ennui du monde

SUP YALL

2010-07-29T11:06:00.001-04:00

ALL INQUIRIES:

refer to http://wnatw.tumblr.com

the time has come

2008-11-23T18:13:00.002-05:00

AVAST, MATEYS!

i.e. my 2 readers.

Absence makes your mom grow fonder

2008-07-02T14:41:00.003-04:00

Greetings from New York, bitches.... it's been awhile.

Good-bye, week

2007-05-11T17:30:00.000-04:00

courtesy of xkcd.com

cent poteaux!!

2007-05-01T13:16:00.000-04:00

100th post!!

Not pie, pi.

2007-04-27T12:14:00.000-04:00

I just don't know what to say.

Gratuitous post, part billion

2007-03-16T00:33:00.000-04:00

Like the awesome guy pictured above, Spring has sprung unexpectedly upon Washington DC.

Yes Spring, when smoke breaks become something you genuinely enjoy, and ladies begin to wear wispy dresses for the first time in months and you feel like you're in middle school again as a result, and you eat your lunch in the park and feed the squirrels and read the newspaper and try not to burst with the pleasantness of it all.

New job, new future... So why am I still anxious?

Well, I predict unrestricted war with China occurring at some point over the next twenty years, so there's that. Fiji is officially sinking into the sea and I've still never been, so there's that too. More importantly, though, every year Spring brings with it that vague restlessness that comes with the warm air that nags at you, very quietly and in subtle ways, like a little invisible gnome that punches you in the nads with his little fist, ever-so-softly, more like a tap, that begins to get intolerable over the course of days.

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

target="_blank", bitches!

2007-02-28T12:17:00.000-05:00

Stay tuned.

in the meantime, add your own subtitles to Bollywood films:
http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/v2/
let me know what you come up with.

stupid camera tricks

2007-02-08T00:57:00.000-05:00

hooray for snow. the audi isn't mine.

David Bowie says fuck that

2007-02-06T10:59:00.000-05:00

So that Noonday Underground mp3 doesn't work... that's what you get for horking links off other people's blogs.

Here's a creepy picture of David Bowie instead!

/coming for your children

-5? I say fuck that.

2007-02-06T00:13:00.000-05:00

Today was so cold my 'tache grew ice. That was pretty cool.

But I'm trudging along my daily trudge to lunch, swearing out loud at the gusty wind and chomping on my Parlie, when the queerest thing happened: everyone just stopped and starting sort of bouncing on their heels. The helicopters started doing tight circles in the sky, all the taxis started blaring their horns to an unheard beat, and the street sweepers starting dancing a complicated choreography in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. Even their foggy shoots of breath were perfectly synched!

Finally, as if out of nowhere, the Noonday Underground started playing.

My new headphones kick ass.

Your workday ill

2007-01-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

Yes, lately the Internet has been resembling something similar to a nightmare: no matter how fast I run, no matter where I turn, the Mundane is always two steps behind me, brandishing the Butcher Knife of Boredom. Every now and then, however, I manage to outwit that cunning bastard for a few minutes to catch my breath and actually enjoy myself. See below, courtesy of the Avalanches:

Acting out a turntable mash-up, sample by friggin sample? Genius.

Web 2.ugh.

2007-01-11T21:13:00.000-05:00

I came across this today, written by Hassal Mikal for Something Awful:

Horseshit of the Year 2006: Time Magazine

Time Magazine recently named us the most important person of 2006. At first I felt flattered and began to write my thank you speech but then I realized that the title was not entirely accurate. In fact if you read the article it's downright misleading.

The person of the year isn't me at all. It's the people who upload videos of themselves doing monumentally retarded things to YouTube or leave racist comments on blogs. The person of the year is anyone who has ever vandalized the Wikipedia entry on Sonic the Hedgehog to say that Tails takes it up the ass from Knuckles the Echidna and Sonic is jealous. Finally, the bread and butter of the Internet are getting the recognition they deserve...

Read the rest here.

song for a frigid capital city

2007-01-10T01:49:00.000-05:00

NOTE: TURN IT UP.

/Thievery Corporation

just because

2007-01-06T00:02:00.000-05:00

Can I get a HELLYEAH!!!

give the following a listen. didactic and in no way subtle, but god damn if i haven't been dwelling on it for the past week.

Grammar, Manderly

2006-12-28T22:25:00.000-05:00

/something ornery this way comes

So I'm logging into the portal to write another lame-ass update for this blog o' mine, and I'm downloading a shit-ton of stuff on the side so my connection is a bit slow, giving me about 7 seconds to actually pay attention to the following text on the login screen:

The new version of Blogger now has all the original features you're used to, plus new post labels, drag-and-drop template editing, and privacy controls. And, it's a lot more reliable.

Raise your hand if you see something wrong with this... wait for it... and... --- oh wait, that's precisely it. HEY GOOGLE (ASSTARDS WHO JUST BOUGHT BLOGGER.COM), I THOUGHT YOU GUYS WERE SMART ENOUGH TO MAKE BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND A SWEET CORPORATE JUMBO JET. HOW ABOUT YOU FOOLS NOT START A SENTENCE WITH "AND [comma]", YOU BUNCH OF TURDS.

/blogger.com's copy editor

rEGARDLE OOPS regardless, I'm two sips shy of blazed on cheap sauvignon and typing away on a brand new laptop (God bless you Mr. Claus) having just rediscovered the joys of computing sans virii and doing a little research on a movie I just watched.

That movie is Rebecca.

Now, I've always had a thing for this story, and I can't say why exactly. Just call me a sucker for simplistic neo-Victorian claptrap. Handful of Dust? Word up. The Secret Garden? Hellasweet. Remains of the Day? Tears to my eyes. No surprise then, that a story that begins on the Cote d'Azure and ends with a stately home burning to the ground in Cornwall appeals to my personal aesthetic. I first had to read the novel for a teacher I hated in 8th grade, and it was only the night before the final test that I actually read 160 of the total 180 or so pages. To make a long paragraph shorter, I became totally immersed and it remains to this day one of my favorite novels of all time. There, I fucking said it.

/bu-ya

It was only five or six years later that I actually saw the 1940 cinematic adaptation of the story (which, incidentally, was Alfred Hitchcock's directorial debut) starring Lawrence Olivier and that most angelic and painfully demure of 40s starlets, Miss Joan Fontaine. This, friends and anonymous lurkers, is my embarrassing crush: a movie star from 1940. Yes, it's true... Joan Fontaine gives me fever.

For you, Joan:

Fast forward another (x - y) years, and I'm standing in the Martin Luther King Public Library in downtown DC, my new library card burning a hole in my wallet, prowling the AV department looking for something to watch. Lo and friggin' behold, I spy a recent remake of Rebecca sitting quietly on the shelf.

I check it out.

Turns out it's pretty damn good, in a long, drawn-out, BBC meets PBS in the 1970s and they have a kid that they home-school who ends up making this movie sort of way, and I recommend it highly if you're sitting alone at home with a cheap bottle of wine and you really should be tending to other more important things but you desperately need some sort of distraction to stave off the abyss of your pathetic life. The only issue for me is this: she-who-remains-nameless-throughout-the-story is now played in a different sort of way by a different sort of actress, who also happens to be friggin' stunning: Emilia Fox.

So it comes to this: Who will haunt my dreams of fancy cigarette holders, falconing, and oppressing the working class?

old and busted

vs.

new hotness

You saw the word "ennui" in the title but you read on anyway, people.

fun with embedding

2006-12-15T20:12:00.000-05:00

does this work?

EDIT: SWEETNESS. STAY TUNED FOR NACHTMUSIK. oh yeah and this track is called "Throw me corn"

Better than Winchester

2006-12-15T19:02:00.000-05:00

HEAVENS TO BETSY, I JUST LISTENED TO THE NEW CLINIC ALBUM AND IT IS OUTSTANDING.

/belated thanks to Peter for bringing this to my attention

Ramblin'

2006-12-14T19:57:00.000-05:00

The past month has been, in a word, super.

/[insert philip glass score here]

Immediately prior to Thanksgiving I embarked upon a tour of graduate schools in the Northeast. I learned a great many things on this trip, chiefly that modernist architecture of the 60s was a sham and that schools with boucoup endowment should think twice before running with the style of the times. I imagine the Cold War was the main impetus for throwing money at International Policy programs; perhaps that in itself explains the tragic lack of imagination manifested in the design of the facilities.

/wtf, Wilson?

/wtf, SIPA?

/wtf, Kennedy?

/wtf, Fletcher?!

Shitty architecture notwithstanding, I learned a lot about potential futures. Moreover it was sublimely relaxing to spend 10 hours listening to music while riding Amtrak, and more importantly, I was able to spend time with sundry Grade-A people, some new, some old, some of whom I hadn't seen in a long, long, long time.

I also got to experience the magic that is Hoboken, NJ.

/"oh a song by the fire, pass the pipe, pass the bowl"

/and feel the wheels a'rumblin 'neath the floor

/I saw the lights fading out

/leavin' Boston, however, a real pain in the ass

Then came Thanksgiving. Warmly predictable, tranquil, refreshing.

/extra gravy

I painted a fence green and was taught the rules of the "Anal Car" game, which is nothing more than the word "Anal" followed by any model of car, thus: Anal explorer, anal odyssey, anal escape, anal fiesta, anal ram, etc. Juvenile, sure, but undeniably fun on long car trips. John you anal voyager.

/pre-game

A bitchin' Christmas party, another week, and by the grace of God another surprise jaunt, this time via fucking Learjet, back to New York, where I was called "Santa", ate some delicious sausage, and saw Lou Dobbs in person, all within a two-hour span. Fog in Richmond led to an unplanned overnight layover in New Jersey, and now here I am.

/dad, pensive

That's it and that's all. I feel beat.

hoo-ha!

Can't be bothered

2006-12-06T00:25:00.000-05:00

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here's some advice.

Song for a Cold Morning

2006-11-06T11:24:00.000-05:00

Fingathing - Haze

Link may or may not work.

Smiling Horses, etc.

2006-11-01T10:39:00.000-05:00

He started it again but ill; blindness overtook him, and he died of punishment in the mines; but the story he told begot a legend that lingers along the length of the Cordilleras of the Andes to this day.

He told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness, into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama, beside a vast bale of gear, when he was a child.

The valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of a man could desire -- sweet water, pasture, and even climate, slopes of rich brown soile with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high.

Far overhead, on three sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice; but the glacier stream came not to them but flowed away by the farther slopes, and only now and then huge ice masses fell on the valley side.

-------------------------------------------------

Here are the rules:
Grab the nearest book.
Open to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
Don’t you dare dig around for that “cool” or “intellectual” book on your shelves. (I know you were thinking about it.) Just pick up whatever is closest.

nachtmusik 2.0

2006-10-23T00:43:00.000-04:00

coming soon to an RSS feed [whatever the hell that is] near you:

all the pretension of college radio without the shitty haircuts.

crazy bio shit

2006-10-19T17:22:00.000-04:00

From the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, I present to you:

Dem Bones.

