Grass Seed

Nikon D100, 105mm with reversed 50mm, flash

That's a little seed growing on this ornamental grass plant in our dining room.

Here's how big it is, compared to my index finger.

Nikon D100, 105mm

8th Grade Math

I Passed 8th Grade Math

I got 10/10

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Monday Cat Blogging

Nikon D100, Lensbaby

Start Your iPods

This wonderful work-free Monday starts with:

1. Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar (live)
   
2. Smashing Pumpkins - Geek USA
   
3. Robbie Fulks - You Break It You Pay
   
4. Stereolab - Nomus Et Phusis
   
5. Spoon - Advance Cassette
   
6. Figure Eight - Multiplication Rock
   
7. The Vaselines - Dying For It
   
8. Artie Shaw & His Orchestra - Temptation
   
9. Wilco - Blank
   
10. Rolling Stones - What a Shame
    

Guess this means I hope I'll like my new job!

Shine on, crazy Albert

From the Dynamic Einstein.

Marriage Contract

The Smoking Gun brings us a Sicko Marriage Contract. No foolin, this guy is fucked-up.

Start Your iPods

This wonderful work week starts with:

1. Van Halen - Push Come To Shove
   
2. Rolling Stones - Little Red Rooster
   
3. Belly - Untitled and Unsung
   
4. Beastie Boys (with Q-Tip) - Get It Together
   
5. Television - Guiding Light
   
6. Kinks - Johnny Thunder
   
7. Rolling Stones - Casino Boogie
   
8. Sonic Youth - Silver Rocket
   
9. Yo La Tengo - Fog Over Frisco
   
10. Radiohead - 2+2=5
    

Woo hoo!

Monday Cat Blogging

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Henry

Henry Rollins Threat to Australian Security.

Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying

I have literally nothing to do at work. I turned in my two week notice this past Monday, as my iPod random ten predicted. And now I'm just sitting here, utterly bored. No new work coming my way, all my existing work done. They should just let me go today.

I'm snooping around Pitchfork Media, feeling like a loser (cause, really, that site is pathetically pretentious and who the fuck would want to be there if there was anything else to do?) when I spot a headline about Q-Tip, one of guys from A Tribe Called Quest. I know next to nothing about hip-hop; I only know that I liked the Beastie Boys and A.T.C.Q back in 93, and haven't found anything else since that doesn't make me sad for the state of mankind. But I went ahead and clicked over to this little blurb, in case it said something like "Q-Tip does a new record that sounds exactly like ATCQ in '93! All you lamers who are stuck in the last millennium rejoice! Whatwhat?!"

It was worse than that:

Kanye once said Dilla's drums "can't ever be topped." There's nothing like tragedy when it comes to legitimizing hyperbole, huh? These kick drums sound like John Goodman farting on the Challenger while it blows up. The heartbeat of Q-Tip's floptastic solo jernt, which was produced almost entirely by the man in question, has got three different samples looped up, weaving and sneezing on each other. Each one-- the frisky guitar, the Vibrettes drums, and ESG's "UFO" skylight swerve-- has an identity of its own, but is also syncopated deep into the track. The multiple samples are appropriate, considering the jam is about riding around in your whip knocking your favorite music out the woofers. I guess the Abstract's lothario shtick ain't so bad in retrospect, but really, no one's listening for that racket. It works because it's complicated and sloppy. Nobody knows how to intentionally fuck up a track anymore.

Hmmm... I got nothing better to do, so I'm going to go through this fucker one line at a time.

Kanye once said Dilla's drums "can't ever be topped."

I recognize the name "Kanye"; no idea who "Dilla" is, or what he has to do with this Q-Tip song. If there is a relation, a review would be a good place to put it, no ?

There's nothing like tragedy when it comes to legitimizing hyperbole, huh?

Perhaps. What?

These kick drums sound like John Goodman farting on the Challenger while it blows up.

I guess that's the tragedy and the hyperbole thing. But I don't know what on earth, or in space, that would sound like. I can appreciate the sound of fart, and I can imagine the sound of a Space Shuttle exploding .. but the two together? The engineer in me says: Given the size of a shuttle, you'd only hear the explosion, no matter how big the ass. But this guy hears the combination...

