Pareto's Principle is that 80/20 rule that says things like "80% of our personal telephone calls are to 20% of the people in our address book." But it doesn't account for how 80% of my work is created by someone who's personal space takes up 20% of my office. And this person gets more annoying every day. She complains and complains and complains, and she always gets what she wants because of her complainyness. And here I am, complaining about her.
Posts
Half of The Most Loathsome People in America, 2002 is funny, and half of it is juvenile, but the half that is good is excellent. It's from the some of the guys who wrote for the eXile , or still write for it... I'm not sure of the genealogy. I never liked the eXile ; I suspect the eXile was much funnier if you yourself wrote for the eXile (that is, if you were a frat boy who liked to take acid and troll Moscow strip clubs).
This is another one that has been totally underreported, a recent poll that Americans are getting less, not more, war-hungry :
More than two-thirds of Americans believe the Bush administration has failed to make its case that a war against Iraq is justified, according to a poll by the Los Angeles Times published Tuesday.
Why is it under-reported? If you do a Google news search on this topic , only the Arab News , the Sierra Times , The Toronto Star and yes, you guessed it, the Amarillo Globe-News carry the story. (I confess that I hadn't heard that the Globe and the News of Amarillo had merged.)
I didn't know about this until I saw it in the Onion . In the Lott-sanity of the last week, I completely missed it. Of course, if it's from the White House, it's bad, very bad. I don't think we've seen this much penis-waving since the Reagan administration. Who is writing this drivel that he's saying? Oh, and Missile Defense is back . Jesus - Poindexter, propaganda broadcasts , Missile Defense. Next thing: a sequel to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
The Google zeitgeist page reveals (no suprise) that I'm ignorant of a a lot of stuff going on in the world. Like how Shakira's popularity goes way beyond the the States' Britney/Eminem/JLo tunnelvision. And that Las Ketchup is freaking huge in Germany and Spain. Funny how Google (along with NPR ) delivers most of what I actually hear about things. However, as Google's a search engine, it relies on my searches, not on any kind of culture-browse. That was once the province of weblog reading , but I think that the weblogs I read are mired in three quite narrow channels: techy/webby, politics, and brainy/literary. (Or, to be in keeping with the weblog-as-zeitgeist: evhead , tbogg and caterina .) And NPR has many limitations, not least of which is it's insane New Yorker -subscribing-Volvo-driving solipsism. (Or is that mine?)
What a nightmare. The Total Information Awareness Program is now a reality, folks. And look who's in charge!
Rear Adm. John Poindexter, former national security adviser to President Reagan, is developing the database under the Total Information Awareness Program. Poindexter was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. Those convictions were later overturned, but critics note that his is a dubious resume for someone entrusted with so sensitive a task.
Aldridge said Poindexter will only "develop the tool, he will not be exercising the tool." He said Poindexter brought the database idea to the Pentagon and persuaded Aldridge and others to pursue it.
"John has a real passion for this project," Aldridge said.
Yeah, I'll bet he does.
That illusory connection... again . The Idiot Called George Bush claims that "We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al-Qaida to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind." Huh? In the meantime at the Post , reality rears it's head:
Chas Freeman, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, said that the idea that a secular leader such as Hussein would link up with "religious diehards" who despise his government is "a very strange notion indeed."
But Freeman said the administration's assertions might become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the United States does launch an attack. In that case, he said, Hussein might "make an alliance with the devil" and promote terrorist attacks if he had nothing to lose.
Reading a lot of dooce to keep my mind off the upcoming war. You should read dooce every day.
Reading Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness which is hard for me to keep straight because I haven't read SF in a long time and I keep forgetting that the story takes place several thousand years in an alternate future, and that's supposed to make sense in some way. Otherwise it's brilliant: a planet of humans who are not born with innate gender identities, but instead take one on when they rut once a month. The characters are funny, and the LeGuin is not shy about examining the religious implications of a society ignorant of the Manichean allegory. But I'm never satisfied with fiction, either it's too real (William Trevor) or it ain't real enough. I'm much more comfortable with non-fiction these days. Except I've had a hankering for reading J.M. Coetzee after reading a review of the latest volume of his autobiography (which I would link to,
You should read Kinsley in the Post from Friday :
"Ambiguity has its place in dealings among nations, and so does a bit of studied irrationality. Sending mixed signals and leaving the enemy uncertain what you might do next are valid tactics. But the cloud of confusion that surrounds Bush's Iraq policy is not tactical. It's the real thing. And the dissembling is aimed at the American citizenry, not at Saddam Hussein."
