Items unpacked from move to New Jersey for summer, in descending order of importance: 1) Cats 2) Tivo 3) GameCube and PS2 4) wireless router and laptops 5) Kitchenaid and ice cream maker 6) Clothes
Wish I had brought more: 7) Button down shirts
Items forgotten in New Hampshire: 8) Flip flops 9) Perishable items in refrigerator (incl. eggs, hummus, yogurt, cream cheese) 10) Birthday present to me from Brian
Lipstick on my collar: "The concept behind Covers is to encourage ordinary people to re-create their favourite album sleeve using whatever materials are to hand. It came out of a conversation Daville had with a friend, recalling their schoolboy attempts to look like Marc Bolan and David Bowie. 'We were talking about the mania you have at that age, how enjoyable it is. You have time to do it - you're either thinking about girls or the homework you haven't done or these magical figures. At that age, you know nothing about the music business, you're just getting pure magic, an unsullied experience.'
The show is simultaneously hilarious and oddly touching, not least because you suspect in an age of MP3s and digital downloads, Daville's photographs may be documenting a dying art form. Most of the images people have chosen come from the 1960s, 70s and 80s; the past 15 years simply have not produced that many iconic album covers."
See also "New Slang" video by the Shins (for which I can not find a working link).
Finally, an answer to a question I ask myself nearly every other day (not sarcasm):
Whatever happened to Jo S Club?
Jo S Club, the one in S Club 7 who could sing, has been celebrating her escape from the pop machine by becoming a huge enthusiast for bingo. As well as playing in Romford, she's also a fan of Sky's Avago interactive bingo channel. She has been a regular texter to the show and at one point even sang for them on the phone live on air when the presenter asked her to prove to viewers it was her.
Jo's other hobby is karaoke. Some admiring fans saw her belt out a version of The Greatest Love Of All in a Shoreditch pub. Thankfully, Jo seems to have started working with uber- producer Brian Rawlings so we might be lucky and get a talented teen band singer back...
Americans look to Jesus for diet: "Five loaves, two fish and a goblet of red wine could be on the menu for Americans if a new diet takes off. Don Colbert, a Florida doctor, believes asking yourself 'What would Jesus eat?' is the best way to stay fit, slim and trim."
Blah, blah. The sucker punch comes when the article points out that Jesus did not eat pork pies, nor would they be allowed under the Jesus diet.
I have been playing with del.icio.us for the past week or so. It's fun and neat, like Dashboard or ice cream, but not necessarily exciting in the morning. I can be convinced otherwise however...
'Lost' Kerouac play resurfaces after 50 years:"Beat Generation, written in the autumn of 1957, the same year as the publication of Kerouac's breakthrough work On the Road, was unearthed in a New Jersey warehouse six months ago...
The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fuelled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac's alter-ego... Kerouac even sent the play to Marlon Brando... [He] was desperate to collaborate with the actor, and wrote a letter to him in 1957 urging Brando to appear in a play adaptation of On the Road. Brando never responded, and the two only met once, in 1960, when Kerouac enrolled in the Actor's Studio. But his foray into acting was shortlived. After 15 minutes he asked, 'Don't they give you any drinks in this place?' Spotting Brando he invited him for a drink. Brando refused."
The Diane Rehm Show theme song has been rattling around my head the past few days since I have had NPR on as my background companion. How can one forget those jaunty trumpets? I hum it all day long.
So, I was wondering what my own NPR show A) theme song would be, and B) the topic. So A), I can not think of any trumpets as jaunty as Diane's. How did she get all the good ones? I'll have to relisten to my music library for the best ten second clip.
As for B), topics would be based on my Flickr favorites so, apparently, cats, toys, snow (or rain), flowers, graffiti, and handsome men.
After Microsoft pulled support from the gay rights bill, I let them know of my disappointment. Surprisingly, they replied. The two things that concern me with the response are 1) should corporations necessarily have legislative agendas? (even if they are causes I believe in... on the other hand, I am not so naive as to believe that corporations do not affect policy); and 2) the part about supporting similar legislation in the future is too little too late.
