I spent a part of last spring interviewing participants in and observers of mash-up culture for an overview piece that appears in Now Playing's current issue, which went into distribution about a month and a half ago. I structured the piece as a history, beginning with Mark Gunderson's recollections of developing the Whipped Cream Mixes with the ECC in the 90s. The issue includes at least a glancing look at the new Gorillaz release as well.
So you might say I found the new cover of Wired unusually compelling.
Neil Gaiman interviews Gorillaz, for Pete's sake.
This bit of creative copy - "The History of Mash-Ups, by William Gibson" - was especially entertaining. Gibson's piece relates the avant-garde creative method that William S. Burroughs dubbed the 'cut-up,' to the current fooraw over sampling and borrowing to deep Western historical roots. It's a cogent observation.
Understandably, that's not what I thought I was about to read when I flipped to the piece. Still, I laughed heartily upon seeing the cover. It's just not credible that Now Playing is prompting competitive moves from Wired. At best, I think maybe I channelled some aspect of Wired's editorial decision-making when I pitched this story - and others - to Now Playing.
Now, if I can do it again next issue - well, that would be success of a sort, I think.
It's done. I closely examined the J21 M, per Tom's comments, but concluded that a 1995 D-16T was a superior choice, acoustically, aesthetically, and financially (it was less than half as expensive as the J21 M).
8X-Day: JUNE 30 - JULY 5, Sherman, NY.
"You'll notice that July 5 lands on Tuesday this year. DON'T PINK OUT! This is YOUR ONLY RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY."
Let the will of slack be done. Me, I'm afraid I'm slacking, so no pleasure saucers for me this year - again!
EXCITING LINKS FOR BORING DAYS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
Love the site design. [found via referral logs - cool!]
The time has arrived.
I am in the market for a mid-range acoustic guitar. I am considering the current O-series mahogany Martins, but have always played pre-owned instruments and would be thrilled to find an older guitar as well. Currently the Trading Musician has their usual broad selection, including a 1979 Gibson, a 1975 Guild, and a Martin J21M as well as several Martins priced well out of my range. After years of pawnshop trolling, I had come to think of the Trading Musician as a bit pricey, but compared to the undeniably mouthwatering goods available online from Jet City Guitars (at the time of linking, the lowest-listed guitar price is over $2k), and there are several items listed at over $10k), the listed prices and selection appear quite reasonable.
You know, that '33 is more or less what I want, come to think of it. It's over my budget, though.
As it happens, just up the street from the Trading Musician is the Folkshop (apparently and appropriately not online), which always has new and used Martin inventory on hand.
For the record, my current guitar is an end-mounted tension-bridge parlor Stella (but quite unlike the guitars that site celebrates, mine is more like these). Mine is probably from the 1970s. It's covered with stickers and some ill-advised marker graffiti from the previous stewards, now lost in the mists of time. When I started playing it, it sounded like shit and played like an instrument of torture. The action was high enough that it hurt to fret it, and when I lowered the action, the fret buzz made the thing into a cousin of the sitar. The original machine heads in conjunction with the end-mounted tension bridge meant that for ages I was convinced that the instrument could not stay in tune.
After many years of fiddling, I can report that the instrument has a decent voice, at long last, and while it's still a bear to fret, the action is not nearly the painful torture mechanism it once was.
I once knew a kid who moved to the US to attend high school from his native Venezuela. He told me about how he learned to skateboard. He was a gifted skater who was able to outperform most of the other kids we hung out with. His first skateboard was made by nailing the wheels from a steel-wheeled adjustable roller skate to the bottom of a 2x4 plank.
Posters designed in the 60's by Lefor-Openo, a french advertising and design firm. [MeFi]
Viv and I were sorry to see Jean go, but we assuage our sorrow with the hilarity of a Nova devoted to the Piltdown hoax.
While Excavating Past, John Irving Finds His Family [NYT blogerated link].
I am a profoundly reluctant admirer of Irving's work - I still find it gratingly self-absorbed - but this article unlocks some persistent themes in the man's work, and I cannot help but be transfixed by the tragic narrative associated with his absent father and the conflict stemming from loyalty and love to his adoptive parent. I'm grateful that my own questions about who I am and where I come from are not subject to the complications of knowing one biological parent and not another.
