I am terrible with science. Yes, I am married to a scientist, but tha'ts more one of those things where it's like "I'm glad she knows that stuff, because I sure as hell DON'T."

So when I take this quiz and find that I "scored better than 85% of the public, below 7%, and the same as 8%", I find that to be both insane and pathetic.

Sadly, I bet if this was about NFL stats or the Kardashian family tree or whatever*, those scores would be a lot higher.  But then, what has science done for us lately? Also, what's a bird flu?

Science and Technology quiz



*granted, I can recite plenty of useless things in disturbing detail (music stuff, comic book stuff, NBA lineups, pre-2002 Simpsons, etc...), but come on. At least save room for the fucking basics of SCIENCE.

Hot Dog Social Hour Vol. 2

Okay, so work hell is over for 5 or 6 weeks, so I can get back to this. But not today.

Instead, here is volume 2 of my ongoing mix. This is an odd one (less English than any mix yet!), and some of it has been sitting around onmy computer for some time, waiting to be put on a mix. Not because  they're not good songs, but because I lost most of them for awhile. Anyway, enjoy?

Hot Dog Social Hour Vol. 2 by Hotdogsocialhour on Mixcloud

or, listen to it here.

Retrobituaries: Chuck Jones, animator of Looney Tunes

I got to meet Chuck Jones once as a kid, and he was exactly as awesome as you would expect. That the creators of Looney Tunes only expected these shorts to run 5 or 6 times and then be "retired" is astounding, especially since they hold up so well.

I still watch them a few times a week, and I still laugh as hard at them as I ever did. Chuck Jones's name in the front is as good of a sign of quality as I've ever seen.

Not sure I'd pick "What's Opera, Doc?" as the best, though...

Retrobituaries: Chuck Jones, animator of Looney Tunes:

Few animated series have aged as gracefully as Looney Tunes, and that’s in large measure because of director Chuck Jones. He drew relentlessly as a child, a result of a nearly unlimited access to pencils and stationery because of his father’s business ventures. (Each time one of his dad’s companies closed, Chuck and his siblings were given the remainder office supplies.) He never stopped drawing, and would go on to elevate animated shorts as an art form. Here are a few things you might not have known about the man behind Bugs Bunny.

He worked for Walt. 

After Warner Brothers closed its animation studio, Chuck Jones worked for Walt Disney. “In animation,” he said in an interview, “asking ‘Walt who?’ would be a very strange thing. It would be like saying ‘Jesus,’ and saying ‘Jesus who?’—he was that important.” (Jones added that poor Walt Lantz, director and producer of Woody Woodpecker, was always overshadowed as the other Walt. “There were no Chucks, which is just as well.”)
He didn’t last long at Disney, though. 

“The reason I stopped working [at Disney] was because I saw that nothing happened unless Walt okayed it, and you might have to wait three weeks to get an appointment with Walt to come in and see this sequence you were working on. And it was old stuff to these guys, but not to me. I was used to working at a pace.”  

Dr. Seuss was an old war buddy.

During World War II, Jones served with Theodor Geisel in a unit that produced training films for soldiers. They worked on such series as Situation Snafu and Fubar. Army training shorts could be pretty boring, he noted. “The pictures were made by some Army colonel who thought he was a director.” Jones and Geisel made it a point to keep their films interesting and entertaining. As if it’s not weird enough that the guy behind Bugs Bunny and the guy behind the Cat in the Hat were war buddies, they later collaborated with the Navy on other films. The Navy liaison? Hank Ketcham, the cartoonist behind Dennis the Menace.  

He didn’t make Saturday morning cartoons...

This might sound weird to anyone under 30, but for a very long time, if you wanted to watch cartoons, you had to wake up early on Saturday mornings. Looney Tunes, of course, was a mainstay. But none of Chuck Jones’s work was made for children on Saturday mornings. “They were always made for theatrical release right up to ’63. None of them were made for television. There’s a perfectly logical reason for it, and it was that there wasn’t any television.” In the 1930s and 40s, he and his team figured the work that they were doing had a total lifespan of three years—first run through fifth run—until finally the films would be worn and retired. Accordingly, they were unafraid to take risks with what they were doing. This often drove their producers crazy. “We got a double pleasure, and that was to make pictures that we enjoyed making, plus making someone else uncomfortable by doing it.