The heartbeat of Q-Tip's floptastic solo jernt, which was produced almost entirely by the man in question, has got three different samples looped up, weaving and sneezing on each other.

Jernt? Which man? What's the question?

Each one-- the frisky guitar, the Vibrettes drums, and ESG's "UFO" skylight swerve-- has an identity of its own, but is also syncopated deep into the track.

I think I know what he's trying to say with "syncopated deep into the track", but that seems like a lousy way to say it.

The multiple samples are appropriate, considering the jam is about riding around in your whip knocking your favorite music out the woofers.

I think there's a bit of logic missing from that. How does the number of samples make anything more or less appropriate for driving around ? Is a song without samples inappropriate?

I guess the Abstract's lothario shtick ain't so bad in retrospect, but really, no one's listening for that racket.

I think I understand this one: "Abstract" is Q-Tip's pseudonym name - right, a guy named "Q-Tip" has a nickname. And I guess he's doing "shtick" these days. I'll give a half letter grade bonus for "lothario", though.

It works because it's complicated and sloppy. Nobody knows how to intentionally fuck up a track anymore.

Those two sentences are fighting each other: The first thumbs its nose at the second; the second one questions the validity of the first.

Overall, the review doesn't work - because it's complicated and sloppy. C-.

Onward Macho Killers

James Wolcott said:

I saw a creature die in earnest earlier this afternoon on CNN. Rick Sanchez was filing a report on hunting protocol and safety, tramping through the woods with a pair of experienced hunters. At the end of the segment one of the hunters shot a quail, which fell from the air and landed in the grass, its wings thrashing. An animal died so that the segment could make its point. And it made me realize or re-realize that I don't have any respect even for 'responsible' hunting, because the deaths it causes are still wanton and unnecessary, even if the carnage is less promiscuous than that of the canned hunts favored by Cheney, Scalia, and similar Davy Crocketts on male-bonding expeditions.

... and it got me thinking...

When I was in high school, my friends and I did a lot of hunting. Once or twice a month, we'd grab our .22s and go marching into the woods around our little town. We shot mostly squirrels, which my friends, two brothers, would take home and eat. Since their stepmother fried the little things in lard, and I couldn't (still can't) stand the smell of anything frying in lard, I never ate any of it.

Back then I didn't think of the squirrels as creatures with any kind of intelligence, except whatever was required to run away when we approached them - and even an insect has that much. They were mostly quick-moving gray targets. I don't know how many I killed over the years. Dozens, at least.

When I graduated high school, I put my guns in storage and went off to college, never to go hunting again. I didn't even think of my guns until sometime during my 4th year of college, when I needed some cash - probably to buy guitar strings or Ramen. So, I found them, wrapped in plastic bags, sitting in a corner in my step-grandmother's basement. I brought them to a local gun shop and sold them. That was probably fifteen years ago.

Since then, I've turned against hunting, personally - if other people want to do it, that's their choice. While I think I'd still enjoy shooting at targets, I know I'd take no joy in killing a squirrel or a deer or quail, or anything, really - I'm even basically opposed to killing fish for sport. I was quite the fishing enthusiast back in my school days, too ('fishing' was one of my listed under in my senior yearbook photo). But I never kept anything I caught, partly because most of what I caught came from the Hudson River, literally right next to the GE plants responsible for making the Hudson the "the most PCB-tainted water body on the planet". The fish, mostly rock bass, perch and various sunfish varieties, were often covered with sores and tumors - yum. There were places I could go to catch fish that were edible, but I could walk to the river from my house in just a couple of minutes. And even when I did catch edible fish I never kept them; I had no need to. I didn't need them for food, didn't want to put them on my wall, etc.. I've been fishing since then, but I still throw it all back.

