Timatollah |
|
 Comments, possibly informed. Tim Wilson Daytona Beach, Florida, USA timatollah@mackandtim.net Personal Homepage Professional Homepage Agenda Bender Dave Barry Bull Moose The Corner Defense Tech Matt Drudge Half Bakered Hit and Run Huffington Post Instapundit Kausfiles Mark Lane Ken Layne James Lileks Josh Marshall PaperFrog Virginia Postrel Shattered Buddha Mike Silverman Sploid Andrew Sullivan TPM Cafe Tapped Matt Welch Archives  |
Monday, September 01, 2003
Final Transmission "All these worlds are yours...." Oh wait. That's not right. But dig the crazy 2010 references! Okay, this is where it was going to say "I've moved," and all that good stuff. And, in fact, there is a new web site somewhere with a new URL and new blogging software all installed. Okay, the templates were still in development. And HTML/CSS visual design is not my strong suit. Visual design never was, from my first spirit-duplicated "Daily Planet" to the high-school magazine I edited to the college paper (called "thursday" when it came out on Thursday, and "monday" when it came out on Monday -- with a beautiful Cooper Bold Italic logo) I worked my way up through the ranks of, if a quasi-alternative university "community" paper could be said to have ranks. See, I do have pseudo-journalistic cred; i.e., like many other bloggers, I worked on a school newspaper way back when. And even some once-upon-a-time leftist cred: Remember the "process discussions"? But, to be honest, I'm currently long on somewhat more important things to do and short on ways to increase the number of hours in the day. The school year has started in full regalia. So the relocation is suspended, and blogging is going on an extended hiatus. I'll likely rework the new site into some kind of mackandtim.com or .net kind of thing and use the stupendous amounts of disk space for photos, maybe audio. If I can ever figure out all this newfangled music production stuff. This has been an enormous blast. Two folks who I think are wonderful, but very distinct, examples of what human-sized blogging can be all about are Dragonleg, with his Shattered Buddha blog and Mark Lane with his Flablog. The permalinks over there show the rest of the first few tiers of my daily blog reads, and I think it's not hard to make a good case that some, even as I enjoy their writings, need to move up a few pegs from the agit-prop Trotskyite "for us or against us" attitudes that latch onto labelling a good dissection of stupid arguments as "Fisking" and calling the hateful or stupid -- or those just plain disagreed with -- as "Idiotarian." I'd like to think that that kind of thinking doesn't really have much currency in the world we live in where actual life-and-death decisions are made, at least as far as I can tell. But, the blogging world, like much human socialization, has its cliques. Like most human cliques most are horribly embarrassing when looked at with any degree of detachment. Especially the clique that is made up of all the ones who couldn't get into The Clique in high school or college or at work or wherever. I find that being on good terms with as many people as possible has a lot of advantages, and being part of any clique works against that. In the long run, I'll take the solo route if I can. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy being part of a gang of gay ex-Memphians who blog and who have several other attributes in common. I like that a lot, but it's not like we're going to take over the world. Or even fantasize about it. Let's put it like this: I think that those that I'm thinking of would at least be aware that they were fantasizing when they were. I think 9/11 is still very very important to be aware of. I think that to the degree we try to pretend like enough time has elapsed that its impact isn't relevant at this time is not, in many senses, wise. I believe, unfortunately, that radical Islam would not stop even if it controlled Mecca and Medina and Jerusalem -- power corrupts, etc. -- and that many of those who believe that way will continue to threaten free peoples -- or North Americans and Europeans and substantial numbers of Asians and most Latin Americans these days and increasing numbers of Africans, and the Israelis, if you think we're just all controlled by the big corporations and that representative democracy is a sham. Threaten with death. Threaten with destruction. Threaten with subjugation. While our individual, national, and global pasts may have brought us to this point, with plenty of wrong, hateful, and stupid moves on everyone's parts since time immemorial, nothing in that past justifies the actions of radical Islam. Those who believe that way base what they are doing on their traditions and their book, just as radical Christians in the USA continue to attempt to justify wrongful attitudes towards some on the bases of their traditions and their book. Luckily we live in a part of the world where those radical Christians are restricted to some degree by other traditions and other texts, like, say, the US Constitution. But there's only a short step from vouchers to madrassas, so it could happen here if we're negligent. Would/will those radical Christians try the same murderous tactics that the radical Islamicists do? Hopefully we never get to find out. But the radical Islamacists continue. Today, tomorrow, next week. I don't think they should not be allowed to achieve their aims. I think that free individuals should be allowed to worship as they choose, but that aggresive religions -- like collectivist or totalitarian or facist political movements -- must be restricted, preferrably by custom but, if necessary, by law. I regret that stopping them requires, at times, the use of physical violence. Or killing. I respect those who thoughtfully disagree with using so much or any force, but I prefer not to live in the first phases of several hundred years of a very dark age. Or that such an age come to be while we are alive to stop it. N.B.: "Radical Islam" does not equal "Arab." Saying "the Arabs this, the Arabs that" is just as stupid as "the Jews this, the Jews that." It doesn't fit. At least take the effort to pin things down to the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, the Egyptian government, etc. There is groupthink, but as long as there are individuals, attributing groupthink to attribute groups is, in fact, not accurate. Formal organizations with formal processes is one thing, but "the Jews," "the Arabs," "the Gays," etc. just doesn't cut it for me. Exceptions matter. Individuals matter. Individuals are all that matter, in the long run. Groups are just accidents of attributes that belong to individuals. Sorry if that is disrespectful to your individual traditions. So don't forget 9/11. Don't forget that there really is a "they" out there that wants to kill "you." Just for being born where you were. Just for being who you are, whether that's American, gay, Jewish, or a female human who enjoys having sex. Much less all of the above. Okay, please forgive the rant, and please forgive this entirely too-sloppy exit. It's been fun not-working for you. Thanks to the regular few readers and to all those who made it this far. Blogging may resume at some future time, but don't hold your breaths. Breathe. Let go. Disappear. Thursday, August 28, 2003
Keir Dullea Says... "Did I say 'wonderful'? Uh, well, something is going to happen. Supposedly. With some luck." Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream..." Forty years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his noted speech. Read it here (from the site of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee). Thanks to Dragonleg for the reminder. Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Keir Dullea Says... "Something wonderful is going to happen." Like, maybe by the end of this coming weekend. No breath holding. Friday, August 22, 2003
The Shamalar Revolution In this delicious post, Agenda Bender gets onto one of the reasons any form of non-traditional me Tarzan you Jane you go fix supper coupling is a threat to the status quo. The nugget: the flowing sounds of Shalamar. It's in this last verse that [A Night to Remember]s overflowing heart brings the Los Angeles River to floodtide. We're so happy let's drink to the exes!Just remember, kids: If Mullah Omar knew you so much as liked this music, much less were expressing love that way, he'd shoot you without blinking his good eye. Thursday, August 21, 2003
