Showing posts with label indulgence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indulgence. Show all posts
1.30.2009
1.22.2009
unless you're insured by Mutual of Omaha
About a month ago, someone on the Robyn Hitchcock mailing list mentioned that he'd had a dream in which Hitchcock was on David Letterman's show and announced that he was about to premiere his new song, called "(Here's One I Bet You Wouldn't Want to Meet) In the Wild." Unfortunately, our dreamer couldn't recall how the song went - so I decided to write the song instead.
The first problem was that rather unwieldy title: how to make it scan? I played with it for a while, and came up with what I hope is a viable solution. The wordiness and staccato rhythm dictated some of the rest of the song's texture, with a lot of rapid-fire words. The lyrics came pretty quickly - I think the idea is quintessentially Robyn, in some ways similar to "Lions and Tigers" - although figuring out how to sing them presented more difficulty!
It seemed as if the music should be relatively simple, so I stuck largely to conventional chord sequences and rhythms (with a few tricks thrown in to make things interesting). The most fun was coming up with actual guitar parts as opposed to just strum-strum-strumming away. Some day I might even practice often enough to be able to play them reliably and consistently. Editing magic!
Lyrics:
Here's one I bet you wouldn't want to meet in the wild
The scent of raw meat between the politician's teeth
Slavering over a shivering child
At home we find it best to try to keep them in line
Some jingling coins and some velvety loins
Makes them forget they're already dying
Oh Mr. Perkins, you've such a glaring white smile
But don't mind Jim, so secretive and grim
You'll have alligator shoes in a while
Here's one I bet you wouldn't want to meet in the wild
With a sleight of wrist and the invisible fist
He's anointed the bank vaults in his castles in the sky
Clipped wings and a nice little perch will be fine
And yesterday's news is covered up with rotting food
You won't smell it if you just keep on buying
Here's one I bet you wouldn't want to meet in the wild...
(The bridge, incidentally, refers to this program, and urban legends like this one.)
Monkey Typing Pool "(Here's One I Bet You Wouldn't Want to Meet) In the Wild" (2009)
The first problem was that rather unwieldy title: how to make it scan? I played with it for a while, and came up with what I hope is a viable solution. The wordiness and staccato rhythm dictated some of the rest of the song's texture, with a lot of rapid-fire words. The lyrics came pretty quickly - I think the idea is quintessentially Robyn, in some ways similar to "Lions and Tigers" - although figuring out how to sing them presented more difficulty!
It seemed as if the music should be relatively simple, so I stuck largely to conventional chord sequences and rhythms (with a few tricks thrown in to make things interesting). The most fun was coming up with actual guitar parts as opposed to just strum-strum-strumming away. Some day I might even practice often enough to be able to play them reliably and consistently. Editing magic!
Lyrics:
Here's one I bet you wouldn't want to meet in the wild
The scent of raw meat between the politician's teeth
Slavering over a shivering child
At home we find it best to try to keep them in line
Some jingling coins and some velvety loins
Makes them forget they're already dying
Oh Mr. Perkins, you've such a glaring white smile
But don't mind Jim, so secretive and grim
You'll have alligator shoes in a while
Here's one I bet you wouldn't want to meet in the wild
With a sleight of wrist and the invisible fist
He's anointed the bank vaults in his castles in the sky
Clipped wings and a nice little perch will be fine
And yesterday's news is covered up with rotting food
You won't smell it if you just keep on buying
Here's one I bet you wouldn't want to meet in the wild...
(The bridge, incidentally, refers to this program, and urban legends like this one.)
Monkey Typing Pool "(Here's One I Bet You Wouldn't Want to Meet) In the Wild" (2009)
1.03.2009
a house is not a motel, or...
Last night was our first night sleeping in the new bedroom - complete with new bed, sheets, pillows, and blankets. It's always a little odd, sleeping in a new place...perhaps odder when it's your own. You realize that all kinds of little details and rituals need to be worked out and reimagined: where stuff goes, habitual motions, gestures, etc., and of course the obvious getting used to a new bed. We discovered, for example, that the eyebrow dormer lets in a lot of south light later in the mornings: this won't be a problem on weekdays when we get up and go to work, but if we want to sleep later on weekends (and we do), we'll need to find a way to dim that down, without just slapping up something that blocks the light all the time. And of course, we discover minor things that either need to be changed (already, we moved one of the shelves in the closet, partly for cat-related reasons but mostly for functionality) or that we would have done differently had we been able to live in the space before building it. (Dammit - I knew I should have done that Sims thing...)
But for the most part, we're incredibly pleased: Rose's design mostly works exactly as we'd hoped it would, and we're so happy finally to have been able to do this.
But for the most part, we're incredibly pleased: Rose's design mostly works exactly as we'd hoped it would, and we're so happy finally to have been able to do this.
11.28.2008
a meme before memes
A few years back, amused or annoyed by all the dumb "which X are you?" internet quizzes (not yet called, annoyingly, "memes"), which were inevitably constructed such that after only a couple of questions, it was obvious which results would arise from which answers, I made up one of my own.
It's maybe a little bit less linear than most. (After you take it, click on the "view all results" button to see the rest of the possibilities...)
It's maybe a little bit less linear than most. (After you take it, click on the "view all results" button to see the rest of the possibilities...)
9.29.2008
9.16.2008
still sitting in a tree and spelling out the fun words
I don't usually write about my personal life here, but today Rose and I celebrate the 25th anniversary of our first date. Those of you who know us know that I continue to be flabbergasted at my good fortune. My life is immeasurably richer with Rose in it, and the few bumps we've experienced along the way only make it more precious.