/wheeeeee!

Seamus Dreams of Murder

2006-09-18T14:44:00.000-04:00

Hooray for autumn, and hooray lazy no-good fucking cats who sleep all day while I work long hours to feed them. Seriously: Get a job, you jackasses. Kill something. Learn to fetch shit. Something, anything. Just don't track dirt all over my bathroom and knock shit from off my windowsill and arrange yourself on my bed so that your feline anus is 3 inches from my face when I wake up in the morning. I mean, come on... fuck that.

Monochromatick

2006-09-05T19:51:00.000-04:00

I don't care what kind of fancy bullshit you can pull off with Flash, these guys are keeping it fucking real. I stumbled across them a few years ago en Londres, only to remember them today rather randomly and in a rather roundabout way, and to my utter joy discovered that they've recently updated their ouvre a la "Miss DMZ".

I strongly suggest starting with Operation Nukorea, and make sure to follow at some point with Metablast.

Make sure your audio is on.

Sheer. Fucking. Boredom.

2006-08-31T16:26:00.000-04:00

"Type type type" go the keys, "furrow furrow furrow" goes the brow, and thus I get away with doing something completely worthless at work THUS NOT FALLING ASLEEP FOR 3 MINUTES IN MY CHAIR.

Everything here is so fucking soothing. The lights, the soft "crrrrrrrrrrr" of the AC vents, the faint whirring of xerox machines down the hall, all coupled with the knowledge that outside it is cool and overcast and just on the verge of raining... all of this makes Nat a sleepy boy.

Over the past week I've become aware of certain vaguely secretive activities going on around me, things that they keep hidden away in filing cabinets that have fat steel combination locks incorporated into the handle. These are the dealings of players so far above my head I can't even figure out what the hell they're doing even when it's written on the page in front of me... I'd type some of it out but then I'd get ARRESTED HELLO SECURITY CLEARANCE PROVIDERS!!! HI!!!

Time passes, and now I have ONE HOUR TO GO. Bike to home. Metro to train station. Train to Richmond. Car to beach. Feet to porch. Hand to lighter. Lighter to bottlerocket. Bottlerocket to [glory]. THIS, friends, is the trajectory of my life energy on this dreary day.

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in The Office, but instead of funny coworkers I have a lot of uptight Eurobankers and instead of finding ourselves in zany situations we just find ourselves sitting alone, using Access and Excel all the time.

I've been wasting altogether too much time on Flickr recently... there doesn't seem to be a single place in the entire world you can't find an amateur photo of [including Nuuk and Pitcairn(!)]. Unfortunately there's also no shortage of douchebags who suffer from Chronic Self-Portraiture Syndrome... Brush your bangs into your eyes, look up into the air, and cut your eyes to the side a little. THERE. Sexy. No. We don't need another one. Really. Stop. Self-absorption is one thing, sure, but these people don't seem to have any sense of shame whatsoever...

GET OVER YOURSELF, YOU VAIN [apparently CHILEAN from the rest of your pictures] BITCH.

^ this guy's getting the fuck up outta here, and so am i.

Advice to live by

2006-08-28T12:30:00.000-04:00

Special thanks to Mr. Keating for bringing this to my attention.

Chalo, chale mitwa...

2006-08-18T16:52:00.000-04:00

Another nice long weekend spent travelling. This time around, however, the transfer airport was pleasantly Atlanta, which only partially made up for arriving in the dingy little shitbox that is Chicago Midway airport.

/obligatory plane picture

Regardless, Chicago seems to have changed very little since last time I was there... four? five years ago? Having lived there for more or less a year, I had been feeling an uneasy mix of excitement and psycho-emotional trepidation at the prospect of re-walking the sidewalks of yore, like when you accidentally run into a parked car but instead of stopping you move on but then return to the scene of a crime the next day. You're on guard, you're nervous, yet there's no real threat... and I was just beginning to feel at ease, enjoying the city for itself rather than for its baggage, when-- oh HELLO, FREAKY-ASSED FOUNTAIN IN MILLENIUM PARK.

/the end of the world as we know it

I suppose I'd have found it much less creepy had it been sunny out... but no, it was nightmarish, dark and humid, and the little urchins playing in the water underneath that face only drove home the impression that we're truly living in the End Times. I was still eager to see the "Bean" as it had been described to me, and which I suppose everyone has by this time read about. And yeah... it was pretty damn cool... but dirty.

/mad mad world

/ugh, gross

The occasion for my visit was serving as a groomsman in the wedding of one of my bestest friends from high school, Paul, to his long-time squeeze Ambika. Held at the Adler Planetarium, it was quite the affair:

/panjabi women = hot

/feet

/the happy couple

/"Paul, you've got shit on your neck" -- actual quote

/more feet

/[glitter]

oh and I finally found one:

Draft letter to Clarke re: IMF counterclaims

2006-08-17T11:16:00.000-04:00

bu-ya!

Love makes me sleepy

2006-08-09T13:09:00.000-04:00

This past weekend marked my first trip ever to Milwaukee, my first "college wedding", and Virginia Slim's first public performance since Kenyon.
w00t!! kinda like riding a bike...

6am tomorrow brings yet another friend's wedding in Chicagooooo (that tawdlin' town), two more red-eye flights, and several more Chicken McNugget layover meals in nondescript midwestern airports... I think this one's gonna be Detroit.

In the meantime, here's a song from Jim Noir... keeps me from going overboard-aggro on the TSA screeners.

Right Click ---> Save As....

MY BOSS JUST SAID "FUCK"

Up the River... again

2006-07-20T12:29:00.000-04:00

I spent this past weekend drunk in a tent full of moisture and spiders. Yes, the annual Up the River Party was a bona fide hootenanny this year, despite a whole bunch of bitches who didn't turn out for the festivities. We drank your share, don't worry.

/hi-ho, Thunderbolt! bitch kicks. bitch kicks hard.

/paintlick mountain obscured by the fog.

/Jose, contemplative.

/clarence carter's "strokin'" was blaring as this photograph was taken. seriously.

/the long road back sunday morning, enlivened by haybale acrobatics.

Fucking spiders, though, man. I tell you what.

O Superman

2006-07-14T11:15:00.000-04:00

Today's stolen mp3 link: "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson, queen of experimental music a la Brian Eno, [early] Peter Gabriel, John Cage, etc. etc. suffice it to say she's collaborated with everyone at some point. She was also NASA's first (and last) artist-in-residence a few years ago.

This particular song is a bit unnerving/annoying at first, but as the minutes roll by I find it extremely soothing.

RIGHT CLICK --> SAVE AS

"here cooome the plaaanes... "

WORTHLESS TRIVIA: The background "beat" of this song is sampled at the beginning of the Clinic's "Cement Mixer".

Words

2006-07-13T12:56:00.000-04:00

or, incredible song from Low. ..

RIGHT CLICK -> SAVE AS

it isn't even my link.

Hooray for embedding

2006-07-13T11:06:00.000-04:00

FIRST VIDEO POST EVER

By train from Amsterdam to Den Haag, almost 3 months ago now....

Kinda falls apart at the end, but whatever.

Hot 'n Heavy Link Dump Action

2006-07-10T13:58:00.000-04:00

OR "HOW I LEARNED TO MASTER THE ALT-TAB FUNCTION AT MY NEW JOB"

Pay $20 to get a picture of your cat/dog wearing a military uniform. Heh?

This shit's creepy. Links clips of 80s commercials to your keyboard. "e" and "s" are particularly disturbing. REQUIRES AUDIO.

How do you warn humans 10,000 years in the future to stay the hell away from our radioactive waste sites? Call in the anthropologists:
"Any system for marking the WIPP site will have to be colossal in scale. Given the many huge human-made structure in the world today and the many more that are likely to be built in the coming centuries, a marker consisting of a small building or sculpture bearing a standard commemorative plaque is unlikely to be effective... In order to avoid the risk of the WIPP markers being confused with them and ignored (who in the 72nd century is going to bother to have a dedication to some 19th century war hero decoded?), they and their connecting structures have to be conceived of on a scale equivalent to that of the pyramid complexes of Egypt."

Add decorative flair to your bonsai installation.

Here's a semi-in-depth review of "Number stations", i.e. shortwave broadcasts of seemingly random strings of numbers, snippets of music, and amorphous tones throughout the Cold War, almost certainly linked to espionage:
Wikipedia entry
More in-depth article
Samples

Ever wonder how the Italians train for the World Cup?

Coolidge v. Mobb Deep. Castro v. Prince Paul. Shackleton v. Kid Koala. Get your samples here.

Mister Rogers testifies before Congress. No, really. What a cool guy.

NEW!!! SUNDRY WEIRDNESS BROUGHT TO YOU VIA GOOGLE VIDEO!!!!1!
MONKEYS WITH DRUMS!!!!
NUCLEAR TEST AT ENEWATA, HOLY CRAP!!
WHAT THE FUCK??!!!

Land that I love

2006-07-06T09:09:00.000-04:00

Any vacation involving copious amounts of liquor, snakes, sharks, motorboats, and detonating watermelons with M80s will get an instant entry on this website.

/like drinking after a year of thirst

/filled with sharks
//no, really

/thank you President Bush, you fucking douchebag.

Consumption Fuction

2006-06-28T10:47:00.000-04:00

Reasons I haven't posted since February:

1. Tanzania.

2. Benelux (yes, all of it).

3. School.

4. Bicycle.
[photo temporarily unavailable]

5. Other stuff.

More will follow soon. And to Mr. Herring, a belated thank you for my birthday wishes.

WAY TO GO, STEELERS

2006-02-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

Postage Stamps from the Periphery, Part III

2006-02-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

Recently on PostSecret I came across something like: "I used to be an anarchist but now I read the Wall Street Journal every day." Ok, man, what the fuck. Is it your past or your present that you're embarassed about? Why should it be a secret that you grew the fuck up? This post is dedicated to you, jackass. I'll see your reading the WSJ and raise you "taking time out of my day to write the third installment on my bitchin' stamp collection." Really now, just because you called yourself an anarchist and went around your middle school after hours drawing anarchy symbols all over the bathrooms and then went home to listen to L7 and quote Nirvana while chatting on your hacker-wannabe's BBS back when a 14.4 modem was hot shit, doesn't mean you can't eventually grow up, does it? DOES IT?!

Regardless. Here's my continuing tribute to the more arcane and dusty corners of world history.