Was It SoBigF? Headline currently at Drudge: "WEST FILE VIRUS CLAIMS ANIMALS AT DENVER ZOO... DEVELOPING...". Press to Israel: Bend Over and Take It Okay, I'm not so naive as to pretend that the Middle East conflict doesn't have long roots, nor will I pretend that both the Israelis and Palestinians don't have some if not many legitimate greivances with each other, with much of the rest of the world, etc. (If you ask me, the Palestinians, if they would stop and think for a moment, ought to have some pretty big beefs with many of the governments in the Arab world, for example.) So there was a cease fire. So someone -- and it doesn't seem any stretch of the imagination that that someone was connected to one of the Palestinian parties in the cease fire -- blew up a bus and killed, what?, 20 something people. So the Israelis went after a Hamas leader, killing several other people in the process. It would seem to this one sitting in the safety of his office halfway around the world that an appropriate headline might be: "Cease Fire Breaks Down After Suicide Attack." Instead, the headlines from wire service and newspaper and television web sites almost all seem to be along the lines of "Hamas Declares End to Cease Fire After Israeli Attacks." As if the attacks happened completely context free. It wouldn't surprise me if this had something to do with journalism-school approaches -- "Always use the most proximate event as the cause" -- along the same lines as similar non-intuitive to this non-journalist journalism practices -- "Always use the largest unit of measurement to describe epoch durations: If it happened yesterday the 31st, then say 'Last month'." Or maybe there really is an ensemble bias in the press tilting in favor of the Palestinians. The origins of that putative bias? I don't know. Could be a prediliction for quasi-socialism. The perception that Israel is a bully state. A snivelling toady attitude toward wanna-be (or real) dictators like Arafat. It's a mystery to me why it might exist, given that Israel, for all its faults, is a democratic nation whereas the Palestinian Authority is still essentially a Leninist-based one-party (one socialist-style party propped up for years by the Soviet Union and still unable to make it on its own without massive influxes of USA and European money) pseudo-government that will not, for whatever reasons (scared, confused, in cahoots) put down the terrorists that must, eventually, submit to legitimate governmental authority. Think about that for a moment: There could be, maybe even in our lifetimes, a legitimate government in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Would any legitimate government allow a bunch of armed thugs, many of whom are religious whackos, to dictate to the government what its domestic or foreign policies ought to be? No way. Remember: The reasonable, sensible, language-as-a-way-of-modelling-the-universe proximate cause of the end of the cease fire was the suicide bombing, not the Israeli retaliation. The organizations within the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority that support such actions have lost any credible reasons they might ever have had to exist. The USA and Israeli governments should do anything and everything they can to help factions within that territory to dominate and destroy the terrorists and the supposedly-legitimate groups they are "arms" of. I'm sorry, but I don't think there's any more room for negotiation with murderers. Maybe not "Ugh!" Ken Layne has additional/alternative details on yesterday's item (referenced below) about Phish bassist Mike Gordon, a boathouse, photos, and the nine-year-old daughter of a Hell's Angel's leader. Among those additional/alternative details: Segway rides, not just for the little girl, no boathouse to be behind, and no sneaking around. Here's hoping it was all just a big misunderstanding. I probably shouldn't have linked to Layne's piece in the first place -- and what the hell was up with the purported serious-media story he linked to being on Orlando's Channel 6's ("local news here") web site when it happened at Jones Beach? -- but I have to admit that there's something creepy about Mike Gordon that I've never been able to clearly identify. Still, I'm sorry for participating in whatever circus this was. Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Ugh! Phish bassist Mike Gordon is in trouble. Something about being behind the boathouse. To take "art photos." Of a nine-year-old girl. Whose father is a Hell's Angels leader on Long Island. Who he met at a Dead show. Story here (via Ken Layne). If it weren't for the fact that the father's "associates" may have roughed up Gordon already, this would have that episode of Law and Order where the parents let the comedian molest the little boy for muchos dineros written all over it. And it still might. Everyone except the cops seems to be tight-lipped about what happened. Creeped out yet? If not, there's always this (via Dave Barry). Of course, as creepy as both those stories, nether really comes close to that of the murderous bastards who hope to take over the world and killed about 40 people who were getting on with their lives yesterday. Thousands likely died around the world at the hands of less-organized murderers, but without coherence, without the cover of "my religion's better than yours," without trying to end what many of us think of as a life of freedom. Tuesday, August 19, 2003
The Latest "Insta-Crisis" Now that the phoney doctor/Republican generated Medical Malpractice Crisis in Florida has been temporarily settled, it's time for the Prison Overcrowding Crisis. Flablogger Mark Lane has several pieces (starting here, then scroll up) on the latest shenanigans from JEB! and his cronies. (Does the word "shenanigans" make anyone else think of Stubby Kaye? Shenanigans was sort of like Video Village for kids.) Lane has been on roll lately, with coverage and commentary over numerous topics, including lousy attempts at humor on the part of newspaper editorialists. I hate to break it to him, though, but hardly anyone reads those 19th century legacy/vanity publishing artifacts, possibly excepting around election time, and then with a large grain of salt. The Salad King Speaks Here, in today's New York Times (registration required). The Salad King owns Dressings and salsa and popcorn HUD was no acronym FOX is his target In the copycat court Or behind the wheel He is the salad king He can sue anything Monday, August 18, 2003
Not My Kid Today's Daytona Beach News-Journal has this story about parents griping that their kids who go to all-ages nights at local "night clubs" get roughed up when they act like total jerks in public. Believe me, I'm not defending bouncers: A bouncer I once knew who worked at an ABC Liquor/Lounge in Orlando was a complete loser. The sheriff's deputies knocked on my door one time at 6:00 a.m. in the morning to see if I knew where he was, because they had a warrant to serve him for bouncing someone too hard. Bouncers can be complete and total creeps. The story contains at least one reported instance of some kids definitely getting bounced too hard. But who are these loser parents who let their kids go to all-ages nights at these places. In my estimation, the same kind of parents who very rarely, if ever, see the evil that their little monsters do unto others. If I had a dollar for every time some perp's parents had uttered to some media tool the immortal words, "It couldn't've been our son," I'd be a rich man. Take a ride on the clue bus, los locos parentes, it very well could've been, and it very likely was. The local DJ is not sufficient reason for letting your budding criminals out of your sights. Quit letting your underage kids hang around bars, unless there's a really, really, good band playing. And if there is, then why don't you join them? It'll embarrass the hell out of them. Saturday, August 16, 2003
His Son, the Internet Humorist Were you alive in the 60s? If so, you likely remember Hello Muddah.If you remember that, you might be interested in the Paul Harveyesque "rest of the story" by Paul Lieberman of the Los Angeles Times regarding Camp Granada (actually Camp Champlain), the songwriter Allan Sherman, and his son, Robert Sherman, who actually wrote Mom-Dad-get-me-out-of-here letters from camp then later in life became one of those persons who comes up with... Humorous WWW Quizzes. My favorite Allan Sherman song goes On top of Old SmokeyBut that's not important now. Friday, August 15, 2003
End of the World, Part 42563 You know how some bloggers, even some favorite bloggers, crow about beating some famous Pulitzer-prize-winning columnist to the punch regarding some particular insight? Now ask yourself this? When it comes to something really important like this, who had the goods first? This blog or "this blog" by some famous Pulitzer-prize-winning columnist? End of the World, Part 42562 Devo is doing commercials for (the formerly Satanic, but much better now) Procter and Gamble's Swiffer brand of cleaning tools. Thanks to Dragonleg at Shattered Buddha for the link. Wanna see the commercial? Okay. It's your head. What's next? Some cruise line using Iggy Pop's Lust for Life in their commercials? Speaking of Iggy.... Agenda Bender offers some schwinging Iggy words on the mongo Northeast power outage. Speaking of power outages, it only took sixteen days (warning: The whole article is a link to send mail to the author) to get the power back on to some folks in Memphis after a storm there late last month. Our landlady who lives there was without power for eight days. In Memphis. In August. What's that smell? It's only the river. It's only the river. Thursday, August 14, 2003
East Coast, West Coast Politics. Ocean Guy, Somewhere on A1A (up towards Jacksonville Beach, I think), has some thoughts on what/how the Democrats might do some things differently to gain back his vote. (Remember: Linking to someone else's post doesn't constitute an endorsement of the ideas there; it does say that I think the ideas should be considered and not dismissed, though.) On the other side of the continent, out in the SF Bay Area, cranky male person Richard Bennett has what seems to be a pretty succinct analysis of who the players are in the world of California politics and its gubernatorial recall. (Again, I'm not endorsing his point-of-view, but from what I know about Golden State politics, there's something accurate about his listing of who the various power groups in the various parties are.) It's the Ekman Transport, Dammit The National Weather Service office in Melbourne, Florida, has an explanation of the upswelling phenomenon causing cold water temperatures along Florida's northeastern coast. It also has the image below. 
