I've had of late.
Rich takes a look at the tempest in a teapot over a Monday Night Football skit involving a cross-promo for the hit show Desperate Housewives. I have been only peripherally aware of the 'controversy' this week; now that I work with someone who is a committed sports fan, I hear more about this stuff than I would have in the past.
At any rate, it should come as no surprise that said controversy is a pure media construct, and that apparently no-one was actually offended by the skit until two days after the event, when Rush Limbaugh made it into the center of a segment on his show.
Despite this, the piece only heats up about halfway through:
Again as in the Jackson case, we are also asked to believe that pro football is what Pat Buchanan calls "the family entertainment, the family sports show" rather than what it actually is: a Boschian jamboree of bumping-and-grinding cheerleaders, erectile-dysfunction pageantry and, as Don Imus puts it, "wife-beating drug addicts slamming the hell out of each other" on the field.
Which made me shoot coffee out my nose with laughter, since that more or less summarizes my own disinterest in pro sports. Reading it again still brings the funny.
The next paragraph cites the recent bit of top-notch blogsleuthery by Jeff Jarvis which revealed that an earlier incident which prompted a $1.2 m fine against Fox was based on a total of 3 unique complaints, the first time that I've seen this bit of data jump the fence from blogistan to greyladyland.
Jarvis is continuing to file FOIAs, too, so expect some more goodies!
Status Report: Wormwood to Screwtape at Kuroshin.org. Lovely. Thanks, Jim.
I'm nearing the end of my first readthrough of the Narnia books in about twenty years, and was considering the possibility of rereading one of Lewis' adult-oriented books again for balance. The Screwtape Letters is now near the top of that list.
Oh, and by the way... it's been rather busy here. I'll try to do a wrapup, maybe sometime next week.
On Sunday, Viv and I went to a Cinema Seattle screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's upcoming film, A Very Long Engagement, which stars Audrey Tatou as a young woman whose fiancé fails to return from the trenches of the First World War, and sets about finding him. I saw the film for review, so I'll skip the windbaggery here until the review runs. I can tease you, though: I liked it.
I experimentally used a Moleskine to take notes in the dark on the film; this is clearly not a cost-effective strategy, as in the dark one tends to write larger and less legibly. Next time it's back to steno pads.
Jeunet was present at the screening and I was able to ask him a couple of decent questions.
I do have one gripe about the film which is utter airplane nerd trivia and therefore won't rate in the review. It's also a bit of a spoiler, so I won't go into it in detail here yet. In essence, an airplane that appears in the film is explicitly identified as one of a series of well-known German models. The plane used in the film proper is clearly not the distinctive model it's identified as. In fact, it appears to be a plane from the period between the wars. Only aeronerds will care, but it bugged the hell out of me.
I didn't take the time to address this issue with the director, and I regret it.
Textbook disclaimer stickers: "This book discusses gods. The existence of entities with supernatural powers is controversial, and many believe that myths, especially other people's myths, are fictional. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
Where to start?
As I noted here previously, sometime around September of 2003 some fliers appeared in Seattle, proclaiming the loss of what appeared to be a small boy's frog. “Who took my frog?” the author asked, plaintively. Concluding with a determined “P.S. I'll find my frog,” the fliers were noted and remarked upon by at least a couple of Seattle-based bloggers, Jeff Sharman and Samantha, whose last name I do not know at present.
As Jeff notes, sometime in September 2004 the flier was introduced to an online image sharing community, where it quickly became the subject of a still-growing set of visual riffs. An enterprising individual soon registered the domain lostfrog.org, where new contributions continue to be posted. Around this time, another high-traffic community website, MetaFilter, hosted two different threads concerning the frog flier and subsequent images. This image of the flier comes from the lostfrog.org site.
In one of the MetaFilter threads, an enterprising researcher established that Hopkin was a toy distributed as a freebie by the McDonalds corporation. Others noted that someone had called the family and verified that the frog was indeed a toy. Intrigued, I went back and looked at the initial postings that Jeff and Samantha had made, and realized that there was a high likelihood that the person who made the fliers lived in my neighborhood.
I did my own research then, and quickly found one of the toys on eBay for about $5.00. Having purchased it and established where the flier artist lived, I cast about for my next step. As it happened, I received a call from an editor of mine, who was establishing a new relationship with a community paper that covers the neighborhood where the family lived. I ran it by her, and was given the go-ahead to pitch a story to the editor-in-chief of the neighborhood paper. We got in touch, and she green-lighted the idea.