“Because we were so young and had recently left our parents, or teachers, we had very little respect for adults. So we ended up where every creative person is, and that is where you paint or draw for yourself. And we figured if we made each other laugh, hopefully the audience would as well. And it turns out they did.”

...and yet he helped invent Saturday morning cartoons. 

In the mid-1950s, KTLA in Los Angeles and WNEW in New York starting running old Warner Brothers cartoons from the archives on Saturday mornings, thus beginning the tradition of programming for children. Animated features at the cinema didn’t last long after that. “We used to kid about it when television was being done... We figured TV might put us out of work, which eventually it did.” 

He said of his work at Warners, which was never meant to survive, let alone endure, “We kind of lived in a paradise and we didn’t know it.” 

He reportedly considered "What’s Opera, Doc?" to be his greatest work. 

If the words “Kill the wabbit!” mean anything to you, then you’re familiar with arguably the greatest cartoon of all time. The 1957 animated short features Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, and parodies Wagner’s operas. (The cartoon’s most famous line is sung to "Ride of the Valkyries.") This wasn’t his only take on opera. He took on Rossini in 1949’s Rabbit of Seville.
He had to persuade his old friend that How the Grinch Stole Christmas would make a great show. 

“I had known Ted during the war, but it had been 15 years... I had really wanted to do something of his, and Charlie Brown was one of the only works I knew doing a Christmas special.” Jones thought that Dr. Seuss was the natural person for such an annual tradition. “So I called up Ted, so I ask him would he be willing to think about doing it? He was anti-Hollywood, very much, because when he left after the war they pirated a lot of his stuff and took his credits off of his features... He did some documentaries—one of which won the Academy Award and someone else took it. So he was pretty sour about that.” How did he persuade Geisel? “I told him this was another field—this was television!—and he didn't know much about televisions either.”  

Ironically, a banking consortium agreed to sponsor the show, which helped Jones sell the Christmas special to the networks. Jones later noted that Dr. Seuss’s publisher should have sponsored the show, because the cartoon doubled sales of the book that year, and they haven’t slowed since. 

He was once, under protest, the vice president in charge of children’s programming at ABC. 

In 1972, he was hired by ABC TV to be its vice president of children’s programming. “I’m guilty of a lot of sins,” he said, “but that is one I’d just as soon forget.” How did he get the job? “I complained so much about children’s programming that these guys called my bluff. They said come over and do something... well that was a very good idea except nobody listened to me.” He didn’t last long. “I didn’t want to be vice president. I wanted to go back to doing drawings.”
April 3, 2013 - 12:00pm

Chart Of The Day

Obviously, a lot of this has to do with the amount of attention the issue has received in the past 20 years, but this is crazy. I honestly don't know whether to be proud of the reaction to public outcry or dismayed that there had to be public outcry. Still, very interesting...

Chart Of The Day:
by Patrick Appel
Dylan Matthews charted the Senate’s support for marriage equality over time:
It’s basically an exponential increase.

Informational Posters and Books from a Fictional 1970s British Town

Informational Posters and Books from a Fictional 1970s British Town:

Scarfolk is a town stuck in the 1970s and a blog slowly releasing pieces of the town's municipal history. The reworked book covers, posters, and public information ads are humorous and uncannily realistic. 'Certain themes resurface: the municipal, the occult, childhood and school days, totalitarianism and dystopia, memory and nostalgia, societal paranoia and fear of disease, television and radio.'

Butterfly in a Human Skull

Butterfly in a Human Skull:

Photographer Marko Popadic took this marvelous photo of a butterfly inside
the eye socket of a human skull. Titled Oki ("eye" in Croatian),
the butterfly's wing looks eerily like an eye staring out of the lifeless
void. Link
- via Mighty
Optical Illusions

Last week I posted a mix and said I'd have another one up this week. Truth be told, it's all but done, I just need to work out the seques and clips that I'm using. But I also noticed that the last one has been listened to once since I put it up. Once.

So I'm not exactly in a huge rush to get the new one up. Especially since I checked the last mix to make sure it was playing correctly. Once.

So it'll be up when it's up.

I'm working between 10 - 14 hours a day all through this week and next, so don't expect a ton of content to be put in that time period. I have some writing ideas that I want to work on, but they're still in nascent stages. There are a few more Adventures with an Idiot thingys I've got ready, so expect those sooner than later. Whether you want them or not.

Hot Dog Social Hour, vol. 1

try this?

or here?

