Almanesiac

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2010-07-01T12:17:00.001-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

2008-09-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

This blog post of P Diddy discussing John McCain's veep choice is amazing. check it out.

For a moment, Anti-Americanism be damned.

2008-05-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today, in her article "Credit Where It's Due", Janet Albrechtsen made me shiver a little bit with her analogy between other countries' anti-Americanism and the classic parent-teenager relationship. Why? A non-American, she isolated several trends in American philanthropy and aid work that go unrecognized by cavilling international critics, citing specifically the catastrophic situation now in Myanmar, where American relief is waiting on the sidelines while the Burmese military regime tries to figure out whether to let the US give its people much-needed help. Meanwhile, these critics are disregarding US aid efforts as "attempts to undermine the UN" and (re: the 2004 tsunami), "consolidate its hegemony." I could go on, but I suggest you read the article.

2008-05-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

In one of Clinton's most recent brilliant political moves, she discounts economists in the gas tax debate saying that she doesn't trust those totally elitist economists, saying: "I’m not going to put my lot in with economists because I know if we did it right ... we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively." Is she insane, or just totally irresponsible in her politics?

2008-04-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Has the New York Times un-endorsed Hillary?

So I'm going to stop troubling you buried in my yard

2008-04-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

Stephen Malkmus is crazy. When talking about indie/underground music today: "U2 wants to hang around with Arcade Fire. U2 didn't want to hang around with Pavement."

But no, he also wrote: "We just do what we do. I would quantify our sound as more underground than indie, in that it's not catering to a fashion, so much as indie happens to be a fashion now. But the underground lives on regardless. It always does. Because there are so many people making music, and there are enough people just making it to their own taste." (source)

I tend to agree with what he's saying in distinguishing underground music from indie, but what about musicians who are underground who receive sudden and extreme exposure through new media?

Why am I thinking about this? Because I've been watching Pennsylvania returns all night on MSNBC and I need to find some respite from the torture. At least, I have the lovely Matthews/Olberman tag team doing coverage (I didn't really like Olberman until I saw his special comment last month on Countdown).

i was nineteen (call me)

2008-04-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

"you showed me my first good glass of red wine, andre," I wrote and erased.

2008-04-18T22:39:00.001-07:00

Laying and lazing for a while as they did in Prospect Park, it didn't feel so much to John and Agie like a Thursday afternoon as it did the whole length of a Saturday. Holding one another then, there was no chance in these timeless few hours that it might have rained, the baseball games called in for the day, or the barbecues upended by turbulent wind and wetted paper plates. Although they continued to lay there for a shorter time than they might have thought- they were young and supposed to be other places, after all- the crispness of the air, the bristle of shorn grass and the sounds of cavorting families and friends trolling through these undulating urban hills lent them two and a half hours of eternity, and the most fabulous intimacy only possible in public cuddles of locked limbs and traveling hands.

2008-03-20T03:38:00.001-07:00

"Abigail, hush dear," said Mrs. Mary Walker across the sitting room. "It is a mercy these days to have one's things in order. A taxman's life cannot be the most pleasant, to be sure, but it is the profession of the most reliable type of man, and considering the indiscretions of your past, this is most certainly a good match!"

"I could never love a man such as Mr. Parker, mama," Abigail replied, rearranging her bustle in discomfort, perched on a straight-backed chair.

"Blast!," interjected Mr. Walker, "All this nonsense gets us nowhere. Now where's my handkerchief gone to? I'm telling you, the walls in this house are damp."

"They most certainly are not!," rebuffed Mrs. Walker, and then all kept quiet for a while.