Mauritius

The tiny island nation of Mauritius, country dialing code (+230), sits quite alone in the Indian Ocean on the other side of Madagascar. I recently learned a whole lot about Mauritius for work, and I can say with certainty that at least one of their customs officials is a thief and a damn liar. Originally settled by the Dutch and named after Prince Maurice of Nassau (that’s Germany, not the Bahamas), it subsequently passed through French and British hands before gaining independence in 1968. It was actually the fifth nation in the world to issue postage stamps (??), and is apparently used fairly often as a setting for Bollywood films. I also have a t-shirt purchased in the capital, Port Louis, that says “Enjoy the Summertime”. Thanks, Roselynd.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Montserrat

Talk about shitty geologic luck. Once considered the jewel of the Carribean, the British territory suffered a 1995 volcano eruption that rendered most of this island severely uninhabitable. Two thirds of the population has evacuated, and the volcano just keeps on erupting. Mother nature’s a bitch.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Rhodesia and Nyasaland

The entire Rhodesia region was acquired in the 1800s by the British South Africa Company, and named for Cecil Rhodes of "Cape to Cairo" fame. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (also referred to as the Central African Federation) wasn’t really a federation at all, but a pseudo-self-governing amalgamation of the colony of Southern Rhodesia and the [you guessed it] Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia protectorates; the move to combine them all in 1953 was calculated to counterbalance the newly-forming, left-leaning black independent nations with the white-run states of South Africa and Mozambique. Eventually Northern Rhodesia said “fuck this” and split off to become Zambia, Nyasaland was all like “wtf, me too” and formed Malawi, but Southern Rhodesia trudged on to become Zimbabwe, only after the white-run government attempted to declare independence from the UK (while still recognizing the Queen) as a last-ditch effort to maintain white rule. This didn't last very long, and in 1979 Mugabe told everyone to STFU and the rest is tragic history…

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Kenya Uganda Tanganyika

These are a bit of a philatelitic aberration [read:HOT], as K/U/T never existed as a single united colony. Rather they were printed for use throughout these East African regions, even though part of the territory covered technically belonged to ze Germans. Tanganyika refers to the area of the African Great Lakes region south of Lake Victoria; originally part of German East Africa, it passed through British hands via a UN trusteeship and became the Republic of Tanganyika in 1962. Two years later it joined names and territory with Zanzibar and is now the proud nation of Tanzania [get it?].

----------------------------------------------

¡Nouveau nom!

2006-01-25T14:48:00.000-05:00

Even Koffi's excited.

Postage Stamps from the Periphery, Part II

2006-01-06T14:06:00.000-05:00

At long last, here's some more stamps from the remote, random, and no-longer-existing nations and territories of the world.

We'll go alphabetically......

Borneo

Borneo is the second largest island in the world
(definitions are important here), and is currently
shared by Indonesia and Malaysia. Back in the day, of
course, nearly all of it was the territory of the
kingdom of Brunei. The deeper history of the island
can't really be summed up in a paragraph (read: too
lazy to transpose), but it seems to have been one of
those British colonies retained solely for the
economic gain of the British [fill in territory here]
Company... oh wait, that's all of them. Still, cool.

/"Payau" meens deer. Apparently the highest cave
entrance in the world is on Borneo, to a
cave called Gau Payau. Inside it's roughly 5 times
the size of St. Paul's Cathedral. Damn.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Cuba

I'm not going to get too bogged down here, either,
because Cuba isn't really the periphery per se. Most
of the other stamps not pictured here are fairly similar,
featuring a) beautiful women, b) tobacco/cigars, or c)
revolutionaries. Um, hell yeah.

Maximo Gomez - One of the foremost generals in the
Cuban war of independence last century. Although he
could have been president, he declined to run because
he didn't feel like a Dominican-born man should lead
Cuba. That's what I call integrity.

Jose de la Luz Caballero - Renowned Cuban professor,
once attempted to construct a magnetic observatory on
the island. Later founded the first Cuban university.

Jose Marti - Everyone likes to think Che Guavera was
some kind of Jesus figure for Cuba and pays capitalist
American dollars to hang flags with his picture on
them in their dorm room, but it was Marti who was
behind it all. After being charged with treason by
the Spanish government, he left the
country, published the Montecristi Manifesto
proclaiming Cuban independence, returned with Maximo Gomez
to lead the war of independence, called the US "the
Goliath of the Americas", and was later killed.
Havana's airport is named in his honor.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Gilbert and Ellice Islands

Discovered by the British in 1764, these islands became a protectorate only in 1892, and later were proclaimed a full-blown colony in 1912. Not much goes on here, though; they were occupied briefly during WWII as a central base during America's island-hopping campaign, and eventually declared themselves two different independent nations (Kiribati and Tuvalu) in 1974. Like many former colonies, these islands were bound only in name, not by any shared culture or ethnicity: the inhabitants of Kiribati are of Micronesian descent, the Tuvaluans Polynesian.

Interestingly, Kiribati is likely to become the first nation ever to file suit in a court of law against the United States for damages incurred by global warming. Most of the nation is only several feet above sea level, and if current trends continue, the country will literally be swallowed by the sea.

Kiribati is also the first nation to enter the new year.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Gold Coast

Now known as Ghana, the Gold Coast was settled by Britain in 1821, although Portuguese settlers had been using the area as an exclusive trading zone for decades. Obviously it was originally named for the extensive mineral wealth in the northern interior, but as time went on the value of the slave trade in the area surpassed gold as the prime economic motivator for retaining it as a colony. Several wars between the British and the native Asante tribe were fought over the course of the 19th century.. you can guess who won. Eventually it was officially recognized as Ghana upon its independence in 1957, becoming the first "black" African nation to achieve independence. Although there were several political upheavals over the ensuing decades, it's now a relatively stable and prosperous democracy.

----------------------------------------------------------

Greenland

Greenland is actually a self-governing Danish territory, although it was held by Norway up until 1815. Apparently there were a few spats involved with the handover, as Norway considered most of the country no man's land and refused to leave; one of the International Court of Justice's first decisions of its existence was to grant the territory to Denmark. The head of state is officially Queen Margerithe of Denmark, although it's administered by a 31-member parliament. The capital is called both "Godthaab" and "Nuuk", which are both fucking rad names for a city.

I don't really know who is portrayed on this stamp, but I have a hunch it's Frederick IX, former King of the Danes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Iceland

Most people can identify Iceland on a map, but beyond Bjork, most people don't know a damn thing about it. It hosts another sweet capital city, Reykjavik, and is home to the oldest parliamentary body in the world, the Althing, founded in 930. The entire population (296,737) is less than that of Richmond, Virginia, but from what I gather, the Icelandic people possess one of the keenest senses of modern style in the world. Do your own research on that one.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Malta

Like Iceland, everyone vaguely knows Malta. I can't really think of a single interesting thing to say about it, except that it hosted a pre-historic civilization that predates the Pyramids in Giza by nearly a millenium. Hot shit? I think so.

I was given several more Maltese stamps by a dear friend, but couldn't locate them at the time of scanning. One of them had a motorcycle on it.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Manchuria

Northeast China. Neat but kinda boring.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can probably gather, I've grown tired of typing. Next post will start with Mauritius....

Eat my butt, Mr. Congressman

2006-01-04T12:36:00.000-05:00

Over the past 24 hours I've been reading a lot about all these Congressmen donating all their ill-gotten gains from Abramoff to local charities.

First and foremost, they're all a bunch of shitheads. Secondly, I've noticed that all these charities are for some lame cause like "inner-city children", "women's shelters", and "hunger". Come on, assholes. Give the money to some real causes:

"Rounding out the ongoing trend of high-ups dumping cash received from embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) has just announced a $10,000 donation to Amnesty International..."

a-ha. ahahah hahaha. Shitheads...

Une petit découverte...

2006-01-02T22:41:00.000-05:00

God bless you...

Alpendub

Not again...

2005-12-20T14:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon we had another protest in front of the main building. Thankfully it wasn't more lame fucking students and hippies who don't know anything about foreign aid... no, these people have some real scores to settle: the Ethiopians. Unfortunately the Ethiopians came to the wrong place. Right up to the wrong place's front door, in fact. It was kinda awesome regardless.

/hoping for a ruckus in my heart of hearts

First, a little background.

Far from the image of an arid wasteland full of starving natives that the media enjoys broadcasting to the west, Ethiopia is in fact a fairly modern country built on the remnants of the oldest Christian empire in the world. Actually it is fairly arid, but whatever, they have some of the most beautiful women this side of Mumbai.

/how do you say "you so fine" in Amharic?

From their independence until this year, things have been going fairly smoothly for the fledgling democracy: good relations with the US, shitty economy that's getting better slowly, pretty much par for the course for any east African nation. But in July of this year, however, the ruling party known as the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) was accused by several external bodies (including the EU) of rigging parliamentary elections. The EPRDF didn't take this criticism lightly, and on at least two occassions over the ensuing months government troops have opened fire on peaceful demonstrations in Addis Ababa. With over 80 people reported dead and another several hundred whisked off to prisons in the highlands, the EPRDF then decides to start a pissing match with neighboring Eritrea over a decades-old border conflict that in 1990 claimed thousands of lives on both sides and led to one of the world's most severe land-mine problems. And to top it all off, they're on the brink of one of the worst food shortages in years. Fickle Fortuna's a fucking bitch.

Suffice it to say that the expatriates around the world are pissed off at their government back home, and furthermore, they're pissed at those institutions that they see as implicitly supporting that government.

Enter the protestors.

/bundled Ethiopians.

Before I go any further, let me express my sincere sympathies to these people. Their country's government is turning from democracy to fascism at an alarming rate, their economy could use some work to put it lightly, and they aren't getting any help from the outside. I understand this. But damn it, do some research on the institution you're about to protest.

In short, they're fulfilling all 3 requirements for a wholly ineffectual demonstration:

1. No focus of message - A) "Injustice anywhere leads to injustice everywhere." That statement makes me feel warm inside, but it hardly makes for a hard-hitting emotion that'll keep me up at night. Call me jaded. B) "[Picture of EDRPF leaders with bullets flying through their heads]" Just kinda creepy.

2. Signs making outrageous accusations. A) "World Bank funds the Ethiopian military" No we don't. B) "Bank/IMF $ = Ethiopian Prisons" False. C) "You have blood on your hands" Tricky one, but I just don't see it.

3. Little or no hint at a viable alternative. "World Bank get out" I'll get into this one later.
----------------------------------------

Alright. In the first 10 articles of the Bank's founding charter you'll find repeated reference to the rule that says no matter who the ruling party or political entity within a country is, it shall have no bearing on the amount of aid the nation should recieve. I think the logic behind this is self-evident: we'll support the world's poor whether they're commie, Muslim, fascist or democratic. Starvation is starvation.

/a hungry Bolshevik child? fuck 'em.

