de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est

hm.

Worth a moment of silence.

So I feel some memorial should be made of the passing, at long last, of my venerable Compaq presario 1510. A whopping 32 mg of ram, when we still used megabytes, and a Pentium 1 clocking 150mhz.

The powersource was bad, it had no ethernet. But it had serial ports. Wow. In its last days it ran BeOS like a champ, a tiny netBSD kernel, and OS/2.

Warp, baby, warp.

And BeOS was the only one worth running on it.

No glorious story, I just needed a spare screw, so I tore the old beast apart looking for one.

Farewell!

Respectable.

More importantly, stable. My current, albeit overly customized linux clocks a 14 second boot. Good enough for government work, I suppose.

Can you find the ram slot?

Reasons not to use the acer aspire one, and, frankly, the only reason.

To upgrade the ram, you have to completely disassemble the machine, take out the motherboard, and add ram to a slot on the bottom of the board.

Preferably in a clean, static free environment.

North is north and south is south

And the twain rarely meet.

Dunkin' donuts is now taking Nashville by story. Unlike dd's in the nyc metro, here when I dash in and bark out "medium coffee light and sweet" they have no idea what to do. I had to interrupt a small conference of employees to teach them that means "with cream and sugar, pretty please".

Also, kinda scary, my receipt here carried a blessing.

Home sweet

Or bongo at least.

This will be a curious trip, as all adventures are. But coming back to this porch, where I always return, well, it's something.

Many stories, many friends, many romances started and ended, countless cigarettes, a few thousand cups of coffee, and my power chair in the corner of the porch.

And, nod to el jefe, green onions.

раскулачивание!!

Still Red october, I realize, and I have failed to update on the progress of the Communist revolution of the house GOP.

Because, alongside other matters and political questions, I have been trying to find, quite desparately trying to find, an answer to this:

What the hell is an "elite?" They seem to come in so many flavors right now, liberal elites, east coast elites, university elites, media elites, liberal media elites, mainstream liberal media elites... though i was briefly thrilled to discover that Caribou Barbie appeared to make a momentary discrimination and distinction between the "elite" and "regular" media this weekend, only to realize it was Tina Fey speaking.

As a Republican apostate and or marxist republican I assume I'm an elite. This is nice! Though I always hoped "elite" status would involve making more than $15,000 a year.

But then it occurred to me: yes, all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again.

So what exactly is an "elite"? кула́к.

That seems to be it, huh? Best go ahead and slaughter the cattle now, the purge will be coming any day now.

It is wrong, but I don't care.

So perhaps, as his meanness declares, purple is the new red and blue. And maybe in a post partisan world, it makes sense to find a Hudson news and a peet's coffee in the same airport.

Oh god I'm so happy right now.

I hate airports, yes. Air travel too. But several thousand feet over Indians it occurred to me - there's a Peet's in cincy. No skyline chili, mind you. But peet's!!

Peet's is noteworthy for one reason. They have good coffee. I mean good. Really good. not starbucks "good", where you convince yourself it's worth the high price and burnt taste and silly jargon I tend to call "starbonics". Peet's is just good.

There was a brief and ridiculous 15 minutes of fame for the nor Cal coffee favorite. As the world watched the O.J. Trial, judge Ito insisted on having Peet's brought to him. With props to the Fugees, I can judge a coffee like ito judge a verdict.

I can't emphasize enough that I am right now a happy man. And the fact there's a dank and wretched ill ventilated little room across from peet's where I can not go through security and smoke only improves things.

I may just stay here in the cincy airport. Who knows.

Delights of postmosdernism.

There is some intense charm to Absurdist theater, something that let's you suspend all disbelief and just lean back and laugh - for life is not a paragraph, nor death a parentheses you know. Especially when that theater is the supposedly "real" of life and love and politics. It's like living in a movie! I keep thinking, wait, this is too bizarre, things like this only happen in books, or bad french films. Like the miraculous reversals of my fortunes, miracle pharmaseuticals, The Drama, or, as the ultra realist of most careful deliberation has named it, Dramasaurus Rex.

One of my professors will quietly admit holding dear the gift someone once have him, a tee shirt with Picasso's Don Quixote that reads, "postmodernism saved my life".

