This is Me Being Helpful
We've lucked upon a bassinet. A couple we know have grown out of theirs (well, their son has) and so the handy carryall has been sent over to our house. I was tasked with the job of figuring out how to put all the pieces together this evening and, dutifully, I gave it a shot. I finally wrap my head around the arrangement of snaps and drapery and get the thing assembled. Underneath the main portion of the bassinet is a hanging plastic basket for, I don't know, useful things, I guess.
Or cats. Baloo waits until I've finished before he walks right up and climbs into the lower basket. He gets comfortable and then gives me a look of "See? The bottom bunk is just my size. You won't even notice me."
Dandified
We're feeding Solomon rock and roll now. A couple of weeks ago, we found out that he had a positive reaction to Led Zeppelin and Thursday night we gave him a good dose of the Dandy Warhols. The Dandies were doing a hometown show in Portland, Oregon, before hitting the road to support their new record, Welcome to the Monkey House. They've found their niche in Europe and the record has been out over there for some time and the Dandies have been doing the rounds for most of the year already. These days on the road meant they were coming in hot to the Rose City which is a nice change from the last time we saw them here when they were slow to wake from a several month hiatus.
The band was tight and Solomon showed his support with a couple of solid kicks. He kept it up long enough that I could get my hand down on Melissa's side and feel 'em. A nice way to spend an evening: feeling my son move around and getting a little groove on with one of our favorite bands.
Of course it really isn't a rock and roll experience until you get a contact high from the couple of fellows two rows over who are hitting their marijuana like they need to smoke the entire dime bag before the band finishes the first song. Nor is the evening complete without someone doing their nibble-fingered best to cover the largest area possible when they decide to drop their full cup of Weinhard's Finest.
Ah, the triumph and the tragedy of going to a club. To think I'm going to give all this up soon to stay at home and get vomited upon.
Kill Me Now
In the vanpool this morning, the radio is tuned to 1090: Classic Country. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has a song called "Fishing in the Dark."
"And it don’t matter if we sit forever and the fish don’t bite
Jump in the river and cool ourselves from the heat of the night
Baby get ready.....ooooooooooo.
You and me going fishing in the dark,
Lying on our backs and counting the stars
Where the cool grass grows.
Down by the river in the full moon light,
We’ll be fallin’ in love in the middle of the night
Just movin’ slow..."
Kill me now.
Summer Voyeurism
Traditionally summer is the time when we catch up on the movies we missed during the fall. Summer TV is usually so banal that it isn't worth wasting time on and we make regular tracks to the video store. But this summer has been the summer wherein we have succumbed to the lure of the trash TV programming of Monday night.
It has been the sordid tale of any addiction. First we watched one because everyone else was and we wanted to be able to share in the experience at the water cooler on Tuesday morning. And then it became a little obsessive as we started to shape our schedule to it. Finally, we have to recognize that it has gotten out of control. We don't do it just on Monday anymore; there's voyeuristic TV to be found on Tuesday nights as well. Fear Factor, Meet My Parents, For Love or Money, Last Comic Standing, What Not To Wear, Dog Eat Dog, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Where does it end?
Thankfully, next Monday night. Will Erin pick Chad or Ward? Will either of the two men take the money and run? Is Rob and his "big eye! big eye!" affectation gone forever or will he make a last desparate end run plea for Erin's affections? Will someone finally beat Jordan with a pool cue for always been so gleeful about delivering bad news?
God, I can't believe I care. I didn't watch the Blackadder documentary last night. I was too busy getting it on with the glass teat. (Going on forty years with that phrase, Harlan, and more right than ever.)
In a couple of weeks I can get back to the really important things like what did happen to Sydney at the end of last season and why did Vaughn bury his grief by marrying another woman? Or, can the writers of 24 actually find an interesting sub-plot for Kim or will they just cut her entirely and focus on what we all want to see: Jack having a kidney and maybe a lung snatched by rogue organ-leggers and still being able to kick ass. Or, how badly will The West Wing tank now that NBC has driven Sorkin off?
Gah, I should be writing.
Behind the Cunning Plan
More of a reminder to myself than anything else really. BBC Radio 4 has an archived stream of the "I have a cunning plan" documentary about the British comedy series Blackadder. This is what I'll be listening to this evening.
Theme and Variation
Listening to the Foundry's new collaborative CD Sub.terra this morning and thinking about the idea of "theme and variation." Sub.terra is a collection of tracks based around one source material. This isn't a Chinese Whispers style of collaborations where each artist remixes the previous artist's interpretation, but rather each of the five on the disc re-imagine the long tone trumpet work of the first fellow, Interstitial. What you get is five variations of the same journey. It's the same, but it's not.
We bought a new car over the weekend and, as I'm driving to work this morning, I'm considering the whole "it's the same, it's not" phenomenon. I take the same route I do every day, but everything else has changed: I'm higher off the ground, I've got fog lights running, my coffee cup is in a completely different position, Peter Gabriel's Up record is getting pumped through a system that has more high-end available than before, and the noise of the car beneath me is a different purr altogether.
Theme and variation.
