1.25.2009

i feel like i'm documenting a reality that nobody cares to see. the dj
needs to play some kanye.

1.22.2009

i don't know about this

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.


i've never been particularly impressed with college humor dot com. this comes across a little forced.

sorry there haven't been more serious posts. i was going to qualify that with 'recently', but there haven't been many at all. soon to be remedied.

1.20.2009

1.17.2009

a view from the people mover


dreary january 15th while joy riding around the d on the greatest monorail outside a themepark.

Posted by ShoZu

this freaks me out to no end

friday night

sunny and i at the emory.

1.14.2009

the rusty liver winter beer tasting

 
best in show for me was noel de calabaza by jolly pumpkin. 
Posted by Picasa

i heart speculative fiction

i feel like i haven't been reading enough. i mean, i read a few hours a day, but not the right kind. i'm hungry for literature. short fiction is like a delicious snack for my brain. the second person perspective is fresh.

BLDGBLOG
has alot of good content. i'd recommend checking it out.

from BLDGBLOG:

Found Sound City

There's a building somewhere in New York City: every time you go there – maybe it's a bank or a department store or the office where you work – you hear what sounds like air-conditioning equipment, a distant droning noise in the background that you can't quite place.
But it's always there – maybe sometimes higher pitched than other days, but always audible.
One day, though, you happen to be there with some friends and you've got a videocamera. You're filming each other goofing off, playing in the stairwells, and so on – but when you get back home and begin to watch the video you realize it's actually quite boring. Making faces at a camera is not as interesting as you'd hoped it'd be.
So – overlooking the fact that this would not actually be possible – you begin to fast-forward the video at 4x speed, then 8x, then 16x, then 32x – and you realize, with a collective gasp, that that droning sound in the background is not a drone at all but a piece of music played slow to the point of unrecognizability. It's Beethoven, say, or Jimi Hendrix.
Someone is playing incredibly slow music, like a kind of acoustic glacier, inside the building. It's avant-garde Muzak.
You go a little crazy upon discovering this, however, and begin to make field recordings all over Manhattan, recording drones. You stand in alleys, beneath trees in Central Park, and inside abandoned warehouses, capturing ambient background sounds on tape. You visit the airport, deliberately seek out traffic jams, and illegally access basements on the Upper East Side.
And for the next six months you sit and listen to all of them at 32x speed – 64x speed, 128x speed – convinced that this world has strange music embedded in it somewhere and, if only you use your equipment right, you can find it.

tn: McManis Cabernet Sauvignon

Calvin, my salesman for Arbor Beverage Company, was wondering why sales of McManis have slowed since I took over at Western Market. There are a few reasons, the most obvious being that I have never had any of the McManis wines. Maybe it's my responsibility to try them, given that they are one of our better selling brands, but I can't bring myself to buy California Cab Sauv when there are so many other things I'd enjoy more. He took it upon himself to get me a bottle.


The wine pours a deep red color, not over-extracted, and rather translucent. It has a powerful yet enjoyable aroma of berries. The taste is rather fruity, but with enough structure to make it better than most of it's ten-dollar-a-bottle-california-kin. It is certainly inoffensive, unless your some natural wine geek *cough*, but isn't actually annoying or undrinkable in any sort of way. I hear that it is made in rather large stainless steel fermentation tanks, which are lined halfway with large oak planks, which the country of origin is unknown, and rather unimportant, to me at least. As fruity as it is, this wine will drink better with some American Colby or Cheddar, and would be best with a big, medium rare burger with cheese and the works. This wine should be quite appealing to most anybody looking for a safe California Cabernet, especially at ten dollars.

If you want to play it safe, take this to a dinner party or barbecue, as long as yer not hanging out with snobs or geeks. If you want to have fun, take Chateau d'Oupia, which is only a dollar more. This brings me to the biggest reason the McManis brand has slowed down: I've worked really hard at making Western Market a place where it is safe(r) to be adventurous. I would buy 2007 McManis Cabernet if I was at some creepy backwoods party store with only Beringer or box wine, but given the wealth of interesting, engaging wines at a similar price point, why not try something new? If i'm not in the store, shelf talkers and placement can guide you towards a wine that will satisfy and delight, as long as you drink with an open mind.

1.13.2009

paul krugman makes astute and well spoken observations.

i wonder when sentiments like the one below will become 'fashionable'. from the comments:

I have an uncomfortable sense of déja vu — the Obama administration will be just like that of Clinton — so much promise, so much hope, squandered. Just one disappointment after another.

— m. doe
there's already a certain smell in the air that tells me that people will recognize our system is very broken.

i've seen the future, and it is bright.

noah shared this video with me:



and makes me want to live again, if living means writing. i've been living, maybe too much recently, and this night at home is long overdue. for a rather incomplete history, check out my twitter, or encourage me to write and post it. it's a sea-change and this needs to be the record. more to come.