In addition to being the date we first got together, it's also the date, on that 9th anniversary, we got married - making today our 16th wedding anniversary. And because I'm geeky like that, it occurred to me that that combination of numbers is unusual if not unique, in that 9+16=25...but the square root of each of those numbersnot only adds in the same sequence (3+4=5) but is itself a numerical sequence. (As Steve points out, I'm not a math teacher. I'm also not much of a copy editor, apparently.)
The other benefit of doubling up the anniversary celebrations is that we get to have another 25th anniversary nine years from now. I hope each of my readers finds as much happiness with their partner as I have.
In addition to being the date we first got together, it's also the date, on that 9th anniversary, we got married - making today our 16th wedding anniversary. And because I'm geeky like that, it occurred to me that that combination of numbers is unusual if not unique, in that 9+16=25...but the square root of each of those numbers
The other benefit of doubling up the anniversary celebrations is that we get to have another 25th anniversary nine years from now. I hope each of my readers finds as much happiness with their partner as I have.
3.29.2008
lock up your hats in someone's eyes
Because I've been adding loads of songs to my new external drive recently, I've been listening to iTunes on my computer in shuffle mode quite a bit...and so it was that a couple of older songs came up which I hadn't heard for a while, "The Boiling Boy" by Wire and "The Overload" by Talking Heads. Curiously, the two songs reminded me of one another...and as it turns out, they're even in the same key.
So naturally, I thought it would be fun to crossbreed them. Of course, the original versions are in two rather different tempos, so I had to Strawberry Fields them together, slowing down "The Boiling Boy" and speeding up "The Overload." The Talking Heads song took speeding up much better than the Wire song took slowing down, so I slowed it very little and sped up "The Overload" to match.
The next step was to figure out how to work them together. I ended up splitting "The Overload" into a series of instrumental sections, followed by a series of vocal sections - while "The Boiling Boy" was left largely intact. I figured I could simply repeat some of the instrumental sections under the long instrumental intro to the Wire track, and counterpoint Byrne's vocals to Colin Newman's. This didn't quite work: first, one difference between 1988 (when the Wire song was recorded) and 1980 (the date of the Talking Heads song) is the pervasiveness of programmed rhythm tracks. Either that, or Robert Gotobed simply is a much steadier beatsmith than Chris Frantz. The result was that if I layered the two tracks without alteration (aside from the already mentioned tempo match), the beats on "The Overload" were constantly going out of whack. So into the manual quantizing machine I went, cutting up what were originally 8-bar phrases into shorter units, so as to keep the wayward Mr. Frantz in line with Wire's machine rhythms. A few other tricks were involved, including making "glue" from a particular sample, and stretching and layering the opening ambient noise to make a less noisy bed during the vocal sections. (I also made a drone but ended up discarding it.)
The vocals were a huge pain. Unlike 1965, the eighties found producers neglecting to slam all the vocals into one channel and all the instruments in the other, and even messing with putting things out of phase didn't do much to isolate the vocals from the surrounding instruments (that was, in fact, one intention behind the discarded drone - to mask those instruments dropping in and out). I ended up filtering Byrne's vocals to eliminate most of the instruments...although, conveniently, when a guitar is audible at the beginning of phrases, they're all in the second and third verses (of "The Boiling Boy") so it works alright.
Didn't turn out quite as good as I'd hoped...but here's "Boy Boiling Over" by Mesh Skulls (arranged by Monkey Typing Pool, of course).
Earlier experiments along similar lines: flying in string parts from the Kronos Quartet arrangement of "Marquee Moon" to fit atop Television's original; and in a fever dream, deciding that Neil Young's "Soldier" made perfect sense stuck in the middle of the 4th untitled track from Labradford's E Luxo So album (extended via manufactured drone). And of course, Segway Army's "Are Higsons Electric?" - Robyn sings Numan.
Mesh Skulls "Boy Boiling Over" (2008)
Television/Kronos Quartet "Marquee Moon" (2004)
Labradford/Neil Young "E Luxo So 4/Soldier" (2002)
Segway Army "Are Higsons Electric?" (2007)
So naturally, I thought it would be fun to crossbreed them. Of course, the original versions are in two rather different tempos, so I had to Strawberry Fields them together, slowing down "The Boiling Boy" and speeding up "The Overload." The Talking Heads song took speeding up much better than the Wire song took slowing down, so I slowed it very little and sped up "The Overload" to match.
The next step was to figure out how to work them together. I ended up splitting "The Overload" into a series of instrumental sections, followed by a series of vocal sections - while "The Boiling Boy" was left largely intact. I figured I could simply repeat some of the instrumental sections under the long instrumental intro to the Wire track, and counterpoint Byrne's vocals to Colin Newman's. This didn't quite work: first, one difference between 1988 (when the Wire song was recorded) and 1980 (the date of the Talking Heads song) is the pervasiveness of programmed rhythm tracks. Either that, or Robert Gotobed simply is a much steadier beatsmith than Chris Frantz. The result was that if I layered the two tracks without alteration (aside from the already mentioned tempo match), the beats on "The Overload" were constantly going out of whack. So into the manual quantizing machine I went, cutting up what were originally 8-bar phrases into shorter units, so as to keep the wayward Mr. Frantz in line with Wire's machine rhythms. A few other tricks were involved, including making "glue" from a particular sample, and stretching and layering the opening ambient noise to make a less noisy bed during the vocal sections. (I also made a drone but ended up discarding it.)
The vocals were a huge pain. Unlike 1965, the eighties found producers neglecting to slam all the vocals into one channel and all the instruments in the other, and even messing with putting things out of phase didn't do much to isolate the vocals from the surrounding instruments (that was, in fact, one intention behind the discarded drone - to mask those instruments dropping in and out). I ended up filtering Byrne's vocals to eliminate most of the instruments...although, conveniently, when a guitar is audible at the beginning of phrases, they're all in the second and third verses (of "The Boiling Boy") so it works alright.