I sit in the same seat on the train every day -- to and from work -- and I know that I sit on the west side of the train in the afternoon so that the sun doesn't make it impossible to read the laptop screen. Yet, in the morning, I'm on the sunny side. What's the difference between the light in the morning and the afternoon glow that makes me gravitate towards it in the morning? Or is it just habit that puts me on this seat every day? I look around me and see the same four or five faces that I see every day on the ride in. We're all creatures of habit.
When theme become all-pervasive, do you stop listening or looking because you've heard/seen it all before?
Listening to: Institial "Solitude" Sub.terra [2003]
Soul Seduction Indeed
Got this email just a bit ago.
"You are receiving this email because you have been ordering music at www.blackmarket.at or www.soulseduction.com at some point but we have not heard from you since then. We believe you are an “active music listener” and we have made a self definition: “providing music for the active listener”. That’s why we ask you to read on…"
This is crack delivered over the Internet. It's a good thing the Euro is doing well and shipping rates from mid-Continent are high enough to give me pause. Otherwise I'd be doing all my shopping here.
This is the way online niche music retailing should be done. No mess, no fuss, and lots of sweet sounds to seduce you with. Glorious.
Pigs at Powell's
We were in Powell's last weekend, taking a break from the blistering boredom of the I-5 corridor. Powell's is, for those who have never had the joy of visiting Portland, Oregon, an entire city block of books. Four stories, nine -- ten, maybe -- color-coded rooms overflowing with, well, everything you could imagine that is still in print. And quite a few books that aren't.
Across the street used to be Ozone Records and this intersection of 11th and Burnside was Heaven for young lads with disposable income. Ozone is now a Buffalo Exchange, and the newly opened Ozone UK located a block east is but a pale shadow of its former self (though there was a huge wave of nostalgia for the old days which washed over me when I stepped in on Sunday and heard Curve's Cuckoo playing). Djangos.com's flagship store is just up the street from Powell's, though I had to admit a preference for shopping their online store -- access to their entire inventory, a Notify Me list, and you don't have to wonder if the sixteen-year old they have filing records knows anything about the more independent genres of music.
It's been a year or so since I've been to Powell's and the neighborhood has changed. They've been tearing down parts of the old Henry Weinhard's brewing facility for years now (I've got pictures somewhere of the wreckage of the first building), but, in the last year, the contractors have outdone themselves. In the past, the blocks to the west and north of Powell's had been quasi-industrial, a string of streets with relatively available parking and silent warehouses. Now it is all chrome and glass and dark brick and high tech metered parking. At least three of the new buildings are high-rise condominiums. There's a Whole Foods grocery market, at least two gelati places, and about a dozen coffee shops.
The Terrafazione Italia shop plays the Acid Jazz DMX channel. There's a whole range of culture being co-opted for mass consumption by the hipster set right there.
You have to go into Powell's with a plan. Random browsing is too overwhelming. You have to have a couple of titles in mind when you hit the Green Room, otherwise you'll be found in the back corner of the Rose Room in six hours, immobilized by the stack of books you're trying to carry around.
I was after a copy of Bad Wisdom by Bill Drummond and Mark Manring. Drummond is one half of The KLF Foundation and Manring has been fucked by rock in his disguise as Zodiac Mindwarp. Bad Wisdom is the travel diary of their journey to the North Pole with an icon of Elvis. Yeah, I know it sounds like High Art and all, but these two have a knack for turning hijinks/performance art into acts of random enlightenment which are both entertaining and inspiring. I had also hoped to get lucky and find a used copy of John Burdett's Bangkok 8.
We came out with a bunch of kid's books. Fully cognizant that we're going to be reading these books about a million times to our son before he gets old enough to tackle the complete library of Alexander Dumas that is waiting for him, our aim is to add books to our permanent library that have some staying power with the adult mind as well. Holly Hobbie's Toot & Puddle books make me laugh -- every time -- and are an obvious choice. The harder sell was The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Anything with Dave's work in it is a no-brainer for me, but his work is probably a little too strong for young tykes.
Fortunately, there is a very stout-hearted and brave pig puppet in The Wolves in the Walls. There is at least one night in my future of sitting up with Solomon due to nightmares brought about because Dad's imagination has bled all over his wee boy and, yeah, that's the trade off and I can live with that. But there is a pig I can anchor him with and that'll help.
Pigs anchor all of us, you know. Ask any Chinese Astrologer.
Vicarious Living
From David Hatcher Childress' Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of Arabia and Africa:
"I wanted to do more than just see Africa and Arabia, I wanted to explore its mysteries. According to traditional history, mankind evolved in Africa millions of years ago, lived primitively in caves and trees for the same amount of time, and then, about ten thousand years ago, suddenly came out of the caves and started building ziggurats in Sumeria and Pyramids in Egypt. Yet, these civilizations were still supposedly primitive, had little interest in the rest of the world except for the occasional conquering of a nearby country, and life today is far better by any standards.
"Somehow, I didn't buy that version of history. The fertile crescent and the Nile civilizations were no doubt areas of ancient civilizations, but I wanted to find out the solutions to such riddles as what civilizations had inherited the Sahara before it was a desert, where the Egyptians had inherited their extremely advanced sciences, where King Solomon had gotten his fabulous wealth, and what were massive, ancient cities doing in the wildest and most remote part of central Africa? These were just a few of the mysteries that I intended to investigate, and I would have to do it in person. Reading about them in some book was not good enough for me; I wanted to see it for myself." (pp. 15-16)
Not that I'm expecting he'll find answers which might transform modern understanding of these ancient civilizations, but I will vicariously live the life of the vagabond adventurer through him.