Manning Up and the Media Moment

2008-03-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

I had never really been horrified by the sheer power of spin-doctors until the reaction to the primaries last Tuesday, the lightning quick emergence of Naftagate and the other burgeoning phantom scandals. It has always seemed sort of harmless in a way, harvesting controversy, journalists and pundits keeping up with me while I refresh my browser during a lunch break, giving Drudge his next 40 pt font headline and Real Clear Politics their early morning edition. The real reason Obama is getting more flack now isn’t just because the media felt bad about soft handling him, or because there’s more reason to criticize him, but because it’s the next logical conclusion in achieving customer satisfaction. People who are reading the news every day like me want a new story every hour on the hour, and if it’s not new, it better darn well deliver somehow. Hillary has been flipped and prodded and fried and served up so many times in her life, and there are only so many ways to cook an egg. But suddenly, like the invention of the omelette, there was a new way to tell that story for a while: Hillary gets shown up by newcomer who shows the world that it can be a different place. She is not just a terrible, corrupt establishment politician anymore-- all the old arguments against her-- now, she doesn’t sing in the people’s key. Because few politicians are very compelling speakers, this was never an issue, but with Obama making women faint at rallies, what a headline this could make!

The fact is, her bad politicking and mud slinging haven't really been given that much criticism, given their breadth. Bad campaigning is old news. But this new critique took the likeability factor to a whole new level: Obama doesn't only refrain from engaging in bad political discourse, but he understands why it is damaging (taking a cue, it seems, from Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire). For a while, right around the time of the Yes We Can video, we “got it” and we knew that Obama “got it”. And we knew that Hillary supporters didn’t get it at all. That was good news. That was a movement Obama had on his hands, the edge he had (as far as the spin went at the time) over Hillary. Of course, then Hillary went on SNL and the Daily Show, and Obama's supporters started coming off as too mindless (will.i.am's Yes We Can was followed up by We are the Ones), his cause too much of a fad, like liking an iPhone.

This hits upon that pundit fave, buyer's remorse. Is voting for Obama like buying an iPhone, too? Malarkey. Any candidate has pros and cons. When comparing the two candidates, people continue to say "No, THIS is what this election is about about," and proceed to make their argument about the make or break factors in this race. In reality there is no bottom line, but in the news, there always must be. The public requires this. This demand creates the spontaneous media moment, the will the public has for drama and the excitement the media has in pouncing. And, as in all theatre, good timing counts. As we have seen with YouTube, the will of the moment is strong and sometimes totally arbitrary. But also, as with YouTube, the moment is contagious, media blitzes work like the flu, working in and then out of the system. Until now, the Obama camp has had an uncanny sense of timing, but part of the reason the Clinton dismembering machine is so powerful is because it has historically struck at the most calculated moments, such as the days preceding the VOTR primaries, where a jab as hypocritical and nonsensical as the 3am ad had just enough time to score Clinton some points.

As for Obama's alleged glass jaw, since the Clintons are certainly showing that they are the horror film which will never end, I tend to agree with Maureen Down when she says that Obama needs to get dirty and dispense, for a while, with his principled restraint. The best part of this psychodrama would be seeing Obama come back at Hillary with the same style that we have seen him demonstrate off the cuff in their last debate. Hillary can try to shellac Obama with inanities, but all the media is really throwing at Obama now is a charge against his assertiveness in the face of opposition or foul play. Obama doesn't need to use a smear campaign that capitalizes on thin information. Hillary's given him loads of ammunition already, whether we're talking cattle futures or Whitewater. Now that we have six weeks until Pennsylvania, it's the perfect time for the Obama campaign to change gears and take a spin in a different direction. Obama getting a little dirty, manning up and taking Hillary into the ring will not only prove that he's got the guts, but it'll get the newspapers begging for more. Now that's some good theatre; and it'll be clear to everyone who the hero is.

Paul Potts

2008-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

Watch this if you want your heart to be warmed. See how a shy cell phone salesman makes all of Britain cry when he sings opera. You'll love it.

2008-01-18T06:41:00.000-08:00

Being back in Chicago is interesting. From the get-go, with Americans resurfacing around me, it was all very uncanny, from my neighbor on the plane telling me how he had recently visited Barandov studios, to the until now entirely forgotten feel of ice underfoot and the familiar echo of fellow men, cursing with mincing step down the sidewalk, remembering that sometimes its no cakewalk nipping out to the shops. Of course ice is not an American phenomenon, but it feels like the Chicago winter I know. On all kinds of surfaces, mostly on pavement and blasted on the glass of bus shelters and windshields, glazing the grass on winter walks to the Point, giving those blades a backbone for a few moments. When the plane was coming in for a landing and we ascended through a level of clouds, I mistook a lower cloud bank for a set of frozen waves on the lake, so perfectly frozen did they appear. I was wrong about the lake- it hasn't been swallowed whole by the cold- just around the fringe- but it seems to stand alone in that.

