How to Subscribe to TV Shows Using The Democracy Player, Bittorrent, and RSS, by Jesse Newland.
Seattle and ashes
Charles D’Ambrosio sketches scenes from a pre-boom Puget Sound – my good old days, chilluns – in The New Yorker.
UPDATE: I found the story, as I often do with D’Ambrsio, beautiful and evocative. Interstingly, I distinctly felt that this story was written in conscious dialogue with Alexie and Vollmann. Perhaps someday Vollmann will write of the Northwest directly.
UPDATE II: on Father’s Day 2016 I noticed that the new Yorker appears to have bitrotted this, and presumably other, old links. Fixed. This post gave me such a thrill when the author himself dropped by to express appreciation for my expression of appreciation.
Learn from Jon
Jon, who has been a bit quiet of late, makes up for it with disquisitions on the American left, his Christianity, and an unimpeachable list of tunes. Clearly, the man is, in fact, the Greatest Bus Driver in the World.
Seriously, I urge you to reflect on that list of music. It lends credence, as it were, and predisposed as I am to listen to Jon on things political it makes me reinspect my impulse to skip the religion component. Jon makes me think, and think hard.
But why does he think Billy is back on the sauce?
Bullet dodged
Happily, the Powerbook boots smoothy this morning and does not emit the aroma of a brewery, so I presume whatever intoxicant was preventing the machine from operating as expected last night has been metabolized.
Not again
As I seated myself on one of the new couches, beer and laptop in hand, the unfamiliarly slick surface and round arms led to a moment of discombobulation which resulted in a sploosh of beer over the keyboard and trackpad of the Powerbook.
At first, it appeared that all was well, but moments ago, the machine froze, and now it won’t boot.
Due to the move, I don’t know where all my diagnotic emergency CDs are. Bummer.
In anticipation of a sore back
Today, by some coincidence, we received both a new living room set and a new living room set, one a couch-chair combo in chocolate leather, one a bunch of flat boxes from Ikea. I have completed the build of a chair, a couch, and three shelving units, with two shelving units remaining. I started the day with a brisk round of wood chopping.
Viv wants to go out.
I think I’ll give the new couches a nap test.
Container ship aground south of Tijuana
[via Monkeyfilter] The full-laden containership M/V APL Panama beached in northern Baja Mexico on Christmas day. The ensuing mayhem has been amusingly & anachronistically CHRONICLED by correspondents unknown upon the PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN TO ME web-site of Countryman & McDaniel, attorneys-at-law.
Skating
This morning, Puget Sound awakened to an ice storm. Viv and I cautiously took the car about five blocks away before losing control of it on the ice and returning home. As I write this, the radio reports that I-5 offramps are blocked by jackknifed Metro busses.
The snow on our yard was beautiful in the dawn fog. When Viv and I stepped out of the car we took a few moments to listen to the chatter and song of literally hundreds of birds of all sorts in the trees around the house. Sparrows, chickadees, robins, a Steller’s Jay, crows, starlings, and possibly a pair of small brown woodpeckers were jostling for roost space in the tallest of our trees, singing and squawking and chasing one another through the branches and into the air.
Curious, I tried to record the birdsong on the Treo. The result was good enough to drive my cats crazy when played back inside the house, ears twitching and heads turning, seeking the source of the chirps and tweets. Sadly, I inadvertently nuked it from the card in attempting to get it posted herein.
UPDATE: e.nature’s multimedia bird ID guide helped us finger many of the avians we saw this morning.
S.est
Oz, indeed
Tara’s up to that memoir thing that blogs are so good at. So’s she. Check it out.