Still going after all these years.
Warning: life trivia ahead. They kept saying it would happen, but the longer the drought went the less I was prepared for it to start. But it’s nice not having to worry about all the plants we put in dying.
Why are halogen flood light bulbs $12? It just seems a little exhorbitant for something that’s going to blow out and die.
… of erosion of civil rights, strong arm international politics, and failure to respond intelligently to terrorism.
Of course, we remember what happened the last time the Republicans controlled both houses, right?
Biggest regrets so far:
Esta: Vote.
“If you don’t vote you’re a heinous wreck of a human being, and small children will point at you with horror and run away screaming.
Plus you won’t have the right to complain, and we all know that that’s no fun.
So vote.
Don’t make me tell you again.”
A hard couple of days here. Seven hours of work yesterday at the office, about 11 today. Hopefully all for a good cause. I’m a little sore and very tired.
Bill Turner has written a quick’n’dirty lo-fi Amazon Wish List display tool using Amazon’s web service APIs. Pretty darn cool, Bill. Wanna host a queryable service? 🙂
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I think this is a first: Slashdot posted links to the judge’s decision on the Microsoft anti-trust settlement an hour before it was to be released. Links from Slashdot to the documents, as well as copy/paste of the text.
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Esta tells some outstanding ghost stories from her days in Colonial Williamsburg and philosophizes about why Halloween is so cool:
On Halloween we realize that everything we trouble ourselves about is as fragile and fleeting as water in a cupped palm, and rather than howling about it, in our inimitable human logic we put on face paint and howl with it. Tell me that ain’t cool.
I came into work this morning and turned on my music software. The first song it decided to play?
Sonic Youth’s “Expressway to Yr Skull.”
Happy Halloween.
(Now I just need to dig up the UK Surf mix of the Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation” and I’ll be in that proper indie rock Halloween mood.)
One more link: Forbes’ CEO Halloween Masks! Print ’em out and go as your favorite scary CEO! (Thanks to Cory @ BoingBoing).
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Greg has started calling our group of connected blogs a keiretsu, after the Japanese cross-industrial conglomerate. I guess that’s the only way to describe that circle: a programming MBA deep in the software world (me), two Southern Democratic political bloggers, and a financial analyst and poet. It’s too bad the era of corporate megamergers gave “synergy” a bad name, because you’d hope there would be some in that random combination of assets.
Anyway, looking out over my keiretsu to catch up:
Me? I still have a cold and I need sleep. I was at work until 9:30 tonight and I have a long day tomorrow. Talk amongst yourselves. 🙂
Moxie’s blog turns 2 today. Go spank it.
Updated: I should clarify: I meant, spank her blog, in keeping with the custom for birthdays. Get your minds out of the gutter.
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After the last post, I decided it was high time to create a new department in which I could ramble about food and beverages. The Cucina department, aka “Food Porn,” has accordingly been added. Old posts will be recategorized as I get to it.
The Julie/Julia Project may have its Spicy Thursdays; I have, at least while Lisa is on the road, Leftover Tuesdays. In this case, though, the leftovers were steaks from a beef tenderloin that had been roasted in an herbed salt crust (for the curious, you dispose of the caked salt—it just ensures consistent temperature distribution, retention of juices by the meat, and some small amount of seasoning).
Being a fundamentally masochistic person, I decided that I couldn’t just do leftovers. So (after using our new random-orbital palm sander to buzz off the trim in the Gold Room prior to tomorrow night’s painting) I tried cooking mashed potatoes with parsley and chive oil (it’s in this month’s Gourmet, but probably won’t be on Epicurious for another few months). I halved the recipe but had proportion problems. For instance, I decided to substitute sautéed shallots for chives, since we only have one very small pot of the latter. And I probably didn’t have enough parsley (though our parsley plant is overproducing, I didn’t want to cut off every leaf). So as a result, the potatoes that were supposed to be bright green and presumably bursting with herbaceous flavor…weren’t quite. Still good, but next time I’ll stick to roasted garlic.
I emailed Michael Goldberg today. He founded Addicted to Noise, which in the mid nineties was the coolest music site around. They had Corinne Tucker of Sleater Kinney writing a column for them for a while… Alas, they sold to SonicNet, who sold to the VH1 corporate megalith, and a lot of great content that they had has disappeared (though some of it is still in the Google cache).
That was actually why I emailed Michael. I was looking for good SY and Thurston Moore reviews for musicmoz, but the content was no longer accessible. To my chagrin, Michael confirmed that VH1 owns the rights to all those great stories. There’s a greater point to be made here about the evils of contracts that give all rights to the purchaser of content. You think copyright is bad when Disney owns it? What about a corporation that is bought and essentially ceases to exist, and a new copyright owner who lets all the content rot?
Fortunately this story has a happy ending. Michael’s now at Neumu, a killer little site about music and art that deserves to be a lot better known. Go check it out.
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Enough said, really. I picked up Blacklisted the other day and I’ve forgotten all the other music I was listening to, which almost never happens. If you’ve never heard Ms. Case’s music, do yourself a favor and check out the new album’s second track, ‘Deep Red Bells.’
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