Hot Dog Social Hour Vol. 1 by Hotdogsocialhour on Mixcloud

"Sundor Tum Goa" - Amit Kumar
"Soul Shake" - Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson
"Give Me Your Love" - A.C. Jones & the Atomic Aces
"I'm doomed?"
"Je Bent Niet Hip" - The Pattie Sisters with Enteng Tanamal & his Comets
"Viva, Femme Africaine" - Danialou Sagbohan
"Funky Bijou Anthem" - Funky Bijou
"What do you think about, Sean?"
"Harlan County" - Jim Ford
"Don't Believe Nothing" - Ike & Tina Turner
"There's this huge man..."
"The Feeling Kind" - Thao & the Get Down Stay Down
"Dope on Plastic" - Uptown
"I think it's in Canada..."
"Panzer" - The Dirty Nil
"Shrinking Violet" - Swearin'
"They tell me cake is bad for me..."
"Birthdays" - The Mouthbreathers
"Light Up Gold II" - Parquet Courts
"Have You Seen My Son?" - Benjamin Booker
"Sad but true..."
"Black Egg" - Snake & Jet's Amazing Bullit Band
"Open Letter to the President" - Roy-C
"My story amused him all the same..."





I'm trying to figure a download option, but that may take awhile. In the meantime, email me or something.

okay, Soundcloud is being a dick and I'm late to go to the desert.

download it here.

I'll fix this up later.

So here's a thing...

I'll have a mix up in a few hours. It's all done, I'm just working on a new delivery system and I need greater bandwidth before I can upload it.

It hit me pretty recently that I hadn't made a mix in well over a year. It's not through lack of effort, either. A few months ago I had one all but ready, but then my hard drive crapped out and that was a pretty massive setback. I'm still trying to find some of those songs. It's also because I don't listen to as much music, with my listening augmented by podcasts, audiobooks etc...

So I had this folder of songs and clips that I wanted to use for a mix just keep growing and growing and growing until the idea of getting back to making a mix was daunting indeed. So I decided to make it a bunch of mixes. Then it turned into a (hopefully) ongoing project, the Hot Dog Social Hour. I know if you've seen this site in the past few years, you're already rolling your eyes, but I'm gonna make an effort both to revive this dusty virtual space and to release at least a couple volumes of HDSH, so check back sometime soon if you'd like.

Usually, the bulk of the work I put into my mixes is the tagging and editing. I know that sounds crazy but it's true. So I'm gonna try to do something new, where I'll put out a mix as a single track. This allows me to avoid getting sued for sharing music, and it also makes the back end a lot easier for me. If you don't like it, or if you want a particular track without all of its neighbors... email me. or something.

This way, it should be a lot easier for me to put one of these out every other week or so. I have most of the next show already taken care of, as well.

Check back here in a few hours for more details on the first volume of Hot Dog Social Hour.

Coming soon...

Though long abandoned, the machines lurched for a moment before sputtering to life. Giant gears creaked and groaned as they gained the momentum that possessed so many years ago. Rust flaked and descended through errant beams of life, giving the workshop the appearance of a copper snowstorm. The scent of wear filled the room.

Across town, the butterflies were back.

Adventures of an Idiot

There was no moon visible the night I met the wizard. It was cold and wet and I had been waiting at a bar on 17th all night for a friend who never showed. I was thinking about whether I’d been stood up or if I’d just forgotten to inform my friend that we were going out when I noticed a weird pink mist emanating from the subway station at Harrison. At the time, I just assumed it was an effect of the rain or alcohol or whatnot, but in retrospect I should’ve known something was going on.
After descending the steps and reaching the platform, it was evident that the mist had nothing to do with the rain. In fact, the station was crawling with it. At first I thought something might be burning, so I glanced around for a burning cotton candy machine or something, but there was nothing.  Besides, there was no smell.

Then, I just assumed that there was probably a bank of smoke machines or something hidden and that any minute now some annoying improve group would jump out of the fog to scare me. I decided right there and then that that would not happen. Despite the fact that I was starting to freak out, I didn’t want to end up on some prank-based reality show. So I decided to just keep my eyes fixed on the wall across from the subway tracks until my train arrived. The joke was gonna be on them when they couldn’t even get my attention, let alone prank me! I stood there pleased with myself for a few minutes, listening to some Tuvan throat singing on my headphones to help keep me calm. Before long a train showed up and I got on it.