I took some 8-year-old girls to the zoo today. Pretty tired now. Best moment was when, on the way, they discussed how other kids make fun of your name, no matter how normal your name might seem. (One girl has last name "Katz," and a boy does a "meow" bit to her; stuff like that.) Having discussed this awful fact of childhood, they agreed: "let's think of all the kids we know, and try to figure out ways to make fun of their names." It was one of those moments, like something out of Milgram .
I have to finish my class in the next week. I find myself still puzzling out lots of questions that I think I should have figured out a long time ago . Not included in that set of questions is the fact that many times I can compile code on my gcc compiler that my Microsoft compiler won't compile. It doesn't make much sense to me how a very, very wealthy corporation can sell buggy compilers. But then again, I work for (what seems to me) a fairly large com
This, from "Foes of online music swapping sing out in Sacramento" :
The group 3rd Storee , billed by record industry representatives as the next big boy band, said its latest CD, "Get With Me," was released Tuesday, but at a Sept. 28 concert, one fan admitted she had already downloaded the album.
"When she told me that, instantly my heart just dropped," said 3rd Storee member Dante Clark, known as D'Smoove.
"I was just hurt," Clark told the committee. "They don't see how much work, how many sacrifices, how much dedication goes into making an album. You feel like you've been robbed of something you worked so hard to gain."
First of all: D'Smoove ? Does D actually get female interest when he whips out that name? What kind of woman goes, "hey, he's cute... and that name!"
Second: 3rd Storee's appearance in Sacramento (not a photo op) was keepin it real. You know what I'm saying, the
Here's what Bush said this morning to reporters :
President Bush said today that he thought it was "highly doubtful" that Saddam Hussein would meet demands to disarm, but that he was expecting a quick United Nations resolution on the issue. He also expressed annoyance with Congressional Democrats, who have asked for time to consider any use of force by the United States against Iraq.
"I can't imagine an elected United States-elected member of the United States Senate or House of Representatives saying, `I think I'm going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision,' " he told reporters. "If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I would explain to the American people and said, you know, `Vote for me, and oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.' "
I'm thinking this was their plan all along! I knew those guys had thought it all out:
1. make
Bought the new Aimee Mann today, and yes it's very good. Actually, I had extra $ when I returned that book I bought on 9/10 and bought a different, hopefully better, book . This is my exciting life.
I think Emily Dickinson had all the answers. Today I saw her quoted on andrewsullivan.com ( not linking to him; he's a moron) and metafilter , all in one day? I think most of us, either lefty or right-wing, see that a horrible, teeth-gritting period lay before us, and the sense that many more innocent people will die, it can't be escaped. What frustrates me about the call to war is that conservatives are unwilling to note that their attention to U.N. resolutions seems selective if not completely self-serving. Recall, if you will, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 . Those resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from the Arab territories that it occupied in 1967. You don't hear much about them these days.
"Success is counted sweetest/By those who ne�
Are we really going to go in? I have this frightening image of 9/11/02 news reports, images floating across the screen that recall the last war in Iraq. Flashbacks: Wolf Blitzer, sorties, SCUD missles , gag orders on the media, lies, protests.
Has anyone actually thought about what happens after Richard Perle's missles fall? James Webb has.
I have a deadline this week. Sometimes deadlines make me depressed. In this case, I am leading a training on Thursday. Most of the actual thought has already been done, so now it's a matter of details (handouts, computer setup, choosing the best sample exercises, reserving the room, etc). I have a problem with perfectionist feelings, so that when things inevitably fall short of my ideal, the sense that I am growing old and useless is overwhelming. It fosters an urge to procrastinate, too, which might explain why I'm typing in a Blogger window rather than working on the training.
I Am Trying To Kiss A Wilco Guy (scroll down; thanks to Elise for the link) describes my demographic a little too well. "Now, Wilco guys are different. Don't get carried away: don't think Cary Grant, or Chris Noth. Think bookishly handsome, well-educated semi-wimps. Wilco guys tend to be sensitive, literate, bespectacled, somewhat wan Don DeLillo readers with a bit of a grainy edge.
OK: Iraq. A non-starter ? Is it just a hoax?
Maybe it's this: Just something to get people thinking that the administration is �doing something� about terrorism.
