1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?Got paid for something I wrote.2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions and will you make more for next year?Sort of, and yes.3. Did anyone close to you give birth?No.4. Did anyone close to you die?Depends what close means.5. What countries did you visit?In person--none.6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?More weapons...
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Friday, December 29, 2006
This week, I find myself rearranging and reorganizing for the New Year. Usually, I have someone nagging at me to do this, but I find that the habit finally took. Over the past few days, I've been slowly going through and clearing out all the things cluttering up my psychic RAM. Here's one of them. During...
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
You thought because of the holidays, I was too busy to rip off Nick Hornby's playbook. You were wrong (though I didn't think I was going to post this before today). Last week, I read...Fritz Lieber, "Gonna Roll the Bones"Robert J. Sawyer, "Biding Time"J. Robert Lennon, "Dead Roads," "Election," "The Current Event," "Claim," "Opening," "Copycats," "Town Life," "Rivalry," "Get Over It," "Composure,"...
Me, that's who. You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize. You're Avante Garde Indie. You listen to abstract music like free-jazz and Krautrock. You drink too much coffee and you scare the fuck out of the rest of us. We're afraid to call you pretentious because we know that we all just don't get it. There...
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Soul Icon James Brown Dies at 73by Renée Montagne Morning Edition, December 25, 2006 · Singer James Brown -- one of the most influential popular musicians of the past 50 years -- has died at 73. He had been hospitalized over the weekend in Atlanta, suffering from pneumonia.Current Music: James Brown, "The Big Payba...
Monday, December 25, 2006
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Simultaneously supported a local bookstore and a local author.I can now feel good about being a consumer at the height of the season of consumerism.We'll be away for the next two days. Back Monday (maybe). Merry Christmakwanzahannukah and try to be nice to one another. Except if a stranger rudely rolls up on your table and starts messing with your stuff. That person needs to learn a lesson via...
What the hell possesses people to walk up to a stranger's table--a stranger with earphones and surrounded by books, papers, and a laptop thereby giving a reasonable impression of being busy-- and ask "What're you working on?" while picking up a random book from said table?And, unsatisfied with my initial response "Stuff," acting like HE'S being put off when he got the response "Personal stuff" to...
Friday, December 22, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Apologies to whoever I ganked this from...Do you snore? I never used to, but ever since I spent two years in Appalachian Ohio, all of a sudden I'm sawing logs on a nightly basis :(.Are you a lover or a fighter? I'm a lover until someone pisses me off.What's your worst fear? The clowns coming out of the mirror.As a kid, were you a Lego Maniac? Maniac was the operative word. Comments were made about...
Monday, December 18, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
I really, really didn't want people over last night. Of course, I changed my mind and my feelings about it as soon as they got there. It was fun as always! But, I'll tell you, after these past few weeks at the Diamond Mines (for a variety of reasons), I've been needing a place to hide and recover every day. Even my usual haunts were useless, between the holiday shopping season and finals week...
I re-read through Nick Hornby's playbook more thoroughly, so as to more thoroughly rip it off. Last week, I read:Raymond Carver, "I Could See the Smallest Things"Raymond Carver, "Sacks"Raymond Carver, "The Bath"Raymond Carver, "Tell the Women We're Going"Larry Niven, "The Jigsaw Man"All those stories came out of two books: Carver's collection WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE and Ellison's...
I've heard it said (but never to my face), "God, why can't you people...I mean, people...let that 'Little Brown Brother' stuff go?"Because we're always two-and-a-half steps away from stuff like this happening in real life..."The Terror Alert Levels: A Brown Person's Guide"by RT SehgalOh, you don't think so? Wait 'til the first Filipino comes along who does something stupid, looking for his 72 vi...
Friday, December 15, 2006
Per the editor...So American Nerd's just going to sit as a static site now (and itactually still gets a surprising amount of traffic for something thathasn't been updated for months-- people just want to read aboutChicago and beading, I guess).I understand that this is the way of things, but it's still sad.EDIT: The spawn of AmNerd lives on: Raketenwerf...