Someone down near the Broadway Playfield, near what has previously been the staging area for participants in the annual Gay Pride Parade, has been setting off m-80s or cherry bombs or something. That, in conjunction with the flock of chittering helicopters plaguing the neighborhood this morning, have created a mild flashback to November 1999's WTO experience. For us that week included about five days of twenty-four hour helicopter noise punctuated by explosions in the distance as various police units used flash-bang grenades and pepperball grenades to, among other things, harass me with their incessant noise.
Each time one of today's bangs echoes down the street, Viv and I tense in anticipation of a change in the tone of the crowd noise or - worst thought of all - a great but brief silence broken only by car alarms and shattering window glass tinkling onto the pavement. In 1990, the FBI arrested a group of folks who had driven a van loaded with explosives into the neighborhood with the intent of bombing a popular gay nightclub.
The person lighting m-80s has no idea what an ass they are. I hope they continue in blissful ignorance.
Media Activists Who Smile and Throw Cheese [NYT blogerated link]
... Since Jan. 6, when the five-member Rochester-based group executed its first bust, as it calls them, of a live remote in their hometown, viewers in Boston; New York City; Manchester, N.H.; Columbus, Ohio; and several other cities have seen their local news briefly hijacked by elaborately planned vignettes that are more likely to baffle or alarm reporters than make them curse on the air.The Newsbreakers' repertory of characters includes Cheese Ninja, who cavorts in the background of live news broadcasts, derisively tossing slices of processed cheese, and Jiminy Diz, a supposed newspaper reporter, wearing a loud jacket and a hat with a "Press" card in the band, who is angry with local television news for lifting reports from the morning paper.
These humorless aesthetes are clearly a front intended to increase overall viewer numbers for local news!
Grimfaced, I await their eruption hereabouts.
Spence and I headed to the waterfront last evening with the theoretical purpose of eating vast quantities of marine life while sunning ourselves on the deck of the pier which hosts The Fisherman's restaurant. Our plans were thwarted by the unwelcome appearance of a very loud band playing very undistinguished top 40 covers on the stage of the public facility just on the other side of the outdoor dining area.
Undaunted, we surveyed the possibility of fish at one of the other waterfront eateries, only to be daunted by hourlong waits for walk-ins at each. In the end we settled for pasta at the Trattoria Mitchelli in Pioneer Square.
On our way back up the waterfront we ducked into the Owl and Thistle to find the alter-ego of local roots-rockers The Dusty 45s playing, The Vinyl Avengers. These guys do stripped down, cheesed-up covers of 50s and 60s top 40. They opened with "Taste of Honey" and worked through a range of material that included "Ring of Fire," "Girl from Ipanema," and an abbreviated "St. James Infirmary." Billy, the lead singer, guitarist, and trumpeter, was his usual enthusiastic self.
I was able to get audio of the whole thing on the Treo, but haven't listened to it or evaluated it yet.
It's unclear how this came across the linktroll, but: Hot Dog Blog, "the community site for dachshunds and dachshund lovers!" Proceed to the multimedia downloads for sheer minutes of dachshund-wriggling hilarity.
bart sez: See You at Nick’s. I won't be there, but in spirit. Pour one out for me, boys!
(Update of possible barty interest: Michaelpella, courtesy brother Dan.)
...And so I think we're bowing out of the rent race. I can't visualize moving twice in a year. Viv may differ as she is concerned about having to move in a rush and having to find a place to rent in a hurry. I think we'll probably have more discussions about this in the future.
We beat the track again for a place tonight. We have a prospect, and turned down a prospect, and we're sleeping on one too. Man, is this exhausting!
Man, we rolled by over ten houses today, and got into three. We filled out an app for one with a sweet location and have appointments for three more on Monday and Tuesday. We're really moving.
Afterwards we had dinner in Ballard (again) with Don and Trish at Sofrito Rico, a Puerto Rican place at the end of the Market commercial district. Reading blogs tonight I noticed that Greg and Stacey ate there last night for their anniversary. Small world.
I am totally beat.