Didn't turn out quite as good as I'd hoped...but here's "Boy Boiling Over" by Mesh Skulls (arranged by Monkey Typing Pool, of course).
Earlier experiments along similar lines: flying in string parts from the Kronos Quartet arrangement of "Marquee Moon" to fit atop Television's original; and in a fever dream, deciding that Neil Young's "Soldier" made perfect sense stuck in the middle of the 4th untitled track from Labradford's E Luxo So album (extended via manufactured drone). And of course, Segway Army's "Are Higsons Electric?" - Robyn sings Numan.
Mesh Skulls "Boy Boiling Over" (2008)
Television/Kronos Quartet "Marquee Moon" (2004)
Labradford/Neil Young "E Luxo So 4/Soldier" (2002)
Segway Army "Are Higsons Electric?" (2007)
3.12.2008
more inconsequential nattering
For most of the middle years of the eighties, I lived in Madison. Now Madison isn't really as not-Wisconsin as some people (many of them Madisonians) like to believe, but there were some distinctly not-Wisconsin touches here and there...sometimes, directly abutting quintessentially Wisconsin characteristics.
For example, your basic midwestern family-style restaurant. ("Family-style" restaurants are, presumably, those that do not feature naked waitstaff, nor do they require all customers to be single.) This is the kind of place that has paper placemats, and one side has some four-color drawings of cows and wheat and the like (or worse: badly reproduced photos of menu items), while the reverse has some sort of kid-oriented backdrop, usually featuring the sort of deadly dull games guaranteed to bore kids instantly. The mats are useful, though, to be scrawled on by kids, should crayons be available.
Anyway, one of these kid placemats (of course, as dull as they were for kids, they were more interesting to a handful of drunken college students haunting the family-style place that was open until 3 in the morning, for all those restless children who couldn't sleep) had a puzzle of some sorts, one of whose clues featured a phrase that's haunted me throughout the years since. I have no idea what the answer was supposed to have been - typically, of course, they're printed upside down in 7-point type - but perhaps that portion of the placemat succumbed to fried grease or something, because I don't think I ever knew it either. The phrase meant to clue us in, though, was rather odd:
I'M ONLY AS LARGE AS AN ANT AND I'M HIDING IN YOUR CAR
I actually Googled this - no luck. Anyway, pretty clearly there are many places in a car for something ant-sized to hide - and I don't think it's a pun (like the way "Tom" is hiding in your "auTOMobile," say), since "car" has only three letters.
Still, there's something vaguely menacing about this one. I mean, how likely is it we can find this very small being - a very small being who somehow has managed to make his existence known via a sentence in all caps on a family-style placemat? Can we guess at its intentions? Does it plan on sabotaging some aspect of the car, turning our ride back from the restaurant into a deadly game ofcat-and-mouse chance? Or maybe this small creature is hiding...from some other, even more frightening creature.
Uh, I think I'll take a bus home instead, thanks.
For example, your basic midwestern family-style restaurant. ("Family-style" restaurants are, presumably, those that do not feature naked waitstaff, nor do they require all customers to be single.) This is the kind of place that has paper placemats, and one side has some four-color drawings of cows and wheat and the like (or worse: badly reproduced photos of menu items), while the reverse has some sort of kid-oriented backdrop, usually featuring the sort of deadly dull games guaranteed to bore kids instantly. The mats are useful, though, to be scrawled on by kids, should crayons be available.
Anyway, one of these kid placemats (of course, as dull as they were for kids, they were more interesting to a handful of drunken college students haunting the family-style place that was open until 3 in the morning, for all those restless children who couldn't sleep) had a puzzle of some sorts, one of whose clues featured a phrase that's haunted me throughout the years since. I have no idea what the answer was supposed to have been - typically, of course, they're printed upside down in 7-point type - but perhaps that portion of the placemat succumbed to fried grease or something, because I don't think I ever knew it either. The phrase meant to clue us in, though, was rather odd:
I'M ONLY AS LARGE AS AN ANT AND I'M HIDING IN YOUR CAR
I actually Googled this - no luck. Anyway, pretty clearly there are many places in a car for something ant-sized to hide - and I don't think it's a pun (like the way "Tom" is hiding in your "auTOMobile," say), since "car" has only three letters.
Still, there's something vaguely menacing about this one. I mean, how likely is it we can find this very small being - a very small being who somehow has managed to make his existence known via a sentence in all caps on a family-style placemat? Can we guess at its intentions? Does it plan on sabotaging some aspect of the car, turning our ride back from the restaurant into a deadly game of
Uh, I think I'll take a bus home instead, thanks.
2.20.2008
because what holds the world together is contests without prizes (sorry, Mark and the wind that blows through Gena Rowlands' hair)
For no good reason, I spontaneously started writing Beck lyrics earlier today. I do hope this doesn't mean that teams of 10,000,000-year-old alien lawyers will descend in silver spaceships to reallocate my pengram chips or whatever.
Anyway: the contest is, finish the song! Points off for making any sense at all.
Drip-dry modem in a wet dream parking lot
Gettin' strangled in the tangle of a carburetor hum
Flash flood humping in a mousehole packet
With a Krispy Kreme coffee and a paper bag bum
Anyway: the contest is, finish the song! Points off for making any sense at all.
Drip-dry modem in a wet dream parking lot
Gettin' strangled in the tangle of a carburetor hum
Flash flood humping in a mousehole packet
With a Krispy Kreme coffee and a paper bag bum
2.01.2008
curious dream fragment
For some reason, I rarely remember entire dreams - instead I remember isolated scenes, like snapshots or little skits. Here's one from last night:
I'm at some public function or another, and I realize that the man sort of behind me and to my right is Morrissey. However, I'm quite surprised to find that in person, Morrissey is rather tall and has a rather imposing physique, much like that of a linebacker. However, his head is comically small, the overall effect making him look a bit like one of those Playskool characters with the blocky bodies and round, plastic head. Even more unfortunately, his speaking voice is peculiarly high-pitched - I'm surprised by that, since his singing voice isn't particularly high-pitched at all.