It only went a few stops before slowing to a halt at some station I’d never been to before. It’s funny how many subway stops you pass through a million times and never really look at, right? Anyway, this is where stuff started getting weird. The pink smoke was at this station as well. Also, the station appeared to just be a tunnel carved into solid rock. Some neighborhoods, right? Anyway, seeing how the car clearly wasn’t going to budge, I walked into the tunnel so that I could make my way to the surface. A few minutes later, though, I was standing in front of an old man. He was short and tubby, and was practically nude except for a beat up pair of cargo shorts.

“The transit authority is gonna shit a brick when they see what you did to their station” I yelled. The man didn’t look up.

“Hey, did you do this?” I yelled once more, but again was ignored. I was starting to think that he was deranged. Or maybe listening to headphones of his own.

“Are you listening to Tuvan throat singing, too?” I yelled even louder. Again, no response. Was this guy dead or something?

Apparently not. Because as I got within ten or so feet of him, he did look up. He straightened to a height of what felt like ten feet and pointed his finger at me.

“Thou mustn’t confuse me with a mere mortal, lest you find thyself on the wrong end of my wrath” he boomed, angrily.

“What are you, Thor?” the man stopped for a second. His pointing finger withered slightly and he had an expression of confusion on his face.

“Why are you talking like that?

“I have walked the earth for millennia. I will speak how I wish” He said.

“Well, you sound like a crazy person to me.” I said, trying to get around him. “Can you tell me how to get back to the F Line?”

He looked at me with an expression of disdain.

“You have been summoned to a higher calling” he said, before adding “for some reason” under his breath. I checked my phone. There were no messages.

“Ew, no way am I gonna be a priest.” He looked annoyed for a second.

“I have summoned thee here to the Rock of Eternity to-”

“We’re on the West Side. Is that some sort of club?” I looked around and noticed that there were number of lit braziers and totems of the deadly sins. The one closest to me (“Sloth”) looked a lot like Andrew McCarthy.

“Hey, was this stuff here the whole time?”

“They have been here for time immemorial. The sins are a grievous reminder of the horrors that might occur if man’s wickedness is left unchecked”

“That one looks a lot like Andrew McCarthy.” I pointed at the totem.

“I am not familiar with with that sin.”

“Um, Weekend at Bernies much?” He looked lost. Poor guy. Sometimes I forget that not everyone has daytime cable.

“I have summoned you here because my champion has fallen, and you have been deemed worthy of his mantle.”

“What do I win?”

“…”

“You have to win something to become a champion, don’t you?”

“It... is a title. There are no rewards. You will be called upon to defend those in need, and to oppose wickedness in all its forms”

“Wait. Who are you?”

“I am burdened with the task of carrying out the will of the cosmos”

“And... you want me to become a social worker? An unpaid social worker?”

“I want for-” He stopped himself. “I will thee to become my champion, to right the wrongs in this wicked world”.

“No.”

“Thou hast no voice in this decision. The great powers I bestow upon thee”

“Great powers? Why didn’t you say that earlier? I love great powers! What are we talking about here? Flight? Nigh-invulnerability? Holy shit am I getting a power ring!?”

“This was a bad idea” He seemed to melt into the darkness. I tried to follow him, but my legs felt paralyzed.

“So, you’ll mail me my power ring?” I yelled, hearing only my echo in response.

It’s been two damn weeks and I still haven’t gotten anything in the mail.

Goodbye Fergus

   My friend Fergus died on Monday night.  I hesitate to use the term “cat” or pet”, since I haven’t really thought of him as either in years, but I also want to make it abundantly clear that I’m talking about a cat here. There is pain and injustice in this world that baffle the heart and mind and, even though it’s sad, I cannot count a librarian’s eulogy for his elderly cat among them. And that’s exactly what this is. Requiem for a feline.  If it doesn’t sound appealing to you, don’t read it. I’ll understand. Besides, I’m writing this more as a process than anything else.

   Shortly after we moved to California, Carrie decided that she wanted a cat. Not just any cat, mind you, but a Scottish Fold. For those of you not up on your cat breeds or too lazy to follow a Wikipedia link, Scottish Folds are stubby, round-headed cats known primarily for the way their ears “fold” over. One of the most internet’s famous cats is a Scottish Fold, although Maru does not have the distinctive folded ears. Anyway, Carrie decided that she wanted to adopt one. Being a dog person my entire life, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea, but was willing to go along with it. So we started keeping an eye on various sites and Scottish Fold Rescues.

