Today was the day that my expansive Aviator post was to flow. The bane of life, television, has interfered. Damn the tube, I say. Damn it to the depths of hell.

Somehow, synchronicity arranged that the distraction would be the Tom Hanks flick The Terminal, where one supposes the aviator would spend some time.

The film introduces an interesting, slightly throwaway plot element: Hanks’ character has come to New York in search of the autograph of one Benny Golson, a man pictured in a famous portrait taken in 1958 in Harlem.

There is a wonderful hyperlinked exploration of the image itself, known as “Jazz Portrait, Harlem, 1958.” The shot was taken by Art Kane, and yes, Benny Golson is the man cited in the film.

Who is Steve Konscek, Supermarket Manager?

Well, for one thing, he’s managed at no less than 44 grocery stores over the past weekend, and brilliantly so.

TidBITS (#764/31-Jan-05) reports, or passes along, news that Apple has reconfigured the “auto-gouge” feature the product shipped with initially in build-to-order configs at the online Apple Store:

The 1 GB memory upgrade was originally a fairly ridiculous $475 when name-brand 1 GB cards of the same type can be found in the mid-$200s. The price now is $325, which is low enough that it’s more reasonable to have an Apple-certified technician perform the installation – especially when you consider that Apple will warranty that RAM and replace it if you have problems. (Self-installed RAM is your own problem, a problem that bit me with my PowerBook G4 and Panther.)

The wireless combination of Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme is now $100 instead of $130 when installed together. Upgrading the hard drive to 80 GB now costs $50 instead of $90.

On the realization that I would regret not going more than going even if it sucked, I took Viv to see the Firesign Theater show tonight at the Moore. It was… rough. Still, it was a pleasure to see the act. I chuckled when I noticed that an image of a shack being apparently twisted by an encroaching tornado used as an element of the show’s stage dressing had appeared within the month on either FilePile or tmbo.

Viv found the act confusing and the apparent confusion onstage regarding scripted bits and sound effects did not help to clarify things. Firesign’s material is always murky and it wasn’t reaching her. They did mostly new stuff, I think, with a few recorded bits that were vaguely familiar used as scene transitions. Adding to the problems were sound mix issues, including bad cues, over-amped mics, and so forth. The second act was largely a Nick Danger piece, with the customary post-modernist fooraw. There was only one brief multi-voice bit, which is a shame, because the layered speaking bits have always been my favorite part of their material.

It felt like a workshop performance, as if what we saw is going to evolve into a new album and a touring performance. As it happens, this was stop three of six.

Also: Firesign podcasting – a huge trove of downloadable mp3s, right here.

Nothing beats the crisp, clean taste of a cold Monkey Beer.

So, a while ago, I posted to MetaFilter about the hilarity that is “Ron’s First Goatse,” which I had seen at an interesting image-sharing site known, variously, as [this might be offensive] and also “themaxx,” after the site’s domain.

At the time, the site was a silent filepile imagestream mirror. I was mostly unaware of this when I posted to MeFi about the image; I had seen a lot of FP references in the imagestream, but I see a lot of the same images on BoingBoing, so I hadn’t connected the dots in my mind at the time.

Shortly after my post, the site’s maintainer and developer, known as themaxx, ran a graphic illlustrating the dramatically escalated bandwidth demands that were placed on the site after the MetaFilter post. Since that time, membership on the site has climbed, to what I estimate to be about 2000 members; many are apparently also MeFites and/or Pilers.

Apparently, over the last week or so, some sort of huge drama broke out on FilePile about themaxx’s mirror. See, FilePile evokes the inexplicably cultish “Fight Club,” and the first rule of FP is, well, you either know, or you know how to use Google, and frankly, I find the topic tiresome.

It’s been interesting catching glimpses of the dustup on [tmbo]. I have been chuckling about it all week, and a couple of days ago, I pointed this out to that expert provocateur, Danelope, who immediately frittered an hour of his life away constructing an animated fumetti.

Fumetti are photo-based comics, best known in the US as having been an importat element in the 1970s National Lampoon. This month, the form has been pressed into service with remixes of scenes from, mostly, The Lord of The Rings, and so Dan’s choice was tres au courant, if I myself did not recognize the film he repurposed. I do not have a copy of his animation, but will link to it when I find a copy.

In his animation, he made light of the dustup and provoked a storm of comments on [tmbo], notably including remarks from one “andre,” which is the first name of the Southern California-based programmer who originated FilePile. (Since this was posted, internal evidence makes it much less likerly that this andre is the FP guy).

Shortly after Dan’s posting, themaxx posted a monochromatic image, similar to the color image at the head of this post; he’d disconnected the mirroring.

The image at the head of this entry is what occurred to me as I watched all of this, chuckling, from the couch. The internet is like a slow-moving sitcom that you have to poke at and peer into to get the jokes.

A missive from my friend Jason:

Hello…

Something is happening in the produce section of your local Supermarket this weekend:

Jan 29 – 12:30 pm – Ballard Safeway – 8340 15th Ave NW
Jan 29 – 7 pm – University Safeway – 4732 Brooklyn Ave NE
Jan 30 – 12:30 pm – Capital Hill QFC – 523 Broadway E
Jan 30 – 7 pm – Everett QFC – 2615 Broadway

Thus, my vague Saturday plans appear to begin to sort of coalesce.

the hand collector, via everlasting blort.

Unreal Aircraft, via things, which I have been sorely slacking on.

Museum thief spirits away old crystal ball (timesonline.co.uk, December 11)

A RARE 16th-century crystal ball that belonged to a maverick consultant to Elizabeth I has been stolen from the Science Museum in London.

A man dressed in a long leather coat smashed a display case on the fifth floor and ran down flights of stairs and out of the museum before he could be caught by security guards.

The crystal ball, thought to be worth £50,000, was used by mediums and for curing disease. It belonged to John Dee, philosopher, mathematician and astrologer, who lived between 1527 and the turn of the 17th century. Dee became an authority on “angel magic” and beliefs that man had the potential for divine power.

The thief also took a statement about the ball’s use by the pharmacist Nicholas Culpeper, written on the reverse of ancient deed manuscripts in the mid-1600s. The theft happened on Thursday afternoon. Detectives are investigating whether the items were stolen to order.

Interestingly, this little tidbit was passed on to me by a reliable informant of things otherworldly who is known in these parts as Alice Dee. Co-inki-doink? I don’t think so.

Please note that the tsunami followed this theft shortly thereafter, as did the snowstorm of the century.

Here is a book by Dr. Culpeper, The English Physitian.

Lucky for England, it looks as though it’s easy to buy replicas of Dee’s crystal, although I personally suspect the good doctor favored a slightly less gothick mode of presentation. For some background on Dee, the John Dee Society would appear to be a good place to start. The John Dee Publication Project looks interesting, too, as it’s devoted to publishing electronic facsimiles of Dee’s primary source materials.

(Did you know that Armin Shimerman, the actor who played Quark on DS9, has published a series of novels featuring Dee as a character?)