Cirriculum Vitae
The list of "jobs I would have if reality had no bearing" includes being the guy who carries David Hatcher Childress's luggage. Oh, who am I kidding? I would be this guy. Screw following his footsteps. His bio at Adventures Unlimited Press reads: "Rogue adventurer and maverick archaeologist, David Hatcher Childress, takes the reader on unforgettable journeys deep into deadly jungles, windswept mountains and scorching deserts in search of lost civilizations and ancient mysteries." I picked up his Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of Arabia and Africa recently as part of a "buy three get the fourth free" inducement at Borders and promptly lost the book on my desk.
I've been using that phrase a lot recently.
The book surfaced last night and I caught myself wishing I had the time to read it right now. Also caught myself wishing I was out there doing the physical research for a book like this too. There are, I think, eight books in this series. Man, wouldn't that be keen. It would make the phrase "curriculum vitae" actually have some resonance instead of jsut being a high-brow way of saying "resumé."
How Soon is Now?
At what point do our evaluative filters give way to the comfortable embrace of familiarity? There is so much new music out there that we (and when I say "we," I really mean "I," but I say "we" so this won't look like complete navel gazing) may not have much time to absorb a new piece of music before we move on to something else. How much time do we give something before we relegate it to some category in our heads? Case in point, Snake River Conspiracy's Sonic Jihad record. I reviewed it for Earpollution back in 2000, and said that it had some promise but was hindered by associations which came to mind of things that it would never be. It was kind of a "feh, there it is" review, and I put the record on the shelf and moved on.
My wife discovers the disc at some point and starts listening to it. A LOT. I think there was a good month or two when this was the only thing she had in the car and, when I rode with her, I got to hear it over and over and over. Somewhere along the way, my ambivalence became acceptance which has now turned into a certain level of appreciation. I was putting together a new mix disc last night and popped SRC's cover of the Cure's "Lovesong" on there. I throw all the selected tracks together and listen to them a few times to get a sense of what order to put them in. So far the Snake River Conspiracy song is really standing out from the pack which means I've either picked a bunch of clunkers or SRC has become an old friend that is really welcome when it arrives.
When I write, I have to listen to music that is strongly familiar because, otherwise, I find myself listening to the music and not writing, or I find my writing being significantly influenced by the pace and content of what I'm hearing. I prefer records which I know well enough that they provide just sound and tempo to my writing environment and I hear them differently. I hear them as background noise, and these sorts of songs only impact you on a subliminal level -- they are emotional tints. But they are always solid, good colors which you like to have around you.
Okay, put it this way: you listen less, but hear more. Doesn't that make any sense? It's bugging me today because Snake River Conspiracy has somehow slipped into this comfort zone category. It's isn't because I sought the record out, but because I've heard it enough that it has -- by sheer persistence -- slipped over the wall and gotten into my warm space. The question then: is the relative worth of this record -- is it "good" or "crap" -- altered because my familiarity has engendered an understanding of depth or has it become respectable simply because it is a known entity?
And yes, I know they cover a Smiths' song. That and a Cure song and a Beatles song. And, in all honesty, they do a pretty good job of each of them.
Eaten by Monsters
Like the Weapons of Mass Destruction error page, here's another one. This is "this page has been eaten by monsters." The "Security Options" are a hoot. Well, the whole thing is funny, actually.
(scoped from Neil Gaiman's Blog)
The Lifespan of Memory
Mars hangs in the southwest, a white and pink dot in a gradually lightening sky. It is really not much larger than a pinhead, but still, it is bigger and brighter than the other dots in the heaven. I can tell my son that I have seen Mars. Sure, it was tiny enough that any of my upraised fingers would obscure it completely, but there is still the memory in my head that I've looked upon the face of another planet.
My father recently got a stack of pictures from his mother and one of them is a picture of me galloping across a sand dune in Death Valley. Dad sent a copy of this image to Melissa. It was strange to see this picture because I have no recollection of ever visiting Death Valley. I recognize the blonde kid in the picture -- I've got many pictures of that kid stashed away -- but there are no related memories in my head to accompany that snapshot.
Before I went to sleep last night, I tried to remember my earliest memory. I could remember the multi-colored squares of carpet remnants which covered the tile floor of my bedroom. I can remember playing hide and seek with my Dad and a glowstick. I can remember watching Godzilla in Destroy All Monsters, and I can remember seeing it a second time when I had the chicken pox. I can even remember events in first grade, but no names or faces. But I don't remember the house on Carracart Street or any trip to Death Valley (even though we lived but a hour or so from it until I was twelve).
I can remember looking at the full moon with Brett Thompson's telescope and I can even remember what the night felt like and the sound of the pool sweeper as it trundled about the surface of the pool behind us. I also remember peering out his bedroom window, staring with disbelief out at the green bushes as he tried to convince me that he had seen an alien with silver hands the night before. His hands were always dry and cracked and I can even recollect thinking that maybe HE was the alien. (What can I say? I was ten.)