   After a few near misses, we had found an available Fold that looked we couldn’t stop looking at. His profile photo was that of a gruff, pissed-off-looking cat. The description was coded in a way to suggest that he might not be the most outgoing or lovable cat. He’d had his hips replaced as a kitten. And he was 9, which was older than we were hoping for. Nonetheless, we trekked out to North Hollywood one day to the pet store where he was being kept.

   When we got there, it was the typical chaos of a large pet store during an adoption event on a Saturday. I had identified Fergus as soon as we walked in, and I knew that he would be going home with us. It wasn’t that he was particularly adorable (though he was) or outgoing. In fact, he just sat in his cage like a hardened veteran of events like those. He surveyed what was going on around, but he looked disinterested and tired more than anything else. Fortunately for him, disinterested and tired are great hobbies of ours.

   Carrie soon picked him out and she knew right away, too. When the adoption people figured out who we were looking at, they brightened up. Fergus had been with them for years, living in the pet store. He wasn’t the greatest with other cats, and he was too old for most people to want. They also told us he’d originally been named Winky, but that they’d renamed him Fergus in hopes that it might help find him a new home. It did. We were on our way home with him (and our new cat supplies) in 30 minutes.

   It took him a long time to warm up to us.  The first thing he did when we brought him in our home was throw up. He was far from hostile, but he spent most of his time in crawl spaces or warily surveying our apartment. After some phone calls, we got a better idea of what was happening. It turns out that living in a pet store for a few years was just part of Fergus’s life. Before that, he had been living in an outside cage at a cattery for some time. Apparently he had been pampered by someone, since his hips had been replaced as a kitten, but from what we could gather he’d been living in bad conditions or foster care for most of his life.

So we had a cat that, after years of neglect, had stopped trusting anyone. He was defensive and ornery at times, but usually just wanted to be left alone. After taking him to a vet, we were told that he had kidney disease and other health problems. Our concerns mounted.

   But something happened. He started to enjoy himself. He started soliciting pets from us. He grew to trust us, and then much later, to love us. He became a member of our family. His jail mentality disappeared and he began to act like the entitled cat that he’d surely been at some point in his life.

   It took over three years, but he even starting meowing. W we returned from a five-day trip to Big Sur, and he was sitting on our bed. He meowed in such a “where the hell were you?” way that we didn’t even believe it had happened. It was only when he repeated himself that we realize that he was talking to us. After that, we couldn’t shut him up. He had a hungry meow, and a “wake up” one, and a “leave me alone” one. He started hanging out in the bathroom, meowing to himself over and over just to hear his own echo like he was admiring his singing voice.

   

   His health, while stable, continued to decline in the last few years. He developed an abscess in his right paw, making it swollen and uncomfortable. Still, he hobbled around on his big paw without much pain. In October, we started having to give him electrolyte injections at home to keep renal failure at bay. We were criticized by friends and colleagues when we started doing this, and it was suggested that we were keeping him alive for our own sakes and ignoring his decrepitude.

   Of course, we knew better. Those people would see him for 15 minutes a month and assume he sat and stared all day. True, that was his primary occupation and he’d do that for some 20 hours a day. But he always did that. What nobody else saw was the way he would sprint around the house (a sound made unmistakable by his big paw), or chase after errant insects. He developed an unprecedented penchant for table begging.

   In all honesty, he was a pretty lousy pet. He would spite-poop all the time. I once awoke to see him sitting on my pillow next to our bed, taking a shit because his litterbox was full. I didn’t know whether to throttle him for ruining my pillow or respect him for keeping it all off the floor. There was one instance where he let loose a torrent of diarrhea upon a former-roommate’s mattress that rendered it unsalvageable. He begged at the table and refused to do anything but glower at 90% of our guests. He whined a bit and kneaded our feet when we were sleeping. He was insanely finicky about his food, especially when he was supposed to only be eating his special kidney food. One of the few things he got right about being a cat was the constant self-cleaning.

   He wasn’t the best at being a pet, but he had parts of it nailed down. For one thing, he was freakishly photogenic. As people who generally dislike having our photo taken, it really helps to have a pet that openly mugged for the camera.

