Take What You Like: April 2004

I’m trying something new here and listing out the mix cd contents. If anyone is interested in a copy, and doesn’t already receive one, email me your address and I’ll mail one.

Living behind the tape delay

I’ve been unpacking the personal history stuff that’s filled up my living room since October. I break it down by person and then file it away. This included keys to two different girlfriend’s places. Both have since moved at least twice.

I guess they aren’t really “keys” anymore, just key shaped pieces of metal that don’t do anything. What is a key that doesn’t unlock anything?

With all the stuff I’ve saved from people over the years the things that have thrown me for the biggest loop today are a couple of notes and cards from Leia. Reading them now they come across as sincerely loving and heart warming. I wish I could have recognized them as such back then. I read them today, practically for the first time, and was genuinely touched. Just two years to late.

Thrills and spills

I’d forgotten the thrill of posting a comment on some completely new person’s website and getting a personal response back from them.

Got some past due sysadmin stuff done tonight. New toys coming in. A 1u rackmount server on Wednesday, and a 15" powerbook on Monday. I’m surprised Mac Resource is giving me $550 for my g3/500 dual usb ibook.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time working on my servers and playing with net widgets. It’s hard for me to imagine a life where I didn’t have servers to take care of that other people count on 24/7/365. Listening: Tokyo - The Books

Now *that's* humor

Somethingawful.com has posted a pitchfork parody that is quite funny. It overdoes it with the Radiohead humor but I liked this snippet from a “review”:

Discovering a new Radiohead release is like staring into the eyes of Jesus Christ and feeling the eternal stream of love and awe that flows from Him. Pitchfork has funny stuff on their own like their review of Metallica’s St. Anger.

Happy and Aloof

I’ve been on a hot streak with music purchases recently. The Unicorns, Halley, The Books, Modest Mouse, songs from Xiu Xiu and Four Tet and the new Mirah have all kept me enthused about music.

Today it’s the new Mirah that’s put a smile on my face. Five songs in and they all match Cold Cold Water in production, lyrics and the raw anthem like power. The simple, solitary quiet and playful lyrics that dominated her past two albums seem gone.

The story of chicken little

According to this study Moroccans not only don’t like America they look on Osama bin Laden more favorably. These results are from the month after I was there, March 2004.

I can’t believe that almost half the people I interacted with thought favorably of Osama bin Laden and looked down on my country. I’ve never been treated with greater hospitality by strangers. I would put Bush and bin Laden as unfavorable but bin Laden is more unfavorable by an order of magnitude. Surely this poll is a repudiation of the neocon New American Century? Why oh why can’t we get thoughtful analysis injected in policy debate? Real military folks at the Defense and the National Interest website have been writing great stuff. Those essays are so good I can’t believe they are freely available. Listening: Jerusalem - Mirah

Coming up short

I want to write with the same charm, candidness and brevity that

Millennium Actress

I must be getting soft since my favorite movies this year have been love stories: Show Me Love, Mansfield Park and now Millennium Actress directed by Satoshi Kon.

Quick thoughts on the movie

I had enjoyed his previous film Perfect Blue with it’s clever story about celebrity and obsession but it lapsed into silly thriller cliches far too often. It was sort of Se7en meets Being John Malkovich inside Internet chat rooms. Then nothing from him for five or six years till Millennium Actress. Again he is tackling the simulacrum of celebrity and the physical world to say it’s all part of the same story of human endeavor. Film it or live it but the story that lives on after you is even bigger. Like the cult classic “The Stunt Man” this movie is full of trap-doors between the movie within a movie and the reality within a movie. The film deftly weaves between Chiyoko’s movie roles, her real past and her present to tell a great story about her search for one love. Along the way you get a sort of Cliff’s Notes of Japanese history, lovingly animated as apparently only the Japanese and Pixar still remember how to do.

i was born (a unicorn)

I talked with this homeless guy for an hour a couple weeks ago. He’s never been married and has nobody now. For the first time ever I saw a future where I floated from city to city alone.

I missed the ark but I could have sworn you’d wait for me. I was born a unicorn. I could have sworn you believed in me. Then how come all the other unicorns are dead?

Al-Salooq

I just got back from seeing the last show of Godspell at the VBC Playhouse. I went in not knowing anything about the story. I was invited by a friend that performed in it.

I suppose there is some cosmic irony in me, an unbeliever, watching a musical about the Gospel of St. Matthew (my namesake even) on a Sunday. I wasn’t the only unbeliever. I saw a “Who is John Galt?” bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot.