Writings · of · Mass · Distraction

On Tuesday it will be our 30th Anniversary. I am taking Monday and Tuesday off for this special event. We will be hosting our annual Halloween party on Saturday night but the rest of the weekend will be spent watching movies, football (go Vikes), baseball (Yankees suck!), and more movies. I suppose I will get some writing done, we'll see. Dinner will probably be at the Blue Door in St. Paul, which is just our kind of thing. No pretensions, just burgers and beer. That pretty much says it all about us, doesn't it?

My laptop died a couple months ago. Apparently this model of Toshiba has issues with the power button and this definitely is the problem. At almost 5 years old, it's not worth the amount of money it would take to fix it (like I have that kind of money anyway). So we are down to one ancient PC. The only good thing is I was able to take the hard drive out of the laptop and plug it into a little $12 device that essentially converts it into an 80gb jump drive. I was able to get some files that I thought were lost and could never be recreated. Then I wiped it clean and am using it as an external hard drive for storage and just moving files back and forth to work.

The bummer of the one computer in the family thing is that I am not getting nearly as much computer time as I used to. Less writing, less fooling around on the Internet, less time spent on my forums... It's a pain and the only plus side is I am having more time to read. And that's never a bad thing.

The good news is that I will be sleeping in tomorrow. The bad news is that it will be because I caught some low-level crud flu. It started in the middle of the night Thursday and given my age, it will take at least another day for it to run its course. It used to be more flu bugs lasted only 24-48 hours on me but once I passed 45 or so it seems that someone moved the goalposts on me. Now it takes me a good 4 days to bounce back and even then, it's pretty shaky. So plenty of fluids, staying warm (keep in mind fall just kicked in here with a vengeance), and getting some rest. And hopefully Carjo won't make me watch another bad movie with her...

I have avoided commenting on Michael Jackson but this bit of news is too bizarre to ignore. Sarah Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska and millions upon millions of politically-minded folk are going WTF?! Seriously, one does not drop out of your first term in a governor's office if you are considering a run for the big show. It just does not compute. It shows you cannot buckle down and finish a job, that you haven't got the stones to withstand criticism when the going gets tough, and that you won't even have a decent body of work to use as a reference. Despite what was being claimed in the last election, being a hockey mom is not a stepping stone to higher office.

I suspect either her notorious thin skin could not take any more scrutiny and criticism, or there's a scandal brewing up north. Face it, at the presidential level you have to endure some abuse and far worse than what she got. If she couldn't take what Letterman was dishing out (which was blown up to be far worse than it was) or the Vanity Fair article maybe it was time to bail out. But I think that there's a grand jury up there that is looking at her finances, or maybe that sports center boondoggle. But whatever it is an abrupt exit that makes no political sense and does not stand up to her rambling reasoning.

I think I have figured out Burnsville's "hot spots" for heavy speed traps, at least where I drive. There's two spots on Nicollet Ave North, a church parking lot and a strip mall near Burnsville Expwy. And Hwy 13 between Cedar Ave and the high school, especially late at night or on the weekends. I rarely see them on my secret back route but I am keeping my eyes open.

It's not that I speed a lot but they are so damn aggressive in collecting revenue for the city I want to make sure that I am nowhere near them. My alternate routes cost me little or nothing in time or convenience. It just irks me that these local governments are now so strapped for cash that they have to resort to the methods small towns in ND used to use. I blame Pawlenty, that Bush-lite taxaphobic git. And by the way T-Paw, this allotment nonsense is going to come back and bite you in the ass. And I'll post on it as soon as it does.

http://www.slate.com/id/2220223/pagenum/all/#p2

The above is some pretty good reading, especially if you don't read newspapers anymore. And a lot of people don't anymore. It's not just that newspapers lost their ad revenue to Craig's List; they've lost their readership to the Internet. It's been written about for quite some time by better writers than me but it all makes me a little sad. I grew up in a house that subscribed to FOUR newspapers (gee, and I wonder how I became a maniac for the printed page). But even I get my news off the Net. Just like the music industry, newspapers are running on a business model that doesn't work anymore and most of them are saddled with debt that far outstrips their worth. I have no sympathy for their out-dated model, you have to adapt to the times. But I am going to miss them when they're gone, and I really wonder who will pick up the baton of reporting when the last paper closes its doors.

The Daily Show had a great bit this week with a visit to the NYTimes. I loved it when Jason Jones asked exec-editor Bill Keller "what's black and white and red all over...your balance sheets!".

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=230076&title=end-times

On one data CD I burned: Black Sabbath Live at Hammersmith, The Decemberists' Hazards of Love, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Jeff Beck's Performing This Week at Ronnie Scott's, and Pierre Dørge & New Jungle Orchestra's Live at Birdland. If you can find a connection between more than two of these you're a better man than I. But it will make a fun day at work when I play it.