   There were other things, too. He started being this weird comforting force in our lives. When I broke Carrie’s heart, he noticed. He would lie next to her (unusual for him) and lick her hands. When unemployment and depression threatened to ruin me, he would sit next to me and pick me back up. I know how that sounds, I really do. You can roll your eyes or think to yourself how I’m rambling that a cat saved my life or something, and I completely understand why. But I was there, and I remember how bad things seemed. Depression is screwy. Sometimes it’s difficult to address. Sometimes, because of fear or shame or anxiety, you can’t talk about it with anyone, not even your closest friends. I stopped communicating with most people. Important personal relationships were neglected, as was this weblog. While Carrie and I spoke constantly about what was happening, they were terse conversations, pregnant with frustration and dread. I spent my days volunteering and filling out applications while my spirits grew dimmer and dimmer. But each day, I’d sit with him for a bit and pet him while I thought. Carrie did the same. I know that the idea of therapy animals is hardly new, but I guess I never expected firsthand experience.

   That never really stopped. When I started getting up before dawn to go to work, he would be the only thing awake in the universe, staring back at me while we waited for the water to boil for coffee. It became my morning ritual to sit for a minute with him and read the paper. A little later, Carrie would sit in the yard with him while she had her own coffee and he wandered around the garden.

   He’s not there anymore in the mornings to greet me. There is no thumping as he runs around the house in the middle of the night, and the house is a lot quieter without the sound of him eating. The object in our peripheral vision is no longer a grey cat, but a bag on the floor, or a pile of books in the shadows. Because he died in our arms the other night.

   I’m not going to bemoan his death or act like he was taken from us too soon. Fergus was a cat, and he outlived all expectations. We used to joke that he was part cyborg because he was constantly proving to us that he was stronger and more agile than we thought. But he was still a living being, and as with all living beings, at some point they cease to live. His death was a painful reminder of the hardest part of having a pet. His exit was sad, but we’d been telling ourselves that it would happen for months, and I feel incredibly fortunate for the time we had with him.

   I know he was a cat. I also know that most of you have children and that it probably seems a little absurd, the amount of fixation we poured into this fleabag. But he was still a member of our family. It breaks the heart not to feel the ones you love there anymore. It still hurts not to hear the voice of a loved one, regardless of whether they could lick their own genitalia or not.

   There’s a saying that rescue animals are actually the ones doing the rescuing, and I can’t disagree. I’ve never been happier to take a chance, and I’ve never been rewarded as handsomely. There will be other pets and (I hope) other friends, but none who would ever replace him. Like I said, he wasn’t great at being a cat. But he was a damn good friend and neither of us will ever forget him.

test

My REM cycle will grow trunks like a mighty oak

   For somewhat obvious reasons that I'm not willing to get into right now, I've been having trouble sleeping lately. This is nothing new. I've had bouts with insomnia since I was a kid. But it's always been about having trouble falling asleep more than being able to stay asleep. Recently, though, I've been finding myself waking up at 3 or 4 every morning. At first I assumed that it was just premature onset of old age. But once I realized that it isn't to pee and already in the throes of a panic attack, I figured I had to do something. Changing my diet and/or exercise regime is clearly not an option, melatonin gives me really weird dreams. So obviously, I resorted to changing what I listen to.

   Up until 25 or so, I fell asleep listening to music every night, and I could use just about anything. It wasn't until I was living with someone did I realize that other people don't find shrieking blues musicians or DJ Shadow to be as soothing as I did. and frankly, it started to wake me up with a start as well, so I just stopped.

   I think I already mentioned this somewhere, but there's a site, You are listening to Los Angeles, that I use a lot when I'm writing or just trying to think. It's a combination of super ambient music and police scanner broadcasts. In spite of the obvious contrast, I've found it to be one of my favorite things online. Lately, even more features have been added and I love it even more. But as much as it soothes me, there is no way I can fall asleep to descriptions -however codified- of homicides and animal abuse. But I still love the idea.

   So I started using an app on my ipod called Ambiance. This is essentially a huge archive of sound clips culled from Freesound.org and sent in by users. Wanna listen to a campfire or crickets or a thunderstorm? done. Tuvan throat singers? done. There's even weirdly specific ones, like "rain on a tent" or "TV through a wall" that are oddly captivating. You can even opt for plain old white noise (though I prefer violet noise for reasons I do not understand)*.