I dreamed last night that I had a bit part in a lavish play and, even after months of rehearsal, I couldn't remember any of my lines on opening night.
If We Can't Go to Mars, Let Mars Come To Us
The Red Planet is rapidly approaching its closest position to Earth in the last 60,000 years. On or about August 27th, it will come within (approximately) 34.65 million miles of our planet. The next time it will even come near this proximity will be sometime during the lifetime of the 10th generation of our grandchildren. If they are even still on Earth and haven't all moved to Mars by that point.
Mars comes up sometime after 9pm and should be clearly visible from most of the night, being the brightest object in the sky other than the moon. I'd tell you where to look, but that would involve actually understanding the defintion that Dictionary.com spat back at me for "azimuth." Instead, go visit Space.com where they've got a whole section devoted to the adventures of the Red Planet (the link will take you directly there).
Too bad the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen isn't on a better schedule to coincide the release of the last issue of Volume 2 with this event.
(spotted by Jason. Thanks dude.)
Birds of a Feather
A duck paced me this morning. I saw Winged Migration a few weeks ago, and was reminded of the film as I watched the streamlined shape of the bird fly beside my car. Migratory birds can fly more than 2000 miles twice a year in the course of their seasonal migrations. Winged Migration follows a number of flocks of birds along their migration patterns, utilizing ultra-light aircraft to pace the birds and get some of the most amazing footage of birds in flight you will ever see.
I glance down at the speedometer. I'm doing 35MPH. This duck is keeping up with me. I've got Henry Ford's inventive genuis and a hundred years of mechanical inovation wrapped around me in order to achieve this sort of speed. A duck has a pair of wings and water-repellent feathers.
When Baloo snacked on my arm this morning, my reaction wasn't to bite him back, but to find a brick -- to find a tool.
Our self-awareness, our ability to see ourselves separate from our environment and to be imagine different configurations of that environment to our advantage, is what moved us to the top of the food chain. But where do we go from here? Sharks are the top of their chain and have been for millions of years. They haven't refined themselves because there hasn't been any reason to do so -- no creature threatens their position.
Who threatens us? Ourselves. Which is probably why we spend so much energy and creative effort coming up with more efficient ways of killing each other. Nice built-in self-destruct mechanism.
Body modification is just the next iteration of Darwinian evolutionary extrapolation. The next generation wants to be better, faster, stronger than the last, and isn't content to just pass along these traits to their children. They want to be more evolved NOW.
We understand tools, and, as our tools become more sophisticated, we will be able to more readily mimic those traits of animals which we still admire. Sure, I have a car which allows me to go faster than a duck, but I have to stay on the roads. My son may be able to grow his own wings and follow the children of this duck more directly. The distinction between the route we take and the course the duck flies may disappear in our lifetimes.
In the meantime, we have Winged Migration. See it. A duck's eye view is something wonderful.
Alfred
Alfred the Great was king of the West Saxons until 901 AD. Born in 849, he came into his kingship in 871, following the death of his brothers Aethelbald and Aethelred, and for the next seven years he fought the Danes for control of Wessex in England. Finally, in 878, he managed to defeat Guthrum, the Danish leader, and forged a respectable treaty which brought peace to the region for nearly a decade. When a Viking fleet appeared on the Thames and threatened the general peacefulness of the region in 885, Guthrum repented the treaty which he had signed and came again against Alfred. Alfred hadn't been napping and his defeat of the Danish attackers was much more permanent as he drove them back to East Anglia and Northumberia where they fled to France.
No longer faced with a life of combat, Alfred turned his attention to educating his people. Seeing a dearth of teachers in England, he brought in scholars to educate his subjects. He also believed there were a number of texts which his people should have access to, and that these books should be translated into a language which the general population could understand. He undertook a number of these translations (from Latin to English) himself and several of the books he brought into English were Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, an interesting rendition of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, and several adaptations of the writings of Gregory and Augustine.
"It should be borne in mind, however, that it is not the magnitude of Alfred's military achievements, nor the extent of the country which he governed, that lift him into the ranks of the world's great men, but the beauty and moral grandeur of his character. In him were combined the virtues of the scholar and the patriot, the efficiency of the man of affairs with the wisdom of the philosopher and the piety of the true Christian. His character, public and private, is one without stain, and his whole life was one of enlightened and magnanimous service to his country." [George P. Krapp, Encyclopedia Americana, 1962 edition, p. 380.]
Ow.
I've been reading Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats and he has a section where he talks about self absorption in cats. They aren't, he argues, conceited but, rather, they aren't so domesticated that they've forgotten how solitary they are. Cats aren't pack creatures like dogs and, in the wild, are completely solitary animals who have only themselves to rely upon. Which translates in a domesticated situation to being aware of their surrounding environment only insofar as it pertains directly to them. If your cat craps on the floor and you find it later and try to discipline him for it, he will not understand why you are angry with him. He will understand the emotion which being leveled at him, but he won't have the slightest clue why. The act of going to the bathroom on the floor has no impact upon the cat -- in fact, he's probably relieved that he could have a bowel movement -- but the effect that act has upon his immediate surroundings doesn't have any meaning to him.