I'm in the middle of working on a big pile of stories for another publication, so I added the family to my list of calls each day. Initially, I spoke with a female child, and requested a call back from her father; then I spoke with an elderly woman, and then an adult female. In no case did I ever get a call back; this didn't greatly concern me.
Finally, Sunday afternoon, I picked up the phone and dialed the family's number; to my surprise, the father was there. Here is more or less what he told me.
First, he was not interested in appearing in a neighborhood newspaper story about his son's lost frog and the internet. He gave me permission to write about it here, however. Out of consideration for his concerns, I have chosen not to explicitly identify the family.
The person who drew the flier is a sixteen-year-old boy who suffers from autism. His father was unaware that his son may have made more than one batch of fliers (it appears that new fliers were hung in May of 2004). He did know about the loss of the frog and I believe that he knew about the first batch of fliers.
He also did not want me to give the frog to his son. He's forgotten it, he told me. Bringing it up again will probably only bring up a bunch of bad memories.
He was quite unaware of the interest in the frog and the flier on the internet. He reiterated that he did not think it would be a good idea to show the sites to his son.
He was pleasant throughout our conversation. But he was quite clear and firm in his opinion that reminding the child of his lost frog, even to the point of restoring it to him, would be inadvisable for the boy. On his behalf, he asks that no-one send other Hopkins to the child. I was happy to hear that apparently I have been the only person calling them about the frog. Left unstated was the suggestion that future calls will be unnecessary.
So, then, that's the resolution. Hopkin was lost by an autistic adolescent; this explains something of the sense of determination that comes through the initial flier. His family requests that no Hopkins be sent and that people seeing the Hopkin flier should not call with frog news, or, as I did, to find out what the story behind the flier is.
It's a different ending to the story than I expected or had hoped for, certainly; but on another level, it means that Hopkin will remain forever lost, justifying and extending the mounting need for Hopkin-related photoshop tomfoolery. Perhaps someday the flier's author will stumble upon lostfrog.org, or the tee shirt. I simply cannot imagine what that moment of perception might be like.
I hope this blog post satisfies some curious people. I am glad to know the backstory now, and hope this data proves useful to you as well.
UPDATE, July 1, 2005: Seven months later, this post is still generating interest and links from large collaborative sites. Every other month, on average, someone links to it from a high-traffic link-collector, and I get another day of several thousand site visits to the page. Just today, MetaFilter, a site in which I actively participate, linked to this page again. A commenter there chucklingly suggested I should link to the thread, and so I have.
Another commenter in the MeFi thread is curious about a link in a comment posted here after the initial publication. In that link, citizenkafka recounts calling Terry's mom about two weeks before I did, and mentions a) Terry's mom knew about lostfrog.org and b) that Terry has a new frog.
I did not speak to Terry's mom, but to his dad. The family is of an ethnicity that often emphasizes patriarchy and the adults clearly speak English as a second language. I didn't want to step on toes by grilling Mom or Sis or Granny.
Terry's dad told me what I recount - he was unaware of the web's interest, and so was Terry, and that was a good thing as far as he was concerned. I specifically asked if other people had been calling, and he indicated that no-one had.
However, not mentioned in the thread comments is yet another story of someone calling Terry's family. In this story, a forum participant (possibly affiliated with the very first site to post the image) called and spoke with Terry's sister. I can't recall the details of that interaction, but the poster noted that he was ecouraged not to locate and give a new frog to Terry.
Finally, Terry's dad did tell me that he has a new frog. Although I don't recall this explicitly, I believe I must have asked if the frog was called Hopkins. Terry's dad emphasized that the frog was different. I was surprised on reviewing this post that I did not mention it directly. Presumably I didn't think it had bearing on Hopkin.
I believe that in all probability the other members of the family just never mentioned the calls regarding the appearance of the flyer on the web - remember that Terry was actively posting these flyers for at least six months, and that they included a phone number. Others must have called before the web got hold of it.
So in my mind, the different narratives associated with Terry's family boil down to internally consistent perspectives, despite the apparent contradictions. It's possible, of course, that Terry's dad actually was aware of the internet hubbub but chose to deny it in order to keep our converation brief. Of course, over time it becomes more likely that the family will become aware of it, as well.