I'm at some public function or another, and I realize that the man sort of behind me and to my right is Morrissey. However, I'm quite surprised to find that in person, Morrissey is rather tall and has a rather imposing physique, much like that of a linebacker. However, his head is comically small, the overall effect making him look a bit like one of those Playskool characters with the blocky bodies and round, plastic head. Even more unfortunately, his speaking voice is peculiarly high-pitched - I'm surprised by that, since his singing voice isn't particularly high-pitched at all.
1.31.2008
thieving bastard
Okay, I have officially anticipated an idea used by an actual conceptual artist: see this entry (and note the date), and then read the last paragraph of this entry from Lord Whimsy.
I really should do something other than sit around typing, apparently.
I really should do something other than sit around typing, apparently.
1.26.2008
actually fun "meme"
Courtesy of yellojkt - the Robert Pollard Memorial Faux Rock Album Meme (I've renamed it - and no, don't worry: Pollard hasn't died, you just need "Memorial" in there).
The obvious next step (as YJ points out) is to do up an album cover - so I spent a little while and came up with this for my random names, phrases, and image (click to embiggen and render the type more legible):
PS: I just don't like that the perfectly serviceable term meme has come to mean merely "quiz that gets passed around the internet." Sorry - I'm all fussy, and probably am one of those people who, one hundred years ago, would have complained that the word "automobile" is ill-formed, deriving as it does from mixed Greek and Latin roots...
Update: The Summervillain pointed folks to a random selection of Creative Commons Flickr images - so rather than use a copyrighted image, I've redone the meme with one of those. For the image choice, I chose the third image in the third row of the first page that came up. (The original image - by, uh, " >>> Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids <<<" - is here. Oh - and the full quotation from which my "title" is drawn runs as follows: "Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it." It's fromthe comic strip "Garfield" President James A. Garfield. My original selection - with copyrighted image by Evje Calling - may be viewed by dropping the "2cvr" from the image URL.
The obvious next step (as YJ points out) is to do up an album cover - so I spent a little while and came up with this for my random names, phrases, and image (click to embiggen and render the type more legible):
PS: I just don't like that the perfectly serviceable term meme has come to mean merely "quiz that gets passed around the internet." Sorry - I'm all fussy, and probably am one of those people who, one hundred years ago, would have complained that the word "automobile" is ill-formed, deriving as it does from mixed Greek and Latin roots...
Update: The Summervillain pointed folks to a random selection of Creative Commons Flickr images - so rather than use a copyrighted image, I've redone the meme with one of those. For the image choice, I chose the third image in the third row of the first page that came up. (The original image - by, uh, " >>> Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids <<<" - is here. Oh - and the full quotation from which my "title" is drawn runs as follows: "Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it." It's from
1.07.2008
stuck in Minneapolis with the rental blues again
So, we were scheduled to return from our trip to Dallas (photos here) Sunday evening, on a flight due in around 6 o'clock or so. As anyone who lives in Milwaukee knows, all flights to and from the city Sunday were canceled due to extremely dense fog.
We didn't find that out till we were in the line to check out bags at DFW, of course. What to do? Well, we had several options (one was not to fly into Chicago: no seats available). We could rent another car for another day and go back to Tonia and Cason's house...but that was risky, in that the forecast for Monday here was very similar to Sunday's (as it turned out, fog didn't come early...but it looks like it's coming now). It would also have been a pain in the butt for Tonia and Cason, who probably were glad not to have to entertain us as well as deal with a six-month-old child. (I know they were pleased we visited...but as we well know, it's also good to get back to the normal routine.)
We did a little thinking, and decided to fly into Minneapolis instead. (Note for the geographically clueless: first, Milwaukee and Minneapolis are not the same city. Second, they're about five or six hours apart by car.) We figured either we could rent a car one way that evening and drive back - or, if we were too tired or a car unavailable, stay overnight at my sister's place and then deal with renting a car.
So it was that we ended up on a flight leaving nearly an hour and a half earlier than our original one...which meant we had to OJ it (pre-'94) to the Northwest terminal (we'd been on Midwest) and barely had time to scarf down some not-all-that great food before the plane took off. (At this point, curiously, Rose actually became a bit nervous and flustered. That rarely happens: usually it's me who turns into a puddle of panic when stupid bureaucracy makes things unpredictable. She got better.)
One uneventful flight later (although we were worried: there were five or six under-six kids within three rows of our seats - which were, miraculously, together), we touched down in Minneapolis, took the amusingly short tram ride to the rental car area (amusingly short because unlike DFW, MSP was not built for fifty-foot-tall giants), and tried to rent a car. Struck out at the first place we tried (and at this point, can I express my displeasure with airports that charge for wireless access? I mean, c'mon: we've just paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege of taking off our shoes in public and walking through a metal detector: the least you can do is be as generous as your average coffee shop and give us free WiFi), but found one at Alamo. Of course, we paid a premium for a single-day, one-way, right-now rental...but we realized that no matter what we would have done, it would have cost money.
