Friday, June 25, 2010

A Ride in the Park

So, today, June 25th, I rode my bicycle to work for the first time this year. Last year at this time I already had about 500 miles to and from work. But that's neither here nor there. Well, actually I guess it's there, technically.

Anyway, here's a picture of my route.


Anyway, it's a pretty short ride, 4.5 miles. But that 4 miles is pretty scenic. In that short ride, I get to see (either up close or from a distance (The world is blue and green, amirite?)

  • Iwo Jima Memorial

  • Arlington National Cemetery

  • The Potomac (aka The Little Skanky)

  • The National Cathedral

  • The Lincoln Memorial

  • The Washington Monument

  • The White House

  • Cosi

  • CVS

  • A horse and wagon on Mulberry St

  • I mean, a reindeer pulling a sleigh on Mulberry St.

  • Wait, no! That's too obvious! I mean, I saw a tiger with a shark in its mouth riding on the back of Mr. T who was riding a Vespa on the back of a flatbed tractor trailer that was careening into a crowd of ninja midgets riding on the backs of another crowd of midget ninjas (camelfight-style). On Mulberry St.


  • When I used to live in Canada, all I ever saw was cars and some cute furry animals. AND ONE F'N BLACKBIRD WITH RED F'N WING!

    Tuesday, June 08, 2010

    A Tale

    Yesterday I twoerted that I like the Antlers album Hospice and that it sounds kind of like a Bon Iver/Secret Machines mashup. I was wrong. It's not a mashup. It is a much more complicated relationship than that.

    It's more like Bon Iver and The Secret Machines were seat-mates on a trans-Atlantic flight in the early 80's from Munich to Chicago. After takeoff, they started chatting about this and that and found out that they both lived in the same upscale suburb north of Chicago, right on lake Michigan. In fact, they both knew some of the same people, went to the same dentist and had kids in the same school, though not in the same grades. Bon Iver had kids in 1st and 5th grades while the Secret Machines had twins in 3rd grade, a boy and a girl. They also discovered that they were both Vietnam veterans, Bon Iver an Army officer fresh out of West Point at the time and the Secret Machines an Air Force mechanic. The Secret Machines had been there for the fall of Saigon. As the plane landed, they exchanged phone numbers and made plans to see each other again soon.

    Two weeks later, Bon Iver calls up the Secret Machines and invites them and their wife to dinner on Friday. In another strange coincidence, Bon Iver's wife and the Secret Machines know each other. In fact, they were once high school sweethearts so desperately in love they planned to marry at 17. The wedding was prevented by Angie's parents because the Secret Machines were worthless failures who would probably just end up having to enlist in the armed forces because there weren't any other options for no-accounts like them. She cried for days when the Secret Machines DID enlist. But she moved on. She went to college, got a job as a copy writer at a big downtown ad agency and the Secret Machines showed up in her thoughts less and less until she met Bon Iver at a happy hour on the Miracle Mile and all thoughts of the Secret Machines disappeared. He was a handsome, dashing Army officer just returned from Vietnam and Angie liked nothing better than an emotionally wounded man to care and fall for. So a year later they got married. He worked for a big defense contractor and worked his way quickly up the ladder to Vice President in charge of Munitions Operations. They had kids, bought a house on Lake Michigan and everything was beautiful and kind.

    But all of that came crashing down as she saw the Secret Machines for the first time in nearly 20 years. They didn't turn out to be a no-account. In fact, they were now the owner of the biggest aircraft maintenance company in the tri-county area. Midway, O'Hare, even Milwaukee all used the Secret Machines for maintenance contracts. Their wife was lovely. No, not just lovely. Stunning. The kind of woman you see on magazine covers or billboards or trading cards if they made trading cards for beautiful people.

    At first, the Secret Machines didn't even realize the connection. They were so far divorced from their past as the poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks that everything before 1974 seemed like a dream, or a copy of copy of a copy, or a television show that you forget about as you are watching it, flushed down the short term memory hole. But then, the Secret Machines were introduced (or re-introduced) to Angie and everything that would happen in the months ahead was written on their eyes in that instant.

    At dinner, everyone laughed about the coincidence and the Secret Machines and Angie told stories about the old days. Everything was perfect. The Secret Machines felt young again. Angie made love with Bon Iver more fiercely than she had in years that night. He credited the 4 glasses of wine she'd had, but really it was the Secret Machines coursing through her head.