Anyway... I recently got into a little discussion about hunting, on a wingnut blog post about Cheney's hunting accident. Since I'm not a Cheney sycophant, the other posters immediately assumed I'd never fired a gun, owned one, taken a shooting course, had a hunting license, or been hunting - just another sissy city-boy liberal, I guess is the assumption - and therefore, I had no right talking about the Cheney incident because I was out of my element. Well, it was fun to correct them and say that yes, in fact, I have done all that, and some of my relatives still do; hunting is not yet a GOP-only activity. The goal posts immediately moved somewhere else, of course.

What got me thinking, though, was this: yes, I've done all that; I know all about guns and gun safety, hunting and being a big macho slayer of smaller animals. But these days I have zero interest in doing it again. I no longer think of the animals that I used to shoot as little animated targets; I realize that they have their lives to live, just as I have mine. That they don't know how to speak or type an email doesn't give me the moral authority to kill them as a way to boost and soothe my own ego (a.k.a. "for sport"). I'd rather feed squirrels and birds then kill them. I have absolutely no interest in killing a deer or a bear. And if ever offered, I'll politely decline the chance to shoot farm-raised birds. Yes, I'm sure it's a great challenge to hit a fast-moving bird from 100 feet, and I'm sure the VP takes great pride in the accomplishment; but beyond a test of hand-eye coordination that I can duplicate with a copy of Half Life 2, the point of killing birds eludes me. I don't need to stand on a pile of little corpses to feel like a man.

Hold the ice

12 year old budding scientist, Jasmine Roberts reports:

'I found that 70-percent of the time, the ice from the fast food restaurant's contain more bacteria than the fast food restaurant's toilet water.'

Start em Up

This work week, the iPod starts off with:

1. Miles Davis - Four
   
2. Adrian Belew - Old Fat Cadillac
   
3. Robyn Hitchcock - Uncorrected Personality Traits (live)
   
4. Beck - It's All In Your Mind
   
5. Radiohead - No Surprises
   
6. King Crimson - Sleepless
   
7. The Cure - Throw Your Foot Away
   
8. Moby Grape - 8:05
   
9. The Sea And Cake - Sending
   
10. The Cars - The Little Black Egg
    

Interesting. Guess I'll be quitting my job this week.

Monday Cat Blogging

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Investing

Money mag lists five stocks they "love". Leading the list is Apple.

Now, I don't know when that article was written. But, if it was written any time in the last month, the author[s] should've been taken out behind the woodshed. Why?

APPL:


That's why.

See that peak? That's Jan 11^th. And see that little nipple at the top of that peak? That's me, buying in. I am not a good investor. But now I at least know to ignore what Money magazine recommends.

Oi

Photoshop, baby!

The good old days

Glenn Greenwald, Live blogging the NSA hearings:

We used to quote Madison, Jefferson and Lincoln to decide what the principles of our Government are going to be. Now we quote Al Qaeda. The Administration wants Al Qaeda and its speeches to dictate the type of Government we have. It is the centerpiece of everything they do and say.

Start your iPods

... and this week we start with...

1. Interpol - Leif Erikson
   
2. Cowboy Junkies - Floorboard Blues
   
3. Cowboy Junkies - First Recollection
   
4. Polvo - Well Is Deep
   
5. Pavement - Billie
   
6. Cowboy Junkies - To Lay Me Down
   
7. Beck - Sing It Again
   
8. Big Star - Thank you Friends
   
9. Buena Vista Social Club - Murmullo
   
10. John Lennon - Beautiful Boy
    

Three Cowboy Junkies' songs in my random ten? Hmm...

Mysterious sudden meeting with my manager announced... wonder what that means?

... heh. it means we've been bought. Current word is they're keeping all products and employees... but you know how that stuff goes.

Monday Cat Blogging

Nikon D100, 50mm

Ampulex

Carl at The Loom writes about The Wisdom of Parasites:

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.

The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp's burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes.

Read the whole thing!

Ho. Lee. Fuck. Ing. Squick.

Look out! Trigens!

W sayeth:

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms; creating or implanting embryos for experiments; creating human-animal hybrids; and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.

Errr... what?

Has W been staying up late playing Far Cry ? And has the lack of sleep made it impossible for him to keep the two worlds separate in his mind ?

Look out, Condi! That one's got a rocket-launcher on his arm!