Apparently Alamo doesn't much care what car you use: we got to their area of the parking garage, some guy pointed at four cars in a row and said, pick whichever one you want. I decided that the black Avenger was a no-go - since it was probably designed and engineered to appeal to the kind of guy who wants to drive a car named "Avenger" (which meant we'd probably use another hundred bucks' worth of gas) - and the rest looked functionally identical. In fact, it wasn't until we stopped for dinner on the road home that I even knew what kind of vehicle it was, other than being a Chevy (obvious from the bowtie on the steering wheel). The key said "Intermediate" on it...so we were contrasting what kind of person buys an "Avenger" with the person who'd buy a "Chevy Intermediate." Turned out to be a Malibu. So that explained the stupid oblique angles of the numerals on the speedometer display: it's sporty!
After briefly getting slightly lost near the Mall of America, we were soon on our way. The fog didn't make itself known until about Black River Falls or so (I remember the Orange Moose being difficult to see) and really wasn't that bad except in patches...until we got to Madison. At first, it was just a little bit surreal: there was a truck about half a mile ahead of us whose taillights formed a perfect square, and because the fog obscured much else in the surroundings, if you focused on the square of lights, it was as if you weren't moving at all. (This is not something you actually want to do for more than a second or so, of course: I found that moving my eyes around and not focusing on any one thing for very long helped me stay unhypnotized by the lack of visible landscape.) When the fog got thicker, though, it was kind of weird, as if in some science fiction film where the sensation of motion was present, but very little was visibly moving. Fortunately, since this was kinda freaky, we found a friendly truck to follow for the worst of the fog. We were concerned to keep a good distance (far enough back, but close enough so our headlights actually reflected off the back of the truck to provide a bit more ambient illumination) - and as it turned out, that was a good thing. Around the point where 90 and 39 break off from 94 near Madison, there were a bunch of cop cars with their lights flashing, apparently blocking off some entrances and exits (fortunately, not ours). It wasn't until I got home and read the news online earlier today that I found out that earlier Sunday, about mid-afternoon, there'd been a huge pileup in the fog in which two people had been killed and several injured. Probably good I wasn't aware of that at that point.
We finally got back to Milwaukee a little after midnight (by which time, amusingly, the fog had almost completely cleared), parked the rental next to the garage, brought our luggage into the house and left it just inside the back door, fed and petted the cats - and immediately went to bed, exhausted.
Now we get to see if Midwest will reimburse us for any of our extra expenses. The last time one of our flights was canceled, they did...but that flight was canceled because of a mechanical problem with one of their planes. That is, it was their fault. The fog was not.
As I put it in an e-mail to Tonia, if Midwest fails to reimburse us because the fog was an "act of God," maybe a letter to the Pope would help.
We didn't find that out till we were in the line to check out bags at DFW, of course. What to do? Well, we had several options (one was not to fly into Chicago: no seats available). We could rent another car for another day and go back to Tonia and Cason's house...but that was risky, in that the forecast for Monday here was very similar to Sunday's (as it turned out, fog didn't come early...but it looks like it's coming now). It would also have been a pain in the butt for Tonia and Cason, who probably were glad not to have to entertain us as well as deal with a six-month-old child. (I know they were pleased we visited...but as we well know, it's also good to get back to the normal routine.)
We did a little thinking, and decided to fly into Minneapolis instead. (Note for the geographically clueless: first, Milwaukee and Minneapolis are not the same city. Second, they're about five or six hours apart by car.) We figured either we could rent a car one way that evening and drive back - or, if we were too tired or a car unavailable, stay overnight at my sister's place and then deal with renting a car.
So it was that we ended up on a flight leaving nearly an hour and a half earlier than our original one...which meant we had to OJ it (pre-'94) to the Northwest terminal (we'd been on Midwest) and barely had time to scarf down some not-all-that great food before the plane took off. (At this point, curiously, Rose actually became a bit nervous and flustered. That rarely happens: usually it's me who turns into a puddle of panic when stupid bureaucracy makes things unpredictable. She got better.)
One uneventful flight later (although we were worried: there were five or six under-six kids within three rows of our seats - which were, miraculously, together), we touched down in Minneapolis, took the amusingly short tram ride to the rental car area (amusingly short because unlike DFW, MSP was not built for fifty-foot-tall giants), and tried to rent a car. Struck out at the first place we tried (and at this point, can I express my displeasure with airports that charge for wireless access? I mean, c'mon: we've just paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege of taking off our shoes in public and walking through a metal detector: the least you can do is be as generous as your average coffee shop and give us free WiFi), but found one at Alamo. Of course, we paid a premium for a single-day, one-way, right-now rental...but we realized that no matter what we would have done, it would have cost money.
Apparently Alamo doesn't much care what car you use: we got to their area of the parking garage, some guy pointed at four cars in a row and said, pick whichever one you want. I decided that the black Avenger was a no-go - since it was probably designed and engineered to appeal to the kind of guy who wants to drive a car named "Avenger" (which meant we'd probably use another hundred bucks' worth of gas) - and the rest looked functionally identical. In fact, it wasn't until we stopped for dinner on the road home that I even knew what kind of vehicle it was, other than being a Chevy (obvious from the bowtie on the steering wheel). The key said "Intermediate" on it...so we were contrasting what kind of person buys an "Avenger" with the person who'd buy a "Chevy Intermediate." Turned out to be a Malibu. So that explained the stupid oblique angles of the numerals on the speedometer display: it's sporty!