I was pleased to hear from my dad that he got his father's day gift on time, even though I sent it late. It was a late-30s or early-40s pewter sommelier's cup made in part from an old French franc coin. The manufacturer's label is still attached to the back of the cup.
Jon Nelson, possibly my new favorite film critic, says, "I just saw Batman Begins," and among other things, notes:
"I think that it might very well be THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE," going on to note that "It had depth of badness."
Really, the whole thing is worth quoting, but I'll refrain. this choice bit, though, must be passed along.
"The plot is dolled up with lots of racist crap from the 'mystic east' and some really dumb psychedelic obscurantism. Under that layer of drivel is some nasty reactionary nihilistic bullshit masquerading as crusading idealism."
Ah, what a sweet rant. My only complaint is that it lacks detail.
Viv and I drove all over the north end today, looking at rentals. On our way up I snagged a car adapter for the Powerbook so I would be able to do that bluetooth-modem thing and get Google maps of our destinations on the fly; as it happened, I'd planned far enough ahead that I only had to go online while driving around twice.
We saw two that looked great, both on the very western edges of their respective neighborhoods, Magnolia and Ballard.
Afterward, we repaired for dinner to the Hi-Life, formerly a terrible dive known as the Ballard Firehouse (yes, I've played there, and yes, it sucked) for a pricey but yummy dinner. On our way out the door we ran into my long-ago ex-wife and spent the rest of the early evening playing catch-up over a walk through old Ballard and drinks.
We have tentative showings on the two most promising places Monday night.
While perusing this fascinating analysis of the reported use of airplanes during the notorious Tulsa race riot of 1921, I came across a reference to the black community of "Wybark, Oklahoma," which Google and Google Maps report to be located somewhere in the precincts of Muskogee. This newsletter reports that the community "was located at Section 6 Township 15N Range 19E in Muskogee county (north of Muskogee)."
I find it interesting that Google Maps apparently include historical data, as the same reference notes that "Wybark, Oklahoma does not appear on the Oklahoma maps of today."
This AOL Hometown page describes the community thusly in a list of "African ghost towns" in the Oklahoma region: "WYBARK---Established in 1890, though settled a bit earlier, Wybark was 4 miles north of Muskogee. The town operated a post office from 1890 to 1940. It is believed to have absorbed some of the old settlement of North Fork though no remains of that town are noted. The town faded in the 1940s."
I'm intrigued. The exhaustively researched genealogy that Quentin Whybark worked up in the early nineties clearly implied unexplored and lost Whybark family branches, including Civil War era references to a doctor, if I recall correctly, who may have chosen the Confederacy instead of the Union. All of the Civil War era information centers on the area around Marble Hill, Missouri, where the second-generation American Whybark settled while the area was still under the control of Spain.
I wonder if this lost Oklahoma hamlet relates to that unexplored branch of family history, or if the town's name could possibly have arisen independently. It seems awfully improbable for the name to have an independent etymology.
A Florida-based Goodyear blimp crashed late Thursday, during a storm. I heard about this but was remiss in blogging it, as my referral logs note.
This is the second such incident I have blogged, although the other incident involved the LA-area blimp. I regret not snagging that pic, so, uh, sorry, CNN. It's linked, if you care.
The P-I's Buzzworthy scores bus link of the month for pointing out Seattle Bus Monster, a Google Maps hack intended to simplify navigating the vexing but data-rich resources of Metro Online.
When I turned to look at the clock, I noted, with some astonishment, that it was 4:00 am. I did not feel sleepy, but considered the situation and with mild anxiety decided I should try to get that additional two hours of sleep. Despite my dread, I soon drifted off. The dream resumed, apparently having moved forward by a scene or two in my absence. Vivian and I were in a darkened theater. I was aware that the skater-rabbit was also in the audience, but not sitting with us. I do not recall what was on the stage or screen, whichever it was.
As the entertainment moved toward a conclusion, I noted that I appeared to be experiencing an annoying drip, striking my head occasionally. At first I ignored it, but as the frequency increased I became aggravated. As I brusquely rubbed the damp away, I became aware that others in the audience were growing restive as well. In fact, an increasing number of the audience were also experiencing intermittent drips.