Water temperatures along Florida's east cost. Click here for a larger version at the NWS/Melbourne web site. See Cape Canaveral on the east coast? Its Delaware shaped county is Brevard County, and we're in Volusia County just north of there. Lighter shades correspond to colder water temperatures. It looks like the temperatures in Flagler County are even colder. NWS link via the Daytona Beach News-Journal, which has this story about the beachside coolness. Of course, the upside to all this is a great sea breeze. We had the windows open the other night. In August. That's surprising. Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Lost Attractions Mark Lane, of FlaBlog fame, linked (in this post) to the Florida Lost Tourist Attractions site which has a somewhat overlapping list with those mentioned in the similar list from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that I mentioned in this post (below). Among those on the master list at the FLTA site that I've been to are
There are several Daytona Beach attractions on the list I'm clueless about. Maybe Mr. Lane can fill everyone in. Construction Zone They've been putting in sewer (at last, no more septic tank) and new water lines into our neighborhood for the past few months. Here's a shot of the alley beside our place.  Apologies for the time stamp. Some moron must not know how to operate his own camera! Brrrrr If I had read this post at Shattered Buddha before getting into the water yesterday, I'd've known to expect the water temperature to be 59 degrees Farenheit. 59 degrees ! Brrrrr. I think the only colder ocean water I've ever been in was at Ogunquit, Maine, summer 1991. The air temperature was 95 degrees F., and the water temperature was 55 degrees F. Brrrrr. Tales of the Tails Yesterday, the New York Times was featuring this article on struggling traditional (i.e. pre-Disney) Florida attraction Weeki Wachee Springs (warning, slow-to-load Flash intro, but kinda fun in a cheezy way once it loads), the place with the "live mermaids." Trying to come up with some additional background on the place, a web search yielded these slightly different pieces (27 July 2003, 28 July 2003) from last month in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I've been to Weeki Wachee, but it was a long time ago. Sounds like few improvements have happened since. As usual, I'm kinda ambivalent about establishments like Weeki Wachee -- or Cypress Gardens -- going out of business. (The Journal-Constitution has this list of Florida attractions that have closed in the past twenty years.) By one set of considerations, they're just businesses, and businesses come and go as they're appropriate to the times and to the degree they can suck up your tax dollars (i.e., corporate welfare) to stay in business. But, the personal and human and nostalgia aspects pull me in a different direction. As the stories above make clear, the Weeki Wachee mermaids are real people, putting on a different and quirky -- and, yes, kitshcy -- entertainment. It sucks to see people lose their jobs. And there is some value in preserving something from times now past. I'm not saying corporate welfare for all such enterprises, but I'm hopeful that something can be done such that some of those attractions can find a way to keep going as relevant operations, maybe with a little help from the community and its governments. Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Remembering E Elvis died twenty-six years ago this week. Now, it's Death Week in Memphis. I mean "Please don't call it 'Death Week' " in Memphis. Okay, I mean Elvis Week. Let's tempt the copyright gods. The following is from Lester Bangs's Psychotic Reactions and Carburator Dung: ...and when I read that book [Peter Guralnick's Lost Highway] it reminded me more than anyone else of Elvis even though it was recommended to me by Richard Hell who said it was the best book he had ever read and when I asked him why he said it was because he admired the protagonist so much for his individualism and originality and integrity and all that: BUILD YOUR OWN WORLD AND BE, nobody's happy but maybe at least NO LONGER ALIENATED cause how can you be when nobody else is around course you're probably no longer human either or soon will lose what little grit and blood and marrow lingered on like that waxen old Elvis we all saw on that ghastly TV concert special of I guess one of his typical last stage shows in the waning days but then Madame Tussaud's ain't such a bad place to hang your hat for eternity and being a mummy is one way to live forever just like the Colonel said when some reporter asked him what was gonna happen now that Elvis was dead: "Why, nothin', son, it's just like when he was in the army!") so that even at his most grotesque there was still something of the Infinite about Elvis, something again perhaps extraterrestrial, even down to all the post-death indignities they submitted his poor corpse to I guess to get revenge for all those years everybody in the world wondered what the hell Elvis did all the time and nobody knew so now he's been demystified to the max as we read in the daily swillsheet how he died trying to squeeze out one more little turdlet sitting stool (god, that beats Lenny Bruce even, naked by his toilet with a needle hanging outa his blue arm! damn!) and the other nite on TV I saw Geraldo Revera who is obviously a case of advanced ringworm it's just impossible to way whose body's and while hoping the unlucky host to said worm ain't all of us we get to watch the worm grill that poor ole Greek croaker who wrote all those scripts for Elvis and Jerry Lee and everybody else in town and is now a fall guy if ever I was one and there was even talk of having Elvis's corpse dug up and the stomach analyzed for traces of drugs these two years on which led me to fantasize: Can you imagine anything more thrilling than getting to stick you hand and forearm through the hole in Elvis's rotted gus slopping whatever's left of 'em all over each other getting the intestinal tracts mixed up with the stomach lining mixed up with the kidneys as you forage fishing for incriminating pillchips sufficient to slap this poor sweating doctor 20,000 years in Sing Sing and add one more hot clip to Geraldo's brochure of heroically humanitarian deeds done entirely in the the interests of bringing the public the TRUTH it has a constitutional right to know down to the last emetic detail which they in time get as you pull your arm out of dead Elvis's innards triumphantly clenching some crumbs off a few Percodans, Quaaludes, Desoxyns, etc. etc. etc and then once off camera now here's where the real kick to end 'em all comes as you pop those little bits of crumbled pills in your own mouth and swallow 'em and get high on drugs that not only has Elvis Presly himself also gotten high on the exact same not brand but the pills themselves they're been laying up there inside him perhaps even aging like fine wine plus of course they're all slimy with little bits of the disintegrating insides of Elvis's pelvisElvis Aron Presley. R.I.P. Lester Bangs. R.I.P. Monday, August 11, 2003
Pathetic Pat Robertson Kit over at Paperfrog has this piece about that ugly Pat Robertson, his ugly praying for US Supreme Court justices to keel over and die, and his ugly business connections with now-deposed Liberian president Charles Taylor. I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but way back in high school, I dated a girl whose mom was ahead of the curve in terms of being part of that early small group who watched Robertson and his 700 Club television show. She was a sweet woman, but an over-the-top religious freak. Her idea of a fun on a Friday night at home was kneeling in prayer for several hours, maybe with some speaking in tongues thrown in. Then watching the 700 Club. Thanks to folks like her, and the money they gave him, Robertson got over the initial hump required to stay in the televangelizing business and have all that moolah stashed away somewhere. Sunday, August 10, 2003