Our home smells like a record store. I couldn't be happier.

The last few years we've been burning incense more often. Carjo was always fond of burning scented candles but she has gradually come over to preferring incense. I have always loved the stuff. I had a burner that got me through high school and college but like a lot of my ilk (baby boomers) had put aside such affectations. But we have returned to the fold. There is a theory that people are better at creating when one of their senses is distracted. Some authors have been known to have fruit in their offices because the sense of smell is engaged. I prefer burning incense.

We started with some cones that were bought over the internets, then we discovered sticks last longer. Finally, Carjo found some really nice sticks at some foo-foo store she like in the MoA. I started a thread on PE regarding incense and got flooded with suggestions. Nag Champa was sited quite a few times so I decided I needed to find some. I did a Google search for Nag Champa in the Twin Cities and soon we found ourselves walking into Maharajah Gifts in downtown St Paul.

It's been a long time since I've been in an old school head shop/record store. It was like I was in Mothers Records in Fargo, a den of iniquity that was actually in an old church in downtown Fargo. There were oversize posters hanging from the walls, paraphernalia galore, two cats walking around like they owned the place (named Lucy and Linus), and the guys behind the counter were cranking some old live Mingus. And ye gods did these guys have a large incense collection. Plenty of Nag Champa and other Indian types, plus the brand that Carjo bought at the foo-foo shop but for about a third of the price. For the cost of 15 sticks at the MoA, I bought 60. And now our home smells like a record store.

I am seeing a frightful amount of speed traps and patrolling police cars lately on the highways and freeway this late winter/early spring. I suspect that the various governments involved have decided a little revenue is needed and what better than nailing dozens of scofflaws and speedsters.

Just this Sunday we were heading up 35E towards St Paul and an older pickup roars by us, probably doing 80 in a 70 zone. Carjo flips him a fine white bird because there's an anti-animal bumper sticker on the rusty lopsided bumper. Right where 35E leaves Eagan, the speed limit drops to 55. The tool in the family truckster just roars on and immediately flies past three MN Highway Patrol cars lounging in the median. One chases him down.

Now usually I see one patrol car at that spot. Three cars is something worthy of New Years Eve or St. Patrick's Day. And then a day later on Highway 13 in a stretch of no more than 2 miles I saw three Burnsville PD cars, stopping speeders. There's something going on here.

It has to be revenue. The state and local governments are strapped for cash with no hope in sight. So they've apparently decided to do a little fund-raising. Only this ain't like having a bake sale. So I am going to be very careful driving this spring and summer. I am a bit of a leadfoot - the Passat runs best on the highway and it's as smooth as silk at 75+. In fact, it's best mileage is when I am driving over 65. But I can afford a speeding ticket about as well as I can afford a new car. So I am just going to slow the hell down and try to behave. I just hope they nail Pawlenty's SUV when it streaks from Eagan to St Paul.

I am home today, fighting the flu. The King of the House slept on my pillow last night. He likes to monitor his humans when they're ill. I took a nap this afternoon and just after laying down he showed up beside the bed with that shrill little bray of his. He climbed onto my chest, inspecting me for signs of impending doom, and then settled in by my head. Later on I was vaguely aware of him moving from the pillow and I thought he had left the bed. But no, he just moved down to lay on my legs.

From Facebook:

15 Important Albums

Or as you kids call them these days, CDs. Get off my lawn. Anyway, these are important to me. These are not my 15 favorite albums but they are the most important in that they either brought me to a new epiphany, a sound I had never heard before, or something that so resonated within me that it now defines a part of me.

The Beatles: The White Album. I owned both the Red and Blue albums before this but it was this one where I realized just how weird and wonderful music could be. There are Beatles albums I like better now but this is the one that got played the most.

The Rolling Stones: Hot Rocks. One of my first albums ever and a counter to The Beatles Red/Blue. Whereas Lennon and McCartney always saw the glass as half full, Mick and Keith saw it as half empty and the contents were always black.

Led Zeppelin: IV. I first heard it in a department store in Williston ND. I just walked into the electronics section of the store in time to catch Stairway and I was transfixed. Then the side finished and the tone arm went back to the first song on the album. Black Dog sounded like the apocalypse and the second song didn’t exactly let up either. Then the third song invoked Tolkien and I was a goner. It was the greatest side of an album I had ever heard.

Muddy Waters: Hard Again. After years of cutting my teeth on British rock bands ripping through their own blues I finally decided to take a plunge and try the source material. The opening declaration from Muddy was a plunge into a clear deep pool and one I have never gotten out of.

