Some Words

Waiting for law school to start up, and pottering around around getting moving stuff done, I’ve ended up watching a fair amount of History Detectives on PBS. The show is about people investigating artifacts from the past to see if they have any historical significance. You questions like, “Was this rifle owned by Herman Goering?”

The show, once you get into it, can be fun, but I don’t understand why they chose “Watching the Detectives” by Elvis Costello for the theme song. On the surface, sure, it makes sense. Yet, when you look at the lyrics of the song, you start to wonder. I’ll just grab a scrap.

They call it instant justice when it’s past the legal limit.
Someone’s scratching at the window. I wonder who is it?
The detectives come to check if you belong to the parents
who are ready to hear the worst about their daughter’s disappearance.
Though it nearly took a miracle to get you to stay,
it only took my little fingers to blow you away.

It seems a little dark. The show often borders on goofy. Even when the story is about something dark, they keep it light. Every time the heavily edited theme comes on, mangling one of my favorite Costello songs, I can’t help but laugh.

There are very few times in life that you can look to and say, “Now I know that ‘x’ book changed my life.” Usually, whatever way a book might have changed you is subtle and insidious. You never notice the choice you made or the shift in your reactions.

Today was not like that. My reading of this BBC article was changed by having read Haruki Murakami, I’m not sure for the better. My initial reaction, upon reading that the knifing happened on the same day as another knifing from 2001, was to think that it would be a Murakami story in a few years. A lot of his work is about finding order and shape to the seemingly meaningless events that surround us. Once the matching dates came in, it just felt like one of his stories. Combine that with an increase in mass stabbings… and well, I start to feel a little guilty thinking that way.

From the man who brought you Republicans for Voldemort* comes a new t-shirt. Fox Lies. You probably don’t want to wear that unless you’re in a fighting mood. Fox viewers are like Yankee fans. No matter what’s going on, they think they’re an embattled minority that just keeps winning, and makes everyone else jealous.

*The spell check wants to make Voldemort ‘Demoralizer,’ seriously? It can’t get something three letters away, but it gives me five suggestions for Voldemort.

Twitter!

I’m late to the party again. This post I’m linking is old. Thankfully most of this party, the twitter part, is not one that I want anything to do with. If twitter really does take off, it might just be a sign that we should let global warming or a meteor strike step back in, so that nature can go back to the drawing board.

Seriously, are people that insecure about their own actions? I know I post some banal stuff on this blog, but at least I take the time to think through the banality. And does someone really need to know if I’m doing my laundry? If they did, wouldn’t it be faster to just call me? I have a cell phone, now.

The perceived utility of this thing is such that even if it did only what it was supposed to, and human nature will make sure it won’t, it would still be destructive. We don’t need to make the cultural signal to noise ratio worse.

Q: “Did you hear what Bush said he would fight the subpoenaing his aides?”

A: “No! I was reading that one of my friends was going to the store to buy cat food, and another was going to see 300, and another had a strange pain in his left side that he didn’t think was serious. He probably pulled a muscle. Oh! And my roommate just twittered that he’s leaving the apartment…”

Dear God. Please, all of my friends, do not use this thing. I will write you a letter, I will read your blog/myspace/live journal page. I promise. I’m only half lying.

While I was home for the holidays, I had a chance to check out the TV that my mother had bought. It was a wide screen HDTV. I took the opportunity to watch some classic movies on TCM. There is something about old movies, and I am not alone in this, that makes me sit still, almost regardless of how bad they can be. The wide screen only added to this effect. This leaves me in the position of contemplating a shiny new TV, to watch old grainy black and whites. There’s something about them, and I can’t help thinking that the nostalgia for the experience that movies used to be is it.

The latest New Yorker had an article on the state of the movies. It contemplates movie theaters where I might get a good martini, sit for a while and chat or read a book. Then I’ll wander into the theater and watch a movie. Not only does that appeal to me, (Cocktails and the movies? Together?) but it also makes me excited, like the author, and probably naively, for a future in which the movies can something close to what nostalgia tells me I wanted them to be, with smaller budgets, that don’t risk as much money, and some better plots wouldn’t hurt, but who am I to talk.