The Gay Divorce AgendaBender has several posts (most recent, previous with a link back to, er, this blog (this blog, not Dave Barry referring to himself as "this blog"), more previous, and most previous) dealing with web-located negative comments about the new Episopalian bishop's having divorced his wife after he came out of the closet as a gay man. I have to add that, straight or closet-case, that Derbyshire guy at The Corner seems like quite the Drama Queen. After receiving some negative e-mail from people telling him to shut up, Derbyshire said: But I now know something I did not know 48 hours ago, or knew only vaguely and imperfectly: gay fascism is real, and strong, and determined. If this Political Correctness cannot be stopped, we are going to lose our freedoms.PC inanity can be real and irritating, but real threats to freedom like, say, not honoring Habeus Corpus -- or ongoing denial of basic human rights to, say, gay people -- are a lot more substantially troubling than PC inanity, if you ask me. Like I said, "Drama Queen." Linemen for Uncle Sam My brother-in-law -- actually it's Mack's brother-in-law, so, since there's no gay marriage in this part of the world, I guess that would make him my brother-out-law -- is also named Tim Wilson. He works for the phone company in eastern Oklahoma. One of his co-workers got called up to active duty. That guy's Air National Guard squadron, the 219th Engineering and Installation, is stationed in Qatar, keeping the lines of communication working over there. They've got a web site. Check it out. This is just a brief moment of remembering that there's still lots of military personnel on active duty right now. Children by the Million Sing for Alex Chilton When He Comes Round Meanwhile, back in Memphis.... Besides Prince Mongo selling his house (don't worry, he'll find another one in a neighborhood with more appropriate neighbors to irritate by his very presence), the local PBS station made a documentary about the Memphis garage sound of the 1960s, a sound that gave the world the Boxtops ("The Letter"), fronted by Alex Chilton, and The Gentrys ("Keep on Dancing"). The Commercial Appeal's John Beifuss has the story here. The entry title is from the song by The Replacements, of course. (Bob was such a loser.) Saturday, August 09, 2003
We Recommend We finally got around to watching Standing in the Shadows of Motown tonight. My, what a nice little film. It's the story of the Funk Brothers, the under-recognized and under-appreciated musicians who served as the Motown house band for so many records. How many? My four-CD boxed set "Hitsville, USA" has about twenty or more cuts per disk, and it wouldn't surprise me if many, if not most, of the Funk Brothers played on just about each and every track. And, they also played some songs for the competition. Their involvment in soul and R&B music in the late 50s, the 60s, and the 70s is deep and broad. The film is splendidly filmed. It's not one of those crusty Ken Burns style documentaries; it largely consists of the artists in question being allowed to talk about what they did and to play the music they were so instrumental (heh) in creating. There are some good front performances by Me'Shell NdegéOcello, Shaka Khan, Bootsy (Collins), Ben Harper, and Joan Osbourne, too. Addendum: In trying to quickly get that post up last night before I fell asleep, I neglected to mention the quality of the sound editing. Even though we only have a lowly Dolby Pro Logic system, you can still tell when the sound editing of a music-centered flick has been approached with the visual editing in mind. I thought this film's sound editing was excellent. The image would shift to the guy playing the piano, and the piano would come up slightly in the mix, going back to the original level gradually after the piano left the frame. I contrast that with the Phish flick we recently watched, where the sound editing and the image editing seemed completely disconnected. Friday, August 08, 2003
Global Surf Report Rabbit Blog's Heather Havrilesky has this piece on the latest in cinema and television programming with surfing as a focus or aspect. I'm no surfer: only a poseur. I never really surfed. I own a boogie board and some flippers from the mid 80s, but I hardly ever use them anymore. I still love plain old body surfing, though, and it's nice to live just a few blocks from the beach. My favorite body surfing experience of my life happened when I was in southern California for a job interview in August or September of 1985. It was late-afternoon on a Sunday after I had spent all day flying east-to-west, Boston-to-LA-via-Detroit. I was staying in Simi Valley near where the interview was the next day. Right across the Coast Range was Zuma Beach in Malibu. I think I had taken my body board and paraphenalia and had it with me -- it all used to fit in a hanging-suit bag -- but I wasn't using it. Waves were about four or five feet and pretty clean. It was a cloudy, kind of cool day, and the beach was, for all purposes, deserted. The memory of the thrill of my body hanging over the edge, sticking out, of what real surfers would consider a pissy little wave remains with me today: To be suspended in the water and see this more-than-a-yard drop from the wave you're riding to the water in front of the wave. I've rarely had opportunity to play in such a situation where the waves were so beautiful. It was heart pounding, I got whomped to the bottom once or twice, and I couldn't deal with more than a few good rides, but I've never regreted having done so. I didn't get the job, but I've always been grateful for the interview. Thursday, August 07, 2003
More Upswelling Several weeks ago, I noted how cold the local ocean water temperatures had been. Apperently, it's not just a local phenomenon: Here's a story from the Washington Post about unseasonably cold water temperatures on mid-Atlantic beaches. Why Hate Big Media? Why hate big media? Because despite having enormous human and financial and computational resources, big media outlets behave stupidly enough frequently enough. What am I talking about? For one, earlier today, a headline at Slate had the word "masturbation" as "masterbation." Like the punch line of a joke about a guy who's really good at putting worms on fishhooks. Sure, they corrected it quickly after I sent them an e-mail, but what am I, a proofreader for Microsoft's online magazine? Now, currently on the front of the CNN website, is this teaser paragraph for this story on the California gubernatorial recall: California's gubernatorial recall race took another twist today when Rep. Darrell Issa, who largely bankrolled the effort, decided not to run. Over the past two days, Sen. Dianne Feinstein decided not to enter the race. Then actor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would. Today, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said he would run for Gov. Gray Davis' job if the recall passes.That last sentence makes it sound like there's going to be two elections: One to see if Davis gets recalled, then a subsequent one to elect a new governor. But there's only one election being held. One question on the ballot will ask whether Davis should be recalled; a second asks voters to choose one candidate who will replace Davis if the recall question passes. The second question is moot if the recall fails. The construct "would run ... if the recall passes" just doesn't cut it. Surely a company like CNN with Time-Warner's resources can afford to pay top-notch graduates of journalism schools who can communicate the reality of a situation accurately, even to readers like me. I don't mind typos, weird grammar, or misspellings on an individual's blog. I get site hits for having misspelled "Kobe Bryant" as "Kobe Bryan" and "American Splendor" as "American Slendor". But I'm doing this for free, excepting the reader's valuable time. The people who put together Slate and CNN and the New York Times get real money for doing what they do, so it's fair to hold them to a higher standard. Addendum: My lover/partner/unindicted-co-conspirator tells me, correctly, that the punchline to the fishhook joke would be "masterbaiter." Sigh. Remember, there's a universal law -- I think it's Cohen's law -- that says every attempt to publicly correct (screw the split infinitive) another's grammar and/or spelling results in one making a grammatical or spelling mistake of one's own, with "mispelling" being particularly likely. High-Tech Phishin' This article in today's New York Times (registration required) describes how Vermont-based jam band Phish used technology to oull off last weekend's big rock show in Maine. The key technologies: Walkie-talkies and Wi-Fi. And MP3s. The concert organizers collaborated with Apple to open the House of Live Phish, a sort of next-generation Internet cafe. Using one of 20 iMacs, concertgoers could not only surf the Web and send e-mail, they could also burn free custom CD's from the 154 live Phish tracks that were loaded on each computer.To that, add the following instructive words to any engineer of any form: In the end, It was all about the music, but technology