    They began a torrid affair, the Secret Machines and Angie did. Lunchtime trysts, "out of town meetings," and soon they realized that the love they'd felt as teenagers was no passing fancy. Or was this just a mid-life crisis? A clinging to youth and power and soul and life that was doomed to burn out? No, it must be love, they told themselves over and over and over. Saying it did help to lessen the guilt a little.

    And so the divorces started. Bon Iver, resigned to his fate, parted amicably with Angie, sharing custody of the children. He was hurt of course, and though resigned to it, did occasionally curse his fate. Of all the people in the world to end up next to on that flight, why did it have to be the Secret Machines? Why not John Ritter or even Jack Johnson? Why godammit? He had a good life! A good wife! And now he had his munitions. At least with Panama and Grenada, Libya and Afghanistan business was booming.

    The Secret Machines, however, forced an unwanted and devastating divorce on their gorgeous and emotionally unstable wife, Emilia. Two weeks before the divorce was final, she took too many muscle relaxants. Her car was found wrapped around a bridge abutment and her body was crushed inside the Jaguar. Her face, the thing that had attracted them to her in the first place, was untouched however. She could almost have been closing her eyes to listen to a particularly good aria at the Chicago Opera House. It was a wonderful funeral, as far as such things can be wonderful. The kids were crushed to lose their mother and turned to the Secret Machines for more support than ever. They had always been a good father, the Secret Machines, and it broke their heart to think that it was their actions and an internal combustion engine that had pushed Caroline and Jeremy's mother into that abutment. They never told the kids why. The police wrote it off as an accident. So it goes.

    And life went on. The Secret Machines and Angie married and moved to a different suburb on the lake. Bon Iver never did remarry. He had plenty of opportunities, but something just never felt right. Maybe she smelled to much like soup. Maybe she stole his cat. It was always something, and as his children grew up, they passed word of his excuses and reasons to Angie when they were at her house. Every time she heard about Bon Iver, she felt a pang of sadness, knowing that she was partly responsible for his emotional state, but the pangs always passed quickly.

    The kids grew up, moved out, started families of their own. Grandkids came around every so often, in from New York or Dallas or wherever it was their parents had moved them to now.

    Then one afternoon in September of 2008, Bon Iver's phone rang on his mahogany desk in his Chairman-of-the-board suite. He picked it up. The voice he heard on the other end was familiar, but so.....old.

    "Angie died last night," said the voice, and Bon Iver knew at once that it was the Secret Machines. He couldn't bring himself to speak. So many emotions were being generated by his glands that he couldn't even breathe. Hate, fear, sadness, schadenfreude, and regret. Anger, panic, despair and the crushing sense of lost hope. For he'd never given up. Like the grown children of divorced parents, his own children, he always harbored a ridiculous and irrational hope, that maybe just maybe she would change her mind. That they would get back together. But now it was impossible. It felt like his life hadn't changed, but somehow the universe was different.

    "It was colon cancer. The funeral's next Monday if you would like to come. It will be at Memorial Cemetery on Westminster Street. 1 PM."

    And again, silence.

    "Goodbye, Bon Iver."


    And so he did go. He went and he saw his old friends that had sided with Angie. Everyone looked so ancient, so withered, half-dead and it hit him: that's how I look too. And he realized that it was too late. But yet not too late for some things.

    At the wake, Bon Iver went up to the Secret Machines. "I'm sorry for our loss," he said. "Our loss," not "your loss." The point came across clearly. And they started talking. They drank scotch and talked and ate things off trays that the waiters brought around. The Secret Machines told stories, Bon Iver told stories. They shared as only two lonely people at a funeral can.

    A week later, the Secret Machines received a call.

    "It's time," crackled the voice of Bon Iver over a cellular connection that was interfered with as one of the largest solar flares ever recorded washed over the earth in a bath of plasma and voltage.

    "It's time to record an album."

    "Let's do this before we die. Let's do this before it all goes black," said the Secret Machines.

    And so they did, and that album would sound kind of like The Antlers - Hospice.

    Anyway, I give the Antlers 4.5 cuils out of 5.

    Monday, May 24, 2010

    You Say You Want a Revolution!?

    Well, I don't have one for you.

    What I do have is a brief story about how one time I went out to real Virginia (this would have been last week) and as I was just starting to drive, I realized that I didn't have any CDs with me in the car (and mind you, this car has a 6-CD cartridge changer in the trunk!) so I stopped at my favorite record store to buy some. Since it's kind of a long drive, I purchased 3 new CDs. I am doing my part to keep the record companies in business. I only pirate software. So here's what I think about those 3!