After briefly getting slightly lost near the Mall of America, we were soon on our way. The fog didn't make itself known until about Black River Falls or so (I remember the Orange Moose being difficult to see) and really wasn't that bad except in patches...until we got to Madison. At first, it was just a little bit surreal: there was a truck about half a mile ahead of us whose taillights formed a perfect square, and because the fog obscured much else in the surroundings, if you focused on the square of lights, it was as if you weren't moving at all. (This is not something you actually want to do for more than a second or so, of course: I found that moving my eyes around and not focusing on any one thing for very long helped me stay unhypnotized by the lack of visible landscape.) When the fog got thicker, though, it was kind of weird, as if in some science fiction film where the sensation of motion was present, but very little was visibly moving. Fortunately, since this was kinda freaky, we found a friendly truck to follow for the worst of the fog. We were concerned to keep a good distance (far enough back, but close enough so our headlights actually reflected off the back of the truck to provide a bit more ambient illumination) - and as it turned out, that was a good thing. Around the point where 90 and 39 break off from 94 near Madison, there were a bunch of cop cars with their lights flashing, apparently blocking off some entrances and exits (fortunately, not ours). It wasn't until I got home and read the news online earlier today that I found out that earlier Sunday, about mid-afternoon, there'd been a huge pileup in the fog in which two people had been killed and several injured. Probably good I wasn't aware of that at that point.
We finally got back to Milwaukee a little after midnight (by which time, amusingly, the fog had almost completely cleared), parked the rental next to the garage, brought our luggage into the house and left it just inside the back door, fed and petted the cats - and immediately went to bed, exhausted.
Now we get to see if Midwest will reimburse us for any of our extra expenses. The last time one of our flights was canceled, they did...but that flight was canceled because of a mechanical problem with one of their planes. That is, it was their fault. The fog was not.
As I put it in an e-mail to Tonia, if Midwest fails to reimburse us because the fog was an "act of God," maybe a letter to the Pope would help.
12.30.2007
the no-time-for shelf
I'm pathetic at finishing books. Not that I abandon them - I'm fairly compulsive about finishing books once I've started them - more that I don't have time to read them. (Perhaps I type too much...) So I thought I'd make a little list of the books in my to-be-read pile - and for amusement, maybe look back at this a year from now to see how many I've actually managed to read. They're in the order they're sitting there...which is basically order of acquisition.
Robertson Davies Fifth Business (informal workplace book exchange)
P.D. James An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (English dept. free book area)
Anne McCaffrey The Ship Who Sang (English dept. free book area)
Daniel Handler Adverbs (purchased new)
Colson Whitehead Apex Hides the Hurt (purchased new)
China Miéville Iron Council (purchased new)
Susanna Clarke The Ladies of Grace Adieu (purchased new)
Douglas Hofstadter I Am a Strange Loop (purchased new)
A.M. Homes This Book Will Save Your Life (informal workplace book exchange)
Sherry Turkle Evocative Objects (English dept. free book area)
LD Beghtol 69 Love Songs - 33 1/3 (purchased new)
Franklin Bruno Armed Forces - 33 1/3 (purchased new)
Ben Sisario Doolittle - 33 1/3 (purchased new)
Don DeLillo Falling Man (gift)
Philip K. Dick Voices from the Street (gift)
Robertson Davies Fifth Business (informal workplace book exchange)
P.D. James An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (English dept. free book area)
Anne McCaffrey The Ship Who Sang (English dept. free book area)
Daniel Handler Adverbs (purchased new)
Colson Whitehead Apex Hides the Hurt (purchased new)
China Miéville Iron Council (purchased new)
Susanna Clarke The Ladies of Grace Adieu (purchased new)
Douglas Hofstadter I Am a Strange Loop (purchased new)
A.M. Homes This Book Will Save Your Life (informal workplace book exchange)
Sherry Turkle Evocative Objects (English dept. free book area)
LD Beghtol 69 Love Songs - 33 1/3 (purchased new)
Franklin Bruno Armed Forces - 33 1/3 (purchased new)
Ben Sisario Doolittle - 33 1/3 (purchased new)
Don DeLillo Falling Man (gift)
Philip K. Dick Voices from the Street (gift)
12.20.2007
natal noise
Musicians weigh in on the subject of birthdays:
David Lowery's cynical and a bit drunk; Björk is off in the stratosphere singing about God knows what; and Kurt Heasley, such a downer, is so bitter he's even denying that it is his birthday.
But it is mine.
(It's also Mike Watt's and Billy Bragg's. Apparently, taking my first name into account, it's a day for people with double consonants at the ends of their names.)
Cracker "Happy Birthday to Me" (Cracker, 1992)
The Sugarcubes "Birthday" (Life's Too Good, 1988)
Lilys "Your Guest and Host" (Eccsame the Photon Band, 1995)
David Lowery's cynical and a bit drunk; Björk is off in the stratosphere singing about God knows what; and Kurt Heasley, such a downer, is so bitter he's even denying that it is his birthday.
But it is mine.
(It's also Mike Watt's and Billy Bragg's. Apparently, taking my first name into account, it's a day for people with double consonants at the ends of their names.)
Cracker "Happy Birthday to Me" (Cracker, 1992)
The Sugarcubes "Birthday" (Life's Too Good, 1988)
Lilys "Your Guest and Host" (Eccsame the Photon Band, 1995)
12.15.2007
workin' for the yankee dollar
Paula's doin' it, the Summervillain's doin' it - so even an educated flea like me can do it - let's post a picture of our workspace:
Damned camera's acting up again, with the blurry horizontal lines. I did a totally half-assed job of trying to blur them over...oh well. Unfortunately, even at the largest size (follow the link and click on the alternate sizes link above the Flickr image), the details of the various objects are somewhat illegible...although I just realized that's probably for the best, as some of them are student ID numbers on portfolios I've been grading. Still, a couple-few CDs (not part of my actual job) might be identifiable...anyone care to guess which CDs were sitting on my desk when I took the photo?
Damned camera's acting up again, with the blurry horizontal lines. I did a totally half-assed job of trying to blur them over...oh well. Unfortunately, even at the largest size (follow the link and click on the alternate sizes link above the Flickr image), the details of the various objects are somewhat illegible...although I just realized that's probably for the best, as some of them are student ID numbers on portfolios I've been grading. Still, a couple-few CDs (not part of my actual job) might be identifiable...anyone care to guess which CDs were sitting on my desk when I took the photo?