Terrorism is hard to fight (ask Great Britain, India and Israel), and that's the raison d�etre (sp?) of terrorism, that it�s impossible to wage war on an enemy whose guerrilla capabilities are matched by its willingness to kill civilians in urban population centers. Which means conventional war is hopeless in the face of that kind of terror, unless you are willing to go all the way, as the Israelis are doing now. They just do what they like, fuck consequences. (And, in a cynical way, who�s to say Israel is mistaken in its strategy? Will the US, or anyone else, do *anything* to stop Israel, discourage them, even (gasp) impose sanctions on them for human rights violations? The President seems much more concerned over the baseball strike than the blood being spilled in Gaza) But the "do what we want, fuck cons
Everyone's doing it. The "movement" (can you really call a pop culture event a movement?) has come and gone. I recall reading on someone's weblog that blogs had peaked... and that was January! Yes, it's all over now, baby blue.
But so what? I guess the whole thing goes the way of fads. In the 70's somebody published The Nothing Book , a hardback book with a slip-on cover, whose pages were blank. This was years before bookstores had racks of journals and blank books. It was a cool, light gift, very "yeah, get creative, man." But what the gift-recipient actually did with them is anyone's guess; I would imagine that most of the first Nothing Books were used until the experiment lost its edge, and the last 150 blank pages... remained blank. Don't get me wrong, blogs are different: the listmaker's fondness for collation is joined with the smartass' penchant for one-liners, and everyone gets his chance to crack wise, even if the aud
I was reading Kate's dad's copy of has The Bush Dyslexicon . On the surface, it sounded like one of those "wacky quotes" books, but the author, Mark Crispin Miller , makes a chilling case. "Bush," Miller said in an interview, "shows... a certain genius for evasion of a particular kind -- i.e., representing his most noxious stands as strokes of tolerance and kindness. That move is more insidious than mere evasiveness, and also requires a greater craftiness." He points out that beyond how often Bush lies, that Bush seems to understand something that lefties don't: that a teaspoon of pretense toward honesty and "plain talkin" is worth an oil tanker of perceived intelligence. Americans like him because Americans see themselves as "life-smart" but hate & shudder at the "brainy." Bush = Nixon.
Recent movies:
:: Marathon Man , with Dustin Hoffman. I liked it. A little predictable, but the message, that to resist money and cynicsm is itself a gruelling "marathon," moved me. At the end, I found myself hoping that Dustin Hoffman would steal some of the diamonds himself, not my finest impulse, I admit. I heard Elvis Mitchell the other day, comparing Sam Mendes ( Road to Perdition ) to John Schlesinger , calling each a "Mercedes marxist" for what Mitchell sees as a patronizing attitude towards Americans. I wonder if that's true. Marathon 's class instinct is made clear when Laurence Olivier walks through the diamond district, eyeing precious stones, hoping to unload his stolen shit on some of the survivors he robbed. That section was pretty compelling.
Haven't written in a million years. What have I been doing?
:: Working on my C++ homework. I need to be done by the end of November and I'm only half way done. So I'm behind
:: Spending time with the kid
:: Working a lot. Doing more scripting, and writing, writing, writing
:: Renting a million movies. I should write about them because, oh, I don't know, why does one write anything?
:: Watching in horror as Ann Coulter becomes the most celebrated author of our era. Well, not everyone likes her .
A few words about All Things Considered :
:: I miss Linda Wertheimer . Now they Have Jacki Lyden , who's ok, I guess. I like her better than I liked Noah Adams , who is on leave writing a book about the Wright brothers. It's funny; I can't quite recall what Noah Adams sounds like anymore. A lot of the NPR guys sound the same, except for the the more nasal ones like the guy who does the sports and the guy who does the Washington money stories .
:: I started listening around `91, when I started working at a desk job where I used Lotus to parse large text files filled with book shipment data. A boring job. I often carried around a Walkman with little earplugs, listening to All Things Considered . I remember hearing the Rodney King verdict when it was announced (I think I said "oh, shit," or something equally prescient).
:: Sylvia Poggioli is cool. Especially when she says her name: "This is Syl-vee-ah Poe-joe-lee for NPR News, Milan."
Not what I wanted to hear: Silicon Valley's New Pessimists Talk of Pain Beyond the PC ( New York Times , registration req'd). "To grasp the depth of the Valley's decline from its peak, it is only necessary to review the fortunes of the Fast 50, an annual list of the region's fastest-growing companies maintained by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, a coalition of government, corporate and civic groups."
