NYT: F.B.I. Official Revealed He Was Watergate Source in Interview
WASHINGTON, May 31 — W. Mark Felt, a senior F.B.I. official during the Nixon administration, was the “Deep Throat” of Watergate lore, the secret source who provided information that helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post unravel the scandals of Richard Nixon's White House, the newspaper said today.
Well, it's certainly not like this is breaking news at this point. I must, however, for what is presumably the final time, note that this "M. Wark Flannel" character or whateva is most certainly NOT Deep Throat. Deep Throat, as we revealed here some three years ago, is the deceptively youthful Ken Goldstein, late of the blogosphere and Seattle precincts, and missed quite heartily in both districts.
I would nitpick over spelling but that's burned me recently so a derisive, virtual sniff will have to do.
(For the record, Deep Throat is a great American hero, the preceding is satire, and even though in the current climate of absurdity and repression it's unlikely he's gonna get the Congressional Medal of Honor, it's clear to me that no-one in the entire history of the Republic deserves it more.)
Um, apparently the problem resided in one of the USB ports, not the almost absurdly bent-up USB plug on the end of the mouse. I still welcome original Intellimice Explorers, however. Insurance! Hoarding!
As multiple perceptive readers have joyfully pointed out, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
But the signs I refer to are spelled "Capital Hill." They may have been removed. I hope so.
Seriously, once I knew that the capital of North Dakota was Bismarck, and the capitol of North Dakota resided therein. Again, I blame the Sith and their evil, evil ways.
Viv and I saw Star Wars Ep. III tonight after a wander about the Pike Place Market Festival. In short, my opinion is on the median - much better than the other two recent films, not the greatest SF film I have ever seen, a few scenes that were quite successful on any terms.
I'm sure everyone in the world got the Frankenstein quote, a few got the at-least two 2001 quotes, and some may have made the Close Encounters samples. But why is it that as of this writing (pre-Google though it is) I have not read of one person pointing out the typo - practically a Freudian slip - in the title crawl?
We read of "War!" et cetera. Apparently, General Greivous has sneakily kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine from the very heart of the "capital" of the Republic.
Who knew that the old sneakerino was being kept in Scrooge McDuck's money vault?
Seriously, this totally disrupted my enjoyment of the film. Film is an art in which insane attention to detail and insane control freaks are often mistaken for one another and encouraged to reach for the outer limits of sanity. George Lucas' final word in commercial cinema is apparently to be misspelled in ignorance. It's a fitting testament to one of the means whereby democracy perishes to applause.
The homonym, of course, is well chosen, as it's capital to which essentially all the failings of the prior two films can be laid, and of course, it's capital to which the failings of our own great nation's system of checks and balances ever owes its' tottersome state.
As I am certain one or two of you may be wondering what the rumpus is about: "capital" is large concentrations of currency, with a significance of power, while "capitol" is the geographical center of political power. I live in an optimistically-named neighboorhood, Capitol Hill. The misspelling is common enough that it is immortalized upon several signs that welcome persons to this neighborhood. the mispelling is so well-ingrained, in fact, that I wonder if we aren't witnessing a socially-mandated spelling shift. As money corrodes democratic expression, the perceptual gap between "capitol" and "capital" fades softly to nil.
I should note that "captial" employed as an ejaculatory statement also means "excellent" or "satisfactory;" such use carries a whiff of anachronism.
Musical Family Tree is working toward the goal of providing a comprehensive archive for independent music stemming from the scenes I grew up in, Bloomington and Indianapolis. There's a ton on there and I have some stuff that needs to be digitized, such as the amazing live farewell show by the Pit Bulls on Crack circa 1987. I alos have a bunch of stuff from John Terril that I should see if he wants shared, just amazing material.
Matt, had you seen this thing? Your stuff should go up there, immediately!
Financial planners, dealing with the real estate bubble, and some truly amazing images from what appears to be a municipal festival in Nantes, France involving the most elaborate large-scale team puppets I have ever seen: married life appears to be good for Tom's linkstream.