In my inbox today is a press release from Portland-based Top Shelf Comix, properly tooting their own horn on a first time eent in the history of comics. Portland-based comics author Craig Thompson swept the comics industry awards this year, winning every award he was nominated for in recognition of the stunning accomplishment of his second graphic novel, the brick-like, 500-page opus Blankets.
Here's what the press release has to say:
Top Shelf would like to congratulate Craig Thompson for doing something that's never been done in the history of comics: Sweep the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Awards in a single category -- and he did it twice! BLANKETS not only swept the awards in the “Best Original Graphic Novel” category, but Craig took home all three “Best Cartoonist/Outstanding Artist” awards as well. This is a rare feat indeed! If you haven't read BLANKETS yet, you really need to see what all the fuss is about. You're in for a real treat.
I couldn't agree more. I loved Blankets when I read it last fall, and of all the interviews with comics people I did last year, interviewing Craig about this work was easily my favorite interviewing experience. It's rare to have the opportunity to discuss a work of genius with the creator just before the work begins to develop a reputation. It was a chance to talk with a young man who was aware of having accomplished something special but who had not yet begun to incorporate others' appreciation for the art into his expectations and understandings of how the world looks at him. He struck me as having a solid head screwed on his shoulders and I hope to see further amazing things from his pen.
I ran the whole long Craig Thompson interview here at the end of last year and also a brief conversation I had with him about Portland compared to Seattle as a comics-creator community.
Congratulations, Craig! Do it again!
Apparently I haven't been paying close enough attention, as in October the Star Trek: New Voyages project released their second episode, In Harm's Way. Regrettably, it seems they also have not been paying attention, as it's impossible to ID the content from the URL or storage structure they have implemented at the moment. Presumably, someday, a more effectively designed storage mechanism than a bunch of numbered zip files in a directory named FILES will be a technology within the Federation's grasp.
Snarking aside, I look forward to seeing this.
UPDATE: OK, now I've seen it. Hoo boy, what an incoherent plot. I mean, I was able to follow it; but that's because I'm a big ol' Star Trek geek. The overall look of the thing pretty darn slick, I have to admit, enough so that the uneven acting quality is a bit obtrusive. That and the possibly accidental reliance on esoteric Trek lore knowledge to tie the plot together may have the effect of limiting the appeal of the piece.
It looks to me as though they ended up with about 90 minutes of plot and simply cut the exposition, leaving certain events in place without clear explanation. All that and a time-travel based plot, too. I will show this to a non-Trek fan to get a baseline, though.
The other thing that bothers me after first viewing is the weird interaction between hyper-consciousness of detail (seen in the obsessive attention to the look of the sets, for example) and complete rookie lapses of attention to detail. The examples that come to mind are a) the unfortunate use of vertically-scaled fonts and poor linespacing for the titles, and b) in the sequence when the Farragut dives toward the surface of the Gateway planet, suddenly, we view a reverse-angle of the ship with the surface of the planet in the background. There are others, but those two made me cringe.
In a less-polished production, the lapses might look humorous or intentional; here, they distract from the ambitions of the series creators, I think, by jarringly underlining the amateur status of the project. It's a hard row to hoe. But the only way to meet the high aspirations these folks have set for themselves is for them to be absolutely merciless in critiquing the production. Nothing would please me more greatly than to no longer find nits to pick.
Nonetheless, kudos to the New Voyages cast and crew. Keep it up! I'll be here waiting!
A music video concering Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight, titled 1961 and executed with magnificent panache. Via Jake In.
(I'm making up nicknames for him, OK? Jake is boring, J-Kin don't work, Jer K is an obvious pass. See? There will be more.)
Mr. Sinclair to this MonkeyFilter thread, please. Please report to this thread immediately.
So, this year, This American Life has run a fascinating show recorded largely in occupied Iraq, titled I'm From the Private Sector, and I'm Here to Help.
As I type this, I just now realize that the title is a snark aimed at the hilarious - and offensive, to me - ad that ran back in the Clinton era in which a litte old lady cowers in her apartment, peering through her peephole at a menacing horde of MIBs, there to reform her health care. The ad's tagline, “We're from the government, and we're here to help!” is a masterpiece of American conservative propaganda. Why has it taken me so lingh to recognize this little joke?
Well, largely because the original show is not particularly expressive of a political viewpoint - it's a personal show, about the lives of civilian contractors in Iraq. The strongest opinion expressed in the show comes partway through the second segment, when the young-sounding female reporter, Nancy, is following around a guy named Hank. Hank is trying to impose order on the chaotic operations of a security firm named Custer Battles (after the names of its' founders).