I went to the MCA the other day, and they were changing the exhibition, so only the permanent collection on the 4th floor was open. There was a modern take on the Allegory of the Four Seasons motif- the same vantage point photographed on Lake Michigan shot during all four seasons, which showed the change in the color palette and the opacity of the water through the course of the year. They also had a few Thomas Struth photographs that were incredible. This one was my favorite, to be sure. There was also a really terrible small exhibit on the same floor, Mapping the Self, which was really unpleasant, badly curated, low quality, and in my friend Emma's estimation, altogether too schmaltzy.

A Cameron McGill show was also in order, so I linked up with my friend David for that true fan experience, complete with absolute zeal and heartbreak, some hand-holding. Noah Harris, who makes part of What Army, played an opening set on piano that was perfect for the space, and goofily loungey due to the tea lights flanking him on the piano. Cameron's set was awesome, albeit somewhat less structured than normal, given the workshop format he's adopted for this Wednesday residency at the new Uncommon Ground. It's really more upmarket than the other Uncommon Ground, but very fun.

I got to get a tour of my friend's work in the Field Museum, in the venerable Department of Fishes, deep in the yawning depths of the building. Making our way to the exciting room where the live fishes swim, we passed shelves of less lucky fish, their bodies tipped into jars of formaldehyde, exciting terror and curiosity. Megsie then took us to her lab, where she does all sorts of exciting things involving DNA sequencing, which until this point I had assumed was a much more difficult process than it seemed to be, after seeing all the machines that shake the genes apart and take their picture. It was also a pleasant surprise to go to the Friday happy hour and see all the jovial scientists drinking unseasonal coronas with lime in a back room, paying on the honor system in the hallowed community of friend and colleague.

Before taking this tour, Mariya and I took free advantage of our free visitor passes and toured the Maps exhibit which was really exhaustive, and kind of counter-intuitively laid out. I think it lent something to the exhibit, that there was no overt and systematized ordering, except for occasional pockets of maps related by theme. This was actually somewhat reassuring since it would've been easier to skip through whole portions of a room if it has been organized chronologically. Instead, you always felt you were happening every once in a while upon a little revelation of a thing (the Babylonian clay map from circa 3500 BC, was it?, that shows the grid of a city map, with one block denoted as the Gardens... Are these THE Gardens? The Hanging Gardens? Is this a Wonder of the World as depicted on a clay map?) You see what I mean. The exhibit closes in a week of so, so you should see it if you can.

I was taken out to the best meal ever (of 2007?) at North Pond, which is in the old warming hut for ice skaters on an old skating pond in the center of Lincoln Park. We had the tasting menu, although it was a bit different than what you see on the link. There were a few sort of little courses skirting the ones listed- more substantial than the occasional amuse-bouche. For example, before the shrimp tartare and tuna crudo, we had two kinds of oyster and crème fraiche with caviar on a blini. I don't know that I've ever had oysters before, but they were incredible. Before dessert, we also had this amazing ricotta cheesecake (I use the term cake lightly- it was more of a slice) that tasted like burfi, topped with pomegranate gelée on this inimitable crust. The wine we had was a reaaaally nice Malbec that had no edge at all, which was pretty strange for me, since I always expect to be puckering. Really earthy, as they say. Of course, I know precious little about wines, and you would do well to be suspicious of my recommendations.

I also went on Saturday morning to a wedding- my friend Dana married his beautiful girlfriend Johana in the Chicago Cultural Center, and although I was embarrassingly the last to arrive for the short ceremony, I was thankfully not too late to see the knot tied. It's actually quite a beautiful place to get married, I think. And the judge who married them was goofy and charismatic.

Well, that's all from Chicago for now. I'm here in limbo for maybe a couple days yet. There's news of a Turkish invasion on the front, so I might hold out here for a bit longer, and take that long train ride back home mid-week.