UPDATE: The Nantes event appears to be part of a celebration of Jules Verne. Here's an easier-to-read-and-navigate set of pictures.
Per request, the International Organization of Cynics, Ne'er-Do-Wells, and Misanthropes has re-opened their Cafe Press store. Don't forget to join!
I designed this logo many years ago for a friend. At the time, I was working as a designer for the region's largest provider of labor-union identity goods, and this design is a sort of in-joke based on the many, many serious designs I produced for local labor unions over that several year period. I still see many of these designs in circulation today and I am really pretty proud of this work. To date, it appears to be my longest-lasting contribution to Northwest society. When I was a kid, I was deeply fascinated by logos in general and the logos of labor unions and military units in particular. To me, these appeared to be survivals of a heraldic tradition that was otherwise lost.
While the actual ties of these insignia to genuine medieval heraldry is at best debatable, I don't think it's inaccurate to characterize the insignia as used as such. Believing this allowed me to be pretty effective, I think, in designing, redesigning and rehabilitating the logos that these labor organizations use to express a shorthand visual identity.
The personal highlight of this came in 1999, on the first day of the WTO protests, when a huge labor march coincided with the less-disciplined activists to produce a crowd of over a hundred thousand in downtown Seattle's streets. Many, probably most, of the labor union locals that were present that day were from the Pacific Northwest, and almost every one of them was wearing jackets or hats or carrying banners or signs with art that I had created. Thousands of people, using the art I had made for them in the way I had hoped to see it used. I'm grateful for the rare privilege of actually observing this in person.
Five years ago, I picked up a pair of first-generation 3.x MS Intellimouse Explorers. In the business move on Friday, one was crushed.
"No problem," I cheerily thought. "I'll just pick up the most recent discontinued Explorer on eBay or in a store locally." I did locate one, but to my horror, the crisp scroll wheel had been replaced by a mushy thing referred to as the "tilt-wheel." The tilt-wheel lacked tactile feedback and was notably less precise than the clicky-wheel on my five-year-old rodent. In fact, it lacked precision to an extent that I was actually able to roll the wheel without scrolling the front-most screen window at all; the wheel simply ignored fine input and only responded to gross input. Terrible, and unnecessarily fingerstraining. Without tactile feedback we tense our muscles. The mushy tilt-wheel is a ruination, pure and simple.
Further drawing oaths from me is the now apparently industry-standard placement of the left-side dual thumb buttons above the thumb's resting location. In the 4.0 version of the Explorer that I used, they were actually on a protruding ridge above the thumb groove - another recipe for musclestrain.
The mouse that I have looks like this:
Apparently, the large-size thumb-buttons came under fire for being to easy to hit, and the mouse was revised to look like this:
Several hours of eBay combing, and it's this latter revision I can locate. I suppose I'll order one, but I don't have high hopes for it. The original version is the only mouse I've ever had that did not create unbearable musclestrain. I am not a happy person at the moment.
Manuel generously shares his toolbox with us. It's an informative look at what it takes to solve the mysteries of wintel computing.
Boing Boing links to local WiFi blogger Glenn Fleishmann's look at the emerging discontents of wireless culture as seen at a nearby cafe, Victrola. I, for one, am shocked to hear reports of unscrupulous, unmoving WiFi campers. Shocked!
(I kid, kidded one.)
We are moving at work, which is exciting.
Soon, I will have a desk at work located in a room with a window in it for the first time in about ten years. Tomorrow morning I will be attempting to get to the place via bus.
The PI's Buzzworthy notes the death of Jason Sprinkle, who instigated a bookended pair of guerilla art projects here in Seattle. I read the obit in the paper today, and I felt quite sad as I read the news. Sprinkle's first art prank, a ball-and-chain attached to the foot of SAM's Hammering Man downtown (to my surprise, over a decade ago) still makes me chuckle. His last, a too-successful work which resulted in a full-blown terror scare, still makes me shake my head in disgust over the irresponsibly paranoiac response of the city and law-enforcement authorities.