Hank (who speaks in a flat, authoritative military twang) explains to the reporter how he is trying to train his male Iraqi employees to stop holding hands in public, which clearly really bothers him. His voice thickens as he describes the despicable act. Nancy (whom the listener imagines to be a birdlike recent graduate of the University of Chicago weighing 98 pounds and standing four feet, seven inches) flies off the handle, exclaiming, “Jesus Christ! Leave 'em alone! What's wrong with you?”
She browbeats the surprised Hank in mid-sentence, emphatically exclaiming “No, I don't think it's wrong!” Hanks is utterly taken aback; clearly he's never considered that there might be a possibility that a) male hand-holding is not a terrible crime against nature and b) someone of his own culture might be as offended by his attempts to correct the beknighted ways of the Iraqis as he is by those beknighted ways.
It sums up our current political condition; hell, it can practically substitute for the election.
The company the piece is about is described as having a poor track record in Iraq, including a memorable incident in which employees of the company engaged in a shootout with one another in front of an Iraqi hotel.
Why do I mention this today? The first news I heard on the radio this morning concerned Custer Battles, which is accused of engaging in a pattern of fraudulent billing practices. Those who know me will be unsurprised to hear that I found this to be incredibly funny. I literally cannot stop chuckling about it.
I wonder who owns the movie rights?
More Moleskine hacks, from 43 Folders. Highly interesting. I have spent the past couple of weeks desperately trying to keep up with the ordering demand for Moleskines at my biz. Today alone I packed up at least two whole cases of the things. The small plain ones sell the best, followed by the large ruled.
I think bundling them with pens might make a promising cross-sell.
Viv, looking over my shoulder as I perused a certain mirror of a site devoted to photoshop tomfoolery, got a big kick out of some of the pix. When we got home from dinner, she pestered me for the URL, and I hooked her up.
About seven pictures in, she cries out, “OH NO! GOD, WHAT IS THAT!”
Alas, for I had no camera. My wife had just goatse-d herself, all unwitting. She's doing fine, thanks, and the bandages will come off soon. Ah, celebrate family values, people. It's what keeps us all together.
--[ HogafflaHage ]--, via MoFi. An equine soundboard, admirable in simplicity and elegance. Also silly.
Taz, at Viewropa, posts To My Only Desire, concerning six 15th century tapestries depicting an eponymous Lady and Unicorn. For some reason, these artworks are familiar to me from my youth.
Welcome, new users. Just have that PayPal account ready; Matt's letting folks in, but it's $5.00.
I should read Design Observer: writings about design & culture: The Designibles, says P-Frank. I will. But not now.
NPR : Immigrant Detainees Tell of Attack Dogs and Abuse. I am really interested in this story on the radio, but I have to transcribe stuff right this second and can't do both. Thus, a bookmark.
Dan points out that I might be interested in this antique audio AskMe thread, and verily, he is correct. MeFite tenseone points out a bevy of sites for the gettin' of the olden-style sound files.
An update.
Tenseone's wonderful and mysterious site is highly, highly recommended; it appears to be blog-as-dada, and exhbits the kind of internal, anachronist consistency seen in the poster's enjoyably mannered posting language. I have stuff to do tonight, and good thing, or I'd be spending the eve poking about over there.
A Further Update.
You are commanded to click here. Proceed to consume bandwidth. Ah!
You know, I have only ever visited one live movie set while work was going on, and it makes a huge difference in visualizing what my film people are talking about when I'm doing quote work with them. I can only assume this holds true for journalists without development experience when interviewing computer people.
I think, though, there's more to be learned regarding what goes on in shooting. I need to arrange for more time on set. For that matter, I need to arrange for fly-on-the-wall time in a dev group working on stuff substantially different than the sorts of projects I've burned the midnight candle over. Hm.
Yesterday morning on my way to work, I glanced through the cold morning rain to see a cardboard box in the alley near a bus stop. A tattered piece of cardboard caught my eye, turn-of-the-century display type peeking out from the pile of debris.
I investigated and found a stash of theatrical posters from St. Louis, dated between 1919 and 1928.
On the backs of the posters, years of penciled figures, possibly bookkeeping.