Ah yes. It's hip to be pomo. But what is it? Oh, who knows. Three possible approaches: Lyotard, from "The Postmodern Condition", says it is the breaking apart of master narratives. Whether that of liberalism (the thing in the 19th century, folks) or what have you. The narrative structures and controls, so the story of Bob and Sally in Anytown is as much a controlling device as it is an explanation.

Or it is fragmentation and taking seriously the many bits of the puzzle, no longer as parts of a whole but a heap of broken images or a rat's nest of rhyzomes.

Or, with jameson, it is the present trying to think historically having lost all historicity. To wit:

Miss Alaska to Katie Couric: "if having god in the pledge was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me. "

Ah, yes. Postmodernism saved my live. When I was a modernist these things gave me ulcers.

Breaking news! House republicans declare the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Washington, DC: in an unexpected move this morning, congressional republican leaders brought an abrupt end to bail out talks, the presidential race, and a la carte lunch options by declaring the beginning of the worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat. As part of the new measure, triumphal peace parades featuring the entire American nuclear missile stockpile will begin touring, the largest ever government expenditure on art has been ordered to construct a 7 mile high statue of Reagan, and federally funded schools and offices will only serve corndogs and tater tots, staple favorites of the average, hard working American.

Welcome to red October, or, may those who do net learn the lessons of history make fools of themselves in tommorow's vice presidential debate.

A rant may be soon forthcoming, as a response and contribution to the ever brilliant pie and policy Blog. But this news item is of note and deserves immediate mention.

I really do think the house GOP has declared the dictatorship of the people. World communism at last!

Really, folks. Check the spin. First, all of a week ago, there was a post-partisan yet bi-partisan economic bailout attenpt, quickly turned into a McCain campaign bailout, which eventually went through the sausage grinder and became a palatable compromise. Until the ideologcal core of neoconservatism, the house republican study committee, decided to embarass the republican president, and its presidential nominee.

First, claims of bravery and conviction. Or was it first, blame Nancy Pelosi for being mean? Some jumped the gun and went to the telos of blame: Obama! But as Macbeth said when he clued in that the woods really were moving, oh yeah, and his wife died, there would have been time for that hereafter.

But now, red October indeed, the spin is this: it was the will of the American people. Universal turnout and universal sufferage in the biggest referendum ever. The voice of the American (it's always and increasingly modified, n.b.) People has spoken.

This makes the GOP the vanguard party. Welcome back, lenin!

Maybe she'll disappear too?

This paragraph from the LA times kind of threw me for a loop. Partly because it's dead on.

To McCain's incarnation of this powerful archetype has been added the sidekick Sarah Palin. Palin mobilizes a powerful and unusual -- powerful partly because it is unusual -- supplementary combination of myths. She is Annie Oakley, the sharpshooter who foolhardy men underestimate at their peril even if she has a penchant for tall tales. But Palin is also Wonder Woman, the super-heroine whose exploits and attractions appeal to both sexes. And she is Aimee Semple McPherson, the onetime revivalist and moralist of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. In the imagination of her followers, Palin is some combination of Glamour, Outdoor Life, Playboy and DC Comics.

Poor Sister Aimee. I keep writing about her, and it's so much fun, but the poor troubled soul shouldn't be dragged down by association with Caribou Barbie.

So I'll let Pete Seeger talk trash about her. "The Ballad of Aimee Semple MacPherson":

Oh, have you heard the story of Aimee McPherson?
Aimee McPherson, that wonderful person,
She weighed a hundred eighty and her hair was red
She preached a wicked sermon, so the papers all said.

cho:
Hi dee hi dee hi dee hi
Ho dee ho dee ho dee ho.

Now, Aimee built herself a radio station
To broadcast her preaching to the nation.
She found a man named Armistead who knew enough
To run the radio while Aimee did her stuff.

Now, they had a camp meeting out at Ocean Park
Preached from early morning 'til after dark.
Said the benediction, then folded up the tents,
And nobody knew where Aimee went.

Now, Aimee McPherson got back from her journey,
She told her tale to the district attorney.
Said she'd been kidnapped on a lonely trail.
And in spite of all the questions, she stuck to her tale.

Well, the Grand Jury started an investigation,
Uncovered a lot of spicy information.
Found out about a love nest down at Carmel-by-the-Sea,
Where the liquor was expensive and the loving was free.