"Of the top 10 companies on the list in 2001, only one, eBay, was profitable in the last quarter. Two companies, Excite@Home and Exodus Communications, filed for bankruptcy protection and have since been acquired. Seven others on the list had losses in each of the last four quarters, including Commerce One, which reported a staggering $220 million loss in the first quarter of this year. Finally, the stocks of four of the eight survivors in this group are now trading for less than $1."
It's Canadian, so it's a little left-skewed, but it still gave me solace to see that the National Post picked up on how Bush's teflon days may be coming to an end . I think it was a struggle for all lefty types, watching GW striding across the platform trying to look Rooseveltian (or at least Eisenhoweresque), while we were told that arresting people without due process is the right thing. It isn't. It's also nice to see GW look like Clinton .
Recent movies:
:: The Game , trying to see all the David Fincher movies. The script had had lots of neat ideas about money and happiness, but something was missing, and I think it was Michael Douglas. Although portraying someone emotionally dead who needs to be reawakened, Douglas just looks beat-up and sad rather than actually sympathetic. And the epiphany he experiences comes off trite, which really disables the premise. Maybe if they had cast less of a "movie star"? Douglas is undeniably skilled at portraying investment bankers and stock brokers... but that's not really a complement, is it? (I argued with Sugar that Tom Hanks should do a Fincher movie, but she says that's too against type, no one would buy it. What about Adam Sandler?) The movie had some great moments, particularly the taxi ride and the multiple endings, but I wanted more human emotion.
:: Prime Cut , with my hero, Lee Marvin. I first read about this in a list of Jim Jarmusch's guilty
Ox is dead. I hope it wasn't you-know-what. What a sad thing, almost spinaltap-esque, to die in Vegas (Vegas!) on the eve of yet another "Who rocks America (despite the fact that we are not very relevant)" spectacle. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean any disrespect; he was a one of the great bassists. Just the fact that he was abe to solo in "My Generation," when the song has almost no chords to speak of. And everyone should own Who's Next , it's wonderful, and he played all the horns on "My Wife" himself!
It's just sad, that's all.
This (warning: Shockwave) is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. I want to learn how to do that kind of thing in dhtml, just because I'm reluctant to rely on 3rd party stuff. Then again, what's a browser, but "3rd party stuff"? Or a compiler? Or a script engine? Unless you're writing on stone walls, there's always a 3rd party. [link from Caterina ]
So a friend at work said to me, "I was thinking about how Cast Away is really Tom Hanks, with some other actors at the beginning and some at the end, but it's a one-actor movie. Almost. The question is, are there any other single-actor movies?"
Here was my answer:
::There's Stevie with Glenda Jackson It's not all one person, not 100%, but the other roles are literally walk-ons; otherwise she's talking to the camera.
:: The Belle of Amherst has one actress.
::there's Swimming to Cambodia but that's kind of "filming a concert" which is more or less cheating. (Richard Pryor had a few and Eddie Murphy , so you can probably make a long list...)
:: The Designated Mourner has only three actors in it.
But now that I think of it, all of these were plays that were made into movies. I can't think of one non-play movie that was "let's follow one person." Derek Jarman's Blue has no actors onscreen. It's ju
So Minority Report (warning: Flash) was pretty good. But it was way too long, and near the end Spielberg couldn't resist the Big Speech About Family. I didn't mind that I spotted the secret bad guy in the second time he appeared (you may notice that the very same scene played near the beginning of Peter Weir's Witness , where Harrison Ford unknowingly confides in the heavy... that's all I'll say); and I didn't mind that there were logical lapses so big that Nicole Kidman could walk through them. But I did mind Samantha Morton's horrible speech.
Yeah, it's pretty hard to swallow NPR telling people they can't link to NPR unless we get a note from the teacher that says it's ok. Pretty insane, actually. I thought site traffic was... desirable. And Linda Wertheimer and Robert Seigel are always saying I can reach them at npr.org. As if!
The Washington Post reports that the Christian right has forged an alliance with conservative Muslims. But a rightwinger pundit admitted, "We look at them as allies, not necessarily as friends." Weird wild stuff. Why is our country getting so weird?
I'm getting horrible "cannot be written to such-and-such memory location" errors. I think it's Klez, it really messed on my computer. Life is bad.