Furthermore, let's get one thing straight: the Bank does not hand blank checks to foreign governments. After a review process lasting months and months, a team of experts makes recommendations to a government on how best their money can be spent towards the goal of alleviating poverty. They're very clear about this. Every single dollar that the Bank either gives or loans to a government is tracked by about 20 different bureaucratic processes, and we're very fucking good at this if I do say so myself. If it is ever found that the money isn't going towards the designated end, the funding stops... it doesn't trickle, it stops.

So, after a quick review of the Bank's Ethiopia country office activities, I've concluded that what the Bank does provide to Ethiopia is a) education [read: school construction], b) infrastructure development [read: road maintenance], and c) agricultural assistance [organic pesticides and training]. Hardly sounds like bullets and prisons to me, but hey, maybe the children are just exaggerating?

/another brick in the wall beats another corpse in the ground

So what about the alternative? What happens if we really were to leave? Some protestors seemed to be making the case that millions of dollars of Bank aid is essentially propping up this government, and that without it the corrupt governments would collapse. Well, this doesn't really happen. Ever. Look at Cuba, North Korea, and pre-invasion Iraq. The logic there is to isolate, cut off aid, and hopefully they'll crumble over time. But the sad and by this point fucking obvious truth is that when we stop providing food and aid on behalf of an oppressive regime, no more food or aid is provided by anyone, much less the government. The population just keeps starving.

So here's an alternative, Ethiopian expats: go one more block down the road and pay our fearless leader a visit at the White House. Go a couple blocks down to the State Department and have some tea with Secretary Rice. The Bank's mission is to fight poverty, while the Bush administration's self-described duty is to "end tyranny in our world" and promote democracy worldwide, apparently at gunpoint if necessary. But oh by the way, while your uncles and brothers and cousins are getting cut down in the streets of Addis Ababa, they aren't doing a goddamn thing about it.

Link dump load-blowing

2005-12-14T12:07:00.000-05:00

time for another damn link dump.

the more time passes between these posts, the more weird, wonderful and terribly lame shit i come across in my daily trudge through the netherregions of teh Internet. it's now been quite some time since i've posted any links, however, and i'll attempt to keep the quality reasonably high. enjoy.

I have no idea what the Number of the Day website is really all about, but I check it every single day.

What happens when you toss a camera in the air with the shutter open? Click to find out. It's probably not safe for the camera, but it's safe to say this is cool.

Everyone's visited these flash sights where you make "music" by clicking on random shit, but this is the first all-dub one I've come across. Suffice it to say you need speakers for this. Nothing obscene here, but probably not a good idea to do at work regardless.

Pretty neat stuff made out of a single sheet of paper.

Warning label generator. Straightforward.

Apparently Value City used to sell African blowdart guns. It's always the stupid ones who ruin it for everyone else.

It takes a big person to say "I'm sorry".

As soon as I win the lottery I'm going to give that pansy bitch who runs the Principality of Sealand a run for his money.

Just this morning I came across a purported CIA-written guide to sabotage of the Nicaraguan government during the 1980s. Something tells me this isn't exactly genuine, but pretty cool nonetheless... if only it were the right-wing governments they were trying to topple.

Here's one of those collective art projects where everyone contributes in real time to the creation of what always ends up as one big scribble. Two weeks ago I stayed up way too late at night playing with this thing; if you're quick enough you can scrawl out messages to see where people are from:
"where r u?"
"Moskva!"
"cool"
"Yes!"
May take awhile to load properly, so be patient.

Despite it being nothing more than a clever marketing ploy by Coca-Cola, there's something kinda neat about the World Chill Meter... apparently the recent coup in Mauritania really has gotten people down.

And finally, some of the best jokes I've heard in a long time. Especially #2.

that's all for now.

PBF

2005-12-08T12:28:00.000-05:00

Rise and shiAHHH

2005-12-01T16:44:00.000-05:00

So whatever, I go in cycles.

But so does the sun. For the past week its angle of outright attack has changed juuuust enough to hit me in the face no matter where I lay on my bed. It's fucking dazzling.

I've begun to document this over the past week. The phone, sitting in the windowframe, sounds its alarums approximately 30 minutes before the rise occurs. I of course have taken to laying in bed again, and no "SNOOZ" button can turn off my reawakening.

/yesterday
// that black spot is, i think, a demon

/today
//all clear

All I need are angels' voices and a big-assed organ.
Seriously.

Ode to the Prime Minister of Mali

2005-11-15T12:15:00.000-05:00

Or, as I like to call him, Big Daddy Ousmane:

Risin' up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive!

So many times, it happens too fast
You change your passion for glory,
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive!

It's the eye of the tiger, it's the cream of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he's watchin' us all in the eye of the tiger!

Face to face, out in the heat
Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry
They stack the odds 'til we take to the street
For we kill with the skill to survive !

Risin' up, straight to the top
Have the guts, got the glory
Went the distance, now I'm not gonna stop
Just a man and his will to survive...

...or at least that's what was going through my head when I saw him exit his limo the other day.

His story.

/workplace ennui

Can I get a hell yes

2005-11-08T22:26:00.000-05:00

Mayor of a great city ---> Lt. Governor of a great Commonwealth --->

you're the man now dog.

Well done.

Google Earth is a lying piece of shit

2005-11-07T13:12:00.000-05:00

...and that's all I have to say about that.

J 8-282 wins the day

2005-11-04T11:25:00.000-05:00

/you win 20 oz coke product

OMFG i won tEH COEK !!! LOL!!!1

Early to rise

2005-11-04T11:10:00.000-05:00

Over the past week, starting at about 7:00 daily, my friend The Sun has been peeking its bright fucking face over the rooftops of the rowhouses across the street, in through my window, and directly into my left eye.

I've decided to embrace it. The past two days I've actually been beating the Sun by a good hour or more... everything is so quiet then.

/gotcha, bitch

It's nice.

J 8-282: the saga continues.

2005-11-01T09:51:00.000-05:00

/drink Coke play again

When this old world starts getting me down...

2005-10-31T00:26:00.000-05:00

I demand roof access. Especially in a city filled to the brim with depressing architecture, the calming influence of a visible horizon always seems to put me at ease. With the help of our kind and toothless neighbor Worthy's extension ladder, I've finally accomplished the last task standing in the way of calling this house a true Home.

/up where the smoke is all billowed and curled
Of course, the Monument is blocked by a church, the Capitol dome is behind a rise, and trying to make out the Cathedral directly beside the setting sun hurt my eyes. Still, serene.
------------------------------------------------------------

/before

/after
...as in after he's illuminated by a vanilla cookie dough scented candle. They were on sale.

J8-282 update

2005-10-26T14:17:00.000-04:00

/drink coke play again

Ay de mi!

2005-10-24T00:19:00.000-04:00

So yeah, it's been a long time.

The War Protest

i.e. What a Fucking Waste of Time. Let's get a bunch of namby-pamby (and I don't use that phrase lightly) idealistic morons together to *really* sock it to the administration! I'm all for the cause, sure, but come on you assholes. FOCUS. Don't march down Pennsylvania Avenue in a big float made of purple balloons with a banner reading "Dykes against destruction" or something similarly lame and expect it to forward the cause. All you did was make the cause seem silly and all the rest of us look stupid. I cannot overstate my frustration with this event. But while I'm on the subject, check out Brad's Brain.

/in the process of getting up to allow the street sweeper to come through

/mm-hmm

Rasputina @ Black Cat

So I've gone a little overboard on the cello rock. So what. These girls take rock and classical to downright sublime levels... almost moreso than Apocalyptica, but in a we're-fucking-beautiful-AND-brilliant sort of way. I suggest downloading a copy of their Melanie cover "Brand New Key" to get a drift of what I mean. Oh that shaky voice...

/she haunts me

Also, their opening band, Tarantula AD, is almost better than Godspeed You Black Emperor, in a we-don't-use-video-just-music sort of way. Check them out.

The State Fair of Virginia

Always a good time...

/don't miss it
//don't be late

My Morning Jacket @ 9:30

...still puts on a great show; too bad their new album doesn't carry the weight after the crowds have gone home. The appropriately named "z"[zzzz] leaves much to be desired, and only solidifies my hunch that they're turning into some crappy post-emo pop band masquerading as alt-country. There, I said it.

To be fair, there are some vintage tracks, like their performance opener "wordless chorus" set to strobe lights and nothing else.

/stock photo, fuck it
//shaggy motherfucker

Henry Rollins @ Black Cat

/that's right Hank, let it all out

He's still intense. Just a bit more rough around the edges.

I'm tired.

The Wrath of Lapland

2005-09-13T00:43:00.000-04:00

Tonight, by the grace of a fickle God, I had the opportunity to witness one of the most unique rock acts ever to pass through this godforsaken metropolis.

Here's a little recipe for awesomeness. Take 4 swarthy Finns. Give them a decade or so of classical training on the cello. Simmer over angst and Metallica. Add a dash of insane Misfits-style drummer, and voila: Apocalyptica.

/from Wikipedia. no, really.

Seated in chairs shaped vaguely like coffins, swirling their 80s hair on every stroke of the bow, gingerly plucking the high strings (of what appear to be antique Stradavarii) one minute and slamming the bows down on the bass strings the next, posing onstage like they were gods of rock... on face value it sounds hilarious -- and it would have been, had they not rocked the fucking pants off everyone in attendance.

/crazy fucking Nords, this isn't normal.

Apocalyptica started their career as a small-town cover band touring Scandavian music festivals, covering only Metallica and, let's face it, riding on a gimmick. Somewhere along the way they piqued the curiousity of Marilyn Manson, who snatched them up to open for his tour, presumably to lend him some sort of musical credibility. Manson strives for the chic goth aesthetic, goths love violins, ergo perfect fucking match. Apparently the Finns grew tired of this and struck out on their own, putting out at least 4 albums with more of their own material on each successive release.

One gets the impression that they've begun digging themselves out of a pigeonhole. They certainly have the talent, but gaggles of rawk chicks screaming out "PLAY UNFORGIVEN" after every song must get old really quickly. Regardless, when they're not stomping around stage during a devastating 4-part solo, they're remarkably timid on the mic. This comes from the fact that every song is an instrumental and their english is crappy. "Tankyu. De next one ees kolt "Somver neer novehr". Whatever, man. Play some more.

/oh come on guys.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really like "hardcore" anything, certainly not metal. But there was something so damn cool about these guys. They make it obvious that their hearts are into it, whether from the ridiculous poses they strike onstage or the sheer technical brilliance of their adaptive approach to the instrument itself. This counts for a lot in my book, as does the half-cocked smile I couldn't get rid of throughout the entire show, a result of "Holy shit, these guys are serious... Holy shit, these don't even sound like cellos... Holy shit, this is a ridiculously good show."

Schlitzed

2005-09-11T22:39:00.000-04:00

Meet Franklin, the star of my recent and fucking glorious stop-motion animation debut entitled The Wrath of Rebecca. Unfortunately I can't find an online host to get direct linkage goodness, but hang tight. A sequel is brewing as well, involving army men and a doll's womb. Yes.

