Month: December 2002

Blog roundup

Quick and necessarily incomplete keiretsu check-in:

All Messiah’d Out

Not much blog yesterday because I was pooped. After Friday night’s housewarming party (good crowd, good food—Lisa made an amazing ragu Bolognese for gnocchi with melted mozzarella, and I made a pan of meatballs which we served with a plain tomato sauce and more mozzarella, plus wine), I dragged myself out to the Sammamish plateau for the dress rehearsal for the Cascadian Chorale’s guest appearance with the Sammamish Symphony. The music? Messiah.

I had never sung the Messiah all the way through before, though I had sightread parts of it many years ago in my Glee Club days and had done individual choruses. I soon found that my experience was as close to singing the whole piece as catching a connecting flight in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport is to seeing Italy. If there are no other signs of the presence of a higher power, consider this: not only did Händel take the time to write this hulking monstrosity of a piece (in twenty-four days), but it’s performed every year—and people still come to hear it, though sitting through the entire performance must be exhausting even as an audience member.

I can attest that, as a performer, it’s a bit like what I imagine running a marathon must be. Pacing is key, for instance, so as not to blow out one’s voice totally before the final Amen. There are long stretches where one, exhausted, wishes for the kisses of nubile young Wellesley students—or anyone, for that matter, so that blood flow will leave the vocal chords and be restored to the feet and to the left arm, which has lost all feeling about an hour ago from holding up the score. And after the final fugue on “Amen,” a curious euphoria descends, at least if one has hit the notes correctly. It feels like entering heaven. Or just extreme relief that one has escaped the piece with vocal cords intact.

So that was Saturday. On Sunday after church I drove back out to do it again.

And we have another concert next Sunday, with music of Tavener, Górecki, and Pärt as well as some more Messiah. Can hardly wait…

Quick tasting: Sam Adams Winter Lager

My friend Andrew brought a taste of Boston to our housewarming last night: a six-pack of Sam Adams Winter Lager. Like most lagers, this one is a lot lighter than its winter ale brothers—the taste is mostly hops with very little malt. There’s a slight hint of ginger and a very small hint of caramel but not much of anything else. Not bad, but not great either. Disclaimer: I’m not a big lager fan, particularly in winter.

Win without war–petition

I’m generally skeptical about the usefulness of Internet petitions. However, I think the organizers of the petition to Let the Inspections Work at MoveOn.org have the right idea about how to make a petition useful. They’re taking out a full page ad in the New York Times on Monday, and they’ll be including the number of petition signatories in the ad.

Take a minute and go to the petition. I think the petition letter below and at the link sends a balanced message about the situation in Iraq:

TO: President Bush
CC: Secretary of State Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan

SUBJECT: Please Let the Inspections Work

Dear Mr. President,
On October 11, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution on Iraq that authorizes you to use war as a last resort — if and only if diplomacy fails to accomplish the U.S.’s national goals.

We are concerned that you found Iraq’s response “not encouraging” when the inspectors had only been at work for a week and so far had not encountered Iraqi obstruction.

In this context, we are also concerned by your Administration’s repeated attempts to frame Iraqi anti-aircraft fire within the no-fly-zone as a material breach of the resolution. As U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other U.N. diplomats have pointed out, the resolution clearly excludes such events from its jurisdiction.

The United States has made a commitment to approaching the danger that Saddam Hussein poses through the international community. The resumption of the inspections regime is a triumph for the U.S., international law and multilateralism. But the United States will lose all credibility with its allies if it appears that it will go to war regardless of the inspections’ success. And by alienating and infuriating allies through unilateral action, the U.S. could throw the success of the campaign against terrorism into jeopardy.

Mr. President, it appears that your administration is looking for an excuse to go to war, when a peaceful and just solution may be at hand. We ask that you live up to your word and give diplomacy a chance.

We can win without war.

A farewell to arms, specifically, economic loose cannons

The only possible question that can be asked about the resignations of Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey today is: what took so long? Did our president wake up this morning and say, “The economy is in the toilet. Guess I better do something”? Was that news to him?

I like the New York Times’ coverage best, including the list of O’Neill’s gaffes. “If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear is really very good.” Is that like saying, If you set aside unemployment, deficit spending, and recession, the economic record of the second Bush administration is really very good?

Virginia Bowl Watch

It’s getting to be that time. That time when almost all the games have been played. When Virginia has played Virginia Tech (and the less said about that game the better). When all’s over but the shouting. And the bowls.

Ah yes, the bowls. The great holiday tradition: pissing off one’s spouse by parking immobile in front of the tube for several straight days to see the best in college football. Why do we care?

Why, because there’s a chance the Cavaliers might come to Seattle. Yes, Virginia, there is a Seattle Bowl. And right now it is one of the bowls that might extend an invitation to the Cavaliers.

Now the rest of the Virginia fans might not be happy about this—in fact, according to the fan poll on the Virginia Sports page (no permalink, look in the right nav at the bottom and vote), Seattle is about the last choice for a bowl for Virginia to go to. But it’s my first choice. Instead of ticking off my wife by sitting at home in front of the TV, I could freeze my ass off at the football stadium and cheer on my team instead. You bet I’m keeping my fingers crossed…

Fog and shades

My “excitement” over the rain beginning again on Wednesday was premature. Today we’re back to sunshine. And fog. I usually come in at the southeastern side of campus, which runs alongside low ground next to Marymoor Park, and this morning the fog was still heavy along the whole drive despite the morning sunshine.

Our friend Bethany was in town on business this week (she“s on Senator Murray’s staff). We met her for drinks last night. Which is to say, Lisa met her for drinks and I followed about half an hour later, having got stuck in traffic on the 520 bridge. In the meantime, they had moved on to Nordstrom’s for some boot shopping. As I said before, they both have impeccable taste, so it was quite a sight to watch the two of them run through Nordstrom’s inventory. Afterwards I ran back to work for a rehearsal of “Accidents Will Happen” (more on that shortly).