Now, I'm no Slashdot guy (for someone learning C++, I'm really un-techy), but lately I've been liking windows less and less. My boss is an old Unix pro, and often espuses the beauty of the old Unix way: each user is part of a group of users; each user accesses the system (and its apps) as a group; users are granted priveleges, and no one has the right to hurt the system. The system is fast, the core is strong. Sort of a pre- RedHerring way of looking at things. Ok, so you can't have a local copy of MusicMatch , that would be bad. But otherwise, what is really the upside of windows, at least in a corporate setting? I guess the UI cannot be underestimated. (Heck, it's why I'm here!)
More Ashcroft: This was so gratifying to me: "Ashcroft's High Profile, Motives Raise White House Concern
Had a run-in with the Klez virus . It was bad mojo: it ate Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Visual C++ 6 and other, smaller apps. Kind of a monster.
I thought my pda would change my life, make me much more organized and effective. In actual fact it points to the limits of my effectiveness, without really changing those limits. I still put off what I don't want to do. And I have a much longer list of things I'd love to do but can't find the time to do (actually pulled from my Neo):
-- more hiking!
-- practice guitar scales
-- learn DHTML animation
-- use geometry w/ DHTML
-- really record those songs
-- write in notebook once a day
-- learn math (e.g. trig, calc)
-- practice chess
-- learn more photography
-- write about movies, submit it to some journal
To be fair, I am remembering to do more things. My calendar is self-organizing, and thus consistent, which has been a problem for me in the past. And I'm able to write code snippets during particularly dull me
More on the Ashcroft tip... read the New Yorker piece by Jefferey Toobin and it was pretty weird. I mean, Toobin is so journalistically "fair" he rarely sticks it to Ashcroft. Of course, Ashcroft is so thoroughly ideological in his political bite that asking the tough questions would not really matter anyway, would it? The best moment was when Ashcroft took a moment set the record straight: he does not like brie.
To be fair, conservatives dislike Toobin a lot more than I do . I do think that the earlier piece, the celebrated "Wrong Man" piece form 2001, is right-on. I think we are in a dangerous time. And the whole Reagan-stalking-Cal-Students-and-Staff brings it uncomfortably home.
And I'm not even talking about Eldred , baby.
Listening to Michael Penn , copying the image map on Aimee Mann 's site. Kind of weird.
I was wondering when guns would enter the discussion of the War on Terrorism ( New York Times , registration req.). The Bush Administration has been lucky insofar as the White Supremacy/militia/anti-IRS movement of 15 years ago pretty much died. Americans favor some sort of gun control; eventually this will bite GW (or rather, John Ashcroft) in the ass. But as long as the "terrorist threat" can be laid at the feet of Muslims or people with darker skin, we're not going to see much debate about guns. I think Ashcroft is one scary mother.
Uh, haven't blogged in a while. Been working a lot, studying, that sort of thing. In fact my life is terribly dull. I have been learning a heckofa lot more VBscript lately, mainly creating DHTML pages and using them to interact with scripts. Pretty nifty.
By the way, my blogger code : B5 d- t- k s- u- f- i-- o+ x-- e- l- c++
Livermore. Wind: spotted with dry, yellowed grass. Housing developments carved from gray fields and empty lots. Asphalt. Heat.
Most of my workday is spend indoors, in the dark, in a room without windows. I tend to not know what the weather is until I take my walk down the block. My cubicle has a desk lamp and a fluorescent lamp. And, of course, this monitor.
Is light really that important? How much light is enough? Iguizzini (warning: Flash) has created a computer-controlled lighting system called Sivra that work for places receiving no natural light. "By recreating the day's natural light patterns indoors, Sivra aims to minimise the hormonal disruption caused by exposure to bright artificial lights." Iguizzini also has a place called LightCampus , which they claim is "aimed to the culture of light and lighting design."
Part of the call for computer-controlled lighting has come from the dark skies people . Light pollution... when I heard about it on N
When I listen to Joy Division I'm reminded about what music meant to me at an early age. Of course, at that early age, I had no idea what music meant, but I was addicted to it. In particular, I was addicted to the song "Dead Souls" on the b-sides collection Still . Maybe that song's special dread is one only adolescents can appreciate. But "Dead Souls" makes me wonder if the music I understood at a certain age cannot really be understood outside of my memory, just as the ambient light and arrangement of rooms within the Napa City-County Public Library is something so locked in my memory that I could not communicate it to anyone in a way that would satisfy me. Are there memories that you really could not describe?
Thinking about my upcoming class , and I'm nervous that I will fail, that I will fail spectacularly, and that it will divert me from fun things. But then you make choices and the choices you make limit other choices. I have a hard time with time and it's necessary limits. I want absolute mastery over time. I am a baby, a time fascist.