/a cat.

Beyond that, I just don't have anything else. More to follow.

HEY YOU GUYS

2005-08-30T09:35:00.000-04:00

I SO SORRY, I UPDATE REGULARLY NOW.

/at long last, another link!!!!11!!1one

Babagahaha.

2005-07-10T21:45:00.000-04:00

I haven't written anything in a long time, discounting several fake personal ads on craigslist and a shitoad of address labels and several contracts.

Major changes are ahead.

so stay tuned bitches

We hardly knew ye

2005-05-26T20:55:00.000-04:00

Over the past two weeks I've been very very very very very very busy.

I've marked another complete revolution around the sun since emerging from the womb. How about that.

I also went to a NASCAR race last weekend. Through the assistance of some higher ups in the corporate world, we obtained super-special elite passes allowing us unfettered access to the entire complex. Check it.

My phone was stolen and replaced.

I made another video, but sadly have no one to host them anymore.

My catnip and columbine seeds have sprouted, bringing an extra glimmer of joy to the world.
[NO PICTURE AVAILABLE]

Oh yeah, and I'm going to sail all weekend.

= happiness

a sudden wiff of the guitar solo and you're fucked

2005-05-11T02:27:00.000-04:00

so get out of my garden and spare the daisies.

/it gets cheapened by these things [as I've mentioned before]

Rage Against the Starving Africans

2005-05-06T02:38:00.000-04:00

There's nothing I enjoy more than seeing a pierced short-haired hippie girl getting cross-checked by a burly man in riot gear. No, I haven't ever actually seen this, but I bet it would be glorious.

A few weeks ago a crowd of angry people gathered in front of the World Bank headquarters in downtown DC, toting signs with clever phrases like "World Bank get out" and "Adjust This". Now don't get me wrong, everyone looks sexy wearing a bandana covering their face like a Zapatista, and with Rage Against the Machine playing in the back of your mind you're bound to feel like a bona fide badass. But for God's sake, unless you're fighting for your homeland or packing real heat you come across as a bit silly.

/huh?

Meanwhile the hardworking folks inside the Bank seem to view the protest against their life's work with an air of detached amusement. Two days before the protest, I asked one of the heads of the Africa Section how he felt about all the ire directed against the Bank's work. His reply: "They don't seem to know or care very much about real economics." The sad part is that his reply wasn't a jaded defense of what these protesters see as the exploitative and monopolistic motives of the Bank. Rather, it's a tragic fact.

/take them bowling.

So gather round, fuckers. The World Bank's task is to help less-developed countries become less less-developed! You oppose development altogether? Well damn, son, I imagine the emaciated child carrying an empty food bowl would beg to differ! How do you fill the bowl? You do it by loaning enormous sums of money to very poor countries. The idea is that they will be able to pay off the loans by making themselves more economically productive. The countries spend the money themselves on roads, schools, clinics, irrigation systems, and so on. The bastards!!! Over the past few decades the Bank has been investing more and more into "soft" projects, ranging from AIDS awareness in Africa to increasing caloric intake of nomadic farmers in the Andes! The injustice of it all!! Around the mid 90s people started complaining (alas, in some cases rightly so) that some of the infrastructural projects undertaken by the Bank had adverse impacts on the environment and cultural cohesion of the host nations, and the Bank quickly responded to this with increased transparency and a host of new oversight regulations (i.e. publishing a 17-volume cultural impact study of a single dam in Angolia, egad!!). But somewhere over the past decade our generation woke up to the fact that if we dress up like paramilitary guerillas and don gas masks, our chances of getting laid by those cute activist girls shot up dramatically. And besides, it's easy to attack a multinational institution with as threatening a name as the "World Bank," and if Tim Robbins is speaking out against it, then by God it's a worthwhile cause.

/meet Cameroon.

Hey you dumb hippie, here's an exercise: Go up to the next homeless person you see and give them $100, no strings attached. Sounds cliched and happy and utopian, but bite the bullet and admit you would never do such a thing. So think about it: The best possible thing you could do *is* give him the $100, but insist that he spend it on a suit and a haircut and a fake resume from Kinko's, then ask for it back in 1-- no, 5 years once he starts making a paycheck... with $3 interest. The injustice!!!! And the irony, oh the irony! The more stringent environmental and cultural regulations the Bank imposes on the developing nations, the *less* likely the nations are going to be willing to put up with them, and will instead seek inflow from private sources that will bend them over and fuck them harder than they did Argentina (and it *was* private money behind that). Tell the hobo what color suit to buy and how to cut his hair and eventually he'll tell you not to bother and to fuck off.

And when these governments continue to stay bankrupt through gross mismanagement and corrupt governance, who's seen as the corrupt monopolizer? When foreign investors capitalize on the headway made by Bank investment and then pull out suddenly on the whims of the market, who's seen as the destroyer of economies? When the company contracted by the Bank to run a refinery commits a terrible environmental catastrophe and doesn't foot the bill on its own, who gets the blame? When thousands of children are starving in a country that the US doesn't allow domestic aid to flow into due to human rights abuses, who's decried as inhumane? If the UN has taught us anything, it's that it's easy to target a multinational institution for the failings of individual actors. And if calls for worldwide debt relief are answered, who takes the fall?

/haha yeah, good times...

Granted, the Bank should change its way of dealing with certain issues, among them its response to the protests. Calling in the riot police against a bunch of teenagers is only reinforcing the unfortunate image of an opaque and monolithic institution. However gratifying it may be, clubbing some Che-wannabe dipshit over the head with a blackjack is a poor substitute for actually responding to the charges brought against the institution. So yes, I'd love to see [(former)President] Wolfensohn come out wearing Birkenstocks, carrying some herbal tea, talk to these people, tell them why they're misguided, and then play the cello for them.

/no really, he plays the cello.

Yes, it goes without saying that Wolfowitz's confirmation was either intended to be a provocation to the rest of the world or at the very least an act so insensitive it looked like a provocation. The power vested in the presidency of the Bank is limited in almost all respects by the Bank's Board members, and ultimately answers to what is known as the "Washington Consensus", meaning the biggest donors get the most say. Yet somehow protesting the US Treasury Department isn't that sexy.

And after all this, I'm still a liberal. A liberal who's fed up with having to judge people who talk a lot of shit. Go after the WTO, protest at Davos, yell curses at the IMF, but leave the Bank alone.

OhhiiEEEEEyo

2005-05-02T23:42:00.000-04:00

or a testament to the weekend in photographs.

/tired, so tired

You Go Girl

2005-04-27T17:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I saw Barack Obama speak at the National Press Club in D.C.

This man is a badass. We've all heard of the black senator from Illinois with the funny name, but I'm confident this man will be short-listed to run for president in 08. His speech yesterday was an eloquent rejoinder to Bush's social security privatization scheme, and thanks to an authoritative "SENATOR!" from Peter during the crowd rush after the event we got to shake the good senator's hand. Later, as we were lingering in the lobby of the building, he even waved goodbye to us.

Unfortunately it looks like he's giving us the finger, but trust me: we're insiders now.

Tomorrow I will leave for Gambier, Ohio to visit my beloved alma mater and pick up a future roomate.

I've also recently been offered a job in the Africa region of the World Bank, yet have no details whatsoever on the start date or pay.

Tuckahoe Public y'all.

2005-04-24T17:01:00.000-04:00

Due to interior renovations over the past week I've been having to go to the public library to check my email. Only a douchebag updates a blog while others wait in line.

In other news, Kisses from the Confederacy is now up and running. Initially concieved over a bottle of cheap wine and burdened with the hope of being mentioned at least once in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, we'll be following the politics, policy, and above all the bullshit hype that is this year's race for the right to occupy the Governor's mansion (which was, incidentally, renovated by Bob Villa six years ago).

/someday....

Photo Confetti pt. II

2005-04-17T00:34:00.000-04:00

My friend recently returned from a trip to Colorado and brought me back some old photographs he found at a junk shop in the mountains somewhere. Here's some.

This guy doesn't fuck around: You order a beer, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Written on the back:
"Dear Mr Mead- Walt Hall's Bar, Rapid City, So Dakota. -J. Silverman"
After a little research I discovered that this man's descendants donated money to erect a statue of James Monroe in Rapid City's downtown Presidential Walk sometime in the 1990s. That's SO Dakota. But really, how about that.

"Dick taken at Gettysburg." Film at 11.

At first glance this seems like a staid portrait of a typical midwestern home in the early part of this century. But wait-- There, next to the bush!!!
.
.

/not that there's anything wrong with that

I happen to adore this photograph. A classic representation of boyhood innocence, pastoral simplicity, even overtures of the American Dream itself.

ha ha weirdo.

Look closer.

Yeah.
/cheap

--but-----

This photo disturbs me. It's something intangible; the moment I looked at it I just got a bad feeling. At first it looks like a normal sunset w/ sailboat scene, but something's not right.

I've seen quite a few sunsets over water in my time, and never has it appeared stained. Also the light in the sky doesn't correspond to the object-as-sun, as the source of light is obviously beyond the upper limit of the frame. The only other thing I can think of is the first millisecond of a nuclear blast, but this is hardly likely. It's almost as if the negative emulsion itself was intentionally scratched off here. Moreover, that isn't a sailboat in the distance.

It's a lighthouse, and you know that makes it a bit creepier. I can't say why.

Thanks for the nightmares, Pete.

Requiescat In Pace Domini

2005-04-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

My little friend passed away several hours ago. He will be remembered with love and affection.

/inheriting the earth.

Playing God

2005-04-11T22:37:00.000-04:00

WARNING: If you do not want to see enlarged pictures of baby mice, do not proceed. Seriously.

I love daylight savings time. In the autumn you gain an extra hour to fuck around in the evening, and in the spring you get a free bonus hour of daylight just when the weather starts to turn nice. All winter you've been thinking of fun interesting things you ought to be doing, and God finally says "let's see it then, tough guy." You say "sho' nuff, sir" and go outside to spend a pleasant evening in the park.

Almost. He was up to the challenge this afternoon. Through a series of unfortunate events involving a dog, Brother Cliff, a rather girlish scream and a bunch of boxes out back I became the surrogate father of three baby mice.

But by baby mice, I don't mean fluffy little munchkins nibbling on cheese and squeaking cutely. Instead imagine tiny pink hushpuppies with no eyes and several tiny blood wounds. Even so, only an asshole would let them dry in the sun. So with quick action and a little homespun tenderness, I soon had them feeling right at home:

Not quite, apparently. They paid no attention to the lettuce and I later realized that the porcelain plate lowered their body temperature too quickly, not to mention making the whole affair resemble some twisted plat du jour. Sadly, two of them soon expired. I wished I was in the park riding my bike.

It was the only flag I could find.