They found a little cottage with a breakfast nook,
A folding bed with a worn-out look.
The slats was busted and the springs was loose,
And the dents in the mattress fitted Aimee's caboose.

Well they took poor Aimee and they threw her in jail.
Last I'd heard she was out on bail.
They'll send her up for a stretch, I guess,
She worked herself up into an awful mess

Now, Radio Ray is a going hound;
He's a-going yet and he ain't been found.
They got a description, but they got it too late.
'Cause since they got it, he's lost a lot of weight.

Now I'll end my story in the usual way,
About a lady preacher's holiday.
If you don't get the moral then you're the gal for me
Cause there's still a lot of cottages down at Carmel-by-the-Sea.

ok, I suck at blogging these days.

But what can you do?

So, there was a debate. My plans to watch it fell through, through the serendipity of a lovely late friday nap, and instead I listened on the radio. Like I do with ball games. Baseball is a sport best seen in the imagination, and radio is the perfect media for the national past time.

But I was curious how kennedy/nixon the whole event was. Note the following from John Dickerson's article in Slate:

There was lots of great body language to read. Obama looks down when he's saying something unpleasant—like delivering an attack on his opponent. Obama looked at the audience more (as Kennedy did in 1960), McCain talked to the moderator (as Nixon had). When McCain was talking, Obama looked at him, like he was a listener. McCain stared straight ahead when Obama was speaking, which at times made it appear as if Obama was scolding him for denting the car.

Now, as we all know, most of us having not been there, those who watched the Nixon/Kennedy debate on their newfangled TV's thought it was a landslide for JFK, radio listeners thought the reverse. Of course, and as expected, the criterial equivalence for victory today is simply ideological correlation. J-Mac said cut spending, no pork barrel, no new taxes, victory victory victory, and Obama is liberal. This translates quickly to some as firm leadership, composure, whatever you like. The same can be said for Obama, of course. I'm not going to say that the man I'm cheering for "lost."

But. For those of us out there in radioland, with your home team moving from right to left across the radio dial... [As they used to call the games on Hockey Night Canada]. Quite a difference. Given my PoMo temdencies to see allsigns detached from referents, the whole picture of the debate, the orchestration and the image, is lost, instead just words.

Of course, words account for little. Tonality communicates much more, as all communication studies have shown. So beyond the words-as-sign, particularly of doctrinal orthodoxy, what is left?

McCain utterly shocked me.

With just the vocal, the sign-words were more transparent. The "pork-barrel" lines are so tried and tired in republican discourse. Last november John McCain had a commercial on the topic, pointing out that he was the one man who can save washington from spending like a drunken sailor. And, good rhetorical hyperbole, he pointed to some of the most (rhetorically) aggregious examples. Oh, the bear dna project was mentioned in that commercial, but it paled a second or third following his invocation of the dreaded "Bridge to Nowhere."

Funny how that one's not on the list of rhetorical hits anymore.

McCain was too robotic in these lines, on the radio at least. With just words there was too much contradiction. On Iraq and Afghanistan, the oft-repeated "Obama just doesn't understand" was, at best, condescending. Positing that Obama doesn't understand the difference between a strategy and a tactic - I would first ask McCain to review what notes he has from Annapolis on Carl von Clausiwitz to refresh his own memory, assuming he took notes -- but to say that Afghanistan requires a new strategy, which is the strategy used in Iraq, this is a logical contradiction. That's troubling.

McCain's first comment shook me the most. On the radio a tired and creaking voice intones,"there's a lot of things I'm not feeling well about this week..." Obama was forceful vocally, and McCain came across as defeated, tired, old.

God forbid he should need to hand things over to Caribou Barbie.

Delete

Is actually another button on this phone. Oops.

The club sandwich

This is it. The club sandwich. That for which I have been working these many months.

A damn fine meal it was.

Plumber appreciation

Also mustache appreciation night.

Debonaire!

Wow. When life throws you a Thursday, sometimes you have to go an extra hundred miles to make the most of it.

The details may not be fit for public consumption, but a shout goes out to James, sasha, her sister, alexa, cali/indy, jen, her bf, Alison, nick, Dave, the two girls from the tattoo factory, dude in the sunglasses, cyberpunk girl (who knows how I like my Manhattan), that chick in the toolbelt, and the other one, bank girl and her Michigan crew, my dude who got the shirt at ragshop, and of course the princess.

