Bluegrass, soul, Brazilian pop. One after the other all afternoon. I am pretty rad sometimes, after all.

Although I was puzzled to find out that I don't like Willie Nelson's music. I like him just fine -- I enjoy reading interviews and so on. But, I don't know, it's the production or something -- I didn't enjoy much of his greatest hits collection. Can anyone recommend an album. _
respond? (1)
07:09:01 PM, Wednesday 9 February 2005

-

"I'll Fly Away" has been in my head lately. Based on the lyrics and the TV show named after it, I always thought it was a song about the desire to escape slavery, like those Underground Railroad code songs. Turns out it was written by a white man in 1929, and maybe it's just about the desire to escape living. _
respond? (2)
03:41:24 PM, Thursday 3 February 2005

-

Last week I went to hear Dame Satan play. Their music has good song structure and a nice old-timey sound. Plus they employ something they call "banjarmony" which is basically the loveliness of a guitar and a banjo playing together. I think hearing them kicked off my recent country/bluegrass kick. You can hear some samples on their website, and maybe someday you'll be able to buy a t-shirt or even their album! But not yet, alack. _
respond? (2)
12:08:42 PM, Thursday 3 February 2005

-

The other day I saw someone I hadn't seen in a long time. As we were catching up, she commented, "I can't believe you're still at that job."

I'm sure she had no idea how readily I would turn her words into a thousand daggers to stab myself with. _
respond? (2)
07:50:14 PM, Monday 31 January 2005

-

I've been listening to a Hazel Dickens album nonstop since Friday. I heard her play a set at the bluegrass festival last fall and have been scouring the library's cd collection for her work ever since. Her music is amazing if you don't mind a little twang and picking. It seems that my plan to listen to whatever Le Tigre tells me to is working out. _
respond? (5)
12:21:04 PM, Monday 31 January 2005

-

I saw Battle Royale last night thanks to Mr. Prosper. It put me in a really good mood. P.S. I heart Mitsuko and her "killin' scythe". _
respond? (1)
06:55:07 PM, Friday 28 January 2005

-

A truly wonderful "Week in Craig" column this week:
Two minutes later, I walked in my house where my mother was making meatloaf in the kitchen.

"Hey ma, Grandma wanted me to give you this crackpipe." _
respond?
11:33:06 AM, Friday 28 January 2005

-

Graffiti scrawled outside the art institute:
rabbits killing people _
respond? (1)
06:30:16 PM, Thursday 27 January 2005

-

On my postprandial promenade I passed by the New Langton Arts gallery, which I'd heard a bit about, and headed inside. The pieces in the show were varied, to say the least. I felt like I was playing connect-the-dots -- why is the blown-up newspaper obituary for Marilyn Chambers next to the bricolage anti-war sculpture? -- and the show's title, "Situational Prosthetics", didn't suggest anything to me. (No, I didn't think particularly hard about it.) Perusing the website cleared up a bit of the mystery -- there are fifteen artists in the show and there's some kind of frenchy theoretical notion behind it all. Anyway, I really liked a few pieces by Kyoko Kawahata, especially "dekotora" (or maybe it's called "killar killers"?) which is a bunch of bright, translucent little 18-wheelers that reminded me of sugar skulls. _
respond?
04:35:33 PM, Thursday 27 January 2005

-

Flipping somebody off while you walk away from them is uniquely satisfying, and so easy! You don't even have to turn your hand around! _
respond?
01:03:45 PM, Thursday 27 January 2005

-

I was in a funk last night when I made it to the Coat (had been shopping for certain garments which never fit right) but my mood brightened soon enough. Instead of our regular two hours of discussion and beer, we watched the first two hours of the BBC miniseries I , Claudius and had pizza (and beer). It has the cheap production values I came to love as a wee PBS-watching child and lots of witty repartee. I just can't wait to see who Livia will kill next! _
respond? (9)
11:25:41 AM, Wednesday 26 January 2005

-

I take back any dissing I did on the G-4. I did not know that you didn't have to use that nasty old Mac OS with it. (I hate that OS and its imitator, XP.) And I didn't know that it was very easy to upgrade. If this is not true please let me know. It is possible that Mr. Prosper used its shiny shiny surface to mesmerize me out of my prejudices.