Email excerpt:
This is in response to your comments on House Bill 1515. Thank you for sharing your views with us.
After considering views from all sides, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, has articulated a clear policy that we will use to decide which issues will be the focus of our public policy activities. The company has thought carefully in developing these principles and has concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda. The company therefore will continue to support federal legislation that would extend existing law to prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and will support legislation similar to HB 1515 should it come up in a future Washington State legislative session.
Now that the dust has settled in my trail, I can reveal that I am in exotic New Jersey. It's like nearly summertime temperatures here, whereas New Hampshire is firmly in spring (33 degrees overnight is not summer). The downside is the accompanying NJ humidity that poofs hair. NH's best feature is the near lack of humidity. They should play that up in the tourist brochures.
My main reason for heading southward was to play in my orchestra concert. My double bass was horribly out of tune and dusty from the 10 months of neglect. My fingers had sloughed off their callouses? and survived two attacks (bicycle/pavement and knives). But the fingers know where to move to hit the notes. They don't forget--why would they want to? And fortunately, fingers and I had played all the music before. We played "Hoe Down" from Copland's Rodeo (who is a fascinating subject for another time), Tchaikovsky cello and orchestra thing (I wasn't really paying attention because all eyes were on the cello soloist), and said Russian composer's Fifth Symphony. It's a hard piece that kills the fingers and the arm by the end. Perhaps it's more enjoyable from the other side of the conductor. I'm rarely in that world.
Some Surprises in That Galaxy Far, Far Away: "To be sure, some of the shortcomings of 'Phantom Menace' (1999) and 'Attack of the Clones' (2002) are still in evidence, and Mr. Lucas's indifference to two fairly important aspects of moviemaking - acting and writing - is remarkable. Hayden Christensen plays Anakin Skywalker's descent into evil as a series of petulant bad moods."
Mr. Christensen would be my favorite matinee idol if only he didn't have those dead, dead eyes. I'll see the movie, cry a little, and hope that no one ever ruins the memory of my other childhood influence: Gilbert and Sullivan.
Arianna's latest battle: taking on geek civilisation: "Huffington is convinced that her blog is the future for the media. Though she refuses to say how many visitors the site has had, she is certain they can make money from advertising on the site. It is financed for its first year, she says, and she has a full time staff overseeing the news section of the site...
'People will blog when they blog,' she says. 'There is an element of unpredictability about it.' Much as there is about the woman who created it."
While the Huffington Post has certainly not been a secret this week, I have become increasingly fascinated with it. One reason is that the name sounds like it is distributed in an Animal Crossing town. I also love Arianna's new mantra that people will blog then they blog! So true! The logic is wound up as tight as a small ball.
How does it feel?:"It's a great thing when a song defines a summer, and like the Jamies' Summertime, Summertime in 1958 or Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street in 1964 - which, as a theme song for the Watts riots, came back even more strongly after August 11 1965 - that was the first thing Like a Rolling Stone did. Like a preacher, Dylan sang doom through the song; while no one missed the threat, you could sing along, "No direction home", just like you sang along to Satisfaction...
'I still feel like the same person,' Dylan [said] talking about the milieu where from 1960 to 1965 he did his work. 'One of the feelings of it was that you were part of a very elite, special group that was outside and downtrodden. You felt like you were part of a different community, a more secretive one. And this community spread out across America ... every little city you went to, if you knew who to call, what to look for, you could find ... like-minded people.
'That's been destroyed. I don't know what destroyed it. Some people say it's still there. I hope it is. I know, in my mind, that I'm still a member of a secret community. I might be the only one, you know?'"
What's Up, Pussycat? Whoa! - New York Times: "They are outlawed in New York City, members of a new designer breed growing in popularity called the Savannah, an offspring of a wildcat - the African serval - and the domestic house cat.
'If I have to move to New Jersey to keep these cats, I will,' said their owner, a 29-year-old hedge fund analyst who equates life in downtown Manhattan with life itself. 'That's how much I love them,' she said, speaking only on the condition of anonymity."