The third one, however, is a tough little motherfucker. Trying to nudge lettuce down his throat with a pair of tweezers just didn't feel right, and I decided to seek expert advice via teh intarnet. A few mouseclicks [ha] later I was racing to the pet food store for kitten formula, the salvation army for a heat lamp, and then to several pharmacies who didn't appear to believe me when I said the syringe was for a baby mouse. I would have rather spent that time laying in the grass at the park.

No, this mouse doesn't have a name. He has to prove to me that he's tuff enuff 2 stay alive for at least 24 more hours before I'll bestow that honor [read: become too invested]. And I'm pretty sure it's a him; baby mice apparently have a hard time shitting by themselves, so you have to prod their hindquarters with a q-tip soaked in warm water. Unformed and rudimentary, but plain to see. I could have been hanging out with hot girls in the park.

I have no idea where I get off hand-raising a baby mouse, but I believe the scaly material on his fur is normal. Also he's a bit more lively than he appears in these pictures, and I hope his eyes open soon because the effect is a bit disturbing. When I'm feeding and fawning over him it all seems exciting and fun, but then I go to dinner and separate myself from it for awhile, only to come back to find a squirmy little creature living on my dresser. Still, when all is said and done, I suppose I'm glad I never went to the park.

/not dead, just resting.

[gratuitous entry]

2005-04-08T15:48:00.000-04:00

Sorry folks, but absolutley nothing interesting has happened to me this week. Because I need to apologize and write about it.

It was recently pointed out to me that this weblog isn't personal enough, i.e. a diary of sorts where I bitch and whine about my mundane problems like all the other crappy blogs you see on this site. I suppose that's true. So here you go.

Here's my dog.

And I'm leaving for the beach in an hour.

That's pretty personal.

Stay tuned next week for a movie about surfing, fireworks, and de-winterizing an outboard motor.

Have a nice weekend.

Postage Stamps from the Periphery, part I

2005-04-02T20:55:00.000-05:00

Everyone needs to collect something. My mother collects bunny rabbit statuettes, my friend Kellan collects ridiculously large knives, and this one guy I knew in college collected his toenail clippings in a little model train car. I'm not about to wax philosophic about what drives people to collect things of a genre, however obscure or idiosycratic it may seem to others. Over the past few months I've begun a small collection of stamps initially focused on certain island states that I've had a weird fascination with since childhood; the focus of my collection has now expanded to include other tiny little countries and special economic zones around the globe.

I present the fruits of my philatelistic labors, starting with...

Poor little Nauru. Labelled on maps as "Pleasant Island" when it was discovered in the late 1700s, this small Pacific nation happened to be sitting atop the single purest source of phosphates in the world. The boom started around 1921 after it gained independence from Britain, and because of the phosphate mining the per capita GDP of the population was soon second only to Saudi Arabia. Now as those phosphates are becoming exhausted, Nauru's once beautiful interior has been transformed into a barren wasteland, never to be reclaimed and beset by packs of wild dogs. Heart disease has become the leading cause of death among modern Nauruans, often linked to obesity. The government of Nauru has tried one ridiculous scam after another to maintain its economic health, including a one-plane airline, a series of spurious international loans on which it has now defaulted, and now serving as a legally dubious refugee processing point for Third World nations as far-flung as Cuba, Afghanistan and Rwanda.

----------------------------------------------------

Discovered by Captain James Cook, the small volcanic island was named for the Duchess of Norfolk in 1789. Serving as an important resupply point and penal colony for the British Navy over the next two centuries, Norfolk Island is best known for the pine trees that bear its name today. These trees were of great importance to the nautical trade, as their height and strength made them ideal mast replacements. The island is now administered by Australia.

--------------------------------------------------

The Pitcairn Islands have the distinction of being one of the least-populated states in the world, with a population hovering around sixty. Moreover, the majority of these inhabitants are descended directly from the marooned mutineers from Captain Bligh's ill-fated expedition on the HMSBounty. Pitcairn is one of the last true socially "remote" islands in the world; the men of the island still row out to passing ships to collect mail and sell their goods (including stamps, most of which are extremely valuable), and many still retain the surname "Christian" after Fletcher Christian, the alleged leader of the mutiny. An amazing study of the mutiny and Pitcairn's history can be found here. The United Kingdom continues to retain Pitcairn as a colony of the Empire. The envelope pictured below is from the first release date of these stamps, complete with a postmark from the island. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night afraid that I spent way too much money on this. Whatever, it's fucking sweet.

/...and a handsome devil.

-----------------------------------

Ascension is technically one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world at roughly 800 miles from its nearest neighbor in the South Atlantic, St. Helena. The name comes from its discovery on Ascension Day (it's religious) in 1503 by Alfonso d'Albuqurque. Napoleon was temporarily exiled to Ascension in 1815, and over the next few decades the island became a key supply point for ships engaged in the suppression of the African slave trade. In 1899 the Eastern Telegraph Company used Ascension as a stopping point for a direct cable link between Britain to South Africa, and later laid the first trans-atlantic cable from the same station. The Company later became Eastern Cable and Wireless, and to this day employs the majority of Ascension's population (many serve parallel positions as company employees and government administrators). There is also a small US Air Force base on the island, as well as a NASA/ESA satellite tracking station. These are some of the older stamps that the government issued in the 1930s, although many of the more recent issues include pictures of satellite dishes and whatnot. God damn it I want to go there.

/the first cable comes ashore on Ascension.
--------------------------------------------

This one is self-explanatory, and look up the history yourself because I'm tired of typing.
--------------------------------------------

My stamps are awesome.

I'm gwhn'na Nashville

2005-04-01T15:57:00.000-05:00

I spent this past week visiting Brother John in Nashville, TN, self-proclaimed home of country music and sundry weirdness. Over the past 5 days I've purchased roughly $50 worth of fireworks, spat out fireballs of whiskey as big as my torso, almost been run over by a train, and gotten accosted by a 13-year-old whore wearing braces trailed by her wheelchair-bound pimp. No pictures on the last one, it just didn't seem proper. But here are some others.

First night there, and a wonderful introduction to the Nashville bar scene. This is in fact the orginial Coyote Ugly, there are in fact brassieres hanging from the ceiling above the bar, and those are in fact swarthy rednecks and the occasional confused Asian businessman.

John relaxes after an invigorating day gluing together guitars.

The Nashville skyline as seen from street-level.

My cairn by the lake. It took 15 minutes to build and .125 seconds to collapse about 3 seconds after this picture was taken.

Hallelujiah, Globalization arrives at the Nashville railyard!

Hallelujiah, it's the [quite expensive] Country Music Hall of Fame!

Hallelujiah, we're at the top of the Draper Valley where Mary Draper was kidnapped by native Americans in the 1700s and taken to Ohio to live with them, only to be found 15 years later by her husband and dragged back to Virginia against her wishes!

And there it stood, gleaming like a giant white church on the side of the interstate, flashing her neon into the night like a beacon for all true believers. Oh God it was beautiful.

The Crown Motel, or "Tom Waits Motor Lodge", in lovely White Pine, TN. Rooms come with a free Bible and a bar of that "Sweet Bouquet" soap.

The drive back was entirely on state routes, allowing a visit to Appomattox Court House, site of General Lee's surrender to the Union Army in 1864. Closes at 5pm.

No, we didn't see Rocky Top.

c u l8r, bitches

2005-03-25T21:11:00.000-05:00

Well I'll be godamned: another link dump.

2005-03-22T21:14:00.000-05:00

Time for the SuperFun links!!!!! No more boring "slow-joe" humdrum, it will excite me fresh!!!!!!!!

Cats looking at cats looking at cats looking at cats... doesn't seem very edifying at first, but click through about 100 of the little fuckers and it'll all make sense. And then someone who walks up to your desk will be all like "what are you giggling at, let me see" and you'll be all like "uhhh, nothing... really, nothing".
NASA continues to be awesome.
I might like to think I can stencil, but I have nothing on the guy who did his name 10 feet tall on the ThamesLink viaduct. He also tags cattle.
I'm a big fan of the Google Image Search, and this brings me great joy. Type in some words, it makes a photo montage. Try "goatse" and "prom". No actually, don't.
When I was elementary school the DARE officer told us that if you
played any heavy metal backwards, you'd hear Satanic messages. Apparently he wasn't kidding. What he failed to mention was that they also showed up in Japanese childrens' cartoon jingles as well. Creepy, and requires audio.
Hitler disco. wtf, yes. but lol too. Requires audio.
Time for more GoAt-sHiT CrAZiNeSS!!! "THEY manipulate your nightly dreams, through symbols, archetypes, toons or comics, controlling and hypnotizing your behavior in these dreams. YOU KNOW IT."
Animals on the Underground. What else can I say, this is wonderful.
And........ wtf.

Have a good one, nucca.

I'm a sensitive artist

2005-03-20T17:22:00.000-05:00

I am a sensitive artist.
Nobody understands me because I am so deep.

In my work I make allusions to books that nobody else has read
Music that nobody else has heard
And art that nobody else has seen.

I can't help it
Because I am so much more intelligent
And well-rounded
Than everyone who surrounds me.

I stopped watching tv when I was six months old
Because it was so boring and stupid

And started reading books
And going to recitals
And art galleries.

I don't go to recitals anymore
Because my hearing is too sensitive
And I don't go to art galleries anymore
Because there are people there
And I can't deal with people
Because they don't understand me.

I stay home
Reading books that are beneath me.

And working on my work
Which no one understands.

-----------------------------------------------------------

/thanks king missile

I'm the goddamn Easter Bunny

2005-03-16T22:44:00.000-05:00

This week a very special teacher has roped me into basically lying to her 1st grade class and responding to the each of the letters they sent to the Easter Bunny. She gave me this job under the strict condition that I not write anything insulting/degrading/inflammatory, so I'm a bit at a loss for what to actually say. You see, if they had something interesting to say to the Easter Bunny I'd enjoy the ruse, but this...

{sigh}

Dear Katie,

you need to calm down learn to spell and vary your syntax. learn to spell.

Best wishes,
EB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Kasahn,

Funny. I don't recall ever playing with you, that means you're really creeping me out. Stop. You may as well abandon your imaginary friends now, they'll only leave you in the end anyway.

Best wishes,
EB

p.s. Your teacher tells me you have a problem with incontinence. Work on it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Collin,

"Dear bunny, are you a duck." You're either remarkably tuned into the subtle ironies of the postmodern age or one dense son of a bitch. I'll bet money on the latter, but take heart and fake it til you make it, little man. I do like jelly beans. Inside the Easter eggs you will find cologne.

Best wishes,
EB
------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Kaitlin,

Royal blue, competitive sailing, prosciutto, none of your goddamn business.

Best wishes,
EB
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Alshareif,

What the fuc

Best wishes,
EB
--------------------------------------------------------------------

There are many, many more but I'm getting depressed just scanning them in. Happy Easter.

