“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” - Dan Quayle
Tonight we found a frog in the coffeepot. The coffeepot that had recently held hot coffee and had been, to the best of our knowledge, frogless.
Seriously creepy. Earlier in the evening, Husband and I were on our way to the mailbox when a pair of coyotes went trotting past us. That was a bit unnerving. A frog in the coffeepot? That’s a lot unnerving. Ick.
Alan Rosenblatt has an informative piece up on the Huffington Post, Facts and Lies About Lowering Oil Prices.
I was going to say something smart about Rosenblatt’s cogent analysis of the roots of the lies that are “informing” American’s perceptions on how to resolve the oil crisis, but then I got distracted by Andy Borowitz’s hilarious “report,” McCain Makes Historic First Visit to Internet.
…..
But with his Democratic rival Barack Obama making headlines with his tour of the Middle East and Europe, the McCain campaign felt that they needed to “come up with something equally bold for John to do,” according to one advisor.
McCain aides said that the senator’s journey to the Internet will span five days and will take him to such far-flung sites as Amazon.com, eBay and Facebook.
With a press retinue watching, Sen. McCain logged onto the Internet at 9:00 AM Sunday, paying his first-ever visit ever to Mapquest.com.
“I can’t get this [expletive] thing to work,” Sen. McCain said as he struggled with his computer’s mouse, causing his wife Cindy to prompt him to add that he was “just kidding.”
Quite seriously, I found Rosenblatt’s link to the analysis of the lies around hurricane-induced spills in the Gulf at Think Progress particularly useful, because I just couldn’t believe it when I saw how widely that was suddenly being repeated, and repeated with such conviction.
I know where to take Faith next time she visits.
I swiped that link from an email she sent me, Faith doesn’t have any sort of fish-eating flesh fetish. That I know of. This whole pregnancy thing has made her a little nuts and all, so who can tell. She’s even done some work for a Democrat. On purpose.
Poking the crazy Republican pregnant lady with a stick is a sure way to get my ass in trouble so I’d better knock it off. For now. I’ll call her later.
I make lists. Lists of things to do. And lists of things to not-do .
Since we’re going out of town, and traveling to multiple places that involve multiple pairs of shoes, I needed to make extra-detailed lists to keep track of everything. I realized earlier that I’d made a list that referred to another list. That was silly, but not really noteworthy, until I realized that the second list actually referred to a third list. (And that list actually contained a sublist, although the sublist can’t technically, in my opinion, be considered a forth list).
I need to return to my lists, so I’m going to be lazy and refer you to another old post regarding lists.
Our memories of the session don’t quite add up. He insists that we weren’t actually instructed to puff up our to-do lists by writing down and crossing off bodily functions. It was all about rewording everyday interactions to give yourself “forward momentum.” Thus, you were supposed to notate something like “grunt hello at supervisor before going face-down in coffee” as “interface with superior and debrief for day ahead.”
It was still an incredibly stupid, and expensive, waste of time.
That seminar may have made me the person I am today. Or not. I’m really reaching today, aren’t I?
(sometimes)
One evening a few months ago I was talking to a fairly young artist with a degenerative disease that is increasingly forcing her to rely on assistance with the tasks of daily living. As if this weren’t indignity enough, she’s also made the decision to change her focus from painting and drawing (media she’s been working in for over a decade) to photography, as she finds it increasingly difficult to control a pencil or brush. The photographs she showed me were gorgeous. I wish she’d shown work at Artomatic. I don’t like to reveal personal details without permission, so we’ll call her The Photographer for the sake of this little story.
Another artist, a vague acquaintance both of us, ambled up and joined our conversation. We’ll call him The Asshole.
This guy is one of those folks who don’t show work at Artomatic because he considers himself above it. Knowing full well his fellow painter was now engaged in a lot of photography, he still proceeded to hold forth about how photography wasn’t art, photographers weren’t artists, and how anyone who collected photography lacked taste. The typical bluster and art school pretension I’m sure we’ve all heard more times than we can count. I was itching to make the equally banal pronouncement, “Painting is dead” because that’s another one I’m tired of hearing, but I really didn’t want to stoop to his level. Maybe I should have introduced him to this guy.
If he’d picked a fair fight with, say, Dr. Birdcage, I probably wouldn’t even be recalling it (unless she’d wrestled him to the ground and forced him to eat tarantulas). But it struck me as the height of cruelty to knowingly belittle someone else’s work, after they’d worked so very hard to carve out a new path for themselves.
I know I’ll get at least a dozen emails asking this guy’s name. I really don’t know it. He paints somewhere in Maryland. He’s a jackass. That’s really all that matters. I think you have to have a rather insecure view of your own work to be so mercilessly judgmental, particularly about things you don’t even understand. Made me glad not to own any of this guy’s work, can you imagine the bad energy that stuff must give off? Ick.
I’m sure this squirrel is still mad about being evicted from the attic - she has to be the same one who raced around the outside of our house, following me from room to room. She’d bang on the windows when she saw me and I’m sure she was giving me the finger with her creepy little squirrel fingers. Imagine if she’d built a nest up there? She’d probably have found a way to pick the locks to get back in.
Now she just sits out there on the compost bin and stares at the house. She’s planning something, I can tell.
I am quite certain squirrels harbor grudges.
I got this excellent link from Alec:
Delia Derbyshire was working in the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in 1963 when she was given the score for a theme tune to a new science fiction series.
She turned those dots on a page into the swirling, shimmering Doctor Who title music - although it is the score’s author, Ron Grainer, who is credited as the composer.
Now David Butler, of Manchester University’s School of Arts, Histories and Cultures has revealed for the first time the existence of 267 tapes found in Ms Derbyshire’s attic when she died in 2001.
[read the whole article and listen to soundclips]
And now, a slight Dr. Who digression, with spoilers for the episode aired last night on SciFi and also sort of, but not exactly, for season 1 of Dexter.
Read the rest of this entry »
Samer is off on a 61 day round-the-world journey. If anyone asks, you can tell them he’s off to the Olympics to compete in the javelin. It’s not true, but you can tell them that.
Right before he left, he posted his strategy for dealing with jetlag. I was hoping for an entertaining bit of Hunter S. Thompson-esque advice. Instead I got a strategy that boils down to “stay up all night.” That’s not a strategy, Samer, that’s how we spent 1988 - 1991.
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to vicariously following his adventures on his blog and via flickr. Bon voyage!
Someone who should have known better let Senator Larry Craig walk onto the Senate Floor and utter the phrase, “jerk us around by the gas nozzle.”
Really. You can’t make this stuff up:
Wow. That’s quality.
Tomorrow is the High Holy Day known more commonly as the Water Lily and Lotus Asian Culture Festival at the beloved (at least in our house) Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.
Today, Saturday and Sunday Artscape takes over a big chunk of Baltimore.
For those who don’t want Visual Art messing with their musical experience, there’s also Whartscape. Line-up is on the website, but with the disclaimer, “Schedule subject to incomprehensible changes at the drop of a hat!” which has an honesty to it I appreciate.
As a sidenote, I’m annoyed to see that we missed Mark Hosler preforming Negativland’s new project, Thingomatic last night as part of Whartscape. I recently tried, not very successfully (my fault), to explain Negativland to Sean and Rania.
Speaking of Sean, he’ll be at X Saturday night, which you should also go to.
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