2008-01-05T05:51:00.000-08:00

Dictionary Squared is the creation of an old friend of mine, and it's a pretty interesting simple algorithm for displaying word usage by employing (I've been told) Google's search function, delivering usage examples much to the same effect as does the OED. In this case, the rub is that the answers are arbitrary in their selection, or at least follow internet search parameters, in stark opposition to the process the OED uses to supply its usage examples (at times, the origin of the word itself). This idea is something that critic John Simon would shake his fist at-- a neat if not aggressive tool based in the association of words with their colloquial usage, if it works as I imagine it will. Even if priority is given to academic resources online to supply the examples, the responses will still be inclusive in scope. It may be a very neat little idea to thwart the likes of Simon, since his stalwart defense against "misuse" of usage leaves little room for this kind of bottom-up, mechanized democratization in language. Anyway, it's cool.

2008-01-05T04:43:00.000-08:00

Obama's caucus speech after his Iowa victory made me burst into tears when I read it this morning. Yes, I am a bit behind in the news. If you want, you can take a look at the video itself, which has been posted online. There were also a bunch of fantastic little local tv news clips that held interviews in Hyde Park establishments of note, namely Mellow Yellow and Valois.

2007-12-17T05:32:00.000-08:00

Rocky Raccoon is amazing. For the Beatles, that kind of honky tonk piano is entirely unexpected and absolutely stunning every time you know they're about to go there. I don't know how I feel about the spoken part, but spoken parts don't have the best track record beyond Love Me Tender, so you gotta give a man some credit for trying. The end of the track has the same bittersweet appeal as Butch and Sundance getting gunned down. In league with Tumbleweed Connection in this sense, it is strange how Brits- or non-Americans - can reproduce such a staunchly American timbre. But maybe I'm forgetting too quickly that it was Ennio Morricone who penned the score for a generation of spaghetti westerns, and then there's always Wim Wenders.

2007-12-09T07:24:00.000-08:00

After reading about Radiohead's pay-what-you-want scheme for their new album In Rainbows, I was excitedly trolling around for it, mistakenly thinking it would be found on iTunes instead of on their official site. By happenstance, while bumbling about I found this really wonderful lullaby series in the iTunes store: Rockabye Baby, which does lullaby renditions of different rock bands. The Radiohead one was pretty fantastic, but the Lullaby Renditions of the Smashing Pumpkins blew my socks off. You should have a listen- they have free snippets.

Flickeur, and CSI: LGA - MDW ?

2007-12-07T04:58:00.000-08:00

Flickeur is all at once unsettling and silly (it uses flash, after all). The explanation for how the program functions is at the bottom, but once you start watching it, you get to wondering what it is, exactly, that makes it work so well. It probably feels most like a documentary about a serial killer, with its typed log of events and eldritch soundtrack. It is at its most interesting when there are series that really work when overlaid or juxtaposed. Taking from the entire pool of inane DSC_10012, etc. easyclick shots and the more professional alike proves effective, and I'm also pleased that the log that is incorporated is that of the miscellaneous descriptions of all the images on flickr. It seems incredible to me that code can be written for this kind of improvisation, however simple it might be to generate.

These are a couple minutes that I saw:
Two ugly pug dogs gussied up in red bows
A smiling cover girl
January 30, 2007. Something tells me her modeling days are over
bleached out photo, a boy in a field, only half of his head in the picture
Thursday, October 6, 2007. How many times have I told you I hate you?
A palm with a baby rabbit in its center
a huge glistening eye, and then an overexposed blue sky with blood red foliage
the baby rabbit, again and again
Monday, May 8, 2006 - 04:06. Shock and Awwwwwwwwww
the dome of the Seville Cathedral

Yea, it's better to see it for yourself. check it out, fool.

In other news, CSI: NY was amazing and I hope the current (I use this term loosely, since "current" over here means "episode I currently have my hands on") crossover episode in the Second City spawns CSI: Chicago. Chicago has been left wanting as a setting for a decent television show since Family Matters went off the air. CSI: NY gets top marks- not only have they already done an episode this season where Gary Sinise chases a murderer through Second Life, but now Sinise finds himself at the Tribune building, after following the clues (a bit of the Alamo, the Hagia Sophia, and the California redwood forest) to their embedment in the skyscrapers' walls. Some may argue that CSI: NY has really been jumping the shark recently, but who are they kidding: that's what makes it so fantastic.