Revealingly, I learned much more about the artist in the obituary than in any of the articles I enjoyed concerning his works at the time of their execution.
As Greg and I stumbled down the street to Conor Byrne's for a nightcap under a hugely full parchment moon, our ears ringing, we were in something of a state of shock. We'd just left the slightly smoky confines of a sold-out show by the Old Crow Medicine Show at Ballard'sTractor Tavern.
I had heard Old Crow about three times on the usually kind-of boring, if pleasant, Prairie Home Companion, and several songs the band had performed had stuck in my head and the band's aggressive playing had caught my attention as well. They have the good fortune at the moment to be fairly regular guests on PHC (at the show, they plugged an upcoming June 3 appearance), and I had noted with interest that the band appeared to be getting noticeably better with each appearance. I mentioned the band to Greg casually this weekend and he had the foresight to note that the band had two dates slated at the Tractor this week.
Some phone tag led to my purchasing three tickets early Monday morning for the Tuesday night show. Sadly, the third ticket, intended for our playing partner Karel, did not get used, as his car broke down in Tacoma as the show began. A cute girl actually asked for the ticket as we entered the bar but I held on to it hoping that Karel would make it. My apologies, cute girl. Ask me next time.
The band played two solid sets and two encores with a fifteen minute break - the show ended just before 1, if my fuzzy memory serves.
Greg and I really enjoyed the show, for the most part (the well-meaning but hammerhanded banjo-guitar being a distraction, I'm sorry to say). But what was really amazing to us was, first, the overall young age of the crowd, and second, the intensity of appreciation displayed by the people in the audience, not at all undeserved.
The extended encores were amazing. The crowd was in absolute, full-throated rapture, with the intensity and energy of any great rock show I have ever been to, and the band, using only acoustic and traditional instrumentation absolutely met and fed that energy. It was an amazing experience, easily one of the ten best shows - one of the five best rock shows, if the music had been rock, which it was not - I have ever been to. Never in my life did I think I would see a room freaking out over the power of the fiddle and the banjo and close-sung harmonies. I have certainly been wrong before, and I hope I continue being as wrong as this all my life, and I hope to be wrong again the next time this band comes into town.
Greg and I went to see the Old Crow Medicine Show at the Tractor tonight (er, last night).
Kick-ass, far better than I expected.
I have a pic, but I'll post it later.
Excellent long piece on Alan Moore's relationship with DC, as highlighted on BB.
My Treo was stuck in a reboot loop, so I gathered links.
How to edit the preset favorites on a locked Treo. How to enter debug mode at boot (hold the up-arrow key on the little navigation pad thingy). How to flash the ROM in a Treo 650. Shadowmite's Treo hacks site. Using a Sprint Treo 650 as a bluetooth dial-up modem with Sahadowmite's DUN hack in place.
News flash: Tom and Rachel are married!
I thought about blogging from the actual ceremony, but discretion happily triumphed.
FastMailWiki will help me as I navigate the transition between running my own sendmail and having fastmail provide primary hosting. I already hate the piece-rate alias charges. Ah well.
oops - Last night I met Dan after work for a beer and we ended up having dinner - delicious Ethiopian food - with Viv and Vonda. Sleep followed immediately thereafter, at the cost of blogging.
I wrote a 500-word-plus meditation on the changing fortunes of Broadway in my neighborhood today. I was sitting in Cafe Septieme waiting for Viv, watching the street as cloudburst after cloudburst cycled between sun and wet. Alas for me, my Palm-based blog app lacks an autosave and due to a moment of inattention on my part, poof, away it went.
Our old neighbors Shawna and Christian walked in while we were there with their one-year old. I did not recognize them at first - the baby might have had something to do with it. I forgot to ask about Mavis, darn it.
Finally, Greg reminded me that I should be reading Stacey's blog, having badgered her into it over the past couple of years. He's right, I need to, but due to insane business at work and in real life, my blog reading has been much curtailed of late.