Things I have done lately:
Gone hiking at a cool park full of dead volcanoes;
Had dreams about living under a totalitarian regime;
Realized how boring community college classes can be. _
respond? (5)
06:47:58 PM, Friday 21 January 2005

-

Via Sumana, I found out about joshreads.com. He reads the entire comics page every day and posts his comments. Choice tidbits: he posits that Family Circus is going completely dadaist and discusses the cinematic(al) qualities of Rex Morgan, MD. _
respond? (3)
07:10:38 PM, Wednesday 12 January 2005

-

Another cute and violent Beatrix Potter story: The Story of Miss Moppet. _
respond?
04:08:19 PM, Wednesday 12 January 2005

-

The previous entry shows one reason I'm so glad we're reading Epictetus in philosophy group right now. _
respond? (2)
01:17:18 PM, Wednesday 12 January 2005

-

So my male coworkers have spent the morning insulting each other. Choice selections include, "Can you lift this with those girly hands?" and "Go take some Midol!"

Sometimes I have to remind myself that money is a good thing to have, and assault convictions are not. _
respond? (2)
01:09:55 PM, Wednesday 12 January 2005

-

The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit.

Check out those savage whiskers! _
respond? (5)
12:23:37 PM, Wednesday 12 January 2005

-

Things I've noticed so far today:

-Since this week started I've slept six hours one night, then five, then four. I should probably interrupt this countdown.
-A young woman on BART, wearing "natural" makeup and one of those pastel-colored velour tracksuits, who had entirely removed her eyebrows and replaced them with penciled imitations. I wanted to shake her and give her a pep talk. "Someday you will wake up in the middle of the night, paralyzed by the sense that something is missing -- and what's missing are your eyebrows! Don't hate them! They're the only ones you have! You are the only person who can save your eyebrows!"
-That he plume of steam that spouts out of the smokestack far at the end of the street was glowing, lit from behind by the rising sun.
-A smell that reminded me of the winery my dad worked at when I was little. _
respond? (4)
11:16:37 AM, Wednesday 12 January 2005

-

Out of context quote of the day:

I lie in wait at the end of the hall. Like a sleepy tiger in a bathrobe. _
respond?
02:56:49 PM, Tuesday 11 January 2005

-

Damian remarked recently that my bedroom at my new house reminds him of a hunting lodge -- it's officially a dining room and there's wooden wainscotting everywhere. Naturally this made me want to buy some antlers. Perhaps with a skull still attached? Or maybe I should just get a jackalope? _
respond? (2)
02:35:04 PM, Tuesday 11 January 2005

-

A coworker gave me a copy of the jazz singer Madeline Peyroux's album Careless Love. (She sounds a lot like Billie Holliday -- given the discrepancy between the finite number of Billie Holliday recordings and my apparently infinite appetite for such recordings, this is a wonderful thing.) Just now I noticed that one of the songs on it sounded familiar and realized that she was covering Elliott Smith. Gosh darn it, how cool is that? _
respond? (1)
01:09:04 PM, Tuesday 11 January 2005

-

Sumana brought a bottle of Amarula over to my house on Saturday for our Charlie Kaufman mini-marathon. (We watched Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, both of which I enjoyed, but not as much as I expected to. Now I'm afraid to rent Eternal Sunshine because I liked it so much when I saw it and don't want to ruin my memory of it.) Amarula is delicious, and I am very glad she left the rest of the bottle. _
respond? (3)
11:51:49 AM, Tuesday 11 January 2005

-

How is it that I feel at once constantly busy and thoroughly unproductive? _
respond?
02:00:20 PM, Monday 10 January 2005

-

Interview with Jared Diamond at Salon (do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around, it's worth it). He has a new book out on the relationship between ecological and societal stablity and I am hell of looking forward to reading it (in paperback). _
respond?
01:45:00 PM, Monday 10 January 2005

-

This morning I saw homeless guy picking up a Starbucks sidewalk sign and flinging it down a BART station's escalator well. It hit a woman in the head, but she seemed unharmed.

This is by no means the wackest thing I've seen around here, but it's memorable. _
respond? (1)
01:28:08 PM, Monday 10 January 2005

-

A few things I've figured out this morning:

I have three roommates and we all share one bathroom. This means I should get up earlier on weekdays.

When my coworkers ask, "what the hell are you listening to?", it is not necessary to tell them the truth. _
respond?
01:26:14 PM, Monday 10 January 2005

-

And before I forget: Fuck all' y'all. _
respond?
08:16:55 PM, Friday 7 January 2005

-

Funniest thing I've read so far today (it's early): "I personally believe that Afghanistan is going to turn around, much like a Turkey, and become a moderate Islamic state."