Puzzled, I looked about just as the drips turned into a constant rain. I recall looking up at the ceiling of the theater in time to be dazzled by the crack and flash of a lighning bolt amid lowering clouds. Puzzled, I was pleased to note that I had not neglected to bring my travel umbrella with me into the theater, and as Viv and I made our way out, we huddled under the umbrella until I snagged an apparently forgotten umbrella of my own.
We made our way out into the hall of that same old building I had hurried though earlier and realized that the rain was apparently confined to the cavernous spaces of the theater. Curious, we made our way out of the building and onto what I took for a wrought iron balcony, clinging to the side of a curving wall of old, but quite tall, buildings. Far below us, a narrow street filled with human traffic of all kinds - pedestrians, cabs, carts, all josting.
Up the sides of this picturesque urban canyon, a system of openwork iron walkways webbed the surface of each building. Together they created a multilevel sidewalk system several stories high, using the technology of late nineteenth-century fire escapes. Everywhere, people hurried about their business.
Viv and I climbed the one or two levels up from our first location to reach the roofline. As we stood and looked, we saw that this warren of interconnected and quite old buildings stretched away into the distance, no building being particularly taller than other. The effect was of looking across a large, flat surface made up of hardback books of varying thicknesses, all laying flat and densely fitted to form a sort of mosaic.
As we looked across this plane of roofs, we noticed a small cascade of water pop out and arc down into the hurrying throngs from a roof to our right. As we turned to observe it, more lines of water arced out. We reversed the direction of our gaze, to look behind us. The surging water from the previous dreamfragment had reached the level of the roofs on our side of the street. It roiled toward us even as the leading edge of the water crumbled the rooflines to our left and right.
As we looked out, we didn't see the tops of the buildings we'd hurried through. Only the swelling surface of the water fronted by the surge of debris was visible. Below the new sea buildings collapsed in cinematic grace, bricks spiraling away from centuries of mortar in slow motion. Eruptions at the surface marked the final escape of pockets of air, furniture and bodies popping into the daylight before drifting toward our new, temporary Niagara.
The water thundered over the roof in a stampede, charging out into space to curve gracefully down upon the city. Holding each other by the edge of the cataract, we felt the building give.
Last night was largely occupied with an epic nightmare which took place in two discrete parts. I awakened at 4:00 am, miserable from the experiences in my head, before fearfully drifting into another sleep which contained a direct continuation of the original dream.
It being several hours later, I only retain fragments of the dreams. Here is what I recall.
With a coworker, I am looking out the window of a nineteenth-century building at a curving section of lowland riverbed. on a bank above the river, closest to our perch, an old, narrow highway runs directly beneath the front of this brick building. The building is warped with age and gives one the sensation of drunkenness as one navigates its' tilted floors.
On the highway below is an inching mass of cars, all heading upriver but not making any progress. Vendors hawk wares to the miserable inhabitants. Curiously, all the cars are from the mid-seventies or earlier, great land-yachts in which families anxiously bounce like racquetballs in an empty court.
The riverbed is a mass of glistening mud, with no running water to be seen. As we watch, a flake-green Grand Torino comes roaring around the bend upriver, roostertailing mud at seventy, madly slewing in the semiliquid gumbo of the vacated river's home. It's clear the driver is about to lose control of the car, and I turn to my companion and note this, saying "Watch, he's gonna lose it at the bend."
Sure enough, in slow motion,the car slews up the banked side of the river, spins madly, and rolls goopily several times before coming to rest in a cloud of steam, upside down, just at the edge of our sight lines upriver. The population of the traffic jam appears not to have noticed.
Then, in quick sequence, the river is suddenly host to a parade of huge American cars, barrelling upriver in a manner similar to the unfortunate Grand Torino. They bounce off one another but most avoid losing control as spectacularly as the first car. Lincoln Continentals and 1948 Dodge hearses and long, low Cadillacs jostle through the mud at seventy miles an hour. Suddenly, before the turn, a Coupe De Ville goes into a long, lazy slide that slams the vehicle against the rootball of an overhanging tree, catapulting the car, in pieces, into the stream of cars. Chaos ensues.