Unless, of course, you catch him in the act and hose him down with the water gun. In which case, there is a direct corellation set up in his mind between cause and effect.
Being such self-reliant and self-devoted creatures, one wonders why cats tolerate us at all (and some with argue that they don't). Masson posits that cats see us as superior predators and, with us watching over them, they can lower their guards and spend more time being kittens. We allow them the security to play and not worry about their safety and security. (It's almost Maslowian in its simplicity.)
However, as the superior predator in the group, we have to remember that cats trust us not to abuse the relationship which they have entered into with us. For a cat to offer you its belly to scratch is a huge sign of trust because a cat's underbelly is one of its most exposed parts.
Note to self: Baloo isn't a lunatic. You probably deserved that lacertion on your forearm this morning. It's just a feline reminder to play nice with others.
Still, ow.
The Silent Approach of Progress
Traffic in the Seattle area is a continuing sideshow of gaffes, poor planning, sloppy accounting, and misdirection of the public money. Tim Eyman's "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more" referendums have shown the lawmakers in Olympia that we're willing to be shills for the auto industry and that we'll cut taxes just because we -- as an outraged body politic -- can. Not that we should. The result of all this misdirected voter aggression is a ravaging of the public transportation organizations which no longer have enough money to accomplish anything.
The public votes for a light rail system. Three, four, years later, they still haven't settled on a route which actually goes anywhere or services anyone. Last year, a revised monorail plan not only gets on the ballot but narrowly wins. Who pays for it? The residents of Seattle proper with a solid 'thwack!' on their car tabs. Just the other day, the Seattle Times reported that revenue for the monorail is 50% below expected levels. The explanation? Residents of Seattle are renting PO Boxes in unincorporated King County so that they can register their vehicles outside the city limits and avoid the monorail tax. Two things wrong with that explanation: (1) PO Boxes, even the small ones, aren't free and this theory requires that residents of the city have weighed the cost of a PO Box per year versus the cost of their contribution to the monorail and found the difference to be worth the time of having to drive out to this box in the boondocks once or twice a year; and (2) there are actually that many PO Boxes in unincorporated King County. How about we look a little closer to home and maybe check the math from the city offices first? It's not like there isn't a history of being off in the projection of costs in the past (anyone remember the BILLION dollars they overlooked in the projected cost of the original 21-mile route?)
I can't be too bitter. I am, after all, writing this from the comfortable air-conditioned seat of a Sound Transit train car. But you can't live in the Puget Sound area and not be a little cynical about the state of public transportation. All of the transit solutions seem to be perpetually mired in an endless circle jerk of trying to make sure everyone remains happy and we can all get together for a group hug afterward. Meanwhile, nothing gets accomplished.
It is with some surprise that, while waiting to make a left turn off of Pacific Avenue this morning on the way to the Tacoma Dome Park and Ride, I watch an electric light rail train pass by. I could have reached out the window of my car and touched it.
Things do happen, I guess. Glacially, but change does arrive.
Listening to: Killing Joke "Loose Cannon" Killing Joke [2003]
Under the Sturgeon Moon
I take a break from wrestling with the RSS feed code, and go out to see the moon. There is a small middle school about a block from our house and there is a large field next to it. The light levels are fairly low, most of the street lights are far enough away that the light pollution is acceptable out in the field. I'm out there with my camera, trying to set it up on my tiny little tripod to get a decent picture of the full moon, when I hear this buzzing sound behind me. It's some guy on a scooter going cross-country over the field.
Now I'm wearing dark clothes, lying down in the grass with a camera: what do you do you think he's going to think? He may not even see me, but I'm not really sure I want to take that chance. I prairie dog up enough that I'm a shape on the landscape and say, "Hey."
Long pause and then a "hey" back.
"How's it going?" I ask, trying to be nonchalant.
He must hear "what" instead of "how" because he comes back with: "Taking a leak. You?"
"Taking pictures of the moon," I say. Pause. "This is just one of those two guys meeting in a field sort of things," I say.
"Sure," he says.
A little while later, he finishes up his business and buzzes away. I'm still lying in the grass, trying to figure out what's the point of using a 3X zoom on an object that is nearly 250,000 miles away.
I left my lens cap out there somewhere, and the pictures turned out like you'd expect. But at least I did my bit for the neighborhood watch, spooking someone stopping for a quick public pee while on his way home, and he's got a full moon story he can tell buddies now.
Listening to: Sigur Ros "Untitled Track #3" () [2002]
Sturgeon Moon
According to the Farmers' Almanac it is a Sturgeon Moon tonight. It is also known as the Full Red Moon, the Green Corn Moon, and the Grain Moon: all titles which work well for the Golden Bough afficionado in me. But, most commonly, it is a fish moon. I'm going to stare big-eyed at the screen for a few hours, trying to parse together a RSS file which collates all four of the blogs here, and then I'm going outside to see the fish moon. Clear skies all day with big towering white clouds over the Olympics. Good night to catch fish.
Listening to: Opeth "In My Time of Need" Damnation [2003]
Sun and the Iliad
Very tired today after staying out way too late on a school night for Jarboe's sold-out show at the Showbox's Green Room. I went out at lunch to try to recharge in the sun. I'm not so keen on the bright lights, but the photosynthetic effect of sunlight can't be overlooked. Some air, some light, and some pictures I've been meaning to take for some time over at the Seattle Center.