As for realism in television, the writers strike is ushering in a new batch of really terrible reality shows. How about this show Mark Wahlberg is going to be hosting called A Moment of Truth, where contestants are strapped into a polygraph and asked the most intimate questions about their personal lives? The polygraph machine seems almost extraneous, since it seems pretty impossible to imagine that anyone would be able to lie to Mark Walhberg.

Woes, though some things are still top drawer

2007-12-06T02:55:00.000-08:00

So one of the reasons blogs make me uncomfortable are the growing pains involved. Back in 97, when I was first using basic HTML for my hanson fanfic site, I became master of the Geocities/Angelfire basics. If you remember the sort of banded creativity involved in early websites, you can imagine my dismay, a former maestro of the hit counters and scrolling marquee of yore. It's another ball game now! I don't spend the same long amounts of time alone on the old desktop, trolling FAQs for information on resizing. These last couple of months, I decided I was to take a stand, learn how to resize my header and fix the horrible cropping effect written into my template, and reclaim HTML for my own, see if the website HTMLgoodies still exists, and have a day of it.

But to my chagrin, just like with the study of any new language to someone suddenly (albeit just slightly) further on in years, it just didn't come. In a broader computer scope, I'm bored to tears with installing things, and I thought getting my MacBook would be the end to the nightmare of dreaded drivers and .DLLs at least, but this dark lady comes in different forms now. Quoting the laughably pessimistic family motto of the Baylor family in the film Elizabethtown, "If it weren't this, it would be something else." Although I appreciate some of the simplicity of Mac OS, the bare bones programs I have drive me mad- for starters, I don't have a decent photo editing program. When I first decided to dive into digital, my decision had been backed by a glorious well-resourced year in an Adobe wonderland, tasting the fruits of digital imaging and editing at its best. However now I feel like a fool whenever I use the ridiculous tools of PictureProject (Nikon's horribly designed importing, cataloging software included with its products). I can't synthesize the effects of masking an image, and, as I said before, something as simple as resizing or framing an image has proven a first class nightmare.

Nevermind, I'm just feeling the sting at the moment.

I've been reading a lot about Hillary v Obama in the news. Unfortunately, I've found myself in the camp of the mindless Obama supporter. There's nothing anyone can tell me to shake my irrational convictions on the subject of our rightful future president. Fortunately, since he's making the best Mr. Smith impression I've ever seen in blood-and-flesh politics, I feel more comfortable, supporting in the way I do. I'm sure, reader, you may have seen this crazy incident in poor campaigning in the last couple of days. After feeling intense appeasement with Hillary's bad move, what throttled me a bit was the witch hunt of a message board following the opinion piece. This itself is not startling at all, because anyone who posts in the comments section of a web paper has one, if not many, axes to grind. What disturbed me was my readiness to join the fray and back Obama like a gutless wraith. I should get back to reading more policy. Maybe it's simply that, outside of the country, Obama feels heartbreakingly close to home, and supporting him, like blowing kisses to Chicago.

Yes, despite the glories of my days, there are a few things in the UK that meet with my distrust. The chip shop onion bhaji is the foulest thing I have ever come across on a plate. My affinity for Indian food has at times put me at odds with the madhouse joke of some British Indian food. The bhaji is the best example, since it can be found at chip shops. One day when in Risca, I picked up a battered sausage and chips with curry sauce. Totally standard, albeit shockingly unhealthy. I thought I'd continue the faux Indian trend with the addition of the ominous onion bhaji, the only edible not on wax display behind the glass counter. What arrived between my chips and sausage was not unlike the Creature who lived behind the mayonnaise, next to the ketchup and to the left of the coleslaw in the inimitable and timeless 1992 Garfield episode. To what foul heights did they go to derive this recipe? It was not golden and crispy on its exterior like a good and decent bhaji, but rather a soggy murky purple, a sort of sodden mixture of perished onion in congealed batter. Not recommended.