Cars spin into each other and roll over one another, somersaulting as they shed axles, wheels, windshields, body parts. A sequence of three crushed cars spins lazily downriver under our window, maple leaves in a summer eddy. As we gaze down into them, we can see trapped families struggling to claw their way through the dismembered remains of their beloved, pounding on rear windows and windshields in desperation.
We recoil in horror, and when we turn back to the the window it is in response to an horrific sound, a grinding and pounding much louder than the current of autos had provided moments before. We rush to the window to observe that the water of the river has returned with great speed and force, wiping away the mass of cars in an irresistible onrush. The cars in the riverbed were escapees from the downstream traffic jam who had gambled on beating the incoming wall of water. As we look out, the water rises rapidly until it laps the sill of our second-story window, and we turn to flee, slamming rickety wooden doors behind us in a futile attempt to stem the tide.
As we flee into the interior of the warren-like building, retreating from windows and doors, it grows dark, and we appear to have entered sections of the building long forgotten. We stumble over the detritus of the past one-hundred-and-fifty years of American life, from cowboy-themed table lamps and defunct, dusty console televisions to rotted, weatherbeaten wagon wheels and rusted muskets.
Behind us, a door slams open and a young man of the most peculiar appearance comes uncertainly into the junk-cluttered hall. He carries a skateboard and wears a green hoodie, unzipped. At first glance he appears to have a skinny frame topped by long unkempt hair, but as he half-hops forward, it becomes apparent that he is some sort of human-rabbit hybrid, his lop-ears and long fur fooling the eyes into seeing the mane of a seventeen-year-old pot-smoking skateboard dude.
The water bursts through the door behind him, and I awaken.
(I hope to detail part two in a separate entry.)
Paul is spending his summer blogging for Global Voices Online, a roundup that he draws from this infinitely expanding blogroll.
I teased him about how attractive he will be as a Wall Street analyst after marinating in all that bad news for a summer.
Following last night's West Coast wide tsunami alert, I was pleased to spot this inspired teaser on the front page of today's P-I .
MeFi thread on the Sonora Aero Club Mysteries. Zeppelins + crazy nonsense technology + German immigrant engineers wandering around the Sonora Desert. Can't wait to read it! My first Blimp Week post in many moons!
Just finished Janet Malcolm's gripping and sympathetic Someone Says Yes to It ,which begins as an overdue exegesis of Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans before veering into a sympathetic portrait of the writer and her technique, concluding with a bang-up tale of academic intrigue. Alas, the piece does not appear online that I could uncover.
It appears in the New Yorker issue dated June 13 and 20, 2005.
The piece communicated to me what two years of intensive art historical information failed to regarding Stein's appeal to the moderns, and as it was surely intended to, awakened a personal sense of interest in the famously hard-to-read writer's work.
Stacey has posted on how we spent our Saturday.
It involved Stacey, Greg, Viv and I cooking (mostly me and Stacey in the kitchen) a big ol' mess of ropa vieja. It was yummy, we drank a bunch of mojitos and some Spanish riojas I had brought. I was surprised that neither Greg nor Stacey knew of my Dad's thirty-plus year hobby of winemaking and collecting, and we discussed that a bit, among many many things. I have known Greg and Stacey now just a bit longer than Viv and I have been married, and I really enjoy their friendship and company. This was a happy cooking experience and I hope we have the chance to tackle some other unknown culinary terrain.
Tom shares his well-honed Outlook Tactics, and Windows-based Outlook users would be well advised to give it a readthrough. I have had conversations with Tom about this in the past, and this set of approaches he outlines is well thought through (except for his inadvisable archive deletions - this is someone who may never have employed CYA as a work tactic).
Of course, I also feel compelled to note that Tom's done a bit of customization; hopefully, as he's on the other side of the Great Passport Wall (a topic which I have tweaked Tom about in the past) some Outlook team members will implement his customizations as a default.
There is little like the anxiety of watching a laptop fall to the floor when one's hands are full.
This AskMe thread begins with a plaintive cry into the dark void of space concerning a series of late seventies sci-fi coffeetable books, and uncovers a secret universe.