There were about twelve posters. All were lightly soaked from the rain and fragile as hell. I stuffed them frantically into a paper bag which had evidently been intended to hold them but which was unfortunately a bit too small to hold the now-slightly swollen posters.
Most survived, and I even caught my bus.
Success! Home - Whybark Mambo Test Deployment is up. What I'll do with it remains unknown.
The admin UI is pretty appealing. There were some issues with the default deployment methodology and, I'm sorry to say, no clear user-community help with the problem, although suggestions from some non-English native-speakers finally helped me see the solution.
The forum thread is here.
I need to explore available templates and modules for the app next. Given outstanding writing assignments, that may be a bit off in the future. Adam, let's try to chat this afternoon.
Little Fluffy Industries: Free Online Games Daily. The site's top twenty. For Viv, who is tearing up the word of flash-based promo games at the moment. I miss her, but it keeps her quiet.
Neko Case, Neko Case. November 27, 28 at Neumos.
Looks like I finally have a good reason to hit Neumos. The real question, of course, is, "Can Greg and I get Neko to go drinking with us at the Comet after the first show?"
Hint: this is an unlikely outcome.
Boing Boing: Web Zen: earworm zen: it's peanut butter jelly time. Come to think of it, when is it not peanut butter jelly time?
Gates vs. Jobs: The Rematch [NYT]. Fascinating. The image of Bill pacing his office and fretting about the music market is simultaneously hilarious and chilling, by no means reflecting my position on these matters (I don't have a dog in the fight, having opted out of the portable player market).
Adam asked me to think about helping a friend of his blogify their extant small business website. He suggested considering TypePad or WordPress; I probably would lean to suggesting TypePad to minimize administrative overhead. However, I hadn't looked at WordPress closely yet and so this afternoon I went and grabbed it. As advertised, the setup was nice and smooth. I also downloaded Mambo to take a look at; while blog-oriented CMS apps can sure be tweaked and hacked to provide small-scale site publication and maintenance features in a number of ways, sometimes a less bloggy CMS provides greater site-publication flexibility.
This reminds me that I have a partially-deployed Folklore codebase on the server that I have yet to finish setting up (there were some heinous pathing errors that I lacked the will to battle).
I'm also reminded that I should actually write down my many persuasive ideas about why it's probably important for small business people to blog their business life. Last night I was discussing this with a friend who creates wedding invitation packages. She was telling me that she “couldn't bear” to pimp out her stuff on other people's blogs. She's right, of course; that's comment spam, or very close to it. I started to explain why it would be a better strategy for her to blog the business activity itself, to write about buying the paper, about helping her customers make their product selections and so forth. But I was unable to coherently lay this out, since I have really only mused on it privately.
She had a basic misunderstanding of the methodology and business reasons that a small-business owner might find blogs a useful customer-communication and retention tool. I think this is because if you're not a blog reader (which is most people), the idea and purpose of blogging remains unclear.
Additionally, the primary concern of mom-and-pop shops on the web is visibility. Therefore the initial conclusion many mom-and-pops reach is that they must engage in search-engine optimization strategies, whether simply building their sites to conform to spidering's needs or going so far as to buy a linkfarm. This has a lot of pitfalls, of course.
So, uh, note to self: write about this.
Corporate fun: Handy posters to make your work environment safer and to improve your mental health. [via MeFi]
A bit heavy handed (the use of the words 'legal' and 'prosecuted' is pretty clearly overkill and undercuts the effectiveness of the pieces, I think) but I chuckled!
I don't think I mentioned it here yet, but I've started writing professionally again. I'm finding it fun. It's hard to squeeze the phone interviews in between work and blogging and cooking et al, however.
I'm also chasing down a project which I think the blogging community at large will find interesting but since I don't know if it's gonna be a blog-oriented piece or one for publication, mum's the word. That's a part of the professional writing stuff that kinda sucks, keeping the trap shut until press time.
Recently the most important keyboard shortcut in my copy of Safari stopped working; 'back' and 'forward' are no longer cmd-left arrow and cmd-right arrow, respectively. Instead, checking the 'History' menu shows that the default shortcuts are now cmd-[ and cmd-]. I'll leave my fevered ranting aside to simply ask: how can I change this back to what it should be?
I think it's a problem I introduced when I re-enabled my audio-transcription macros. Unfortunately, restricting them to Word did not re-enable the arrow-based shortcuts.