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run. I’m a freshman in college and I bought this because of all the hype and I was getting off on that title track that I had heard on the radio. There were a couple of other guys in the room waiting to see if it was worth the hype. I put on side one and we heard Bruce sing “The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways. Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays”. And my friend Tony whispers, “ah shit, he IS that good”.

Rush: 2112. (where Thorson starts pulling his remaining hair out) I first heard about Rush from some Canadian kids – “we got our own Zeppelin, eh”. Then I read an article in Cream about this heavy Canuck band whose new album would have a side-long epic that had a science fiction theme. What I got was a wall of sound that had the precision of Yes and the fury of Zeppelin that culminated in one of the most ferocious and chilling finales in hard rock.

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon. First played for me by a childhood friend who would come to town every summer to stay with his grandmother. It chilled me to the bone and yet warmed me like a fire – it still can have that effect.

U2 – Boy. It wasn’t the lyrics that grabbed me at first – it was that sound. This guitar that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard – this painful Gaelic screech; there’s this moment where Larry Mullen hits the snare and it sounds like gunfire. Truly out of control.

The Who – Who’s Next. I had other Who albums but that opening to Baba, the scream coda to Won’t Get Fooled Again, the domestic bliss of Love Ain’t For Keeping, the domestic fear of My Wife…it’s unparalleled. I had to get new speakers because of this album.

Jacqueline du Pre – The Elgar Cello Concertos. I first heard it in a video and that sound – that living, breathing epitome of mourning and melancholy grabbed me like nothing has since the first time I heard a Les Paul getting played through a Marshall stack.

Miles Davis – Kind of Blue. In the movie Amadeus, Salieri talks about a piece of Mozart’s music as beginning “so simple, almost comic, just a pulse.” And so this album begins with So What. And it turns into something that still, 50 years on, is transcendent. It’s not my favorite jazz album but it’s the most important.

Porcupine Tree – Stupid Dream. I don’t remember how I stumbled on PT, I had read about them somewhere. But nothing I had read prepared me for Even Less: the ethereal almost whispered opening that then leads to a Who-like wall of sound and then the roller coaster truly begins. And then PT lead me to a host of bands on a similar quest, a music website I obsessively post on, and another world. A door I thought was closed had opened wide.

The Kinks – Kink Kronikles. I was watching TV, probably early high school and I don’t remember the show. The Kinks came on with that Brit way of being twee yet swaggering. Dave Davies looks at the audience like he’d rather stab the lot of them as he delicately puts on his Les Paul and then he sets off the opening blast of Lola. This is the compilation that I bought because of that and it remains one of the best compilations in the history of music.

Van Morrison – Moondance. I came to this album and Van far later than I should have and those were wasted years. Now of course there are Van albums I like better but hearing songs like And It Stoned Me or Caravan for the first time was as transcendent as any experience on this list.

Warren Zevon – Excitable Boy. I almost avoided this because the hype from Rolling Stone magazine was ridiculous but once I heard Werewolves I had to get it. And thus was exposed to the sickest, sharpest mind on the planet and god do I miss his perspective on this world.

I have been trying to hold back the politics on this journal (that doesn't always work but hey, I try). I've got a few friends who are conservative, but at least rational (though Thundering Bear really needs to stop listening to Hannity). But this article goes to the heart of what I think this country needs to get out of the mess it is in.

Nate Silver is talking about the two types of progressives, rational and radical. I have little use for radical progressives, almost as much as I do for the far right. Both let emotions get the better of them and stake out positions from which they refuse to back down or compromise. With the decimation of the Republican party from a national organization to a regional one, I think that they have lost touch with the rational side. Which leads to three Republican senators and no Republican representatives supporting the stimulus package. And if progressives aren't careful, we could see the same fate if we listen to the far left. Personally, I think Obama knows this and is going to hew close to the center. But it won't shut up the radicals on either side.

So please read this. I think it is essential reading for the rational members of both sides if we are going to fix the mess we're in.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/two-progressivisms.html

This came to mind while talking to Kru about Band of Brothers:

Broadcast TV is really truly empty these days, especially the dramas. We had such a great run of just solid dramas/dramedies on TV: Hill Street Blues, LA Law, NYPD Blue, The Practice, Picket Fences, Northern Exposure, Chicago Hope, ER (before Clooney left), Ally McBeal, Buffy, West Wing. Now only House belongs in that company and the rest are far behind. Life appears to be losing its gift, Law and Order is a joke, ER became a silly soap long ago. There are some good shows scattered on cable (BSG, the FX dramas) but now even HBO is having a dry run. What the hell happened? Joss Whedon's Dollhouse better start kicking ass because frankly its my last hope.