It's intermission at the kabuki show. We just saw 'Tied to a Pole,' in which two rascally servants contrive ingenious ways to drink the master's sake while tied to a pole or with their hands behind their back.
The use of bondage as a theme in a play which the program notes decribed both as stemming from an older theatrical tradition than kabuki per se and as having premiered in 1914 1916 was striking, to me.
The play provided a kind of acrobatic astonishment, as the actors traded off performing dances of increasing apparent complexity and difficulty as they mimed drinking sake while tied up.
I was also struck by the use of physical bondage as a comedic device which literally makes visible the feudal bonds of master and servant. By employing a visible metaphor for the relationship, the play provides an entertaining model for its' intended audience. It shows how to resppnd with astonishing grace to the demands of heirarchy while simultaneously accomplishing the personal and pleasurable goal of getting drunk on the master's sake.
Finally, at one point, I was surprised when the characters employed 'rock, scissors, paper' to settle a difference of opinion. Where did the game originate? How long has it been around?
Sumit's unexpected-by-me memorialization of his recently deceased wife, Kathryn Oates, 1970-2005, caught me utterly off guard and prompted a solid half-hour of spastic and vocal weeping which disturbed at least one of our cats, and prompted insistent, worried questions from my own wife. Sumit's characteristic grace and intelligence are present in his eulogy for her. Listen closely, though, for his shining words cloak his pain. I feel it nonetheless.
Viv was rightly mystified at my reaction - after all, Sumit is not a close friend, and I did not even know that he was married. Her concern is well-grounded. My grief is both sympathetic and personal. It's a direct reaction to my own experiences of loss, and as Sumit's blog material is generally not personal, the post caught me unawares. I was immediately propelled into an accelerated experience of my own concerns and fears about the inevitable experience of losing my own loved ones.
We looked at a house this early afternoon that was amazingly huge and amazingly far away - for just a bit more than our base planning budget, we could afford a nearly 4000 square foot house - in Kent. As it happened, the home actually is within eyeshot of Greg's parents' house. We also have two pre-approvals in hand, with each lender noting that we could qualify for significantly larger loan amounts if we wanted. For now, we're keeping it small and sane, though.
after an in explicable interregnum, bloglines is operable upon the Treo, thanks be to God. My newly longer commute allows nearly twenty-four hours of blog postings to be despatched whilst en route.
Alas for the limitations the Palm broswer places on moblogging.
Note to the League: I will post links to moblog tools I use. I believe our inductee may have some use for them.
Tanggentially: I may be in a suit-wearing mood, but it's too early to say. Said suit would be a black early-sixties sharkskin, very two-tone. I lack a hat.
For over a year, I have played music with Greg and Karel on Thursday nights.
Karel has had a raft of scheduling conflicts, and so we have rescheduled. Tonight, that meant that I had the pleasure of watching the Friends spinoff Joey for the first time.
It's truly no wonder that Thursday nights were originally selected for practice.
Alright, one more thing before I crack the snoozer book. We're going to one of the kabuki shows this weekend at the Paramount, and I can't wait. I think I may have attended a kabuki performance around 1978 in Japan, but I do not have a clear recollection of it, and it may simply be a false memory. So far I have avoided my customary research binge, and thus retain nearly perfect ignorance about the form, save the most general facts: relatively old theatrical tradition, only male performers, etc.
I'm uncertain if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a rare thing, and that piques my interest. Should I retain this relative degree of ignorance, I hope I shall be able to use it to really look at the performance and form hypotheses that I can later analyze against all that tasty knowledge I'm now consciously avoiding.
I suppose it's possible that this may also lead to an opera visit, as Viv has previously expressed interest in the form, while I have seen enough to know I don't care for it.
You know, I've mentioned this before, so forgive me. The SIFFbloggers are really going to town over there - four, five posts a day, comments, building traffic, the whole schmeer. It makes me so proud.
Sniff.
When Matt and Bart both remark on a show, I think it must mean something.
Matt, I'm sorry I am tardy with the details of your assignment. I believe I intend to blog it, and what with various housing-related things and my suddenly hyperactive social life, I have been procrastinating furiously.