12.13.2007
a little number we like to call...
I've been a bit Wire-obsessed lately. So it started as a joke on the music mailing list - the notion of a Wire Christmas album. Naturally, I had to make up a track listing:
Two Presents in a Room
Snow in My Joints
Fat Man Blurred
Three Gift Rhumba
1 2 Xmas U
Mr. Red Suit
Dot Dasher
Sleigh Chasers
Jingling Tongues
Pink Tree
Mincemeat Bingos
Our Santa
Bell Bell Bell (Dugga-Dugga-Dugga)
No Reindeer on the Ice
You Hung Your Lights in the Tree/A Christmas Touch
I claimed it was released late in 2001 in an exclusive edition of 100 copies, via posteverything.com (where actual Wire recordings can be purchased), under the title My God You're So Gifted!.
The packaging, supposedly, featured such ridiculous notions as Bruce Gilbert dressed up like Santa, Robert Gotobed/Grey in an Ebenezer Scrooge costume, Graham Lewis as an elf, and Colin Newman as...Mrs. Claus!
Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone...and so, "1 2 Xmas U" had to come into actual existence, courtesy of Monkey Typing Pool. And so, 'ere it is again.
The lyrics, in their entirety (as adapted from the Gilbert/Newman original at pinkflag.com):
Saw you in a mall (asking for sacks), sat on a lap - sat on the fat man
Caught you with a package (wrapper), caught you with a package
1 2 Xmas U
Monkey Typing Pool "1 2 Xmas U"
PS: As far as Christmas releases by early post-punk bands go, this has it all over the infamous Gang of Four Christmas release, given away to striking workers...which was a piece of cardboard the size of a 7" single with the words "Return the Gift" on one side and on the other, a manifesto on why Christmas was a capitalist ploy to sucker the working class into submission.
Damned humorless Marxists.
Two Presents in a Room
Snow in My Joints
Fat Man Blurred
Three Gift Rhumba
1 2 Xmas U
Mr. Red Suit
Dot Dasher
Sleigh Chasers
Jingling Tongues
Pink Tree
Mincemeat Bingos
Our Santa
Bell Bell Bell (Dugga-Dugga-Dugga)
No Reindeer on the Ice
You Hung Your Lights in the Tree/A Christmas Touch
I claimed it was released late in 2001 in an exclusive edition of 100 copies, via posteverything.com (where actual Wire recordings can be purchased), under the title My God You're So Gifted!.
The packaging, supposedly, featured such ridiculous notions as Bruce Gilbert dressed up like Santa, Robert Gotobed/Grey in an Ebenezer Scrooge costume, Graham Lewis as an elf, and Colin Newman as...Mrs. Claus!
Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone...and so, "1 2 Xmas U" had to come into actual existence, courtesy of Monkey Typing Pool. And so, 'ere it is again.
The lyrics, in their entirety (as adapted from the Gilbert/Newman original at pinkflag.com):
Saw you in a mall (asking for sacks), sat on a lap - sat on the fat man
Caught you with a package (wrapper), caught you with a package
1 2 Xmas U
Monkey Typing Pool "1 2 Xmas U"
PS: As far as Christmas releases by early post-punk bands go, this has it all over the infamous Gang of Four Christmas release, given away to striking workers...which was a piece of cardboard the size of a 7" single with the words "Return the Gift" on one side and on the other, a manifesto on why Christmas was a capitalist ploy to sucker the working class into submission.
Damned humorless Marxists.
12.11.2007
someone's sincerely
More noise typage: "Victorian Photographs" Monkey Typing Pool. (Lyrics and music-geekery here; recording here.)
This one grew out of an intriguing paragraph in Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment, in which Dyer noted that nineteenth-century photographic streetscapes often have a haunting, bereft quality partly because the long exposure time required meant that evanescent figures in the camera field - such as people - were simply not there long enough to register: only the buildings and streets remained. (The passage is on page 217 of the Pantheon hardcover edition.) The first verse (which, quite intentionally, is one long sentence) is drawn from ideas in that passage. Then I had to figure out what to do with it.
A few random details: this is, I think, only the second song I've recorded with no outside samples at all. Almost everything you hear is, in its origins at least, an acoustic guitar - in fact, the same, single track of an acoustic guitar, manipulated a zillion different ways. The solo was cut and pasted from a single sawtooth wave generated in my music software, sped up and cut to size and assembled into the solo, then sonically gone over brutally with the digital fuctwithizer. It might have been easier to learn to play it, even if only at half speed. The rhythms are tricky though. I had two models for the solo: architecturally, the long solo in the middle of Television's "Marquee Moon," which is essentially a four-minute elaboration of a D-major scale rising up over a couple of octaves; and in feeling and effect, Robert Fripp's solo in Brian Eno's "St. Elmo's Fire," which alternates between long, becalmed notes and frenzied, firefly-like jottings of chaotic excitement. The bridge background is a mix of voices (eight of 'em, four voices doubled) and keyboard flute (the same four parts, plus a bass mostly an octave lower). The flute was originally recorded off the cuff as a guide for the vocal parts, but I got used to hearing it as a placeholder while I was doing the rest of the track, and liked it (it reminds me of the flutes in Mogwai's "Fear Satan"), so I just mixed it in with the vocal backdrop. The song also features a ShopVac and a table saw, both speed-altered to (approximately) an A. (As I said, even more geekly music talk is here.)
Monkey Typing Pool "Victorian Photographs" (December 2007)
This one grew out of an intriguing paragraph in Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment, in which Dyer noted that nineteenth-century photographic streetscapes often have a haunting, bereft quality partly because the long exposure time required meant that evanescent figures in the camera field - such as people - were simply not there long enough to register: only the buildings and streets remained. (The passage is on page 217 of the Pantheon hardcover edition.) The first verse (which, quite intentionally, is one long sentence) is drawn from ideas in that passage. Then I had to figure out what to do with it.