   But as much as I love to sleep listening to these things, I've still had trouble falling asleep to them. It's just boring enough to let my mind race. So, inspired by the site mentioned earlier, I decided to start making my own soundtrack. You see, Ambiance can let you play your music along with the sound effects. So I for the last few months I've been experimenting on what works. One of my favorites is playing Brian Eno's Music for Airports with a clip from a bowling alley. It sounds like that would be torture, but with the levels just right it's just as good as any dream I'd come up with. I've also used an old Smithsonian Jazz Piano box set (my go-to sleep music for years) blended with the sound of rain on corrugated metal. Chopin's nocturnes seem to go well with a bed of white noise, and Elizabeth Cotten's guitar picking blends nicely with the sounds of a typewriter.

   If I was a normal person, I'd probably be content with that. But I had to go the extra mile, so lately I've been collecting samples for what will undoubtedly be my unfinished opus. Yeah, I'm planning on creating a 5+ hour, nonrepeating audio track. I've been collecting audio clips of music boxes and armoniums. Of 17-year cicadas and nightingales. Also a lot of clips of people talking, almost exclusively with received pronunciation. I don't know why, but it helps.

   I have no idea how long this will take me, and I'm pretty sure I'll never stop tinkering with it, but I've been enjoying the process, and I guess that's why any of us have hobbies. I just wish mine resulted in some cool ships in bottles or something.

*I also use Brownian noise, which bears a very clear distinction from the Brown note, which would be infinitely less pleasant.

SVD

  I don't care about Valentine's Day. I never really have. It's not because I've been with someone for the better part of 12 years or that I was particularly lovelorn as a youngster, but just that it's a crock of shit. I'm fortunate that my wife feels pretty much the same way.

  I mean, what type of perverse monster would create a holiday that:
-makes people not involved in a relationship feel lonely
-needs to remind people in a relationship to celebrate their love
-artificially forces couples into new levels of commitment/hyperinflated affection?

  I don't like any holiday that gets people down, and I can't even entertain the notion that people aren't thinking about love (or even sex) often enough. As far as I'm concerned, we should be celebrating Arbor Day with more vigor than this bullshit. At least then people would plan some trees or something.

  If you're with someone who needs a February 14 to say "oh, right. I bet he or she would like some chalky candy and calendar-mandated sex!", you should probably rethink some things. This is hardly a new or unique opinion, but it is sincere nonetheless.

   So I don't know, enjoy the day. Go out and be with friends or spouses or cousins or whatever. Watch a movie not directed by Garry Marshall. or be miserable, for all I care. Just don't be miserable because of the date.

Full disclosure: I am cooking a very nice dinner for my wife tonight, but it has more to do with my butcher having Valentine's Day specials than anything else*. I might not be sappy enough to fall for a fake holiday, but I'll always be a cheapskate at heart. Plus, the fact that I'm sick and all of my head-holes feel packed with gauze means that it wouldn't be romantic if I was wielding a bow & arrow and wearing a diaper. Do you see how ridiculous this is!?

*If anything, I think we'll be celebrating the butcher store, which is one of my favorite places in southern California.

 The cat, playing in the yard. I know this is the most boring of boring, but for me it's like seeing a newborn thrown into the Pacific Ocean, so here you go.

I woke up early this morning and saw this through the curtains. It's one of those occasions where I wish the picture could have contained just 10% of the beauty I saw. Still, it came out okay.

I posted this on Twitter a few days ago, but not many of you follow me on Twitter. Also, this might be the most insane panel from the most insane issue of a comic book that I've ever read.

From The Defenders: Tournament of Heroes #1 (Marvel, 1978, republished last week).

   So, I've started writing up my thoughts and comparisons of Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (I know, right?) a couple of times now and I keep losing interest. Sorry about that.

But this happened...

   About once or twice a week I go on these little Fruitthievery™ expeditions where I walk around for a few hours collecting fruit. What one Paul f. Tompkins bit calls "migrant worker fantasy camp". At this point, you can call me cheap and you wouldn't be wrong. You can buy oranges for practically nothing just about anywhere out here. But there's benefits other than the six bucks I might've saved.

   For one, the best tasting fruit is stolen fruit, ask anyone. Despite the name, though, Fruitthievery™ is primarily taken from public or college lands that encourage people to help themselves. Even though what I'm doing is completely legal there's something about walking around on private property and harvesting fruit that gives it a sinister feel. and that always tastes better than something you bought in a store. Or ,in the case of many southern Californians, a freeway off-ramp.