Update - he's doubly right, Stacey's got the makings of a great blogger. Her posts are clearly unfiltered internal narrative; it sounds like her talking on the page. Hm, I probably have an obligation here to do some basic blog-lore education.
Man, how weird is that! Blog-lore! There is clearly such a thing, and I can recall when there wasn't!
The P-I's Buzzworthy notes the launch sites for a City of Seattle municipal WiFi pilot project: Columbia City and the U. I suppose this may well make Chris, Sabrina, and Dan's lives easier.
Say, when was that Minutemen movie again?
I read this amusing NYT piece to Viv aloud because she was asking why I was chuckling. Extra points to the author for assiduously avoiding the Napoleon Dynamite and Pirates of the Caribbean referents the photographer so carefully captured. While a tad glib, I am filled with admiration for the writing itself in this article.
Geez, 2-for-2 from the Times. I gotta stay in more; my link-fu weakens!
NYT: New Theory Places Origin of Diabetes in an Age of Icy Hardships
When temperatures plummet, most people bundle up in thick sweaters, stay cozy indoors and stoke up on comfort food. But a provocative new theory suggests that thousands of years ago, juvenile diabetes may have evolved as a way to stay warm.
Hm. Not sure I buy this. Apparently I am not alone:
Most doctors who treat diabetes are extremely skeptical about the idea. In a typical comment, one doctor said, referring to a dangerous complication of diabetes: "Are they kidding? Type 1 diabetes would result in severe ketoacidosis and early death."
Seems like dying before reproducing might confer some evolutionary limits. The presenter of the theory argues that an Ice Age average lifespan of 25 might have meant that diabetics fared comparably well in the cold climate. The article goes on to note that Nordics are the most prevalently affected by this disease, and moreso in cold climates than in warm ones. I can only note that my wife is Cuban and was affected in sunny California. I will take some salt with this idea, thanks all the same.
JG Ballard reviews The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination 1920-1950, by Robert Wohl, in the Guardian.
I have read, and deeply enjoyed, Professor Wohl's previous book on the subject of the cultural symbology of aviation, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908 to 1918. I am quite looking forward to reading this newer book as well. The period covered in the latest book represents the zenith of aviation as a pop-culture referent. Therefore, it's the period in which the aviation archetypes that have always gripped me first gained wide purchase in the popular imagination.
While I loved the prior book, I found it overly documentarian. This complaint probably stems from Wohl's profession, that of historian. I craved not merely encyclopedic paragraphs stating who did what and how given expression of the symbology of flight was disseminated, but also what it may have meant at the time. That's not to say Wohl doesn't provide interpretation, only that documentation is his primary focus.
While I'm at it, what a treat it is to read Ballard's typically dystopian dry wit on the subject. Maybe he'll take a crack at it - Plane Crash, anyone?
(Given that my folks are currently winging off to this week's god-knows-where - is it China? - my own black joke is really quite inapproriate. Let's hope I lack reasons to regret come tomorrow.)
So, you've probably heard that this time out the NYT's A. O. Scott rejects, I'm sorry to say, a curb-stomping for Star Wars, Episode III (sorry for the link, but the blogerator appears to be down.) Apparently eager to make up for it, The New Yorker's Anthony Lane unleashes a review of overreaching vituperation which fails to amuse in (for example) its calls for the extermination of Yoda, and generally appears to reveal the critic as an enemy of fun. From what I can make of it, you'd think he'd actually like the film. He prophetically describes it as a "remorseless non-comedy," sadly telegraphing a review into which he undoubtedly chortled three decades' worth of deep loathing. It saddens me, because I do so enjoy a sound sour Star Wars review and had held great hopes, if not for the film, for the reviews.
I recorded a bunch of pretty pristine audio this weekend. Bugs chirping and loons whooping and unknown faux feral beast howling in the night. But alas. The signal, though clean, is so low in the mix, I don't have the time to post a usable selection of mp3s here tonight. Here is the best I can do.
