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8.31.2005  

Risk Management

"People that avoid the risks don’t have gas kilns."
~ Marc Ward

8.30.2005  

More God

On a related note, my favorite Daily Show bit has switched from Back in Black to This Week in God*. Stephen Colbert is great at it, and the segment is guaranteed to make me laugh out loud at least once (even if it's just at the slideshow and the brilliant sound effect while the god machine is working).

And last night I watched a recorded Simpsons episode where Homer prophesizes the Apocalypse that was classic. When he goes to visit the diety, God is sitting in a giant Aeron chair (snort!), and then when God agrees to reverse time for Homer, the magic phrase he utters is "Deus Ex Machina!" (hah!)

* Ah, Produce Pete Carrell... why'd you have to leave us for the big time?

 

Thumpers

I saw this on a church message board last week:

"There are no non-believers in Hell."*

Ha! The logic is rather circular, but I gotta admit that it's catchy. As my patience with the flaming ignorance variety of Christianity decreases, this shit just gets funnier.

*1st runner up: "Thank the Lord for your dirty dishes. At least you have food." Yeah, and while you're at it, thank Him for only giving you Leukemia. It could have been Leprosy, for Christ's sake!

2nd runner up: "Try Jesus. If you don't like Him, the Devil will always take you back."

8.18.2005  

Goddamn Them Pixies

I've been listening to The Pixies Come On Pilgrim the past couple days and am amazed at how fresh it sounds even though it was first released in 1987. That's practically twenty years ago! Black Francis and co. are the "goddamn paterfamilias" of Grunge and all of the Alt. Rock that has come since, in my book. The AMG is right when it says they arrived fully formed on this debut EP - it's really impressive that all these parts to their signature sound were there from the start (maybe with the exception of the spacey synth stuff on Trompe le Monde).

Oh... it looks like I'm just redundanting the AMG article entirely - should have read it all first. They said the album "remains as raw, vibrant, and engaging as the day it was recorded". Naturally, I agree. Anyways, if you've got it in your collection, I suggest you treat yourself to some primal therapy.

"I've been tired! I've been tired! I've been tired! I've been tired!"

8.17.2005  

Hyper

Sometimes, on a crisp sunny day at 11am, everything seems possible.

8.16.2005  

The Glory of an Empty Inbox

...

8.10.2005  

Music Loves

The Audioscrobbler and Last.fm sites merged and redesigned this week, for the better in both style and functionality (although it's still ass-slow). Here's my growing profile, which seems a bit squirrelly in the rankings - as if it's recording playcounts slightly wrong - but is still cool to see patterns and history. I'm looking forward to browsing "Similar Artists" and "Neighbors" for new leads related to the bands I'm currently infatuated with.

Speaking of which, my one true musical love these days is Wheat. As I said back in March, their album Per Second, Per Second... is truly fantastic in that way that good music can transport you somewhere else while at the same time sinking into your brain the time and place where it first got to you. Like falling in love with a person, I guess, there's that great moment where you realize that this one is really it.

For me, with Wheat, that place in memory will always be spring break of this year, when the pause in teaching let me have my first full week in my new studio. It was cold, rainy, with that crispness that the air has just before spring has really started to happen. I was learning how to build up a good fire in the wood stove; getting used to the strangeness of making pots again (after 4 months away from the wheel for packing, moving & house rennovations); soaking up the details of living in the country. I can't say it was all fun or a grand time - there's a lot of struggle involved in all those things - but the textures of these songs* helped settle it into my flawed memory as nostalgic meaning, and I'm grateful for that. I can sit here at a desk in an air-conditioned office, far away from the smells of clay and smoke, and feel a thread connecting me to the future times when I'll be in that fragile space of making again. That's good.

* I tend to imagine what the lyrics are based on what I want them to be at the time. For example, I think I hear things like:

"I'm braving the longest spring of my life."
"And everyone gets what they want, everyone gets what they want... all the time. Even me."
"And it takes all that you have and all that you know just to hold on."
"You'll believe what you want to believe - for now."

8.09.2005  

Upgrade?

I've been trying to upgrade my iMac to OS 10.4 "Tiger" with no end to weird, paranormal crashes and quirks. This has lead to a few fun hours trolling the Apple support site, where I found this sage advice:
"Tip: Making regular backups is a great way to prevent data loss."

Duh. I sure hope somebody was intending to lace that with sarcasm. Otherwise it's like saying:
"Tip: Avoiding sex is a great way to prevent pregnancy."

Or something.

8.01.2005  

Pre

One day we'll all have _giant_ monitors.

Ray Kurzweil thinks we could all live forever.

I think computers will always be difficult to use, and that a hard disk crash of your personality files will be a real drag when you forget to do regular backups.