This video has hijacked my brain. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it over the last week and a half.

Lessig posts about copyright extension in Britain and my rss feed pulls it up. This happens just as I hit “remind me again in 2 hours” for an iCal popup, which was telling me to work out. My personal physical fitness program and Britain’s laws on copyright. Who would have thought that they’d be the same policy?

Over at Fabulist, they have found the pretty and wish to pipe it into your homes. The post says it’s creepy, I don’t know that it’s hugely so, but it is cool.

Hockey Pre-Season has started. Today the Wild beat the Wings 2-3. My consolation is that the Wings only dressed something like two members of their team last year. The wild had Demetria and Gaborik on the ice, plus Fernandez in goal. It was frustrating driving to work today, as I had to go past the Xcel Energy Center, where the game was played. There were no broadcasts of the game that I could get either.

Boing Boing seems to have started in on a project using what amounts to micropayments. I was never quite sure I bought into the guys at Goats debunking the idea. Still, I don’t know of anyone making it work very well so far. Good luck to Boing Boing’s Emporium. I would love to think it will be a huge success. It’s a great sounding model when you belive it works.

Back in the day I had an incredibly crappy web page, where from time to time I would post thoughts and things I had written. It was like this blog, but without php making things easy, nasty graphics that I had done myself in photo shop, and even less frequently updated. I can tell you’re all wondering why I’m not an internet phenomenon already.

Anyhow one of the things I wrote about back then, was how I wished there was a service, either a little program (the sort of thing that would now go in the OS X dashboard) or an email service, that would aggregate all the bands I wanted to track so I would know when they were coming through town. A lot of bands had sign up lists, but it was not consistent, and usually they would just send out a big tour schedule. I’m lazy and I wanted it to feel personal.

Well, yesterday the good folks of Fabulist let me know that such a thing now exists. Tourfilter, and here I link the Twin Cities portion, but it’s there for a bunch of other cities. Lets you track who’s coming to town. They send you email notices and if you want to, you can post it to your blog. And oh, what’s this I see? It can integrate with iCal and thus end up in your dashboard. Now I have even less excuse for why I don’t go to all those shows I miss.

So David Brooks pumps out the crazy and gets smacked the fuck down. Balance is restored to the world. But does anyone but me remember the speech he made to a Young Republican group last year that was broadcast on C-Span? I mean, I feel really dorky admiting that I was watching C-Span for more than the two seconds it takes to get past it while channel surfing. But one day, I don’t remember why, I stopped there. David was there, playing the usual role of Republican apologist in chief. He was going into the usual stuff about the ‘burbs growing and feeding the Republican machine.

That’s when things got sureal for me. He stood on the podium and basically said that the Republicans had screwed a bunch of stuff up. Then he said something that amazed me, and I’m paraphrasing here, I would give anything for the actual text, it was the gold standard of ‘what are you thining.’ He said that Republicans had shown themselves to be bad at governing, but it was ok, because the demographics were set for them to continue getting elected. Now, I’m probably crazy, because I’ve been taking hippy drugs here at work all day, but if you say that you’re bad at governing, maybe the solution is not to govern? Play to your strenghts man! He said Dems were good at governing (ish, again, I’m paraphrasing here, he probably weaseled around on it more) but the Republicans were better at getting elected. There is an obvious solution here.

Republicans should be campaign managers and let the Dems to the governing. Hey, I didn’t say it. I just twisted a half remembered speech by David Brooks into saying it.

Via Boing Boing comes a list of 20 great Japanese adds.

Ah, but it does not have the ad that an old friend who went to Japan told me about. It’s about a toilet bowl that has a tab of cleaner dropped into it. It’s so happy that it breaks free and rolls through the streets of Tokyo proclaiming its joy. Sadly you tube does not seem to have it. Searching for ‘happy toilet’ gets mostly people puking on their birthday. Happy toilet to you all.