I spoke with the patriarch of the family that owns our building. The family bought it from Fred Anhalt, the architect (in the creative sense) and builder of the place, when he went bust subsequent to the Depression in the late nineteen-twenties. At least one, possibly two generations of this family have grown up in this apartment building. However, my understanding is that this patriarch - a wonderfully sweet and understanding man, my favorite landlord ever - is now alone in the family in his desire to retain the building.
The prospective buyer is a real estate management company which currently owns one Anhalt, and has chosen to manage the building as Fred Anhalt would have, as a rental property. That building is among the most carefully maintained of all the Anhalts in the neighborhood. However, the care which has been lavished on that building is reflected in the rent - apartments notably smaller than ours rent for about 1.5k, quite higher than our rent.
Stay tuned.
In other news, Apple squeezes underperforming chip partner by making public announcement confirming years of rumors. Mac geeks dispirited; Intel, Apple, IBM stock down. So far no one I have read has asked: what does this mean for the G5 Xbox?
It won't be me, because I could care less.
whoo dawgies! sometime in the last, um, hour, the two-hundred-thousandth site visitor looked in upon us, presumably in response to the previous link-oriented post. Welcome, post-two-kay site visitors!
Attn: VU nerds. totally fuzzy is said to contain the entirety of the Quine Tapes. This is unverified by y.t.
Y.T. does own the box set and it is among his mostest favoritest musics. [thankee, neighbor.]
Viv and I spent the day tear-assing around West Seattle looking at rentals. Our apartment building is for sale, and we're already actively looking for a house to buy, so we've decided to move as soon as possible into a rental house. We have not had a lease here for nine years, so as soon as any sale goes through, we're, ah, well, I'm sure you can fill in the vulgarity.
It will suck to leave this place, though. While I am sick to death of apartment dwelling, and eagerly anticipate dwelling in a place in which sunlight actually reaches the interior, I dearly love this building, and all the buildings that Fred Anhalt erected hereabouts some eighty years ago. It's just not realistic to expect to find a place this size in another Anhalt, and while we certainly will take a look at what's available in Anhalts, four years ago they were running a solid 20% premium over other 1920s condos. I can't imagine that that's changed much, as there is a solidly finite supply of Anhalt units in Seattle, and an apparently infinite demand for real estate.
Last week we looked at at least three houses that were absolutely appalling, each well under 1000 square feet in interior space, nearly collapsing, and stinky like old socks, cat feces, or other repugnant material. Each one of these houses was priced at a clearly insane $250,000.
This morning in bed, I awakened and cranked out a Filemaker database to track listings. I combed the Sunday paper and the online listings for houses that met our minimum spec, and populated the database with the listings that might fit. As I showered, Viv called and gave the listers a quick rundown designed to narrow the choices. By the time we were ready to leave, we had about twenty houses to check out.
We started in West Seattle. I self-consciously used my cell phone's newly-hacked capability to act as a bluetooth modem for my laptop to spot each location in Google maps, and felt quite absurd on several locations as I called the rental agent from the lawn in front of the property's sign. We saw a predictable mix, from terrible - even tragic - to spectacular and underpriced. While we did not get to second base with any of the renters, we identified two possibilities.
Man, it's gonna be a busy month.
The DUN works quite satisfactorily, but MAN, does it eat the battery. Next time I will bring the power pack.
Success! (I think.)
Speed is better than expected - it sure seems faster than Blazer on the phone proper. Fie on thee, non-blanketed wifi coverage!
Ross Barkman's GPRS Info Page + Shadowmite's DUN patch + a TreoCentral thread might yield a BT modem. We'll see.
A solo dinner at Hana tonight with a nice bowl of chirashi and the New Yorker.
Fortunes lined the walls upstairs. We had one in our doorbell frame for years but just noticed it was missing the other day.
There was a column in the New Yorker about a man who is responsible for a significant chunk of the fortunes found in American fortune cookies.
I have just adjusted my rising time, to my bitter early morning regret. Mornings are for people that underestimate sleep.
Further news in the Canadian Bigfoot invasion includes the information that ex-Runaway Cherie Currie is in on the hunt.
Surf Guitar 101 2005 MP3 Compilation, via MetaFilter. Fire up the download engines and ignite the tiki torches.