    1) Shame, Shame - Dr. Dog: Honestly, I'm a little disappointed. Fate was totally good, so I expected the same. It was only regular, not totally, good, though. I think it earns 11 dog-eared DSM IVs out of 14 (They're not a real doctor, but we call them Dr. Dog)

    2) Infinite Arms - Band of Horses: You know that one song, Funeral by Band of Horses? Yeah, that's about my depth of knowledge of them too, until I bought this album. Basically, I chose to buy it because The National was sold out and I'd heard of this band and the cover looked really cool. I know I'm not supposed to judge things by their covers, but a lot of time it works! And it did here. This album does for symphonic dirge-pop what Shame, Shame did for medical canine-pop. By that I mean it was a new album. Rating: a linear approximation of a Taylor series (the fourth Taylor series to be exact)

    3) Congratulations - MGMT: I liked it. I don't care what anybody else says, I like it! (BTW, what do other people say? I really want to make sure I'm not going outside the group consensus on this. I don't want to lose my valuable CRED points.) There is a song about Brian Eno. Rating: On a scale of 1 to Clever! this one gets a "ConGradulations!" with a picture of a diploma.

    In Which a Day Burns Out

    You know a good way to waste a perfectly usable Sunday afternoon? Go to the stupid ER because you're stupid worried you might be dying because your stupid heart is beating erratically and super-fast and you're all dizzy and sweating like a sieve (does that even make sense?) and then not too long after they admit you, it kinda goes away and it turns out you probably just drank to much stupid caffeine but you have to sit there and talk to them and say "no, I don't snort cocaine" and they take stupid blood out of your stupid arm and then put stupid saline into your stupid arm and then they finally let you go home but not until after you wasted 3 stupid hours of your stupid life.

    Not that I would know.

    Friday, April 30, 2010

    Transcontinental Concerns



    So, right now, on the other side of the continent, my grandmother is having brain surgery. It's weird. I talked to her last night and there's a chance that it was the last time I'll talk to her as her. Or maybe it's no big deal, and she'll be fine. They'll get the tumor out of her brain, it won't be malignant and she'll go right back to being the same grandmother I've always known, I don't know. I guess I'll find out later.

    I hope she has a good doctor....


    Anyway. Here's a random picture.


    HA HA! It's not a RANDOM picture at all! That's what they're doing to my grandma right now! GOTCHA!!!

    And no, I'm not putting the dog in that one.

    Monday, April 26, 2010

    Retrograde Curmudgeon

    It's funny, isn't it, how when we look back on the past we only remember the highlights and the lowlights? I don't remember what I did on June 3rd, 2005 for example, that's for sure. OH WAIT, I DO!!! I was in Bolivia protesting against president Carlos Mesa. We forced a constitutional assembly that would ultimately reform the constitution in favor of the native majority, paving the way for Bolivia's first native president, and country's namesake, Manute Bol! It happened, you can look it up. And if you don't believe I was there, then prove it! Where was I on June 3, 2005? HMMMMMMM???? For that matter, where were YOU? You were probably the one that sent that suspicious package to Australian Foreign Minster Alexander Downer that day, weren't you? I'm sure you have a great alibi.

    Anyway, this made me stop and think for a moment. We are quickly reaching a point in time when it WON'T be true that our lives are primarily undocumented and our self-histories will NOT be based primarily/only on the memories of ourselves and those around us. We WON'T disappear into the aether of the collective human past within 100 years (well, we still might) because our entire lives, cradle to eldarc will be digitized and documented! We're not at the end of history, we're barely at the beginning. We're in the transition from the dark ages to the age of historical enlightenment! Events will be parsed, causes tracked back through reams of data into the past! We will know everything about everyone! What will this look like? I don't know, but I want to find out!

    So, I started reading back through the archives of this here blog and I realized that it's good that we don't remember many details about the past (in our current era at least) because most of the past is trite, cruel, blowhardesque, tweeishly self-conscious and maudlin with a large dollop of self-righteousness to bring out the flavor of the self-referential self-absorbedness. At least it's good to know and have a record of how self-serious and self-serving I was only a few short years ago. I'm super self-glad that I'm not self-like that any more! Just look at this post, for instance...

    *reads back over the post*

    OH SHIT!!!