allowed the artistic experience to bloom far beyond the stage and, more important, allowed the logistics behind the festival to come together. Hadden Hippsley, Phish's production manager, may have best captured the festival's overall approach to technology.There's a lesson there. Governor X Today's Washington Post has this feature article on some who would be governor of California. It's not just Arnold, Arinanna, Gary, and Larry. Update: South Knox Bubba reports yet another candidate. Three Little Words Regular readers -- the few, the brave -- know that I'm partial to reading National Review Online's group blog, The Corner. I think it's a fun, energetic, read, I share some, certainly not all, of the participant's foreign-policy perspectives, and I like the fact that the participants are identified as individuals and take each other to task, disagree, joke internally, etc. Maybe it grows out of all those episodes of Firing Line I used to watch. Hell, I even read Up from Liberalism. I certainly don't subscribe to their many, if any, of the predominantly expressed opinions at The Corner about domestic matters, particularly social issues. The recent events within the Episcopal Church (disclaimer: not my church. I was raised a Baptist by my mom and switched myself to Methodist when I was in the 4th grade. I'm still technically a member of the Centerville, Tennessee, United Methodist Church, which means they get money from their local Conference because I'm in their head count, which is fine with me. I'm formally agnostic, strongly inclined towards skepticism about all things supernatural. Matter evolves from nothing, through mechanisms we may or may not be able to understand. Life evolves from matter. Spirit is an attribute of living things, not the other way around. One man's opinion, etc.), though, have brought forth comments in that blog that I don't care for, particularly John Derbyshire's comments. I won't quote them; I won't "Fisk" them; I won't give them credence beyond a link, and simple respect and sorrow, pity even, for someone who feels very differently about something than I do, yet something that I'm doubtful he has any real knowledge of beyond his reported "disgust". Similarly with Lileks's comments today. Both his and Derbyshire's comments are based on the premises that wedding vows are wedding vows, that children's needs overrule all, and that by divorcing his wife, the mother of his two daughters, when he acknowledged his homosexuality, Bishop Robinson displayed an unfitness for -- well, if you read them it sounds like "life as we know it" -- the clergy, much less being a bishop. Also, today, someone at The Corner linked to Lileks's comments mentioned above. Ironically, they didn't choose to link to Lileks's recent sensible comments on gay marriage. I respect folks' differing points of view, and I take them at face value reflections of what they take as their own deeply held feelings and beliefs. I'm not in their skin: who am I to say that what they say isn't genuine and heartfelt. I stronly believe in the value of vows, in responsibility towards created children, etc., but I also understand -- and I think I understand this in a way that Derbyshire or Lileks likely never will -- that a gay man leaving a relationship with a woman, formal marriage or not, children existent or not, because he recognizes that he is a gay man is substantially different than a man leaving his wife for another woman. Their inability to see that difference -- I believe it exists -- goes beyond their sincerity in their comments. It gets to an inability to imagine something about aspects of one's being when those aspects are 180 degrees against the widely-held social and biological currents. There's every evidence that Bishop Robinson was a responsible divorced dad. That some men in the same situation are irresponsible is no condemnation of this individual or of individuals to come. Respecting the intrinsic rights that gay people have, and that ought to and will eventually be respected, will not, cannot, denigrate the lives of heterosexual people. Respecting and acknowledging gay relationships with legal and social institutions like marriage will not, cannot, take away from the institution as people already honor and respect it. It will change who gets to shove whom around, and that is a good thing. People who aren't heterosexual don't need to spend their waking hours worrying about who is coming for them or their loved ones, or why they aren't treated the same as everyone else. That new shades are added to the pallet doesn't remove the value of the ones already there. The sky is not falling. Western Civilization is strengthened, not denigrated, by respecting everyone's human rights, not reserving certain rights for individuals with selected attributes. Get. Over. It. Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Reopening Paddy's Bar was one of the locales on Bali in Indonesia that were hit by yahoo suicide bombers last October. Just a day or so before yesterday's new bombing in Jakarta, Paddy's reopened, a big "fuck you" to the terrorist assholes. Story here from the Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Austraila). I saw the story yesterday in the wire-service world-news section of the dead-tree Fort Pierce Tribune, published before yesterday's bombing, but didn't get around to finding it in on the web until now. Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Bears: On the Charts, with a Bullet The gay-male bear subculture is on the charts with a bullet. Andrew Sullivan has this piece called "Da Bears" up at his web site; it's also availabe here at Salon, but you have to click through an ad to read it there. What's surprising to me is that Sullivan is writing about the bear thing as if it's the latest thing, when, in fact, it's been around for over ten years. The Resources for Bears website, started by Bob Donahue, has been up since 1994. (Bob was one of the co-authors of the Bear Code, which was the original online "code." Ironically, the 'B' for Bear in the code has been ignored by the code-come-lately Blogger Code.) It grew out of the Bears Mailing List, which was started in the early 90s (I think) by Roger Klorese and Brian Gollum. (See correction below.) The Bear Community, in fact, probably has as much origins in the online communities of pre-WWW -- mailing lists, Usenet, and BBSs -- as it does in the real-life development of Bear Clubs, Bear Bars, Bear Magazines, etc. The aspects of bears vs. the rest of gay culture described by Sullivan have been noted by bear types for as long as bear types have been corresponding with each other: hair vs. waxed, flannel vs. silk, gregarious vs. standoffish. And the way mass-market gay media focus on the latter of each of those pairs as a projected norm, instead of just letting people be who they are. That some gay men are hairy, or large, or like cotton, or get off on masculinity shouldn't come as a surprise, but it does come in contrast to other images and ideas presented, and not only in gay media. Perhaps the best line in the piece is, "Straight people love their gay people flaming, or easily cordoned off from the straight experience. Bears reveal how increasingly difficult this is." But it's not just straight people, of course, to whom this applies. It also applies to a goodly number of gay people. Which brings us back to the eternal problem of true diversity: recognizing it and accepting it. Even within the bear group, there is wide diversity of attitude, employment, background, and just about any other factor you find except the ones used to "define" the group. I'd seen Sullivan's article available, but hadn't read it yet. When the conservative types at National Review's The Corner are linking to Sullivan and describing the bear crowd as "Da Bears," it might be the beginning of the end, so I finally took a look. Turns out "Da Bears: Behind a Hairy Sub-Sub-Culture" is the title of his piece at his web site, whereas the title at Salon is "I am bear, hear me roar!". "The Bear Phenomenon" would've been better than either, to this headline writer, but no one's asking me. All we need now is a link from the InstaPundit, a mass-market novel featuring bears, a television show on TNN -- or Spike or whatever it's called -- and the bear trip will be completely absorbed into the larger culture. After ten-plus years, not just yesterday. Addendum: A correspondent writes that it was Steve Dyer and Brian Gollum who founded the Bears Mailing List in 1988. Roger Klorese was running the list when I was reading it back in the early 90s. My