Thursday, December 14, 2006
...how racist Mel is? Does anybody really care? If so, I can't imagine why...No, I'm kidding. I do. I haven't seen APOCALYPTO yet. Truth to tell, I'm generally turned off by movies (read: the theater-going experience) nowadays, anyway. But I didn't decide to not see Mel's movie because of anything he said during his rant. Sure, that's easy for me to say. My people have only been stepped on...
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
I just found out that I won lottery entitling me to purchase a gently used, five-or-so year-old Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop for $50 from the IT department of my place of work.But the choice: Keep it for myself as a backup server (Hey, 20GB of hard drive and 900mHz processing is nothing to scoff at) or give it (docking station and all) to my computer-less sister. Or, sell it to one of the five people...
Monday, December 11, 2006
I wish I could say my hazy memory of Paul Hardcastle's "19" resurfaced when I heard this NPR report. But it didn't. It pops in and out of my head at random, but it finally stuck after I heard...Soldiers Say Army Ignores, Punishes Mental Anguishby Daniel Zwerdling All Things Considered, December 4, 2006 · Army studies show that at least 20 percent to 25 percent of the soldiers who have served in...
It looks like The Wife's income is going to get cut in half next semester at The Other School on the Hill. I'll tell you, she didn't waste to much time. She's on the hustle, even now, looking at leads.We're not gonna starve or anything, not even close (at least not for a couple of months). We may have to do without new high-end consumer electronics after the new year, but still...EDIT: What is...
Thanks to Blogger beta, I...Got tags on posts going back to late '05. Still got a lot to go.Edited some tagsGot updated versions of all the widgets I had on my old templateWhat can I say? It's some nifty stuff they got on here, now. I've had to slap my hand away from all the full length del.icio.us and YouTube widgets I could potentially cram into my sideb...
Sunday, December 10, 2006
I have to admit, I was about to give up blogging. Not necessarily because I ran out of things to talk about. But, I needed to make this thing useful again, a means through which I can take care of my bid'ness.After three years, it became pretty useless as a means of storing and linking information for me or anyone else to review later, unless you wanted to troll through the archive pages. Seriously,...
I admit it. This week I didn't even crack Nick Hornby's playbook open. I'm just winging it. Last week, I read:Alan Dean Foster, "Venting"Isaac Szpindel, "From Gehenna"Brian W. Aldiss, "The Night That All Time Broke Out"Me, "The Evil of the Recidivist"Howard Rodman, "The Man Who Went to the Moon--Twice"Philip K. Dick, "Faith of Our FathersA few weeks ago, I shelled out $7.99 for a paperback anthology,...
Formerly Known As "My Weekly Personality Analysis," thanks to the new labels feature.With which great bass player do you most identify?Jaco PastoriusEarly career backing the Temptations and Supremes. Moved on to work with Pat Metheny and Weather Report. Probably the best technician ever to play the bass.Click...
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Dusting off, but not opening, choosing to go strictly by my fogged, hazy memories of Nick Hornby's playbook, I give you last week's reads.When I was with the family over the Turkey Day holiday, E and I made the trip to Half-Price Books. There are a fair amount of used bookstores in Ithaca, some that really do...
1All of my electronics have now moved into the 21st century. I can backup my laptop five times over. And I can plug a total of 8 USB devices into it, including my video/mp3/FM radio player.I don't know how I ever got by with that 128MB piece of crap player I had. This thing has been my saving grace in a crowded space with the family during Turkey Day, on bus rides with stressed out students from...
I only lie for the sake of consistency. Anyway...You are the Hanged ManSelf-sacrifice, Sacrifice, Devotion, Bound.With the Hanged man there is often a sense of fatalism, waiting for something to happen. Or a fear of loss from a situation, rather than gain.The Hanged Man is perhaps the most fascinating card in...
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