Pictures of Alexander Liberman's orange and red Olympic Iliad can be found in the Photo Log. The sculpture was installed in 1984 after much discussion as to exactly where to put it. It ended up as part of the Sculpture Garden on the South Lawn of the Seattle Center, just east of the Pacific Science Center. The Bumbershoot World Stage is usually right in the shadow of this piece.
Rain Again
"It is raining again, cheri. The elephants are restless."
I think I'm mixing Green Card and Amélie there. The quote always comes out of me in Gérard Depardieu's voice and this time it seems like there are too many words. But it is raining again and the elephants are restless.
The weather will burn off by this afternoon -- it always does and did yesterday -- but for the present, it is cool and grey and the sounds of traffic are all muted by the curtain of rain. I'm not one of those who dislikes the Pacific Northwest because of the rain; in fact, of the types of climates that I've lived in, it is the preferred environment. The weather here is mercurial -- quick and restless. The weather in Eugene, OR, is dismal and suicidal -- 2.2 days of sun throughout January -- and it is just grey, grey with a bit of mist in the air all the fucking time. Up north, the weather moves. Sure it rains and it probably rains as much as you think it does, but it doesn't stay. It comes, floods, and moves on. Even soft rain like what is brushing the leaves of the silver maple in the background right now won't last.
Weather like this forces a pause. You have to pull yourself out of the self-imposed busy work for a minute and listen.
Catching Up
Playing catch-up this evening. Melissa is off in Eugene, OR, and I'm holed up in my office with the Internet and the stack of CDs on my desk. Trying to finish up the design nits of the new iteration of the site (while not getting bogged down in the minutia), trying to organize the flood of CDs that I've received through Earpollution that need at least one listen, trying to get enough background information collated to formulate some coherent questions for an interview with Jarboe tomorrow before her show at the Showbox.
At least I have a new toaster oven. Just like the last one, amazingly enough. Though this one is white which matches the rest of the kitchen better. I think the black one which died last night was the last appliance from my old apartment in Seattle.
Listening to: 9 Lazy 9 Sweet Jones, Kiyo Chaotech Odd Echo, Muslimgauze The Dome of the Rock, Killing Joke Pandemonium
Gadgets
Our toaster oven died a flaming death last night. The heating element cracked and dropped into the base which, visually, was an interesting change from the normal gentle browning of the toast. So, today, I have the mundane task of buying a new toaster. I am a mixture of excitement and dread: excitement because, like all good gear whores, I now have a perfectly good excuse to go play with the new toys; dread because we've had our old toaster so long for a reason and you never know if the feature set is still considered marketable by the manufacturers.
I have a voice-activated Braun alarm clock which has been my steady companion for nearly fifteen years. The beautiful thing about this clock (other than its size and portability) is how much thought went into making the voice activated part of the clock actually functional. Yes, when the alarm goes off, I tell it to take a hike and it goes silent. That is exactly what it is supposed to do and, contrary to what you might think about how little that would get you to wake up, it works deceptively well. When it starts, it starts softly, like a little scratching at the window. "Ah, hello? It may be time to get up. Would you like to check?" Then it gets louder, each series of tones harsher than the last. "Hey, slacker! Time to make the donuts!" And here's the real beauty of the time piece. You have to make more noise than the ambient level of sound in the room for it to register. You can't just groan and roll over; you have to really project to get it to stop. "FUCK OFF! IT'S THE WEEKEND!"
Five minutes later..."Ah, hello? It may be time to get up. Would you like to check?"
I love this clock. My grandfather gave it to me, and at the time, I thought it was sort of a strange and weird gift to give to a boy going off to college -- I mean, this was my first year of college, I was anticipating needing an air raid siren to get me out of bed in the morning. My grandfather was a wise man, and he knew how much a young lad would grow to love the simplicity and elegance of a nearly indestructible clock that you communicated with through sound. I have a bookmark to a store which sells them because I know -- eventually, surely -- replacing the single AA battery won't be enough to resuscitate this clock. I won't want a new clock; I'll want my old one and, even now, I see that the modern version has colored buttons on top instead of a single wide bar and that the snooze time is now eight minutes instead of five.
I worry that I won't be able to find a toaster oven that can handle four pieces of bread. I worry that toast is so last year and all the new machines will only do bagels. Some days I'm not so eager to embrace the new.
Solomon's Wisdom
"Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the sons of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men, than Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was known in all the surrounding nations. He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows on the wall; he spoke also of animals and birds and creeping things and fish."
[1 Kings, 4:29-4:33]
Peach Light
The people who owned our house before us had some strong ideas about what they wanted in interior design. Not all of them were choices that I would have made, but they are the things which you live with while you find time to change them to your liking. They painted the rooms a range of colors, but really like this rose color which runs throughout the main portion of the house. Now, come on, it is closer to pink than the lighter rose, and it is definitely something that I wouldn't have stepped up and picked.
But there are times when I understand why they chose it. The color is warm in the winter when everything else is gray, and, during the summer when the sun flames on in the west, the whole upstairs is filled with a peach glow. It's like being inside James' giant peach.