On the otherhand, whoever decided on "fake blood and animal mask" night, just hope we don't meet in a dark alley.

Little coffee iced cinnamon roll biscuit things!

Wow! Random yummy baked goods appearing in my kitchen! Made in my own kitchen even! Not made by me! And, as if it couldn't get better, with coffee icing!

Mermaid

The memory of this poem has long been in my head, I read in once, a good 14 years ago, and the twin ronson butane lighters have been knocking about in my head since.

Mermaid
by Robert Lowell

1.
I have learned what I wanted from the mermaid
and her singeing conjunction of tail and grace.
Deficiency served her. What else could she do?
Failure keeps snapping up transcendence,
bubble and bullfrog boating on the surface,
belly lustily lagging three inches lowered--
the insatiable fiction of desire.
None swims with her and breathes the air.
A mermaid flattens soles and picks a trout,
knife and fork in chainsong at the spine,
weeps white rum undetectable from tears.
She kills more bottles than the ocean sinks,
and serves her winded lover's bones in brine,
nibbled at recess in the marathon.

3.
Our meetings are no longer like a screening;
I see the nose on my face is just a nose,
your bel occi grandi are just eyes
in the photo of you arranged as a figurehead
or mermaid on the prow of a Roman dory,
bright as the morning star or a blond starlet.
Our twin black and tin Ronson butane lighters
knock on the sheet, and what they are,
too many, and burned too many cigarettes. . . .
Night darkens without your necessary call,
it's time to turn your pictures to the wall;
your moon-eyes water and your nervous throat
gruffs my directive, "You must go now."
Contralto mermaid, and stone-deaf at will.

4.
I see you as a baby killer whale,
free to walk the seven seas for game,
warmhearted with an undercoat of ice,
a nerve-wrung back . . . all muscle, youth, intention,
and skill expended on a lunge or puncture--
hoisted now from conquests and salt sea
to flipper-flapper in a public tank,
big deal for Sunday children. . . . My blind love--
on the Via Veneto, a girl
counting windows in a glass cafe,
now frowning at her menu, now counting out
neanderthals flashed like shorebait on the walk. . . .
Your stamina as inside-right at school
spilled the topheavy boys, and keeps you pure.

5.
One wonders who would see and date you next,
and grapple for the danger of your hand.
Will money drown you? Poverty, though now
in fashion, debases women as much as wealth.
You use no scent, dab brow and lash with shoeblack,
willing to face the world without more face.
I've searched the rough black ocean for you,
and saw the turbulance drop dead for you,
always lovely, even for those who had you,
Rough Slitherer in your grotto of haphazard.
I lack manhood to finish the fishing trip.
Glad to escape the beguilement and the storm,
I thank the ocean that hides the fearful mermaid--
like God, I almost doubt if you exist.

Hokkaido

For some who remember this was the source of my .sig file long ago. For others, take from it what you will.


Fiddler Jones
By Edgar Lee Masters

The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor."
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

King of the road

Because, as some have noted, I should have occasional changes in photographic subject.

And an adventurous trip to Nashville. Further escapades await.

New! For 2009!

The hottest calendar for the new year, featuring white chicks in the suburbs doing work on large American cars. Badly. With little help from those standing around, generally heckling, laughing, or giving photographic direction.

Note how the wind catches her hair, obscuring the look of disdain and contempt.

Wait a minute. . .

Those glasses and that jacket look awfully familiar.

huh. Theology is really useful sometimes.

curious that I fall so (comparatively) low among heretics.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Extreme
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Extreme
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Extreme
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Extreme

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Who knew?

That eyeliner could get you such results? I should wear makeup more often!

the metaphysical conundrum: splitters or lumpers?

Which is really a question of compartive liturgiology. But! A fine use of time right now trying to determine if it is better to sublimate my twitter status and my gtalk status into a single entity (since updating my gtalk status is entirely useless most of the time, but no one really notices twitter). I do not like the unification of twitter feeds and facebook status messages, simply because multiple channels of communication are good. I have colleagues who do not necessarily need the level of detail in my twitter feed, but it's there if they want it.