I see dead people.

2005-03-13T01:53:00.000-05:00

Another saturday brought another road trip to Motley's Auction Co., the 2nd best junk store on the planet (see future post on "Shark Shoal Shanty"). Calling it a "store" is a bit misleading perhaps, more like "two quonset huts and a big prefab shed full of old crap". Their photo collection (more like "20 overflowing shoeboxes on a dusty shelf") seems to have been amassed from estate sales over a period of 50 years, so in one handful you have a fading tin type from the turn of the century while in the other you have a full-color snap of grandma getting drunk on the couch back in '89. History is thus thrown into a state of photographic confetti, and even the most mundane subjects, simply by virtue of being photographed, take on an air of importance. The one above, for example, comes from Medan, Indonesia, if the envelope in which it was found is any indication. Here are some of the others I came home with.

Also from Medan.

An infestation.

Old man Stuart and his dog Crowbar.

"And I told him that buying that damn dog made him look a tad effeminate, but did he listen? Of course not..."

She stole my heart away with those boots...

...but I'm left wondering what they're all doing on a roof, as well as what's going on in the back row. A pinched ass, perhaps?

Totally.

And finally, I'd like to introduce the Orsova. Dig the stamp (see future post, "Postage stamps from the Periphery").

A lot of resources on this one; sadly it seems she's dead now.

.

Nat's Occasional Link Dump

2005-03-09T15:11:00.000-05:00

Again, whatever. Here's some links.

I'm a sucker for the cultural inventory thing, here's a guy who's collected and scanned various airlines' [empty] sick bags. From a design standpoint it's actually quite cool.
In retrospect I'm surprised I haven't posted this earlier. Whenever I feel down and hopeless and desperate and generally afraid, this cheers me up without fail. Once inside, click the "g" and then the pink dot. When she cries it's creepy. Requires sound.
Some random good Flash.
"Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara." NASA is just plain awesome. Requires download.
This isn't quite as brutal as the office micro-Claymore, but still effective. Especially the "slow clap."
When I was six or seven I saw my first a-bomb footage, and it scared me more than tornadoes, which was a shitload of terror. From then on I would have nightmares about standing in my backyard looking about the trees towards the city, a huge orange mushroom cloud looming above me. Not every night, mind you, but this site still makes me shiver. This too.
And this site is pretty sinister as well, not in a silly conspiracy-theory sort of way, but a no-really-i-looked-this-up-elsewhere-and-it's-true sort of way. The first two and "Mighty Oaks" are downright scary. Thanks Bush!! Kidding. Kinda.
But of course, here's some fool claiming that there are alien "utensils" on the surface of Mars. Apparently he also thinks that outlining blurry photographs of rocks with a black pen in MS Paint will make this claim more convincing. See below.

oh, i see it now.

Finally, no one likes a camwhore. Certainly not these guys. Really, I have no idea who they are.

That's all for now. But remember kids,

Richmond, my Richmond

2005-03-05T18:43:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you're bored on a Friday night in your hometown? Pose as a journalist, of course.

Once again we headed into the relatively mundane fray that is Richmond nightlife, this time setting our sights on Shockoe Bottom, the ass-shaking club district of greater metro area. After a brief discussion on whether to ask people about condoms or baseball, we settled on getting people to share their thoughts on Richmond as a distinctly "southern" city. Here's what we found.

Guy on Left: "No, I don't really think you can get away with calling Richmond 'southern'. Sure, the history's there, but you got a bunch of conservatives wanting to tear that shit down to make money, the liberals bitching about it, it's kinda weird like that."
Guy on Right: "I have no idea what's going on."
------------------------------------------------------------

"Hell YEAH we're Southern!!! My brother in Alabama thinks that's horseshit, but we got NASCAR. You boys ever heard uh that?? Haw haw! You bet yer ass, goddamnit. Hee-ya."
------------------------------------------------------------

"No. Well, not really. All the old money lives in the suburbs, out there it's pretty 'southern' I guess, leaving the city to the African Americans and the two-bit hipsters."
------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh my God I love this song."
------------------------------------------------------------

"I would say most definitely. Richmond's morally wholesome atmosphere is what brought our band Fallujah BBQ to play here in the first place."
-----------------------------------------------------------

I later fell in love with that girl. Special thanks to Furtive Squirrel Video for hosting the story.

nat gets nostalgic

2005-03-01T22:21:00.000-05:00

here's to the quiet old men from the council estate, to the geezers playing the slot machines, to pretty Naomi and Scarredface Guy behind the counter, always ready with a raised eyebrow, reaching for the cheap taps.

i just deleted 3 long paragraphs about the history of the Unicorn and Nat, trust me they were interesting. i didn't end up working construction at Heathrow, the barmaid was nice, i now own a nice set of darts.

cheers to the Unicorn.

At long last...

2005-02-25T19:41:00.000-05:00

hooray, here's the video from new york.

special thanks to andrea for hosting the file!!

See John rock.

2005-02-22T22:49:00.000-05:00

This is John.

John plays in a band. The band is called Big Nurse. They like to play their songs. Play, Big Nurse, play! They like to travel far and wide and spread their message of love and hope. I like to hear John play. I can't hear John play. I have no money. I have no gas. If you have gas, you can hear John play. Here is where they play.

Mar 5 2005

9:00P

The Pilot Light

Knoxville, TN

Mar 6 2005

8:00P

House Show

Bowling Green, KY

Mar 7 2005

9:00P

Southgate House- Parlor

Newport, KY

Mar 8 2005

10:00P

Elbo's

Dayton, OH

Mar 9 2005

8:00P

Bernie's

Columbus, OH

Mar 12 2005

8:00P

Lemp Neigborhood Arts Center

St. Louis, MO

Apr 2 2005

9:00P

Angle Of View

East Nashville, TN

Big Nurse has a website. Code, Big Nurse, code! You can download some songs of love and hope. See their show. Dance.

Ode to Camden

2005-02-21T21:16:00.000-05:00

[as promised]

magical magical magical weather, sunlight bathes our home

surely i'm up and up forever, sunlight bathes our home

keeping our life and limbs together sunlight bathes our home

back and forth the colours go, where it stops no one knows

sing and sing this together, sing and sing this at home

(amen)

hope you're having fun.

/thanks Clinic

contours of descent

2005-02-21T01:08:00.000-05:00

...the hyperinflation itself resulted primarily from the collapse of the previous free market restructuring plan, as capital outflows led to a sharp currency devaluation. the devaluation meant that the price of imports rose dramatically, which in turn created the environment under which previously controlled domestic prices could also readily increase.

Hoo ha, and Welcome

2005-02-20T16:23:00.000-05:00

Yes indeedy, here we are. Thanks LiveJournal, but I don't see any reason to have to pay for open source code in this Wonderful Blog Experiment of mine, and I hope I'm never associated with angsty 17-year-olds again.

onyx hit me in the face?

2005-02-19T14:15:00.000-05:00

last night we returned to the Raygun for the Prudoosuh's Cup. this entailed consuming cans upon cans of PBR and listening to truly authentic (if not entirely original [yes, work it out]) beats. there were also two horribly misplaced she-hippies from UofR, but the the beats were the main focus of the evening.

it works this way. two amateur "producers" get up on the stage to sit and nod sagely when their beats are played for thirty seconds. it looked something like this:

not terribly exciting on the surface, but diversion spontaneously materialized via the two aforementioned attention-whores who danced around like drunken hippies/giraffes in a sea of utter darkness. i wish i had gotten a picture of these two so i could post it on TipsyBitches.com and make a quick buck, but i digress. as determined by the cries of the audience, the winner of these passive tete-a-tetes gets on the microphone and drops knowledge on top of their own beats and the heads of the audience. this guy demonstrates, and looks as though he's on FIRE AHHHH kidding that's just the exposure:

and then blah blah blah here's a different perspective, you can see one of the flower children near the front of the stage. i don't know why i keep bringing them up, they just really annoyed the hell out of me.

Nat's Bi-weekly Link Dump

2005-02-18T14:14:00.000-05:00

hoo.ray.another.bi.weekly.link.dump

I've been lazy, here are some links.

Who has their finger on the pulse of underground youth movements? Uhhh...Microsoft, that's who? What a bunch of crap.
Ha ha ha ha look at the douche-bag.
Ay mon, de bruvas an sistahs who talk de rasta are lame. But this is amusing; I'm "Judge Demus", wtf.
An article that appeared in the L.A. Times a few days ago, and reason #1832 our Commander-in-Chief is a total shithead. Thanks Bush!!!
Einstein's Theory of Relativity for dumb heds.
More found shit, a spin-off link from the Found Tapes two weeks ago. The notes are teh funny.
Angry at a coworker? Don't want to get the run-around from the senior execs? Try this. But note the last line near the bottom.
Here's an etymological dictionary, it lists everything. Yes everything, I checked.
At first I was like "beat-boxing cattle? Lame." But now I'm all like "Hey, neat." Requires audio.
Though this guy still takes the taco, see above.

have a nice weekend

c'est mon cpu...

2005-02-16T14:13:00.000-05:00

the photo FTP will not work until further notice. damn you norton, symantec, your cursed firewall, a weak wireless network, original-sized files due to laziness, low bandwidth and a couple of trojans I just found. but here's the "civil war" shot, elaborating on the theme of orange:

i suppose i should find a legit online photo service that isn't photobucket. or forget the whole thing entirely.

in other news,

------------------------------------------------------------
From:
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 16:32:03 +0000 (GMT)
To: Nat Adams
Subject: RE: All the TVs in Town por la ukulele

OK here goes.

E G# C#m C
E G# C#m
F# B F# A Am E

Good luck!

Brett
--------------------------------------------------------

and now i'm all like "whatever man"

2005-02-15T14:12:00.000-05:00

see here for pictures of the city, party, etc.

many that were taken are not included on the FTP. they may or may not be posted at a later date. the FTP may or may not be running at any given time, check back later if the latter.
-----------------------------------------------

update

my FTP server is fucked, try back later!

Enlightenment through Google, Part II

2005-02-10T14:07:00.001-05:00

I didn't have to work today, my fingers are now blistered from all-day ukulele, and I'm one bored son of a bitch. Sorry mom.

I've been feeling rather confrontational recently, so here's some more Google fun with a slightly more edgy search string, "I don't even care if". Whatever. {sigh} And away we go...