Peach-o-Rama!
The Metropolitan Market (which used to be Queen Anne Thriftway, but that's a story for another entry) is celebrating Peach-o-rama right now and you can't work your way to the meat aisle without being assaulted by peaches. There are at least two displays overflowing with the fruit and the chef at the deli is invariably cooking something that requires more than a handful of peaches. There are large placards detailing the Brix level of the current crop of peaches (nothing less than a 13 for the Met, thank you very much!). Frankly, it seemed like a lot of hype to move a goodly number of peaches before the season finished.
Well, I had one tonight. I've got a weird thing about fruit. I don't really know what it is but for reason, I am reticent about fruit. I like it when I have it, but getting it out of the skin or rind or what have you always seems like an insurmountable obstacle. I think it is a texture thing, a guilt by association with my dislike for tomatoes. Regardless, I have to work up to having a piece of fruit. It is silly really. I almost missed having a Pence Orchard peach, and that would have been a tragedy.
Baloo, of course, wanted a slice but got roundly checked at the edge of my lap. That's right, buddy, I ain't sharing. He slouched off, muttering about the motor car he was going to acquire somehow so he could come and go as he pleased.
I didn't hear him. I was too busy with my delicious peach.
What Cats Really Want
Baloo, our black cat, was a wee bit annoyed with me last night. It was the first time (I think) that we had really left him alone all day and night since we had gotten him and, when I got home, he was making the sort of noises an animal makes when it has been screaming for so long that it has become hoarse.
It was all a clever ruse, of course, to get some sympathy. I'm not that much of a sucker.
This morning, while I held him on my lap and ate breakfast, I caught him looking out the window and I knew what he was thinking. "A motor car. All I really need is a small motor car with long enough pedals that I can reach. Then I could come and go as I please, thank you very much."
Baloo would look good in a Mini. And he knows it.
Re-Reloaded
I saw the Matrix Reloaded again tonight in 60 foot IMAX glory. There is the ongoing backlash against the film -- arguments that the film isn't nearly as good as the first. And, now having seen it three times, I will hold to my position that you're not paying attention. Yes, the first movie revolutionized what is possible in film, but Reloaded has the luxury of already having invented the wheel. They don't need to change the world; they just need the opportunity to show you how the New World can be in the hands of Those Who Know.
The Wachowski Brothers have a plan, and it is a grand plan indeed. The first film opened your eyes, the second one will make you think about which reality is real, and the third will show us that our imaginations are the only reality that matters. The trilogy is an 21st century alchemical puzzle. There is a code to be deciphered here.
Here's a couple of specific observations gleaned during this viewing:
(1) The viewscreens in the Architect's room are the same as the viewscreens by which someone is observing Neo in the interrogation scene in the first film. It's just a transition in the first film, a board of screens which leaves us to think that someone is observing Neo in the cell before the Agents arrive, and is nothing more. But, when you see these screens again at the end of Reloaded, you realize who has been watching Neo. Whereas we once thought it was meant to be us, it is now clear that it was the Architect.
(2) When the Keymaker dies, his body is arranged in the traditional pose of the Tarot Magician. One hand raised towards Heaven, one hand pointed towards the ground. If Neo is the Fool, then Keymaker's pose suggests progress towards enlightenment.
(3) Both the Architect and the Oracle speak in carefully calculated language which give the audience the impression they are saying something, when in actuality, Neo is the one who actually posits facts and decisions. The Oracle is especially oblique in the first film and it is as the Architect says: 99% of the participants in the Matrix persist in the illusion when they are given the perception of choice.
The Merovingian is the only radical thinker of the bunch. "Know why you act" is all that he is saying. Move beyond the illusion of choice and actually learn to think for yourself. Morpheus is a zealout and, under the illusion of being free, he is actually one of the most trapped characters. He believes in the inevitable destiny of the prophecy and that every action is preordained to occur in the inexorable course towards that destiny. His diction becomes stilted and robotic in this film because he is losing the ability to be a free thinker. Whereas Agent Smith grows a sense of humor because he is becoming, for lack of a better word, more "human."
I think Councillor Hamann's "no point" in the Engineering Section will become the ultimate point. There is a tantalizing detail of future history in the Second Revolution short of the Animatrix, where the machines, having become self-aware, come to the United Nations seeking recognition of their individualized existence. Mankind refuses to see the machines as equals -- we made them after all -- and, well, things fall apart.
Of course, we fail to see the ironic parallel. God made us and is up there waiting for us to become enlightened enough to approach Him as an equal. You think He'll turn us away? Nope. That's the whole point of the human experiment.
Solomon
"The connection of Solomon, son of David, the King of Israel, with magical practice, although it does not possess any Biblical authority, has yet a very considerable body of oriental tradition behind it. It is supposed, however, that the Jewish Solomon has in many cases been confounded with a still older and mythical figure. Then the Arabs and Persians have legends of a prehistoric race who were ruled by seventy-two monarchs of the name of Suleiman, of whom the last reigned one thousand years. 'It does not seem,' says Yarker, 'that these Suleimans who are par excellence the rulers of all Djinn, Afreet and other elemental spirits, bear any relationship to the Israelite King.' The name, he says, is found in that of a god of the Babylonians and the late Dr. Kenealy, the translator of Hafiz, says the earliest Aryan teachers were named Mohn, Bodies or Solymi, and that Suleiman was an ancient title of royal power, synonymous with 'Sultan' or 'Pharaoh.'