Impotent husband must pay damages: "An Italian man who married without telling his bride he was impotent must pay damages for abusing her 'right to sexuality', a top court has ruled. The man had failed to fulfil his conjugal duty and deprived his wife of the chance to be a mother, Italy's Supreme Court said... The amount of damages will now be decided by a lower court in Sicily... The woman said her husband should have warned her in advance and described his conduct as 'contrary to the principles of loyalty, fairness and good faith'... But the Supreme Court has now overturned the lower courts' rulings, saying the Italian constitution upheld the right to sexuality."
The U.S. Constitution seems so modest now. Sure, free speech, blah blah, but we don't get a right to sexuality. Hrumph.
Plastic sheet saves Swiss glacier from meltdown: "It is one of Switzerland's most picturesque ski resorts. But over the past two decades the Gurschen glacier above the village of Andermatt has been melting... Now, however, the resort's organisers have come up with a novel way of protecting their mountain from global warming - they have wrapped it in clingfilm. Yesterday workmen were putting the finishing touches to a 2,500sq metre (26,900sq ft) plastic sheet which has been wrapped over a stretch of ice used by skiers to get from the cable-car station to the mountain's ski-routes."
Now I might not be the best judge of this, but wouldn't putting a giant sheet of plastic wrap over a glacier perhaps make it melt... faster? I'm not one to mess with the Swiss so I won't say anything.
Two finals down; one to go. My iPod went ZIP, would not load on my desktop, and then reset itself. So, again, as in September when iPod went ZIP and all my music disappeared into the ether. This repetition is not funny, whatever-above. (Yeah, okay, I back up all my music files so it's not that bad. but the trust is gone).
After my last final tomorrow, I am taking the bus from Boston to NYC for the weekend and getting the hell out of Dodge. Not that Dodge is so bad, but I've got a concert to play in New Jersey-ton. Also, I've been thinking about getting a pair of madras shorts. On the other hand, I don't like shorts. I am torn. (Yeah, in-depth thinking is being saved until post-exam decompression).
Dog cared for abandoned baby - May 9, 2005: "A nursing dog foraging for food retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a forest in Kenya and carried the infant to its litter of puppies, witnesses said Monday.The stray dog carried the infant across a busy road and a barbed wire fence in a poor neighborhood near the Ngong Forests in the capital, Nairobi..."
The sweetness of the story is ruined by the CNN.com poll. They doubt the love of wild dogs! I hate those polls.
Anguish of woman who held secret evidence of Hitler's identity: "In the smouldering ruins of Berlin, Elena Rzhevskaya stooped by a radio to hear the announcement of the Nazis' final capitulation, a small box clutched to her side... Tucked in the satin-lined box she was clutching were the flesh-specked jawbones of Adolf Hitler, wrenched from his corpse just hours earlier by a Russian pathologist... On 8 May, as Soviet soldiers in Berlin's streets shouted with joy at the news of German surrender, Rzhevskaya poured wine for her colleagues with one hand - while clamping the little box to her side with the other."
I wish the article were longer--say, a novel of political intrigue--because I am drawn in already. But I guess I already know how the story ends. And it's not necessarily a romance.
One final down; two to go. In a cosmic joke (THAT I DO NOT FIND HUMOROUS) I am again wearing a band aid on a ring finger--after nearly slicing my fingertip off when doing the dishes. Just because I started the school year with bandaged fingers does not require I end it similarly. It's called a timeline for a reason.
Also frustrating was the lack of anything interesting when outlet shopping on Saturday. Just meh all around.
Last year today: Paris, lillies-of-the-valley for May Day and labor union rallies. This year today: New Hampshire, vanilla coffee near the window with the rain outside, Vashti Bunyan and Andrew Bird. Little things, little things.
Classes ended yesterday. Exams still have to be dealt with, but celebrating can happen after small steps. So to that effect, Brian and I attended the local cat show on Saturday afternoon. I realize now that I am wasting my life in school and need to breed show cats. My fat, lazy cats at home seem so fat and lazy now. I bought them a catnip-filled carrot-shaped thing. They got high and are now fatter and lazier.