Close your city-dazzled eyes, plug up your traffic-deafened ears, and imagine layers and layers of birds shrieking and chirping and disputing and fussing and fighting over their turf. Now add an exponentially-larger number of insects, all doing the same thing, at an individually lower volume that collectively challenges the numerically-inferior cohort of winged dino descendants.
Vary by time of day over several twenty-four hour periods but make note of the relative lack of human-produced sounds. If you wish to emulate my personal reaction to this spring soundwash, desire to live outside of an urban area.
Movies from the MetaFilter bowling meetup last weekend. This one has the infamous fatllama victory dance.
My overdue pix here.
Apple's QT7 upgrade breaks QT6 Pro. You have to shell out for a new serial number. Sadly, activating the copy of 7 that has auto-updated on your system will not necessarily provide access to the features you need. From Apple's online fora (quoted, as Apple does not provide permanent online posting of the discussions):
Nick:
Since I've installed Quicktime 7 Pro it crashes every time I try to open 'Show movie properties'. I've tried it on a variety of Quicktime movies, old and new. I've now repaired permissions and repaired my disk - but to no avail.
russblaise:
This workaround is from "blinkmedia", it was posted yesterday. And it worked for me.
With QT Player not running:
Open System Prefs > International & change your language setting. Then quit and re-open System Prefs and change your language setting back to what it was/should be. QT Player's "Movie Properties" should now behave as expected.
I can confirm that this successfully allows access to "Movie Properties."
Crap! I just realized gmail has been filtering inbound comment notifications straight to spam! Sorry, friends, I'm not deliberately sitting on your comments.
Viv and I walked into The War Room, a new club on Capitol Hill, recently. I had noticed that the deck was open, but when we walked in, the interior space was completely empty.
All of the hung art - and possibly the club logo - is by Stewart Fairey of "Obey Giant" fame. The club adertises free wifi. Geeks of Seattle, abandon forthwith the locked-down wifi at the Elysian!
Of course, I must note we just stuck our noses in, thought about helping ourselves to the unattended bar, and then went on to Bill's for pizza. So who knows what sort of tax Mr. Fairey's art imposes upon the drinks.
We did not go upstairs, but it sure seems to me that the whole roof is an open deck, and one thing the $ill always needs more of is outdoor public drinking establishments.
After some research, I have concluded that the 2-inch-long red pepper I inadvisably consumed in a single bite was probably the much-feared Habanero. It did, indeed, feel as though the lid of my skull was lifting away from my brain.
Viv and I saw Hitchhiker's Guide this evening, expecting nothing, and came away reasonably happy. Like many old-skool geeks, I had a particular relationship with the radio and book incarnations of this series and subsequent to last year's disastrous rental of the eye-scorchingly terrible BBC-TV series. The elegiac tone - and subsurface, if you will, presence of departed creator Douglas Adams - caught me by surprise and appealed, shamelessly and with success, to my own sense of loss.
However, the I did find the predominance of American accents in this version of Adams' tale somehow not right.
Hey look, ma! I'm an academic reference or possibly case study!
"Late in September, 2004, Mike Whybark, a resident of Seattle, began researching the background story to the original flier and reported his findings in The Nation (see Whybark 2004)."
Sadly, however, The Nation (later in the paper cited as a Seattle-based publication) has never seen fit to send me a check for my work. If only I knew which Nation it might be that Ms. Knobel cites!
Could it be the venerable organ of the Left? If so, the slow-pay might well be understood. Perhaps it was Bangok's The Nation. Or maybe Pakistan's.
At any rate, I know that I did not report my findings in The Nation. However, pursuivant to the Articles of the League in fulfulling my obligation toward grandiloquence and overreaching, the next time I have hard, cold water to toss in the face of an internet meme, Katrina gets first right of refusal with up to twenty-four hours turnaround on a no-reply opt-out. After that, it's Hilly's turn.