Why is this a houseblog entry? Because this morning I stumbled out of bed and downstairs to hang our newly arrived blinds in our front bedroom. Nothing like hanging blinds first thing in the morning to really get the day going. The only difficulties I ran into were a broken drill bit (the tip of one of my two 1/16th-inch bits broke off in the wood, fortunately leaving me enough to work with to finish the job) and a small problem with the measurements. I had measured inside one section of the frame, but then our window contractor came back and used that to put in the screens (since the windows swing out, the screens have to be installed inside the windows). So I had to go one molding section out, and as a result the blinds don’t fit as snugly as they might. But they’re installed and they work great.

Tonight is our housewarming finally, after all the procedures and address change (have it done at https://www.us-mailing-change-of-address.com). I hope to have some good pictures to share.

Scripting News Awards: Dave fesses up

Dave is going to do the Scripting News Awards again. In the process, he fesses up about something that’s puzzled me: how I got in the running last year:

“It’s quite interesting to look at the lists a year later. For example, the scripting category has boomed. Last year it was hard to find any weblogs about scripting.”

Which explains both why I was one of the four and why I didn’t get that many votes. It was just a small pool.

George: Who is the keiretsu???

George isn’t sure if he’s part of the keiretsu. The way I figure it, he’s part of my keiretsu, and so are Esta and Greg. So are Esta and Greg part of George’s?

This is one of those crazy questions about Internet content association that don’t come up in online communities. If we were all in a common community and interacting with each other in this way, George and Esta would start interacting with each other directly at some point. In this respect, it’s easy to see how closely blog relationships resemble the relationships between their authors.

more…

Boston Charlie

A year ago today, I was desperately trying to get into the holiday spirit with some Boston Charlie. It strikes me that it’s about that time again…

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley’garoo!
Don’t we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby lilla boy, Louisville Lou?

Trolley Molly don’t love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly welly cracker n’ too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, ’lope with you!

Hunky Dory’s pop is lolly gaggin’ on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!
Chollie’s collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

Duck us all in bowls of barley,
Ninky dinky dink an’ polly voo!
Chilly Filly’s name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly’s jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!

(Thanks to Walt Kelly for the lunacy and to the Pogo Page for the Charlie.)

more…

Blogging towards Bethlehem

All kinds of seasonal observations going on today. George points to online Advent devotionals hosted by his church. (I believe this is the first church website I’ve ever seen that has message boards.) The December 1st devotional has particularly sage advice: “Perhaps this Christmas, rather than following the cultural rules of yuletide—shopping, decoration, cards, parties, busyness, you might mark the birth of the Lord of the sabbath by acts of mercy and compassion upon those who have need.”

I could have used that advice last night as I struggled to finish decorating our tree (the one I abandoned from exhaustion on Sunday night). It took forever. Apparently new Christmas light strings are deliberately shipped as twisted masses of wire. Three hundred untwisted lights later, we started hanging ornaments. How is it that, despite only having done one Christmas tree prior to this, we had something like eight boxes of ornamental glass balls? That’s a lot of glass for one tree. Lisa likes the end result, but I’m still trying to get used to the result. I grew up with plain white lights and these are colored, which contributes to the cognitive dissonance I experience when I look at the tree (ceci n’est pas un Christmas tree, or, as David Byrne would say, “This is not my beautiful tree!”). But I think it’s growing on me.

Back to Advent devotionals. Mom sent a finding from her church’s devotional booklet: a reprint of Sylvia Plath’s “Black Rook in Rainy Weather.” Mom is nothing if not au courant with happenings here in the Northwest, as our ten day long sunshine spell just broke today. It seems ironic to think about Plath in any sort of Christmas context, but this poem grabs both the catch of breath on finding the sublime in nature and the waiting through fatigue for miracles to come.

The last is probably the hardest bit. But I’m coming to realize that we all have to “[trek] stubborn through the season of fatigue” and “patch together a content of sorts.” Or as Anne Sexton writes in The Awful Rowing Towards God, “The story ends with me still rowing.” Or as Dave likes to say in a different context, “Dig we must.” After all, what’s the alternative? Whatever it is, I think waiting for the miracle beats worrying about the rough beast around the corner.

On finding one’s funk

Driving into work this morning, KEXP was playing some Beastie Boys (“Shake Your Rump”) followed by some Digable Planets (“Where I’m From”). I was enjoying the hell out of it. Then I realized I was thirty, in a silver Passat, driving to work, and grooving to funk.

I now know what was wrong with me for the last few months. I lost my funk. In retrospect, it has been missing for longer than that. After seeing the P-Funk All Stars at the 9:30 Club with Craig (he may remember what year, maybe 1998 or 1999), I gradually stopped listening to funk. It may be hard to believe, but there was a time that Parliament and James Brown, together with a smattering of hip-hop, were in steady rotation on my CD player.

It’s high time for me to go back and dig out those tracks. After all, as George Clinton says in Funkentelechy (the song from which my new tagline–“[Macro error: Can’t evaluate the expression because the name “tagline” hasn’t been defined.]
”–is taken), “You may as well pay attention ’cause you can’t afford free speech.” I ask you, has there ever been a finer collection of one-liners tied together by funk:

  • When you’re taking every kind of pill/nothing seems to ever cure your ill
  • Oh, but we’ll be pecking lightly, like a woodpecker with a headache. ’Cause it’s cheaper to funk than it is to pay attention. You dig?
  • Would you trade your funk for what’s behind the third door?
  • Step up and dance until I tell you to come down!

I won’t be trading my funk again.