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Cremaster 3

Went to see Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 3 with Mike, Josh, Minette. Not sure it’s worth trying to describe this experience of astounding unreality (watch the 35MB QuickTime trailer for a shadow of its gorgeous impenetrability). Amy and I had seen bits and pieces of other films in the Cremaster series at museums and had found them tedious, but I realize now the key is to be in the theater, immersed, rather than watching excerpts on video with tired feet in the middle of a museum day. Barney’s stuff has an addictive internal logic, even if it doesn’t connect to the world at large in any meaningful way. I’m still wondering what he and Bjork named their baby.

Music: John Renbourn :: Buffalo Skinners
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Vinyl Again

Between the years 12 and 24, more or less, I lived with a Pioneer PL-A35 turntable. All of my formative musical experiences ran through its tonearm. It was part of the landscape of every bedroom I inhabited. Not sure when or why, but it ended up in my mother’s garage, gathering dust for 15 years. When I rescued it a few months ago, the main bearing was frozen solid. The Sound Well in Berkeley said they had a cut-off point beyond which they refused to work on vintage turntables (parts too scarce), and I didn’t make the cut. They suggested a hole in the wall called Handy Electronics. Finally got there today — one of those places with torn apart toasters and VCRs everywhere. Broken English. But 24 hrs later it’s in perfect working order and I’m reunited with the turntable of my teens. Such a physical feeling to slide an LP from the sleeve. Such a short period of time before you have to turn the damn thing over :)

Music: Vinyl!
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Uninterruptible

90-minute power outage in North Oakland this afternoon. Of course I’ve been swearing I’d get a UPS installed soon, and of course we had an outage before I got to it. Just the kick in the pants I needed — I’ll be ready for the next one. Sorry about the downtime.

Music: Moby :: Straight to Hell
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Peter, Paul, and Mary

Is it just the SF Bay Area, or this happening everywhere? In the eight months since Miles was born, I haven’t met a single baby named John, Michael, Amy, Cathy, etc. “Normal” names are just plain old out the window. The babies in Amy’s mommies group are named:

Asa
Eliana
Miles
Simone
Ariel
Amelia
Shiva
Liam
Ruby

Is it the same deal in Durham, Fort Lauderdale, Madison, Akron… ?

Music: Air :: Electronic Performers
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Mirror Writing

Unplug the mouse from the right side of your keyboard and into the left (or vice versa). Use it. Not just for 30 seconds but all day long. Shocking how difficult this, like mirror writing. Start by feeling like you’re stumbling across the surface of the moon. Then move on to more subtle annoyances, like wishing scrollbars were on the other side of windows. Overall, it’s a realization of just how lopsided your brain/body patterns have become with time (I’ll wager this experiment is harder the longer you’ve been using computers).

Creeping pain in forearms/elbows has me looking for ways to minimize onset of RSI difficulties.

Music: The 5th Dimension :: One Less Bell To Answer
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Chicken Transformation Set

The finest in cat costumery, these Japanese feline threads are guaranteed to impress the most discriminating haberdashers. Nice Engrish, too!

It is made from the two-tone felt cloth of yellow and orange, and even if it takes, it is finished to the pop impression. Please observe the feather of the chicken currently attached to the both sides of a hat.

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For the first time since the image went up in 1994, I have been asked how to obtain permission to republish the big boot. Answer: It’s clip-art. Go to town.

Music: Sydney Bechet :: Indiana
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Mass Encoding

Beginning to plan for the move, and decided it was time to do something about all the CDs in this house. If we listened to one CD a day, we wouldn’t repeat a song for about four years. I like having lots of music at my fingertips, but the space sacrifice for all these CDs is silly. Now that Amy is comfortable with the SliMP3, and now that I have the Wiebetech for large-scale backup, and now that iTunes has lifted the 32,000 track limit, decided to get serious about digitizing and selling off discs. The initial goal is to get rid of 1/3 the CDs in the house, which means a miniature emotional battle fought over each one – I’m very good at justifying why any particular disc I haven’t heard for five years is still important. Nevertheless, making good progress. This will get harder after cherry-picking the low-hanging fruit (nicely mangled metaphor). Sticking with 192kbps for almost everything, dipping to 160 for pre-1960s low-fi stuff.

Music: The Three Suns :: Smoke
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EMFs

Some initial concern about high-voltage power lines near our new house and associated possible cancer risks from electromagnetic fields. This was a hot topic in the mid 90s, then died down by the late 90s. People probably got tired of results being so inconclusive.

The National Cancer Institute produced its own epidemiological study in 1997 which found no association between childhood leukemia and measured magnetic fields. As a follow-up to this report, The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of this study along with an editorial calling for an end to wasting money on EMF research.

Today our home inspector went back and took some readings:

Magnetic Field readings in milligauss on my TriField Meter – 5/25/03

1 at my desk, 2 feet from computer screen, 4 feet away from 3 florescent bulbs.

10 touching my computer screen.

100 about 6 inches from the center of a florescent bulb.

100 about 3 feet away from the high-voltage power lines on the outside of the power pole.

100 where you turn off from Moeser into the Safeway parking lot.

10-20 on the sidewalk along the side of the house on Richmond

20 driving up Moeser under the high voltage power lines.

Music: Ron Carter And M.C. Solaar :: Un Ange En Danger
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Permission Redux

Once again, I find myself replying to email with the following boilerplate response:

Hi – To ask for permission to link to a resource on my site or anywhere on the web demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what the web is, how it is built, and what makes it work. I decline permission because it is not mine to give. On the other hand, if you do not ask me, then of course you have permission — that’s the way it’s supposed to work. If people had to ask permission every time they linked to something, the web would never have come to exist, would never operate as an open exchange of ideas and information. Imagine if every synapse in your brain had to ask permission to make a connection with any other synapse. If something is online, you are free to link to it, end of story. Please read this for more information.

Music: The Beatings :: Jailhouse
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The Joy of Lyrics

philm points out that the BBC has done a piece on misheard lyrics which refers to my own sadly neglected kissthisguy. Weird quotes in there about how sites like mine are technically illegal, which makes no sense since kissthisguy only quotes 3 or 4 lines from songs, not entire lyrics.

Music: Steve Hillage :: Searching for the Spark