What's really odd is that John and Mikey's shirts are cited, and Jeff's initial post about Terry is also quoted. I really want to understand where the citation forThe Nation originated,
I was quite aggravated with mo:blog this afternoon when I noted that the app had lost all prefs, including reg data. Ah well. Further profound work-related exhaustion prevents much further news.
Unbelievable week at work. I asked an acquaintance to lend a hand, and he came through, big time. Sadly, I can't really blog about it. I can say that we are busier than we were at Christmastime. I am sooo tired. I'm kinda bummed that I am behind on some of my stuff for the magazine because the day job is so time consuming at the moment.
Some sweet, sweet Greasemonkey hype, and Tom's pointer to Warbaby's World in Conflict. Apparently Dan is a union rep in health care as well as a fine bowler with a classics degree.
Sea MeFi wenten bowling last night.
I bowled well, over 100 both games. As might be expected, many cameras were present.
Tom wins the laurels for showing how this shirt looks when worn as appropriate. Jeff also has some posted pix. Jeff, by the way, was the evening's star bowler - it was a shootout between he and the newly sponsored Danious.
I did, as I have reported, capture the rarely seen fatllama victory dance. But I don't have time to post it today, alas.
We went to Samantha's Spring Extravaganza last night. Daymented's pix include this celebrity couple. As that picture was taken, every camera in the room was popping flashes at us. It was hilarious and disorienting.
I also had the pleasure of a long chat with Jeff Sharman, and regret not having had a chat with Tara about her new job.
UPDATE: Manuel's pix are now up. Palm to Palm!
Manuel and I were plotting the upcoming deeds of the League last night, and several possibilties arose, beyond the previously suggested karaoke festival. We bruited about the possibility of quenching our unending thirst in venues appropriate to the august heritage of our organization, to wit:
- Commandeering a submarine (gotta hurry!)
- Employing our private aeroplane
- A secret underground lair
- A cavern of ice
- The bridge of our space cruiser
In addition, we realized that there are a range of potential locations for a secret lair that were previously scouted by Mr. Wanskasmith which are too secret, too draped in the mantle of national security, to be aired in this venue. The cold, hard light of day reveals that there are some further possibilities.
- our private presidential rail-car
- the sumptuous League mansion
- the vast League data center
- a long-abandonded ghost town
- our skyscraper clubroom
It's clear that some of these venues are less easy to locate than others. Where possible, I have linked to the physical location under consideration. I think an ideal venture would involve stopping in one or more of these venues and also sampling the local saloon-keeper's ware in locales where saloons might be available.
Finally, as I joked with Manuel about bylaws, I felt compelled to speak on the topic of E Clampus Vitus, something I am about half-informed on. I understand the Clampers to have been organized by California gold miners in service of the goal of producing a horse-drawn combination steam-powered still and laundry machine to be delivered to the gold miners at the diggins, a place where booze and laundry were in short supply.
A history seen on a Clamper site condradicts this account, but affirms the status of Clamperdon as a drinking society. Another history appears to confirm the first. A Clampers chapter was working on constructing a contemporary Hurlothrumbo.
As I have it, the miners collected a patch of dough and sent it off to San Francisco in the company of one of their number, one Joshua Norton. Eventually, he did return with the machine. Later, he was better known as Emperor Norton I.
My interpretation was close, but no cigar. The Clampers actually sent someone down to pay a call on Norton, at that time a successful entrepeneur who had already disassembled his ship, the Hurlothrumbo, to use the boiler in a laundry service at the diggins. The Clampers bought the boiler from Norton specified that the boiler was to be moved to the diggins atop a wagon that incorporated "a steam engine, bar, humidor, kitchen and baths." It was constructed and delivered as promised.
I was unable to get into the doctor this morning, which means I will have to wait until Friday morning. Happily, at some point in today's running around a channel appears to have opened in the wax, and now I can hear again. I will continue home irrigation, an odious and messy business, in the hopes of being done with it before then.