I don't even care if they don't win!
I don't even care if THEY have guns.
I don't even care if YOU have a gun.
I don't even care if somebody only likes to sail in one wind type, and I certainly don't give one fecal expulsion if somebody spends every bit of their free time counting ounces, sanding fins, comparing specs, working on jibes, and reading crap like this.
I don't care if he hate me, I don't even care if he broke my shit
I don't even care if you are a billion dollar corporation after a freebie!
I don’t even care if my vote counts to Harry Browne; I don’t know him, and I don’t consider him any more or less especially likeable than anyone else.
I don't even care if you know how many disciples Jesus had.
I don't care who you are - I don't even care if I agree with you - like the fella said today, just don't be evil to people.
I don't even care if he gets the death penalty or not, I just want him to be miserable in jail for the rest of his life.
I don’t even care if anyone reads this.
I don’t even care if you’re camped out in the hair-splitting middle claiming you never notice gender at all.
I don't even care if you thought you saw the future, since, when you told me about the dream, either a) you couldn't know if you saw the future since the future would have yet to happen, or b) you were lying.
I don’t even care if Matt B already wrote that first sentence and you couldn’t give two tear-filled indie shits about rap music.
I don't even care if NuTech brings back the porn stars!
I don't even care if I ever talk to you again but your real friends (if you're even lucky enough to have those) should know that you
aren't what you claim.
I don't even care if you hate me (although I can't think of anything I've done to warrant it.)
I don't even care if she sees this, but I like her so much, we have so much in common, she is beautiful.
I don't even care if the termites defeat all of this.
I don't even care if you got the bottle cause I got the BOWL.
I don't even care if I go down for the accessory charge, this girl simply can't be in there, because she's holding my boys baby.
I don't even care if nobody reads my page or drops me a line to say they do.
I don't even care if I'm the only one in this thread defending this post; so be it.
I don't even care if I forgot anything here.

{blink}

But this little ukulele's real....

2005-02-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

For christmas I got an old ukulele. It is awesome.

That being said, if you ever need a surefire way to look like a total nancy, go to a serious music store and ask for books on beginner's ukulele. They won't even laugh, they'll just tell you to leave. After three different attempts I did end up finding a veritable trove of books for novices, and the one I got even came with a CD. Moreover, I've discovered plenty of websites suited to the beginner's needs, now I'm fucking set.

Current repertoire:
Little Brown Jug - trad.
Go Tell Aunt Rhody - trad.
something - los beatles, but minus that one riff
Breathe - yes, Pink Floyd
Everything That Rises Must Converge - handsome family, and surprisingly easy!
and I'm still working on London Calling

so send me $20 and I'll make you a goddamn CD because it doesn't get any harder core than churning out the Clash on nylon strings, fohcker.

hell.yes

Another weekend antique extravaganza

2005-02-07T14:02:00.000-05:00

...

Nat's Weekly Link Dump

2005-02-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

As banal as this whole temp thing is, I'm grateful for the opportunity to waste a large corporation's money on ever-increasingly ridiculous pursuits. I get paid $14/hr to look up my own ancestry, conduct ground-breaking research on "artistic" water tanks, and... screw it, this will just freak you out.

The lesson here is that chimpanzees are awesome, and so is this round-up of some (by no means all) of the more interesting cages in the internet freakshow I've stumbled upon over the past week:

Some guy has recorded and posted found cassette tapes on his website. I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, just the other day I found some negatives in the grocery store parking lot, will post them when I don't have anything better to do than make a website devoted to them.
Writing a novel? Sending death threats by mail? Use this name generator to come up with randomized names allegedly based on census data. Unfortunately I've been having a hard time with the character development of "Guy Nigh" and "Eve Sen".
There's nothing funny about truly psychotic individuals, but every now and then you come across some poor idiot so quaint and absolutely goatshit crazy you just cubes makes infinity sense because 4 sides + top + bottom = square earth and barren children. Pray for humanity.
Then again some ridiculous drivel is sanctioned by our elected officials and makes me want to laugh and kill someone at the same time. It was published on R-PA Rick "Dick" Santorum's website before people realized it makes him look like a conniving douche-bag and took it down.
Speaking of which, www.sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com. The name says it all.
Here are some slow-speed videos of really quick shit. My favorite is "flabby thigh getting punched".
Golly! [furrows brow] What the hell.
How to hack Coke machines. WARNING: only for the truly l337 hax0rs w00t w00t!!! Pretty neat nonetheless.
Flash animation done well.
Flash animation done poorly.

time2dance, bitch

meh.

2005-02-03T13:59:00.000-05:00

all.your.freedom

are.belong.to.us

Goths are alright.

2005-02-01T13:59:00.000-05:00

Last night Peter and I attended Goth Night at a club deep within the sorrowful heart of our fair city. Far from the morose D&D NIN-listening slackers brooding on the bleakness of this life we remembered them being from high school, we found that goths are actually a pretty fun bunch.

When I say "a pretty fun bunch" what I really mean is "goth chicks are hot". I've always been a sucker for pale-skinned brunettes with tears tatooed on their faces, but slap a tight vinyl skirt on their forlorn loins and I'll sing KMFDM by moonlight anytime she commands it. Sure it might sound a bit sexist, but I never found Trent Reznor's screeching whines particularly stimulating until they were accompanied by the undulations of a corsette-wearing tangly-haired mistress of darkness out on the dancefloor.

Closer to God? No my dear Azrael, you're just really pretty.

Goth males are a different story altogether. On one hand we have the creepy guy in the white t-shirt and slacks who just lurks in the corner and looks faintly menacing all night like Dylan Klebold incarnate, and on the other we have the hardest-core Snow Nazi wearing fishnets, a mink coat and a military officer's hat rubbing his hands all over his pale sweaty chest like he was driving his own nine-inch nail into some young buck back in jolly old Stuttgart. And between these two extremes come everyone else, the fat goths and the black goths and the guy wearing the "Foetus" world tour t-shirt. Husker du, mein fraulen! Imagine the musical Cats but instead of cats the actors play dead mimes and instead of coming into the audience to sing and dance they just writhe around and write gloomy poetry on their LiveJournal.

It is a night of subtlety, a song of sorrow,
wolves vent their pain. The ethereal one
awakes.

I don't know. They aren't all that bad, and to their credit they've got their hearts into it far more than the assholes who think that turning a baseball cap sideways gives them any sort of credibility in a youth sub-culture. I've certainly never met a mean one, and one of the only three bona fide goths I've ever had a real conversation with wanted to be a physician's assistant [Paging nurse Dark Chylde, please report to the maternity ward]. At the heart of the movement seems to be a sincere middle finger to the status quo and some scary skulls thrown in for good measure, but somewhere between Poe's "Annabelle Lee" and the Cure's latest album the movement became mired in a sinkhole of self-caricature. Hell, I was friends with a bunch of these kids in middle school before they went to the dark side, now they've found a niche just like everyone else and if it involves silver crosses and blood, big fucking deal. And perhaps beneath all my glorification of goth chicks is a latent desire to be a goth chick myself, like an after-school special where the kid in the wheelchair discovers that the treasure he's been looking for has been inside him all along.

No one feels my pain.

But this is just stupid.

2005-01-31T13:58:00.000-05:00

"The Kurds, Shias and Sunni all voted YES on today's referendum of Peace, Love and Understanding. Once the ballots are fully counted, electricity and sanitation will be restored. Iran has agreed to not interfere. America's economy is doing great, their education and healthcare systems are top-notch, and Social Security is heading for a major crisis. The Iraqi Security Forces are stronger than ever."

...

Enlightenment through Google.

2005-01-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

I've been reading a lot of articles today on the death of famed architect Philip Johnson, and the phrase that not one article fails to mention is that big fat lazy-assed term "post-modern". I'm sick and tired of hearing people bandy it around without explanation or reference, and was wondering if a simple Google search for "so post-modern" could illuminate the meaning of a term so many people love to casually drop. Let's take a trip through the more erudite reaches of teh intarnet...

"And your friend said “that’s so post modern” and the tour guide said at the same time 'designed by Michael Graves.'"

"It's so post-modern to say post-modern."

"The post-modern paradox: This statement is not so post-modern."

"Or maybe we have grown so post-modern like the French that a simple "that was the last straw, not we will make you pay" is too simplistic for our pseudo-sophisticated ruling elite and intelligentsia." [wtf? -ed]

"And, darling, exposing your html like that is just so post-modern."

"I'm so post-modern it hurts."

"But why do I do it when I realize it’s so wrong? (you’re so post-modern)"

"But the display is so post modern for its subversive duality; angry and yet yearning for some sense of harmony, corrupting and still pure in its own right."

"The film is so post-modern in the fact that the film is like a story within a story."

"When we tend to think too highly of our most "modern" readings (be they ever so post-modern), it might be useful to recognize that learning exegesis is nothing."

"We are so Post Modern that we don't realize how Post Modern we are anymore."

"I mean, that whole beginning, middle and ending narrative thing is like, so Modern, but I'm like, so post-modern, and all I need, baby is like, some coffee."

"The Radical Chic are so post-modern, the annals of inevitable Marxist history so awaiting a maestro's contribution to the final victory of the people, well, all of mankind, or what's left of it after the Revolution, will be on their knees at the United Nations thanking these gods of music and philosophy and science and post-Marx history." [again, wtf. -ed]

"It’s so post-modern!"

"Throwing caution to the wind, I thought I’d get so post-modern on your ass that I might possibly melt into a babbling puddle of self-referentiality."

"Handsome Boy Modeling School is so post-modern ironic it's possibly already retro kitsch."

"And, of course, ever-so post-modern pastiches that have their tongues shoved so far in their cheek that they sometimes ends up licking their own ass."

well shit! who knew?!

file under "wtf"

2005-01-25T13:56:00.000-05:00

oh.hell.yes

Fun hurts, or "Dude, I'm gonna surf it down"

2005-01-24T13:52:00.000-05:00

This picture was taken in a moment of incredible physical pain.

In keeping with my habit of doing things because I feel I should be doing them [as opposed to wanting to], I decided to go out sledding yesterday with Jeremy.

Most of what little snow we received over the past few days has now been frozen over by a good 3cm layer of solid ice, and this should have been our first clue. Our "sled" was a flimsy styrofoam slick-bottomed shelf of sorts, and enabled us to run run run to the crest of the hill and then pile on in a fashion far more graceless than those Jamaicans in "Cool Runnings". I had envisioned swift soft rides a la a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, but the noise of a 2-person person-shelf scraping down an icy slope at 35mph is in fact terrifying, like 100 jetplanes underneath you except they shoot out freezing pebbles of ice instead of dazzling flames.

We eventually moved on to the much larger hill at the local country club, which we figured would allow us to elaborate on our "run and pile" repertoire of riding styles. After numerous test runs we managing to perfect the "laying backwards", "sitting backwards", and "whooping like a jackass while pretending to steer" styles. The one we never quite achieved was the "dogsled homo race" which involed standing upright on the back of the sled hanging onto Jeremy's shoulder-length hair. Every attempt ended in disaster, much to the chagrin of the other grown men who had brought their children sledding that day and were afraid of the influence of our words and actions.

I am moving from right to left here. Always, always wear gloves.