A few random details: this is, I think, only the second song I've recorded with no outside samples at all. Almost everything you hear is, in its origins at least, an acoustic guitar - in fact, the same, single track of an acoustic guitar, manipulated a zillion different ways. The solo was cut and pasted from a single sawtooth wave generated in my music software, sped up and cut to size and assembled into the solo, then sonically gone over brutally with the digital fuctwithizer. It might have been easier to learn to play it, even if only at half speed. The rhythms are tricky though. I had two models for the solo: architecturally, the long solo in the middle of Television's "Marquee Moon," which is essentially a four-minute elaboration of a D-major scale rising up over a couple of octaves; and in feeling and effect, Robert Fripp's solo in Brian Eno's "St. Elmo's Fire," which alternates between long, becalmed notes and frenzied, firefly-like jottings of chaotic excitement. The bridge background is a mix of voices (eight of 'em, four voices doubled) and keyboard flute (the same four parts, plus a bass mostly an octave lower). The flute was originally recorded off the cuff as a guide for the vocal parts, but I got used to hearing it as a placeholder while I was doing the rest of the track, and liked it (it reminds me of the flutes in Mogwai's "Fear Satan"), so I just mixed it in with the vocal backdrop. The song also features a ShopVac and a table saw, both speed-altered to (approximately) an A. (As I said, even more geekly music talk is here.)
Monkey Typing Pool "Victorian Photographs" (December 2007)
12.04.2007
I'm famous for 1/15th of a second among people famous for 15 people
So I'm going through my RSS reader, checking up on the various blogs I monitor, and I'm reading the latest entry at Lord Whimsy's site (I heartily recommend his book, by the way: amusing, urbane, thoughtful, and even incisive at times) on the phenomenon of "microcelebrity," a term Whimsy relates to Momus's remix of the famous Warholian aphorism: "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen people." In this context, it was highly amusing to find Whimsy quoting...me - from a comment I'd made at (I think) Momus's website.
11.23.2007
ten reasons I will never become President of the United States of America
1. I did not eat turkey, stuffing, cranberries, or any other seasonally fetishized food items yesterday - not even a tofucken...uh, tofu turducken.
2. I went nowhere near a mall today, nor did I buy anything online for anyone's Christmas present. I did buy a sandwich at a locally owned restaurant (Fuel, to reward them for going smoke-free a month ago) and then replenished the diet soda supply. And Rose and I will probably go out to eat tonight somewhere. But shopping as such? The day after Thanksgiving? I shudder.
3. I did not willingly watch any football yesterday (my in-laws had the game on - but then we watched Ratatouille instead).
4. I no longer have a TV that works except to play DVDs - no network TV, no cable TV.
5. I no longer own a cell phone.
6. I haven't worn a wristwatch for years (and nowadays, with everyone owning cell phones, I'm not sure why anyone does) - there are clocks everywhere anyway. (Except for at the Post Office - where, a worker told me, they were actually ordered to remove them so customers didn't know how much time they were wasting standing in line. Yes, that'll work!)
7. Hardly any of my clothing promotes any brand of anything. There are some exceptions: band t-shirts, a couple of WMSE t-shirts, and a slew of Atomic t-shirts back when they were giving them away with $50 purchases (back at the heights of my CD-buying) - plus two sweatshirts for which I made exceptions: (1) a Leinenkugel's sweatshirt purchased during a brewery tour because we were camping nearby and it had gotten unexpectedly chilly; (2) a sweatshirt with the logo of a Central Valley winery in California...because several years ago, when we were touring wineries in that region, we came across one which shared my surname - of course, I had to buy the sweatshirt.
8. I don't attend church.
9. I have inhaled - although it's been nearly twenty years, and I never really enjoyed it. Don't have a problem with other people doing so, but it never did much for me.
10. Apparently, a friend of mine has a picture of my ass, mooning her.
2. I went nowhere near a mall today, nor did I buy anything online for anyone's Christmas present. I did buy a sandwich at a locally owned restaurant (Fuel, to reward them for going smoke-free a month ago) and then replenished the diet soda supply. And Rose and I will probably go out to eat tonight somewhere. But shopping as such? The day after Thanksgiving? I shudder.
3. I did not willingly watch any football yesterday (my in-laws had the game on - but then we watched Ratatouille instead).
4. I no longer have a TV that works except to play DVDs - no network TV, no cable TV.
5. I no longer own a cell phone.
6. I haven't worn a wristwatch for years (and nowadays, with everyone owning cell phones, I'm not sure why anyone does) - there are clocks everywhere anyway. (Except for at the Post Office - where, a worker told me, they were actually ordered to remove them so customers didn't know how much time they were wasting standing in line. Yes, that'll work!)
7. Hardly any of my clothing promotes any brand of anything. There are some exceptions: band t-shirts, a couple of WMSE t-shirts, and a slew of Atomic t-shirts back when they were giving them away with $50 purchases (back at the heights of my CD-buying) - plus two sweatshirts for which I made exceptions: (1) a Leinenkugel's sweatshirt purchased during a brewery tour because we were camping nearby and it had gotten unexpectedly chilly; (2) a sweatshirt with the logo of a Central Valley winery in California...because several years ago, when we were touring wineries in that region, we came across one which shared my surname - of course, I had to buy the sweatshirt.
8. I don't attend church.
9. I have inhaled - although it's been nearly twenty years, and I never really enjoyed it. Don't have a problem with other people doing so, but it never did much for me.
10. Apparently, a friend of mine has a picture of my ass, mooning her.
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