I just bought Bruce Springsteen tickets yesterday at a sorrowful 130 bucks a pop. I know he's the Boss, but where's my pay day? I know- that joke was tacky. I don't see gigs often so I figured I should just spring for the real deal. Although, I saw Ryan Adams play Cardiff Bay on November 11th, and he was achingly good. Dear John is a killer, especially the rendition based on the Follow the Lights LP that just came out, with Neal Casal replacing the wretched Norah Jones on backing vocals. Just as he was making me feel at home, I think he was starting to feel like a stranger. He had just come from New York and was publicly lamenting - in his classic style - the separation pains he was already experiencing.

But I was grateful to have him there. The thing that's so terrifying about Ryan Adams is that you feel so dizzyingly intimate with him when you see him. His show is like a bashful conversation, to the point that he dolefully asks pardon when informing the audience that everyone will be going on an intermission, so, as he said, "You can have a drink, we can have a drink, go to the bathroom, and then come back, and keep playing as long as we're allowed" - with the implicit message: "if that's okay by you." So his shows are never perfect, the faults often bare, but then at moments he is so good that his inconsistency garners some brand of little brother sympathy, even when he lashes out at you (the loving audience), like his gig at U Chicago a few years back. People rail on his inconsistency all the time, his sheepish relationship with his drinking problem, that he is prolific to a fault-- he puts out so much material and a whole lot of it is garbage. But I'll take his rough edges any day.

Well this has been a whole smatter of things, but it had been a while. I miss everyone, and thanks for your birthday wishes.

2007-09-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a very long time, partially because I needed to reconsider this whole blogging business, but mostly because I haven't had email access except sparingly (and I only use the term "sparingly" sparingly). I am now living in a small cottage approximately 9 miles from the nearest small town, Banchory, in the heart of Royal Deeside. Where is Royal Deeside? West of Aberdeen in Scotland, and fitted with all the pins and whistles a girl could need, save for a place to develop photographs. So, sadly, we will have to make do with no visuals for now, except for those I've managed to take with my handy iSight camera.

It's salmon pools and Oil Men up here, and a lot of greenery that runs the gamut from pines and ferns to green wool fisherman socks. The color palette on occasion overdoes itself with its sunsets, accompanying an evening meal whose components are all dragged up a two-mile winding forest road by foot with no small amount of effort. The addition of the internet in this last day after of month in a home that has become something of a hermitage by default is seeming, after I've been whiling away my day off online, perhaps something more controversial than I had previously imagined.

I have indulged other options available for entertainments, namely learning German and reading S.K. Woodcroft. Wir gehen Ski fahren! Alright- I just began, really, today, and this was the first phrase I learned. What I thought would be a standard beginner's course seems to be a phrase book for Brits looking to take a skiing holiday, that calls itself an intensive guide geared "towards fluency rather than mere phrase learning" because it helps you string together phrases about going skiing with those about drinking glühwein after hitting the slopes. Mmm, but it does sound delicious.

For those who have already received communiqués pertaining to my misadventures here, I apologize for my certain redundancy.

I love you. I will write soon. Maybe in a matter of hours.

the new american passport

2007-08-15T09:49:00.001-07:00

I had to get a new passport before I flew out, and it's pretty fantastic.

This is just one of its pages, which are completely mind-blowing and look like the freebie dolphin, Daffy, and Canadian geese checks you get at the beginning of a book of checks.

But the passport is not complete without elegantly wrapping my mug in a flag and eagle:

I am not commenting on this derisively. To the contrary, I always admire dolphin check bearers for their gusto and humorous relationship with money. And no, my name is not Frank Moss.

2007-08-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

Canton is a funny area just outside Cardiff, a perfect outskirtsville, more complete than Cardiff is complete as a capital city. Of course, Cardiff did not become the capital city yesterday (although it did, to rub some idioms, become so overnight). Actually, when I was trolling through its endless glorious retail sector and found the Cardiff castle gift shop, I read about Cardiff's bid for capital city in 1954, and how the newspaper headlines heralded the day of Cardiff's victory as "The Day of Great Relief."
But it's hard to be a city.