Heh.

From a comment in reply to Amanda's post about Stern Daddy politics over at MouseWords. The commenter is replying to Terrorist Strategy 101 at DailyKos, which is the most comprehensive explanation of Al Qaeda strategy I've read so far. Go read it, yo. ETA: Another howler from the same fellow, farther down in the comments: "America is not quick to anger, and not quick to war." _
respond? (1)
12:17:27 PM, Friday 7 January 2005

-

My savings account is full of money! It is an untenable situation!

Not quite, but I seem to be done saving up for a computer. Advice on what sort of laptop I should buy? I want to be able to watch dvds and run big graphics programs, but I don't need to edit movies or anything, and I don't want to spend more than $1500. This one was suggested to me -- can all y'all suggest anything else? _
respond? (7)
01:30:27 PM, Thursday 6 January 2005

-

Last night I watched most of Do You Speak American?, an interesting program on language which did a nice job of introducing linguistic concepts in an easy-to-understand way. (If you didn't get to see it, here are the transcripts.)

It seemed to come down pretty strongly on the side of descriptivism (as opposed to prescriptivism). They found John Simon, a crotchety old cracker, to talk trash on modern American speech, and he spent a lot of time complaining about "uneducated" contemporary speakers. (Incidentally, this guy was a great example of the tension between two functions of education -- the mind-broadening function, which we tend to idealize, and the status-cementing function, which we tend to pretend doesn't exist. Except this guy -- he seemed to think of it as education's primary purpose. Certainly that seems to be all it's done for him.) Anyway, he was contrasted with Jesse Sheidlower, the U.S. editor of the OED, who made an excellent case for a scientific approach to language. (I think I heard my brother go, "boo-yah!" at this point.) Later in the program a newspaper copy editor made a good case for a limited form of prescriptivism, which, as an uptight grammar lover, I sympathized with.*

The program was chock-full of linguists -- they had William Labov (even I've heard of him) on to explain US regional dialects, Dennis Preston to demonstrate attitudes about those dialects, Cecilia Cutler to talk about white boys adopting Black Vernacular English, and on and on. It was pretty neat to see them get the star treatment, although they all seemed uncomfortable before the camera.

There's lots of stuff on the website, including an article about Buffy's innovative slang. Now I want to read the book it comes from.

*I was trying not to leave a dangling participle, but that's a stupid rule anyway. _
respond? (2)
01:01:23 PM, Thursday 6 January 2005

-

I just keep watching that Ogre Battle over and over.

Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! _
respond? (2)
12:35:41 PM, Wednesday 5 January 2005

-

Dave is Having Adventures and writing about them. And when he is done writing about his adventures that means he will be here! Hooray!

Here is what his adventures sound like so far: "Oh East Coast, I wil miss you too! Don't be sad! Don't worry, retarded personification of a geographic location, I will take plenty of pictures and send back lots of notes!" _
respond? (3)
03:04:04 PM, Tuesday 4 January 2005

-

Anybody else afraid to use the term "irony" these days? I am always hung up on whether I can use it to mean "opposite to the expected occurence". For example: someone is bragging to me on AIM about their new wifi setup and then they lose the connection. I found a definition which reassures me in my use of it, but I'm still all scared that I might be veering into Alanis territory. Why must I be such an awful snob? _
respond? (18)
01:09:46 PM, Tuesday 4 January 2005

-

Watched Starsky and Hutch again this weekend.

In a restaurant
In a cocktail bar
On a high school bus
In the back of your mamma's car

On a trampoline
In the middle of a putting green
Anywhere, near or far
Right here at this bat mitzvah

That's the time I feel like making
L-O-V-E-T-O-Y-O-U (ooh-ooh-ooh!) _
respond?
11:44:39 AM, Tuesday 4 January 2005

-

I got the blogswap cds yesterday. So far I've only listened to Daniel Dumile's (who is this guy, by the way?) and Liz's and they are both frikkin' awesome. _
respond? (7)
02:02:14 PM, Thursday 30 December 2004

-

Note found on the sidewalk outside my office:
AFTER I COME BACK I PAY
YOU KNOW ME. _
respond?
11:01:36 AM, Thursday 23 December 2004

-

older entries

site & script courtesy of Moss