    Thursday, April 22, 2010

    Dispatch from the Metro: Orange Line Art Edition




    What a privilege it is to ride the Orange Line everyday from the far reaches of Virginia (don't worry, it's not REAL Virginia, I'm not that far out)! Nearly every day I get to experience one of the greatest pieces of art ever created. Actually, I'd say that I get to hear it many times per trip as the train rolls from station to station. You might be thinking to yourself "Self, what art can exist in such a cramped and utilitarian place?" Or you might be thinking to yourself "Self, it's almost time to eat lunch, isn't it?" Or even perhaps "Self, I can't wait until summer when fresh corn on the cob sells for, like, $2 per dozen!"

    All you need to do is listen.

    It's beautiful.

    Bad Poetry Thursday: Now Sugar Free! Edition




    I was going to do some Photoetry, but I'm still learning GIMP 2.6, so I'll give it a couple weeks. So anyway, here is some (imo extremely) Bad Poetry for you!!! HOORAY!



    An Anthem

    A roll of tape
    A roll of twine
    Sixteen cases of fine red wine

    Some rubber bands
    Some handrail screws
    I black eye and a rais-ed bruise

    Don't buy the hook
    Just by the sinker
    Pull the line down into the drink(er)

    Fire all of your guns at once
    Because there is a lady who's sure
    That ice is just as great firearms.
    But she's wrong, you know.
    It won't suffice.
    You can say it twice
    "It won't suffice,
    It won't suffice."
    (Unless, of course, it's pykrete ice)

    A roll of tape
    A bottle of wine
    We hope we don't run out of time.

    Wednesday, April 21, 2010

    A Wicked Left Turn!!!!!!

    So, I came across this on reddit the other day (by "the other" I mean "yester"). Now, if you've never lived in Michigan and experienced the "Michigan boomerang" for yourself, you'll probably think that I'm full of crap and that there is no way that this could possibly be real. I assure you, it's entirely accurate, all the way down to flooring it so you don't get hit by the semi as you complete the second half of the u-turn.

    Now, according to the wikipedia article "Studies have shown a major reduction in left-turn collisions and a minor reduction in merging and diverging collisions, due to the shifting of left turns outside the main intersection. In addition it reduces the number of different traffic light phases, significantly increasing traffic flow. Since separate phases are no longer needed for left turns, this increases green time for through traffic. The effect on turning traffic is mixed."

    I have some problems with this description, mainly because the effect on turning traffic is not "mixed." It's mainly bad. Normally, you might wait through a left turn light for one full cycle if you have bad timing. If you have bad timing at a Michigan left, you might have to wait through 3 red lights (this happens about 60% of the time in my experience.)

    But anyway, the effect on traffic is not what I was trying to say. What I was trying to say was something along the lines of the excess miles drive to accommodate the Michigan Left.

    Let's take some pulled-out-of-my-ass estimates here. Say there are 1000* such intersections in Michigan and that the average number of turns per day is 1500**. I have no idea if these are reasonable assumptions. But anyway, that means 1.5 million turns are tooken eachen day. Now, one time I measured how far I had to drive to make the right-turn-u-turn-to-make-a-left turn. It was about 0.25 miles. That means that every day, vehicles travel an additional 375,000 miles. Annually, that's 136,875,000 extra miles driven in Michigan. That also means that an additional 1.23*** billion tons of CO2 are emitted by these cars! That's more CO2 than is produced by all the sheep in New Zealand and all the caribou in Canada COMBINED***! So if you want to blame global warming on anything, blame it on Michigan. The world needs a good whipping boy, and Michigan is so down on its luck that it won't even notice the difference.


    *Could be off by an order of magnitude.

    **Might be nowhere close to reality since nobody has a job in Michigan anymore.

    ***Absolutely no basis for this claim whatsoever.

    Friday, April 16, 2010

    Theological Exploration

    So, today, I'm riding the train home from work, as I am wont to do, when I looked behind me to see what people were reading, as I am also wont to do, and I saw a guy reading what looked like a bible, but was really the Book of Mormon IN DISGUISE! I figured this out when I looked, progressively less surreptitiously, over his shoulder trying to see what book of the bible he was reading. The more and more I stared, the more I realized he actually was reading the Book of Alvin.