Last weekend Viv and I were wandering about deepest Ballard, when we came across a small secretary desk, about two feet by one foot, that we immediately realized would fit well in our living room and displace one of the rickety 1950s TV trays that Viv has been employing a a computer and work desk. Unfortunately, the shop owner was unable to meet our price expectations and so we did not come away with the piece.
Today, as we enjoyed the splendors of intracity traffic in Seattle on the first day of boating season, we passed by a gimcrack shop we'd never ventured into. I told Viv to pull over, and once parked we explored the place. Nearly immediately Viv found a matched table and chair set, rather plainer but probably older than the other one, for well under half the price that we'd been offered at the other place. The tiny chair was quite rickety and not well suited to day-to-day use.
Around a corner in the shop, we found another old chair, this with a home-made cushion that matched one on the small side chair that came with the table. Asking, we learned that the three pieces of furniture all originated in the same home. We asked about purchasing them as a unit, and the shop's owner extended an extremely reasonable offer we were pleased to agree to. A bit of puzzle-building later, we we had them in the car, and as I write, Viv is seated at the sturdy chair, computer on desk.
Interestingly, the sturdy chair was made in Aurora, Indiana, at the Cochran Chair Company; Aurora is just down the road from Lawrenceburg, the home of several friends of mine from Bloomington, including Matt Uhlmann, Bill Weaver, and John Terrill.
Tonight Spencer scored two tix to that Gang of Four show I blogged about. I have been looking forward to this since he mentioned it to me. Unfortunately, I do not know if I can uphold my obligation to him or not, as I have multiple conflicting engagements tomorrow. I am running a clear sleep deficit and really need to be 100%. I am struggling to get a power nap in, but it seems unclear to me if I will be able to. I'm really bummed about this; who knows, perhaps I will go to the show anyway.
Bright Red Rocket presents: The Naked Cosmos: [via BB]
Oh dear god. This looks so wonderful and delicious I can barely think about it.
My ear is so clogged up with wax that it is causing a bursitis-like pain in my jaw. It's so amazingly painful, I can't even describe it. So far, I don't notice any pain-derived personality changes. I sure hope I can get it irrigated on Saturday.
Thanks to the quick-dialling Dayment, Viv and I attended the symphony this evening. In case that link evaporates, the program featured violinist Joshua Bell in front of a New York-based ensemble, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. There were four works performed. Bell's featured piece was the violin concerto.
Sibelius: Suite from Pelleas et Melisande
Saint-Saëns: Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor
Sofia Gubaidulina: Concordanza
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1, Op. 25, "Classical"
I enjoyed all of them. The Gubaidulina was, strangely, a special treat. It's a 1971 work, composed in Russia, and the dissonant bleeping and hissing and squawking is exactly the sonic employment of stage orchestral instrumentation that is sadly absent on the internet classical station we've been listening to. I have really missed hearing twentieth century orchestral stuff, especially late at night.
I got some good thinking done, as well, about a variety of subjects. Sadly, however, my right ear is utterly clogged with wax and let's just say that the balance was off. Right now it hurts like hell, and I am a bit dizzy. I really need to make an appointment with the doctor to get it irrigated but I really do not have time until this weekend.
I should note here that Josh Bell came of age in Bloomington and I have memories of him being friends with people in my sister's social circle. I believe that he and his family may have attended the same church that my family did, for a while at least. He did not attend the same schools as other kids his age in town. As I recall it, his family had moved to town in order to provide their gifted child with access to an important violin instructor, and Josh was engaged in studying with this maestro full time from pre-adolescence. My recollection, however, appears to be wrong, as Bell's site notes that he was born in Bloomington.
I'm sure my mother will help fill in the details.
Attention Chris:
When I checked NNW as of home arrival this evening, guess what was number one with a bullet on ye blogdex?
Onlookers should know that I was verbally disqualified from participating in the contest at dinner on Saturday. Congrats to you wikkans over there.
Sabrina mentioned Redfin yesterday at dinner. I hope they dump the data for use in Google Maps.