I am a complete idiot. I just figured out how to loop through form elements to get the form values I want. I know I should have known. But I've only been doing this for like a year. So there.
In reading the Tom Frank book (mentioned here ), I am feeling a little warm at the ears. It's embarrassment. In former lives, I worked at Petstore.com, and helped companies like McKinsey and Co. , so I have been part of the "market forces are democratic forces" myth. And I was greedy... I was!
I don't feel like you can honestly discuss those kinds of things with other liberals, the things you do for money, the desire to hang on to a middle class quality of life. Nowadays those more liberal than me cannot tolerate this rift between me and them, where conservatives better us at forming "broad coalitions" to get what they want. We Democrats practically invented the "broad coalition." What happened? In some ways, it doesn't matter, says William Ri
I have to confess I actually like a song by Jimmy Eat World . I'm really really embarrassed about that.
When I eat lunch early, by 3pm, I am a starving fool. I need to eat every two hours, and in small portions. Does that mean anything about my brain? My upbringing? Why do some people like salty foods? Why do some people like the Shins and others don't?
Oh, yeah Bjork's having another baby . And, according to Reuters, she's "one of the most unorthodox figures in pop." I am one of the most unorthodox figures in single parenthood.
Ended up seeing Peter Sis at the Booksmith last Sunday, and he didn't disappoint. Very unassuming and funny. He wore all black: tennis shoes, linen jacket, bandana, everything black. And he talked about wanting a dog, something that my daughter has mentioned... um, from time to time. He signed our books with very clever drawings. Nice to know that his very detailed books take him a long time and make his editor impatient.
I looked at this site on Alexa, and it says that people actually link to me . Really? I find that pretty much impossible.
A certain amount of sadness. I was really, really productive last week and now find that really difficult things to do are not as plentiful. Sometimes there are periods of work that are stable and round and compact, and I have to re-orient myself, just think and write and reflect. I'm so used to pushing and pushing and now I don't need to push and it makes me feel sad and awkward.
Again: what are your goals ? Do you even have any?
I keep thinking that having a PDA will make me more organized. In reality a PDA will make it easier for me to write while I sit in boring meetings.
Peter Sis is appearing at a local bookstore... should I go and see Peter Sis or swim? I'm thinking swimming would feel better, but getting Peter Sis to sign a book, kind of better in your once-in-a-lifetime category.
"My lies are always wishes" - Wilco
I like the new Wilco cd . But then I'm the demographic.
I am also reading the Tom Frank book that came out last year. I disagree with him, and his almost lyrical rants grind on in an awfully familiar way. He likes to make ironic lists like:
The scions of ancient banking families were said to be finding their smug selves wiped out by the streetwise know-how of some kid with a goatee; the arrogant stockbrokers of old were being humiliated by the e-trade masses; the WASPs with their regimental ties were getting their asses kicked by the women, the Asians, the Africans, the Hispanics; the buttoned-down whip-cracking bosses were being fired by the corporate 'change agents'; the self-assured network figures were being reduced to tears by the Vox Populi of the web.
This sort of list-making gets awfully tired.
But he is right about a lot of things, and his footnotes are good (seriously). But sometimes humorless self-righteousness can't overcome astuteness (or eve
I had a friend who, when I recommended a good book on music, complained that my interest in reading about music clouded the enjoyment that music should bring. "Why don't you decide for yourself what you feel about the music? Why read about it?"
He was wrong, of course, because reading about music and art allows you to experience things anew, to see colors that may have been apparent but still escaped you. I thought about that when I found Alan W. Pollack's series of notes on Beatles songs , a pretty amazing dissection of most of the important recordings, sort of the flip side of Mark Lewisohn's great, great book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions , which is sadly out of print.
There are times when writing something down makes things better. But I'm not always certain of that and sometimes I contemplate it to no end, while the thing, the thought lingers and then fades from view. In essence, I'm frightened of actually failing so I never actually start, to the end that thinking of something becomes much easier than doing it.
Of course it's always easier to have considered something than to have actually done it. Maybe I should read Lord Jim again to understand the importance of action.
While we humans bomb the bejeesus out of each other, ants form these continent-spanning societies . Then again, maybe they are not so different. Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland: "When ants of the two supercolonies were placed together they invariably fought to the death, while ants from different nests of the same supercolony showed no aggression to one another."