friend also notes that there were signs of bear sensibility in gay culture starting in the early 1980s. The Farm in The News The Farm is a commune near Summerville, Tennessee. It was founded there in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin. When Gaskin and his gang of hippies moved there from the San Francisco Bay area, the regional media -- i.e., the Nashville Tennessean and the local Nashville television stations -- had a collective fit, hyping the story regularly. This was still fairly soon, in some sense, after the Summer of Love, after Tate/Bianca, Charles Manson, et al., so who can blame the local powers that be for trying to scare the wits out of the locals? Remember: there's always a lot of grocery store ads on when the weatherman is hyping the upcoming snow storm which turns out to be a dusting, so run out and get that half gallon of milk, some cigarettes, and a few lottery tickets. You may be trapped for days by the DEATH BLIZZARD. Well, those hippies are here for your daughers and sons, ladies and gentlemen. (Okay, if you've never lived in a snow region, the above might not make much sense. I'm just trying to get across that our commercial information resouces, even if they are well-meaning in many senses of the world, and even if they are extremely professional and dedicated to their profession, are still part of the world, very much a part and not detached or neutral or capable of objectivity in any deep sense. Capable of striving for objectivity, yes; capable of disclosing conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest, yes; capable of being neutral, no way. And obviously capable of getting caught up in the emotion of a moment: I think it's pretty obvious from watching coverage of the recent war, the way the Kobe Bryant nonsense trumps a terrorist bombing for column inches and time on the radio or television, from the willing mass insanity when Princess Di crashed and burned. Espescially if that emotion sells newpapers or increases ratings.) Anyway, MSNBC is carrying this AP story about the Farm, which is still plugging along, albiet with a capitalist twist. Link (here) from those libertarians at Reason's Hit and Run. Disclosure: Someone I knew in high school ran away from home and joined The Farm. See, they were coming for the local daughters and sons. I don't have a followup as to whether he's still there or left, how long he stayed, what happened, or anything detailed. I believe, don't know for sure, that he left his home and went there to live when, by community standards, he should've been finishing high school. Saturday, August 02, 2003
Funding National Service Author Dave Eggers, mentioned in this space (here) a few weeks ago in reference to a good but silly pirate movie, has this op-ed in today's New York Times (registration required). He's taking the Bush administration and House Republicans to task for not fulfilling their obligation to fully fund AmeriCorp and the programs -- teaching, tutoring, and more -- it funds that (1) provide direct service to people who need it and (2) provide college-age kids a chance to give something to the national community and to local communities. Not only is his message thoughtful, but, in contrast to many op-eds, particularly those by members of the government and traditional advocacy groups, the manner in which he delivers it is uncluttered and free of obfuscation. Egger's tutoring/creative-writing program in the San Francisco Bay area is 826 Valencia. Check it out, if you haven't previously. Friday, August 01, 2003
The Attic of Your Mind Over at Alphecca, Jeff Soyer explores the memory-as-home metaphor in this post. A related concept that's been used by folks since, oh, at least the ancient Greeks, that Jeff's post brings to mind, is using the map of someplace you know, like, say, your home, as a tool when you have to organize information. Say you have to give a speech. You "put" different elements -- paragraphs, bullets, whatever chunks you like -- of content into different rooms of a building you already know. So, you use existing spatial associations you already have to help structure the abstract information you're trying to present to yourself or to others. All this talk of mental imagery: It makes me think that it's about time to clean out the attic.  Thursday, July 31, 2003
For Lane  The above is a scan of an actual postcard that was sent to me within the last year or so. We have a friend, and her postcard trip is to buy up old postcards and actually send them to people, as opposed to collecting them. The image is of the Daytona Beach boardwalk bandshell some time prior to the construction of what is now the Adams Mark hotel, Ocean Walk condos/hotel, etc. More Video, More Music When I previously noted some music-centered films we had watched recently, I omitted that we had seen D. A. Pennebaker's Down from the Mountain, a film about the music from the Coen brother's film, O Brother Where Art Thou, and about the people who make the kind of music in the film. If you've been in Outer Mongolia for the last several years and haven't attained any awareness of that Coen brother's flick, the music in question is hillbilly music or what's commonly called bluegrass. The Pennebaker flick documents a performance at the Ryman Auditorium (former home to the Grand Ole Opry) in downtown Nashville by artists such as Emmy Lou Harris, John Hartford, Allison Kraus, and Ralph Stanley. Some of the individual performances are very moving. The show taken as a whole didn't grab me as much as I'd've hoped, and I think that's largely in part to the fact that someone other than John Hartford should've been given the MC role. Still, an overall enjoyable, entertaining, and thoughtful film. The Thomas Edison of Rock and Roll Sam Phillips has passed away at 80 years of age. Obituaries here from the Memphis Commercial Appeal, here from the Nashville Tennessean, and here from the L A Times. The CA also has Phillips in his own words. Addendum: Kit at Paperfrog has this story about meeting Phillips. (Thanks to Dragonleg.) Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Nostalgia Trip As described below, we've now got access to VHS for the first time in a while. So, naturally, old unseen-for-a-while VHS content gets played. One tape starts off with off-the-air dubs of various rock performances: The Tubes on the Midnight Special, King Crimson (Fripp/Belew/Levin/Bruford edition) on Fridays, and, best of all, The Plasmatics (warning, pop up ads out the wazoo) featuring Wendy O. Williams on the Tomorrow show with Tom Snyder. The Plasmatics did A Pig is a Pig and Butcher Baby. A Pig is a Pig featured a great talk-over-country-vamp intro by Wendy O., dedicating the song to "the cowardly journalist who hides behind his typewriter.... [and] ... the sicky sadist who hides behind his police badge" before the song erupts in total faux-punk chaos, complete with blue-mohawked guitarist wearing a nurse's uniform (starched, white, not those near Dr. Dentons pajamas nurses wear these days), and Wendy O. smashing a television set with a sledge hammer. Butcher Baby features an electric guitar getting cut in half, plus one of the best explosions, real or simulated, I've ever seen in a television studio, complete with light bars falling from the overheads. Some gay men worship Jackie O. I'd take Wendy O. over Jackie O., any day. Then, cut, and it's when President Reagan got shot. I guess this was the tape that was in the box when that happened. Bernie Shaw and Daniel Shore sitting across from each other at the still young CNN. IBM Selectic typewriters immediately to the rear. No computer in sight. You could see the ceiling of the newsroom, the other desks, the back wall. Everything said "budget operation." Cut to NBC, where Roger Mudd was anchoring coverage, with Edwin Newman reporting from some cubbyhole at the White House. Cut to ABC, where Frank Reynolds was anchoring, complete with his on-air refusal to give the name of the alleged perp who pulled the trigger without a second source. It's all there: The confusion at the White House, with then deputy press secretary Larry Speaks trying to explain that questions could be better answered by White House staff at the hospital where Reagan had been taken, but with the White House press corp pressing on seemingly without hearing a word he'd said. Al Haig at the White House stating that he "was in control", even as then VP George H. W. Bush was on his way back to the White House and was technically in operative control of the government. (Haig didn't last too many months longer in that