I'm using 1.2.3 v125.9. I have not run the software update to 10.3.6 and will wait do so until the lost-data-on-external-hard-drives bug is resolved.
I'm meeting with lawyers all day today in consideration of the potential branding and revenue effects of being forever linked with tentacle porn. A leading strategy is to go with a kawaii blitz to offset google effects.
It's kind of a long story, but I saw a print online by the great Japanese painter and printmaker Hokusai today that featured, oh, I'll just say there was a woman, and an octopus. Moving with lighting speed, I passed the image along to my favorite expert on matters Japanese and blue. This was the result. Safe for work, but the links there in may not be. Both Manuel and I were googling furiously after his initial straightforward short-link to the image; I'd post a link in the comments to find that he'd sent it to me via email.
Now, I think I'm happy to say, I know a lot more about tentacles than I once did.
UPDATE: Welcome BoingBoing tentacle mongers!
Jeff (apparently the first person on the intarweb to blog the tearjerker Hopkin tale) updates us with Hopkin: Still Lost .
AN UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: As she notes in the comments to Jeff's entry, it was not Jeff, but the beautiful and talented (and obviously insightful) Samantha who launched the frog pix that launched a thousand photoshop remixes. Kinda. I mean, Terry had something to do with it, and... and...
Did I mention lovely? And that Jeff is of course a lucky lucky man? No? Will these do?
Damme and Damme!
I missed what appears to have been the biggest display of the Northern Lights over the lower 48 since 1988 last night.
Weeping and wailing will occupy me for the evening. There's some sort of possibility of a replay, I hear tell. If that tip pans out, the wailing will end earlier than scheduled.
Thanks to y2k for trying to alert me, although I'd logged off when his kind email arrived.
Last night was the MeFi MoFi Blog windingdangdoodle at the Elysian. I didn't realize that the brewpub took reservations, and should have made one.
I parked at the bar until folks started showing up a bit after seven. Mars Saxman was first and we chatted about the improbable appearance that night of Psychic TV at a nearby club. Erika from MonkeyFilter showed up next, and then Jerry Kindall and Tom Harpel.
In the end about 12 or so people showed up and we parked at pair of tables comfortably enough. After beering, Jerry Kindal, Tom Harpel, and our new acquaintance Mark, whole last name and user name I did not catch (he's an architect, though, and he was funny) went to Caffe Vitta for a cuppa and closed down the place at the late hour of eleven o'clock.
The big news at Caffe Vitta happened when I gave the counter-girl a ten for my latte and she smiled at me real big and said, “Oooh, I love tens,” which amused me but also left me speechless, as a happily married man.
Attendees, I think:
Mark (Mefi user skyscraper)
Stacey Lester (Mefi user black8)
Stacey's lovely and charming roomie whose name I did not catch
Amy (Mefi user tristeza)
Mars Saxman (Mefi user Mars Saxman)
Jerry Kindall (Mefi user kindall)
Oscar Bartos, (Mefi user O9scar and Mofi user el wombato)
Michael H. (mk1gti)
Tom Harpel (Mefi user tomharpel)
Erika (Mofi user mechagrue)
Steven (Mefi user Vito90), who says we should hie on down to the Virginia Inn next time, which is where he currently pursues the pouring arts. He also shouted out to SportsFilter!
My photos can be found here, and Tom Harpel's can be found here. MeTa wrapup here (I think - the server went for a JRun just as I went to link to the thread), and MoFi wrapup here.
Monkeyfilter is considering teeshirts. Here's my rather obvious suggestion. I think I'm still working on it. See you at the Elysian!
It's a put on, but I chuckled all the same.
Of course, as I took the picture, a couple of the zombies that currently infest our neighborhood leered into my personal space. The tall scabrous-faced one began asking half-informed questions about the camera, which I dodged.
Hm, I thought. Should I discuss my small, eminently stealable technology toy with a substance-dependent person who appears, by the way he is practically touching my face with his lips, to be drunk?
I think not.
A reminder. Monkeyfilter / MetaFilter / Bloggish thing at the Elysian, 7p on Saturday. Open invites, no signup, just come on down if you want to! Contrary to the rumors, there will be no free beer.
B^2 is running an election map of his apartment. Things look good for Kerry.
New Orleans is displaying a customary level of political competence, it appears (kidding, Crescent City readers!). Commentary from the locals is welcome!
Well, folks, here we are. Good luck to you, and to us all today.