"You know, Hannah Arendt was always writing about the fact that the more involved you are in corruption or evil, and the more areas of your own existence there are that you therefore don't want to think about, or that you can't face, or that you have to lie about, the more distorted your perception of reality will be in general. In other words, we all have every reason to hide from reality, and it's a terrible problem." -- Wallace Shawn from My Dinner with Andre
I keep thinking that the answer to everything is another notebook. (And by "notebook" I mean bound paper , not "notebook" in the webgeek sense). If you have another notebook, everything gets recorded, and the notebook becomes an indexing system, a defacto folder. So if you want to record ideas/facts/conversations on a certain subject area, go to that notebook (say, the blue one), and write down everything. At work, I have two notebooks, one for software support and one for documentation projects. Problem is, some things worth recording cannot be boiled down to one discrete subject. Life is at variance with the simplicity of my system.
You are listening because it actually means something. Something about time.
Something I want to build: simple text editing web page that allows me to write pages that are appended with my stylesheet data and saves the files where I want, based on the category I choose. It should take me very little time, and it isn't very sophisticated, but it would save me time.
With a lack of something to say, you are saying it and that is poetry. If you read blogdex you can see what everyone is linking to , this meme, that one over there. The blog exercises people�s imaginations because Americans, obsessed with mediocrity, want to do something big. Win the lottery. Say to your graduating class �see how well I�ve done?� Look at me.
Sometimes embraced, sometimes rejected, mediocrity crashed our society�s democratic kegger a long time ago. We let people in. It�s what we do! But mediocrity happens along with it, along with access, along with technology. The last true elitists, the Dwight MacDonald set of the postwar, pre-60s era, opposed �mass culture� and the crap that people thought was �culture� but was, in fact, crap. They were interested in finding non-crap and praising it, "the life of the tide line where the decisive struggles for survival take place between higher and lower organisms." But that view is gone. Who today associates �highbrow
I was thinking the other day, "I should blog," and then I realized that no one reads this but me. No one. So it doesn't really make a difference if you read this or not because I don't believe you exist. Therefore you don't, at least not to me. Sorry.
Someone told me I need to work on my anger.
Recently rented My Darling Clementine and Sonatine. Now, Clementine was a beautiful movie. Those shots! It's one of those movies that could be silent and you wouldn't lose much. Sonatine was different. Funny, dark and funny (I'd never seen a Takeshi Kitano movie), but the sad bleakness of it all was so Japanese in character that I found myself struggling to relate. It was funny because after Kate and I turned off the VCR, The Fugitive came on (network tv). Now The Fugitive is so quintessentially American in the Clinton era: just-feeling and morally righteous and never seeing its own arrogance. God bless Harrison Ford.
Ok, so I broke down and bough the Strokes cd, and it is really good. If you like Television, you'll like the Strokes.
I noticed today that I am a very disorganized person. I have a lot of small responsibilities, and I handle them poorly. Why is it that the thing your mom told you about yourself continues to echo?
I keep hearing Bill Evans� playing of "My Foolish Heart." It�s the CD I play when tuck Ivy into bed. She hears it every night she gets tucked in. I used to play Miles Davis� Kind of Blue when she went to bed, but after a couple of years I got really sick of it. Now whenever I hear it (and you hear Kind of Blue everywhere), I think of when Ivy was six. Was she was six, was she more confused about the outside world, or less? I do remember talking to her about Miles Davis back then, and she wasn�t too interested. She�s still not that interested in Bill Evans. Why are the details of what music she hears important to me? Meybe she won't like, say Fred Frith, but I can't help imagining that she will benefit from knowing who he is. My dad gave me a childhood music thing. My Dad�s record collection rocks. He really loves music, and always played stuff, very cool stuff. And he was never trying to be hip, he hated hip. I remember at dinner he played George Shearing, Christop
Sometimes I get ahead of myself. I think "that would be good," and move in that direction, even though I should finish going in this direction first. Yesterday's example ocurred when my boss told me that Perl by Example was a good book if you wanted to learn Perl. I've always wanted to learn Perl (and, by extension, regular expressions as they are used in the real world). So I was about this close to going on Amazon (through Schoolpop , of course) to buy it. Then I stopped myself.
The fact is, I have too many computer books as it is. I just got four of them of Christmas, and I'm still working on the ones I got last summer. I'm better than I used to be; I used to buy books for whatever I was feeling, only to watch each title collect dust as I took another detour and pursued something else. I'm still too eager to engage in something new, only to blow off what I'm just starting to understand.