administration.) The released info that Reagan had walked into the hospital on his on. The claims that he hadn't lost much blood. (It was only later that the fact that he had been in graver damage than had been stated at the time came out.) It's a very interesting snapshot of another time. A different on-tape snapshot on another tape is the first blast off and landing of Space Shuttle Columbia. Back in the day, HBO didn't run 24/7: it only ran at night. For the launch and landing of Columbia, the local (Nashville) cable operator carried NASA feed. So, it's a NASA-commentary-only view of the first Space Shuttle flight. The manner in which the perception of the risks associated with shuttle flight changed after many shuttle launches comes to mind in watching this old footage. Very sad. You would hope that after twenty-something years of shuttle flights and forty-something years of manned space flight, we'd be slightly beyond either sending up capsule or gliders on rockets. Aside: Where is the space plane? Why isn't it commercially viable? Why is NASA being allowed to manage its development? There's one more tape from back then we've watched. It's B&W, made with a rented camera, as source material for video accompanyment to a band I was in at the time. Stupid faux-trippy stuff like close ups of bricks or out-of-focus images of water running. Or screen doors. In the middle of that one is a rehersal of that band. Single, fixed-location, camera while we play. Besides the fact that the performance is pretty embarrassing, it's interesting to see what we looked like (younger! more hair! thinner!), things we did (smoked), what we sounded like (hicks and rubes). Painful, but fun. Musical Views We're trying to get back to technological equity around here. In the process, we again have acquired the ability to look at not only recorded video on DVD, but also on that most modern technological wonder, VHS tape. Since our original DVD player (early-adopter syndrome) wouldn't play the latest discs, we've been accumulating content for viewing without actually seeing them. So, we're in a catch up phase. Except for watching Young Frankenstein on VHS, most of what we've been watching is musical in nature. Recent viewings include:
MOTD From e-mail I received: We have been notified by Plant pool maintenance that the pool is to be closed today for shocking due to "unwelcome substance" in the pool. Brush with Near Greatness Over at Shattered Buddha, Dragonleg recalls his interview with a visiting Senator Lowell Weicker of Conneticuit. Weicker was what was known then as a "liberal Republican." (Imagine! You can do it!) Good stuff. Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Word to Your Principal As Eric Cartman once said to Mr. Garrison, "Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck. What's the big deal?" (From The Smoking Gun via Hit and Run.) Monday, July 28, 2003
Civic Duty My call for jury duty was short-lived and uneventful. No murder trial; not even a tort. Instead, most of a morning of waiting until dismissed. The judge had gotten all parties to settle (sounds like civil cases were being tried). The courtroom where the jury pool assembled was substantially less Kafkaesque than I had feared. It was on a windowless second-floor room instead of in a windowless basement. Instead of stapled-in tounge-and-groove random hole acoustic tile from the 50s or 60s with fifty or forty years of accumulated dirt and human dander -- and smoke left over from the day when the judge probably sat up front puffing away at the components of a pack of Luckies -- the room had fairly modern drop-in acoustic tile. Flourescent lighting was all around, as it seems is required by law except on courtrooms as seen on TV, excepting pairs of two-lamp sconces on the front and two side walls. The walls had been, again surprisingly, recently painted; the front wall behind the judges bench had wood panelling with too short of a period: the pattern was too obvious. The benches were like pews from a church, except they didn't have a place to put the hymnals or the communion glasses that had been emptied of Welches grape juice. That is, they were basically uncomfortable. Our hosts were Lime Green Suzie and Navy Blue Connie of jury management of the Volusia County Clerk's office. (And kudos to the County Clerk for getting ahold of the "www.clerk.org" URL way back when. Talk about proactive.) Lime Green Suzie was cherubic and did the kind of quasi-comic shpiel I've come to expect from the person in charge of herding unwieldy human cattle who've been placed in a situation most of them never asked for; Navy Blue Connie seemed to be all business. Both were dressed very professionally -- guess what color of very professional business attire each was wearing -- and both had that frosted blonde hair appropriate to their middle age. They were assisted by three older gentlemen described as volunteers. I never was quite sure who these guys, who might've been Bob and Bill and Joe for all I remember -- their names had WWII generation all over them, and their ear canals were appropriately occupied by either hearing aids or substantial hair growth -- had come to volunteer for service assisting the jury management folks. Maybe they had once been bailiffs. No sooner had Lime Green Suzie told us of how County Judge So-and-So would be selecting juries today, than Circuit Judge Such-and-Such was introduced by a bailiff, who, as far as I know, was not named Rusty. The judge showed up to deal with prospective jurors who needed to be excused right then and their and in person. From the looks of it, the prospective jurors needing to be immediately excused were largely the ones who hadn't bothered to read and return the form jury management sends out. One woman had a child in tow, I suppose to demonstrate her immediate need to be excused. I hope the judge asked her if the child was hers or if she had just borrowed it to get out of jury duty. Another woman -- I may work with this one -- said that she was needed because she taught this or that. She didn't get excused. (Personally, I found the jury management folks to be very easy to work with. At my request, they rescheduled my service to a time outside the academic year, and they moved it far enough into the future that I could plan other obligations around it.) Then the waiting began. Okay, first they showed us a video about the jury system. The woman narrating looked a lot like Sigourney Weaver, but without as much cheekbone. There was some content: civil trial vs. jury trial; defendant, prosecutor, and plantiff; voir dire; the opening statement, the evidence, the testimony, the closing statement, and the fact that the opening and closing statements are just lawyerly opinions, not evidence; the judge's charge; etc. Not a word, pro or con, about jury nullification, except passing hints that the judge is supreme and must be obeyed. As one who is a big fan of diversity and recognizes the hassles in getting from a nation where white men run everything to one where people of all stripes fill all possible roles (given enough time), I did find myself wondering about the subtle messages sent by the images in the video: The narrator was a white woman; the lawyer was a black man; the judge was a black woman; the bailiff was a white man. Does it make me a bad person (gay white male) to be aware that those images are somewhat fantastic? That they are likely pushing someone's agenda (even if I agree with it), while others (whose agendas I disagree with) aren't given then same access to propagandize folks? And whose agenda? The Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers, who had the video made and had to sign off on it? The company that made the video? The director and writer of the video? I don't mind propaganda -- I can make up my own mind, thank you -- but I like to know whose voice I'm hearing. There is also the possibility that I am seeing intentionality when none existed. This could all have been accidents of casting availability, etc. The jury pool was surprisingly white and male. There were a couple of Latino looking men, but in an ethnically diverse area like this, it's hard to say what their ethnic identity, if any, was. There were a few black women, but no black men. The jury process excludes convicted felons, and I couldn't help wondering if the higher rate at which black men are incarcerated combined with a relatively small black population locally combined to make that no-black-men-in-the-jury-pool happen. Or if it was just randomness in action. Statistically, if the odds are over 50-50 