A Persian legend states that in the mountains of Kaf, which can only be reached by the magic ring of Solomon, there is a gallery built by the giant Arzeak, where one kept the statues of a race who were ruled by the Suleiman or wise Kings of the East. There is a great chair or throne of Solomon hewn out of the solid rock, on the confines of the Afghanistan and India called the Takht-i-Suleiman or throne of Solomon, its ancient Aryan name being Shankar Acharga. It is to these older Suleimans then, that we must probably look for a connection with the tradition of occultism, and it is not unlikely that the legend relating to Solomon and his temple have been confused wtih these, and that the protagonists of the antiquity of Freemasonry, who date their cult from the building of Solomon's Temple, have confounded some still older rite or mystery relating to the ancient dynasty of Suleiman with the circumstances of the masonic activities of the Hebrew monarch."
[Lewis Spence, An Ecyclopaedia of Occultism, 1920, p. 372.]
Ultrasound Report
We had our second ultrasound today. We're had one at 11 weeks because there was some question as to whether or not we were going to have twins (both my father and Melissa's father are fraternal twins), and while we knew there was only one potato in there, this one was the chance we had to really see and hear what was going on in there. Everything looks normal, which is both anti-climactic and reassuring.
Who am I kidding? We got to see all four chambers of the heart; we got to see the skeletal structure; we got to see fingers and toes. We showed pictures to anyone that seemed the least bit interested. In fact, here's one now.
Later, at lunch, we got these fortunes in our cookies. Melissa's is on top. Mine is below. It was a good day.
Leapfrog
Regarding the previous note about time confusion, I read about it on boingboing.net who, in turn, references a note about the article on interconnected.org. Over at interconnected.org, he's got a link to a mention at 2lmc.org. Now over there the reference hops to David Galbraith's weblog. Galbraith's log points back to the original article in The Guardian.
This has been today's exercise in degrees of separation.
What Time Is Love?
"Unbeknown to most people there is not a single accepted way of telling the time, but several different scales running concurrently. The differences are usually small, but the scales can be as much as 30 seconds apart and the gap between them is growing steadily. " An article in the Guardian from June 26th about the inherent problem with time.
It's subjective. Funny, that.
Since 1967, atomic clocks have been the de facto standard for keeping time with their measurement of a specific number of cycles of radiation which correspond to the transition between two energy levels of the ground state of Cesium-133. That would be 9,192,631,770 cycles. The International System of Units came up with that number. This is International Atomic Time. Which is different from Coordinated Universal Time which is altered slightly to keep pace with the astronomical shift between night and day. Since the Moon is gradually slowing the Earth down, these two times are moving apart which is causing some problems.
Occassionally leap seconds will be interjected into the CUT time to bring it current. Which is all fine and dandy and means that every once in a while, we scamper ahead a few seconds. Like on December 31, 1998 when we jumped forward 31 seconds. And the mix has been good. However, the satellite global positioning system used for navigation uses a different time scale, and that one is about 13 seconds off right now.
The International Telecommunication Union has set up a working group to talk through the oncoming crisis. Later this year, the Galileo GPS system, will be launched in Europe, adding another standard which will have to be dealt into the mix. Eventually, we'll all be on a different time scale and no one will be able to agree on whether or not anything happened at any given time. There will be no external observers, just internal subjective observations of the universe.
Red Herring Fisher
This came up in conversation recently. Can you be a red herring fisher? That is, can you be predisposed to be distracted by things which you are false lures?
The Word Detective has a history of the phrase "red herring." The herring spoils quickly and the only way to preserve it for any length of time is to smoke it which turns it a very distinct red color. These smoked fish were also used by hunters to train their hounds to follow a scent, and were later used to test the hound's ability to distinguish between the real scent of the fox and the false trail laid down by the smelly fish.
There is another etymological version wherein criminal used the fish to disturb their trail in order to evade the dogs used by the law. If a copper found a fish in your pocket, was it circumstantial enough of the possibility that you might be planning a crime or were you just a fish enthusiast?
I've got enough projects scattered around my desk that I sometimes wonder if I might be a fisherman for the red herring.
"Are You Talking to Me?"
Melissa and I are going to become parents on or about the winter solstice this year which puts us (well, her actually, I'm just the support network at this point) about twenty weeks along. Far enough that the little critter has finished building most of the basic structure and is starting to fine-tune the muscles and the sensory organs.
We're out for a walk along the water at Point Defiance this morning, and there aren't many walkers on the path. I'm lost in thought and I hear her voice. "Is that your foot?" she keeps asking. We've been just a pair long enough that I know she isn't prone to talking to herself which means she is talking to me. And her question causes me no end of confusion. My feet are on the ground. We're walking, after all. I'm not touching her or kicking her or lashing her with my shoelaces. In no way are my feet anywhere near her.
Then it hits me that she isn't talking to me. Once a duo, now a trio. The little half-baked rascal can hear us and, apparently, it can move now too.