   Another benefit is that the town we live in has fruit trees everywhere. The above map, taken from Fallen Fruit*, shows a small corridor on the college campuses nearby and what grows where, or what did. Sadly, a lot of construction has rendered this map nearly unusable. Still, there's plenty of other sources and I like to find them on my own just by walking around. Ever since a particularly intense night during college** I've made it a point to be able to recognize any spot on the ground within 2-3 miles of where I live. That sounds easy, but you'd be amazed at how many people take stuff like that for granted. Even if you walk a lot, you might not make it down certain alleys or through patches of trees. I try to as much as I can. Which means sometimes you find yourself potentially trespassing or walking through an elementary school by yourself like a weirdo, and it's times like those helps to be carrying a sack of grapefruit.

   Today, for instance, I found myself crouching in some bushes on an all girl's college campus.

   Let me back up a little bit. The campus is part of a much larger combined campus, so it's not like I was like hanging from a tree with binoculars in a convent or Themyscira or something. Still, it doesn't make me any less self-aware of what I'm doing or how I'm doing it. So yeah, I found a tangerine tree (which I haven't seen as many of) and it was ripe and plentiful with fruit. So I sort of half-climbed it and started filling up the bag I had wrapped around my shoulder. Normally it takes me no more than 2 minutes to get what I need, but tangerines are different in that I like to eat and juice them. Oranges and grapefruits I always juice. So I took my time up there.

   Of course, when I had gone up the tree, there was nobody really around. What I realized was that in the 5 minutes I had climbed into it, the surrounding area filled up with a bunch of people. There was some sort of event going on that people were gathering for, and while I'm sure they saw movement in the tree, I'm assuming they thought it was a squirrel or something not a grown-ass man. And I started panicking.  

   What if they never disperse and I'm up here all day!? (Okay, I definitely didn't think the word "disperse"). But at some point I realized that I had to get out of there, embarrassment be damned. So I dropped myself down out of the branch I was standing on.

   Or at least I meant to. What actually happened is that my shoe was sort of wedged in a forked branch and so while most of my body dropped down three feet or so, my foot rose up to slightly above waist level. It was about as comfortable as you can imagine. Also, since my "drop" didn't go as well as hoped, I had to keep holding on to the tree to keep balanced. Which made a lot more noise than I would've thought. Instead of feeling awkward in front of a few people, I ended up looking  awkward in front of a significantly larger crowd.

   After some clumsy maneuvering I managed to free my foot, pick up my bag of tangerines (which had begun to spill on to the ground did I not mention that?), and half mumble before walking off briskly. All in all, I got a whole bunch of tangerines, a weekly supply of oranges, some kumquats and some limes.


I'm not sure if I should start buying my fruit or touch up on my tree-climbing skills.
  

*Check that site to see if there's a map for your neighborhood!
**I don't think I've told this story here. I also don't think I ever will. It involves me getting lost and taking an entire neighborhood's Sunday morning papers. Ask me about it in person sometime.

New Post

   I need to start writing again. This, some fiction, anything. I need to start flexing that muscle again. One of the things I have the most trouble with writing is not mimicking whatever it is that I'm reading or hearing lately. Then before I know it, I'm aping Justified while writing two astronauts talking. I'm not sure if this means I have no consistent stories to tell or that I have no consistent voice of my own.
   It doesn't matter, because I'm terrified that if I start trying to really take on something serious, the anxiety and self-doubt that has become so engrained in my professional life will seep into whatever I'm writing. Then it'll echo back on to me and I'll be trapped in some sort of negative feedback loop. The thing I was working on, the thing about Mars, sort of just slipped back into the quagmire that is my brain floor. But I'm thinking of something (tentative title The Fattest Spy) that maybe can get me started again. I'll keep you updated. Maybe. Probably not.

Anyway, yeah I'm still here. I hope to be posting again soon



My day, by the numbers:
1 bowl of cereal (Cheerios)
1 large cup of coffee (light cream, light sugar)
1 small glass of orange juice
2.2 job applications completed and sent
between 3-5 miles walked
300 situps
100 pushups
2 college lectures listened to (Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History and Ben Franklin and the World of the Enlightenment)
1 podcast listened to (NBA Today)
3 songs listened to ("Soul Shake" by Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson; "Don't Know You at All" - Blood Feathers; "Unheard Music" by Elastica with Stephen Malkmus)
3 short phone calls made
.6 Meatball sandwiches*
1 large salad*
1 handful gummi candy*
1 shot espresso*
1 magazine read (New Yorker)*
2-3 hours television played, half watched (???)*

*tentative

I feel like I'm preparing for something, but I have no idea what that is. Maybe that's a good sign