that two people in a group of twenty three have the same birthday (assuming birthdays are distributed equally likely over the 365 days), it's likely I wasn't the only non-heterosexual in the jury pool of, what, about 100 people (even assuming 1/100 odds instead of the often-cited 1/10). They played an awful Bob Hope and Lucille Ball movie, to entertain those who cared to watch. I had no idea at the time that Bob Hope has passed away. The volunteer possibly-former-bailiffs seemed to be the ones who were interested in watching. I kept wondering if playing that movie constituted fair use just because the establishment in question was governmental, not commercial. My guess is that someone isn't getting as large of a royalty check as the MPAA would like. I also hope some local doesn't get busted for downloading the latest tunes only to find out the jury was improperly entertained. The rest of us read magazines or books or went downstairs to the vending machines. After starting at 8:30 a.m., around 11:00 a.m., Navy Blue Connie announced that the judge had settled all the cases on the docket, and that we were all excused. Lime Green Suzie had left earlier on important business: her house closing. My civic duty was over with a little over two hours of sitting around, observing the courtroom, reading Augusten Burroughs's memoir, Running with Scissors (and trying not to laugh out loud), and the latest issue of the Rolling Stone (which features a particularly gruesome story on what things are like in Liberia). Under Florida law, if I understand correctly, that satisfies the state for at least a year. (David Bernstein, over at The Volohk Conspiracy has this post about jury service in several other states.) Actually, my civic duty regarding jury service may not be over. I recently got a card from the Federal District Court in Orlando, so I may have the opportunity to compare and contrast jury duty there with what's reported above.b Sunday, July 27, 2003
More Internal/External, or Now for Something Completely Different In this diary entry, Mr. Robert Fripp says: I find myself in a comparable position to 30 years ago, when I was unable to see any external solution to the future: personally, professionally, politically, economically, nationally, globally. Then the butterfly's wings flapped & the collapse of the status quo in the West moved further east: the USSR, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Bosnia & down a bit to Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq. This is all part of a massive change, the short present moment of which is 200 years. The details are unpredictable, the overall view more so."Yet all these external pieces of work, however real, however 'objective', are only fingers pointing to the moon." Beautiful. Saturday, July 26, 2003
Chattanooga The New York Times (registration required for anything deeper than the web front) has this nice travel piece about visiting Chattanooga. My dad was originally from Jellico, Tennessee (Tennessee/Kentucky, actually), but his family moved to Chattanooga when he was still grammar-school age. He grew up there, and his mom lived there until she died in 1977 (in her 90s, if I recall. The last words I remember were her in her hospital bed -- she had fallen and broken her hip for the second time in ten years, and my aunts and uncles (my dad was already gone from this world) were working out the details of getting her into a nursing home) -- saying, "Timmy, don't let them put me in a nursing home." I was 20 years old. What could I do except relay that she didn't want to go into a nursing home -- she'd been living with my dad's oldest brother since time immemorial -- to them. She passed away three days later, before they could get her into a nursing home. Anyway, Chattanooga is a neat place. Mack and I visited the Tennessee Aquarium, sawRock City, and went to Point Park on Lookout Mountain, part of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Parkk, there in 1995, and I see a cousin and his wife there just about every year when I go to Sand Mountain (northeast Alabama) for my mom's family's reunion. Also, it's home to the Krystal (of which I had four, plus two Chiks, fries, and a Diet Coke, for dinner tonight). Non Endorseum Just to be clear, I didn't really endorse anyone for anything. Anyone can read the post below and figure that out. But Jeff's a great guy, and I'm sleazy enough to accept almost any form of linkage. Glenn Reynolds definitely meets some of my own criteria for a presidential candidate, but I'm not sure if he's as big of a fan of progressive income taxes as I am. But the man is regularly cool about not being pinned down by others' expectations, so who am I to presume that he's not. I'm not as well read as Jeff about his other proposed candidates. In fact, one of the things I really like and respect about Jeff is that he reads so many damned blogs. I've got a pretty limited set of inputs, but I'm trying to branch out. I'm trying, I'm trying. Meanwhile, enjoy the blogotopian dream! Addendum: Jeff's removed me as an endorser. There goes the traffic volume. :-) All Kobe, All the Time! The Wyeth Wire is on the Kobe Bryant allegations like stink on shit. He's now got actual photos of the accuser! This is following up his having already published the name and address of the same. Tim Bob sez, check 'em out! Friday, July 25, 2003
Presidential Wish List Up at Alphecca, Jeff Soyer has put together a list of criteria for Presidential candidates. I put my own list together sometime back in the dark ages of last September. Here it is. If I were to give it a little more thought, I'd probably revise these, but I'm still interested in hearing candidates address those particular issues. I think there's good value to each individual thinking about what she or he wants out of a President -- or any other candidate for political office -- before the speechifying and advertising starts for real. Rather than evaluating the candidates against each other based on their own spewings about themselves and each other, evaluate them against your own criteria, against the things that matter to you. You still have to use their output as input to your process, but you try to keep them out of the process of determining how you evaluate and judge them. Addendum, Saturday, 26 July 2003, 5:49 CDT. Please see Non Endorseum, above. Honoring MLK's "I Have a Dream" Speech I HAVE A DREAM MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM AUGUST 28, 1963 Those words are being inscribed by the National Park Service on the step at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C., where Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his noted speech. Story from the Washington Post (which is unpredictable about requesting location and age information). Thursday, July 24, 2003
The Old Ranch Hand, He/She Ain't What He/She Used to Be Since many ranches are now owned by rich folk, the role of the ranch manager has changed from cowpoke to concierge. At least according to this story in the New York Times (registration required). Wednesday, July 23, 2003
The Periodic TABLE of the Elements Theodore Gray has built an honest-to-goodness table -- i.e., piece of furniture -- for the periodic table of the elements, as shown below. It's complete with samples, type of element encoding by type of wood, and more. Visit his site for lots of details.  Image used with permission (if I understood what Gray said correctly at the bottom of this page). Link (here) from the Volokh Conspiracy. PhoneCam Blog Xeni Jarden, out there in LA, has a blog devoted to phonecam photos. And you know what? It's pretty cool. The real-time photos are pretty good in subject and composition (heh heh -- like I'm a photo critic), and the quality off the little bugger phonecams doesn't seem gawdawful. I found her site via Ken Layne's entry at the LA Examiner site (his and Matt Welch's coming-sometime-in-the-future LA weekly dead-tree project). Layne's post linked to this photo entry by Xeni from what was a "[b]irthday party for someone whose last name is Hansen and whose first name rhymes with 'check'." Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Digital Music Downloads This piece by Rob Walker at Slate points out (1) the relatively small number of downloads it takes for a song to be Number One on the Billboard-reported SoundScan charts of digital music downloads. About 1500 downloads, in fact. He also points out (2) how easy that should make manipulating the charts along the lines of a Google bomb. Re (1): With a bullet? A bullet? Re (2): How about "Jocko Homo"? |