So many inputs exist at once, plus all the boo
The Recession Chic Lie is what I've been waiting for someone to write. At my last job, when we were thrown out on the street, it seemed as though I was the only schlub scrambling to find new work. "I'm not in a hurry," one PHP programmer said, "I'm going to go to the Yucatan and do some climbing, and otherwise just drink lattes and read." Uh, great. On the one hand, it makes sense: I was the only father on staff. But I often wonder what kind of support systems some people have. Maybe I'm so near to true poverty that I actually worry about finding work, and that's an unusual thing among the 30-40 college-educated demographic. [thanks to Dooce for the link]
My head is killing me and I know it's neck strain.
Funny how sometimes if someone decides not to email you anymore you don't actually notice how often they emailed you. That silence is an interesting marker.
Over the weekend I came across a notebook that I started in 00. Journal entries. The strange thing about reading old journal entries is that you see how awfully repetetive you are at the present moment. "You mean I whined about that two years ago?" (As if I should be suprised.)
At writer's group we discussed Lord of the Rings and we were as mixed about it as most critical reaction has been, and of course someone slagged Star Wars as being "not that big of a deal." I found myself really taking issue with that. But why defend Star Wars to people? I don't defend it because I think it's better than X or Y. I defend it because means something to me about my childhood. Which is a pointless defense, really. (Another marker: I knew I
Per Kate's advice I bought an Odwalla. Now, this site does not currently enjoy sponsorships, but Odwalla would be on my list of potential sponsors.
I really don't know what to say about this other than that the web supports all forms of information. Good, bad, you must yourself decide.
My writer's group met on Saturday. A great bunch of people, super talented. Talking with them I realized that I am terrified of success.
Not feeling great. Throat is incredibly sore. I have a big meeting today, presenting some drawings and I don't feel up to showing them. Arg.
Yesterday stayed home and watched movies, including Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and Romance on the High Seas. Watched Romance twice. Good Michael Curtiz Warners musical. Curtiz keeps the pace fast, almost ruthlessly so. And Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne wrote the funny and memorable songs, including "It's Magic," which won an Oscar for Best Song in 1948. Maybe the most significant reason why the movie is good is that I.A.L Diamond wrote it with the Epstein brothers (Diamond wrote a lot of movies with Billy Wilder, including Some Like it Hot ).
My new favorite game: blaming Israeli oppression on Yassir Arafat. Yeah, it all started with him. So when the Sharon government washed its hands completely of any obligations made to you during the last presidential administration and bulldozes your house, it's Yassir Arafat's fault. FISHDO. Jeez louise.
And I missed this yesterday: Bush calling Pakistanis "Paki's"
Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, did his best to mollify hurt feelings, without actually apologising. "The president has great respect for Pakistan, the Pakistani people and the Pakistani culture. Pakistan has been a strong member of the international coalition in the war against terrorism," he said.
However, there has long been a sense that Mr Bush's respect for Pakistan has never extended actually to knowing anything about the place. During the presidential election campaign, he was famously caught out when asked to name the Pakistani president, General Musharraf, now
I'm having a hard time coming back to work. Unable to concentrate.
Saw Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man last night. It was very beautiful, visually one of the most striking things I've seen. But I sort of didn't digest it at first. The level of abstraction kept me at arm's distance. But now, thinking about it and hearing that wild Neil Young music, I feel like it's sticking to me. Especially the images of death, and that feeling of vulnerability you have watching it. Watching it, Bill Blake's death is very close, you always expect bullets and destruction. I think that's what the film wants you to realize, that death is near and certain and part of life.
Saw The Royal Tenenbaums. Good, but it lost steam in the second half. I loved the world that Anderson/Wilson created. But the fact that the kids generated their own miseries made it hard to root for them. Kate perceived more of the sadness in the movie, I perceived more of the humor. Especially at the end.
Anjelica Huston is a very beautiful woman.
Well, vacation is over. I really liked Ice skating with Ivy and Sidney at Iceland. It was hard work, and I fell down about two dozen times, but I can see why so many people enjoy it. Ivy and I also had fun with the hot glue gun. Another highlight was Kate, Ivy and I at the Exploratorium. That place really doesn't get old for me, and Kate and Ivy are so much fun, you can be guaranteed of a good time with them.
My only vacation regret is that I didn't do more C++. But I discovered that being a dad all day long is far more tiring than working at my paying job.