I have an extraordinarily pessimistic view of the stakes and circumstances of this election. I mean, it's extraordinary for people at large; if you know me at all, my view is utterly unsurprising. Voting for either Bush or Kerry will not bring about the fundamental changes in the American economy and political system that are necessary to provide genuine economic and military security to American citizens, and by consequence, to the world.
But voting for President Bush (or his party's local representatives) dramatically accelerates the specific economic and military practices which lead inexorably to the practical end of democracy itself in this country. Historically, when a great economy becomes a military empire rather than a commercial one, it presages first the end of representative governmental structures, and then the end of economic vitality and transparency. Political actions taken under these circumstances are met with increasingly repressive measures; in the end, the whole thing collapses with maximum human suffering, slowly.
A vote for John Kerry (or his party's local representatives) has the salutary effect of slowing parts of this process while at the same time, as we've seen, dramatically increasing voter participation. Despite this, artificial boundaries around public political discourse limit the scope and benefit of change. However, a Kerry victory or broad Democratic sweep buys time for Americans of all political stripes.
For people on the left, it's four years of small-d democratic organizing time. For big-D Democrats, it's four years to bolt the current campaign architecture to the floor and to learn how to break up the GOP voting blocs so effectively mobilized by the right's synchrony of church and media. For the GOP, it's an opportunity to get rid of the truly dangerous PNAC types, whose terrible, egotist failure must be apparent to anyone who thinks analytically. It's also four years of an anti-Kerry campaign that will make the anti-Clinton campaign look like a high-school rumor.
No-one knows how a Kerry presidency will resolve the problem of Iraq. It's an issue that is unlikely to be finished in four years, no matter how you slice it. Unless a Kerry presidency manages to better Bill Clinton's economic track record while at the same time turning that GOP propaganda machine into an icon of shame and laughter, the next campaign for the presidency will strongly favor the Republicans.
I did vote for Kerry, but not because he's anybody but Bush. Clearly he doesn't represent my own political opinions. Why, then? Well, largely for the reasons that he is distasteful to the right. His leadership in the anti-war movement in the early seventies is highly important to me, not solely because I agree with that movement's sentiments. What's more important in that period of Kerry's life is the fact that he saw worth in translating a common American sentiment, one seen among the veterans and family of every American war, into the language and currency of power in our democracy. Furthermore, his early investigative work in the Senate on BCCI and the Iran-Contra scandal clearly demonstrate that not only is he under no illusions concerning the mechanisms used to circumvent democratic governance with the goal of projecting corporate power, he is unafraid to confront these mechanisms.
Will a President Kerry have the time and will to confront the parallel mechanisms within our democracy today? Can he do so and take executive leadership of the situation in Iraq, the long-term issue of terror at home and in the world, and provide leadership with regard to our civil liberties? It seems doubtful to me. Yet a Kerry presidency, to secure two terms, must accomplish all of these things.
Things about Kerry's life and campaign which have bothered me include his reasoning for military service (it was because he felt that active-duty military service was required for a successful political career, as I understand it); his inarticulate defense of his transparently political votes on the Iraq war; his icky, Machiavellian use of the word “kill” in reference to terrorists (it's not that I don't think he's willing do do so, whatever my feelings are; it's that it's such a transparent attempt to communicate that he's a tough guy); his general clunkiness when attempting to present himself as a regular guy. He's not a regular guy. He's had an exceptional, extraordinary life, and should he win, we can all expect to benefit from his experience. What's in question is his willingness to trust his own experience and instincts when communicating with the public.
If Kerry and his campaign see and understand the importance of countering the GOP propaganda mill, it will be crucial for them to reach out to progressive voters for the long run. What form this takes is open to debate; traditional American xenophobia is not the solution to outsourcing, for example. But keeping the people who were alternately engaged and energized by the Bush administration and the Dean campaign active and contributing, for all four years, is crucial.
Have fun watching the results, hope it stays free of violence, and I'll see you in front of the Daily Show's Indecision 2004 tonight. May our democracy emerge strengthened from this day.
“Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me.” This came from a New Jersey-based blogger who shall remain nameless.
The sentiment is drawn from a single and amusing animated video viewable at the site linked above. The song is by Australian oddity TISM. Here's some info on the band, including the unexpected origin of the band's name.
Finally, I totally forgot about Jason's final (?) death day show. Bummer. Michael and Josh have both posted about it. In my defense, I must note that I am stupid.