So ultimately why do I bother trying to sublimate twitter/gtalk/facebook status, not to mention this damn blog and my pretty useless tumblr account? Hmm. Perhaps I shall just leave it at conflicting and disruptive multiple currents.

Or, short version, twitter wins, gtalk looses.

ready, you know, on, you know, day you know

Hillary to the Philladelphia Daily News, in what should be a retraction of her account of a daring landing amid sniper fire and evasive maneuver's (when in reality it was a normal landing and she had a photo op with a kid on the tarmac):

"I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

too bad "you" coupled with "know" have to be said so many thousand times a day. And has anyone noticed that quantity is now replacing experience? The number of blacked out pages of schedules, the number of warehouses that could enshrine her papers, now, you know, the, you know, number of, you know, words?

An unexpected gift

Grey, Cold and snowing this evening. Not at all unusual.

The other morning I was enjoying breakfast at a local studio. I was chatting with a charming and insightful woman named Ann Bowers, a local artist, about public art and attitudes toward it. At one point she stopped and said, "I am going to give you a gift, because I think you'll appreciate it."

She told me about spending a day with her daughter, having a similar conversation. They had been talking about black and white photography, and lamenting that it appears less and less now. And she told me that as she was stepping out of her daughter's car, into the cold and looking up at the sky, she realized a gift. She was living in a black and white photograph. The greyness of the day, the dirt and grit of an old city, trying to hide behind the glossy presentation. The shine of worn and polished chrome or steel.

All of it takes a certain vision, all of it requires a moment that sacrifices the rest of a temporal spectrum. But truly this was a gift, and one I much appreciated.

You are so money, baby, you don't even know it.

So a great time rolling with Tudawggz in Pittsburgh. Met a lot of cool people, learned a lot about buying a woman's sweater.

There are indeed good reasons for the devilish grin Jason is sporting in this shot. . .

Hoboken.

Where a man in a boa is rightly assumed to be from cali.

ready on day, when?

Hillary in tonight's debate, answering the question, "Do you know the name of the next president of Russia": "Mah..me.. meand... whatever."

South bend weather

Believe what you read.

lake effect

Long long ago, when I first came to south bend, I went to the South Bend Chocolate Cafe with a lovely person and ordered a "Lake Effect Mocha." I thought this was a charming way to deal with lake effect snow - rename the white chocolate mocha "lake effect." However as it has been two months of lake effect snow this calendar year, continuing and ever continuing as I write, I no longer find it at all charming.

tundra

So I've had the flu for the last week. Bad enough to make me walk out of a class... and, having been stuck at home for several days, too tired and weak to really do anything, sunday I finally felt well enough to leave the house.

And stepping outside, all I could see was blowing snow, the biting wind driving microscopic ice crystals into everything, ridges and dunes of snowbanks shifting around. Welcome to Siberia.

Needless to say I went back to bed.

Why do I even bother. . .

Wearing a fez when everyone else looks better in my hat? (a crappy picture, sooner or later I'll learn how to use my cameraphone...)

good gutsiness!

Almost finished fully restoring the computer. thank god. Somehow, something went different this time through -- everything, EVERYTHING! is working! Networking with WPA and NetworkManager, hibernation and power management, graphic drivers (haven't tried compiz/beryl, which is fine. why push my luck...)

so soon and very soon I can reappear on facebook, read achewood, resurrect my tumblr account... woohoo.

really shows that it's a slow, cold, rainy day...

Hatch show wine!

Any good? Who cares. A wine inspired by hatch show print.

(yes, this is at a mardi gras party. yes, Dave is studying greek)

gutsiness!

after about a month of silence, I have returned... for those of you who don't know, I had a hard drive crash, and there's some apic / lapic bug with my computer and the newer ubuntu disks. I am finally about 97% restored to my preferred state of ubuntu now...

And the whole world watches Iowa

What a frightening thought, itsn't it? And I have people on the ground in Iowa, more or less dependable types, who understand they owe me favors and promised to carry an election for me. I should have stipulated that if I don't get the caucus results I want from Iowa, I at least want an autographed baseball from the "Rapid Robert" Bob Feller Museum in Van Meter, IA.

But I can always go there myself... Come on Iowans, do us proud.