    When I got home, I did some research and found out that the Book of Alvin is part of the story of Joseph Smith. It occurs chronologically right after he finds his pair of magic spectacles that allow him to decipher his magical golden tablets that he found just laying around under a rock. He is visited by the Spirit of his old business partner Brigham Young and told to expect to be visited by three ghosts, in preparation for which he is given a pair of super-magical earmuffs (they were golden too!). That very night, he is visited by all three ghosts at once. You will immediately recognize their names from history: Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. With the help of the magical, golden, jewel-encrusted (sorry, I forgot that part before) earmuffs, he is able to decipher the ghosts' outrageous squeaking. They explained the whole history of religion (including stuff that wasn't covered in the golden tablets) from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to George Washington. Their final command, before they disappeared into the mists was this: Joseph Smith must henceforth change his name to David Seville.

    And the rest, as they say, is history. More specifically: THE BOOK OF MORMON PART II: THE SQUEAKUEL.

    Friday, April 09, 2010

    Raindom Paicture Fraiday: Back of the Boat



    So, here we go again, right? Do you remember the drill? First I go to Drew's Livejournal Random Picture Generator, then I choose a tasteful picture from among the many taste-free pictures (It's like finding a diamond in the rough, and by that I mean it's a total waste of time), then I put it on this blarg.

    VOILA!!!! (or is it "VIOLA?" I'm not all that good at orchestrating clever puns.)


    This appears to be the result of some kind of torpedo attack or something. Probably those danged Somali pirates.

    Step 3: Put a picture of that darn dog in the random picture

    Step 4: ???????

    Step 5: PROFIT!

    Step 6: Lose all the profit in an acrimonious dispute over arcane accounting rules in an assiduously planned pyramid scheme. (That was for all of you out there that are studying for the SAT!)

    Step 7: File a complaint with the SEC about the refereeing at last year's Alabama-Florida game

    Step 8: File a complaint with another SEC about the pyramid scheme.

    Step 9: ?????

    Step 10: PROFIT!

    And there you have my foolproof ten-step method for making money.

    You're welcome.



    Thursday, February 11, 2010

    Rememberance of Things Past

    BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON
    BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON
    BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON

    You know, I was just thinking, it’s been three years since went to one of the best parties I’ve ever been to. Almost exactly three years ago, we were preparing to leave DC for the northern wastes of Detroit, Canada. So our great friends in the current snow capitol (well, actual Capitol, too, I suppose) of the country threw a pretty great going away party. There was karaoke and some of it was even custom written for us! There were some beers, some scrapbooking, some kids.

    It’s kind of hard for me to believe that it was three years ago that we left. That’s half my son’s life (almost)! Hell, my daughter has NEVER been there and she’s almost a year old. I feel like this post is getting a little melancholy, so I’d better wrap it up (in Bacon, so it’s more delicious).

    Anyway, it was a great party three years ago, and I’m afraid our going away party in Michigan won’t be quite as good. Hopefully our “welcome back” party in DC next month will make up for it.

    BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON
    BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON
    BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON

    Wednesday, January 27, 2010

    A Tale of Two CDs

    So I've now listened to the latest Avett Bros. album approximately a baker's dozen times while driving to and from work and/or stores and I've come to the conclusion that I have to call it a total sell-out. It is basically a mainstream wannabe that lacks the pure poppiness of actual mainstream music without the vibrancy and banjo that made their past efforts (see Gleam and Emotionalism for example) so awesome.

    Now this is hard for me to say, and I come by this after many hours of deliberation. You see, I've never heard any other Avett Brothers albums before in my life. However, I am aware that many of their "true" fans do not like the latest offering. I definitely don't want to be one of those Ralph-come-latelys because then I totally lose all my credibility (sort of like how I feel about people who have only heard the Kings of Leon's newest album, which sucks and is a total sell-out). So I am forced to pretend that I don't think this newest album is very good so as to look like someone hip and in the know. You wouldn't think being hip should be so difficult, but you are wrong. It's a lot of work.

    The great thing about this decision is that even though I claim to think "I and Love and You" is a total cop-out, major-label, Rick-rubin suckfest and how they were WAAAAAAY better back when, I can still listen to it in secret. If I listened to it in public without shame, I would be opening myself up to all kinds of mockery by the real deal fans.

    Basically, I just want to make sure I'm hipper than anybody else at work, which is, let's be honest, in the northern Detroit suburbs, like shooting a barrel with a gun specifically designed to shoot barrels with barrel-seeking missiles.

    Sunday, January 17, 2010

    I Tried So Hard.

    Pictures seem to be taking way to looooooong to upload. Thus, instead of putting pictures in my own blog post, I will provide you with links to some other pictureful posts.

    Adah


    Levi


    How's that for efficiency?