Broken Start

2009-03-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

Two things.One, I suppose we should consider it a small mercy that those freecreditreport.com ads haven't inspired an actual, charted novelty hit. Unless they have, but please don't tell me about it.Two: the Georgian Eric Wareheim?

2009-02-05T18:34:00.000-08:00

Songs To Perform Psychic Surgery To, Or Withone of a seriesBattles - "Tonto"At night, in my car, parked and sealed off from the world; when this song starts its long slowdown I start to worry my heart is going with it. This part doesn't feel written, but a natural consequence of physical laws of momentum and resistance.

2009-02-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

Bruce Sterling is usually a moderately prolific blogger, but today he was totally all over the place. Proof that every bust is somebody's boom. And also our full-scale global freak-out demands some Bruce Sterling or Sterling-style explication.

2009-01-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

Essential discoveries of 2008:peach yogurtYogurt in general, but have you tried this peach stuff? What other basic foodstuffs am I out of the loop on? Now I am anxious and worried about this. See also "I bet there are some books written that I would like only I haven't heard of them."Pictures of Sad ChildrenThis thing here.iPod TouchI'm pretty sure these Apple guys are on to something with this

2008-11-14T00:09:00.000-08:00

A few thoughts on Christmas on Mars: It is surprisingly subtle. It is, as you really ought to expect, walking a fine line between buzzy craziness and humane simplicity. And it is on occasion very funny.Anyway, I sort of expected, since there was an alien in a Santa Claus suit, you'd get some sort of key moment involving him, but there wasn't, or not such as I was expecting. And in retrospect I

2008-11-07T15:06:00.001-08:00

". . . but at least I've got my blueberries with me."My top three bands of 2008:The Fiery FurnacesAnimal CollectiveThe Hold Steady(Extra top band of Quarter Four '08: Mount Eerie)Conclusions derived from too little data:2008 is the year I lost all interest in personally identifiable narrative.Or at least I don't have any obvious ins to songs about tough-luck street kids, ship captains, or

2008-09-16T02:25:00.000-07:00

I had just finished reading Infinite Jest for the first time, after being busy all weekend with hiking and friends, only to hear, from Neal Stephenson, that David Foster Wallace killed himself.(Not that he was telling me personally, but he had some thoughts to share at a book reading.)This is a disaster.

2008-06-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

"I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodiesI saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVsMy brain hurt like a warehouseIt had no room to spareI had to cram so many thingsTo store everything in there"July 1st marks the five year anniversary of my grown-up employment.

2008-06-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

Some possible birthday playlist entries, listed in random order:"Forever" - Circulatory System"I Was Born (A Unicorn)" - The Unicorns"You Are a Runner and I am My Father's Son" - Wolf Parade"I Don't Want To Grow Up" - Scarlett Johansson"Moving to L.A." - Art Brut"Shrivel-Up" - Devo"Older" - They Might Be Giants"College" - Animal Collective"Bury Me With It" - Modest Mouse"The Glow Pt. 2" - The

2008-02-19T21:54:00.000-08:00

Terminators < Cylons

2007-12-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

Many unpleasant byproducts of today's design industry last thousands of years; but what things do we want to last that long? Who besides the Long Now and Yucca Mountain designs things to last 10,000 years?Unorganized thoughts: History, really deep history, is fantastically interesting to think about.The heart of the problem is that, outside certain generalities (people are going to need to

2007-11-24T17:14:00.000-08:00

Future Spime WishInjecting RFID tags into my pets, in pursuit of recovering them when lost; my recyclable consumer goods, in pursuit of not drowning in an ocean of garbage; my person, in pursuit of, I don't know, waving my arm in front of a door to unlock it or something, or letting my government retrieve the bulk of my corpse after an unfortunate run-in with narcotics traffickers; all these aims

2007-07-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

In college, a friend of a friend was into Neko Case and The New Pornographers, and had downloaded this video, which happened to be my first introduction to the band. And I thought, hey, that's a catchy song.Years later, The New Pornographers are somewhere in my top fifteen favorite bands, and I've been watching this video for the first time since then. I'm not sure what exactly I thought the band

2007-07-08T21:17:00.000-07:00

I've been posting some pictures I've been taking with my cell, in case anyone is both interested and unaware.Right here.

2007-06-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

Oh, hello there, and welcome to the Institute for the Creation and Preservation of Neo-Antiquity. You'll have to excuse the mess. Here at the ICPN-A, we're always looking for new ways to most efficiently pursue our goals of retroactive symbolic certification and the study of decaying surfaces.Recently, we've received a sixteen million dollar grant from the New England Society for the Advancement

2006-12-15T23:21:00.000-08:00

This will not make me appear cool at parties.Regarding Lost: So now it seems clear that at least certain visions/hallucinations/messages are in fact coming from the island, or the black smoke (Cerberus?). Locke has equated the two, which makes sense to me, but his interpretations of island mysteries have not led him where he thought they would in the past. At any rate, one could now, if one had

2006-12-13T20:20:00.000-08:00

Regarding House: does anyone else kind of want the detective to win? I mean, I buy into the show completely. It isn't that I dislike House, at least not as a TV character. But something about him getting his comeuppance just feels satisfying.

2006-12-08T21:47:00.000-08:00

The thing is, when enough dust builds up in your computer, apparently it explodes. I mention this by way of explaining where I've been, if indeed anyone has noticed I've been anywhere who doesn't already know.I have read a bunch of books that I don't remember much about. I watched V for Vendetta, which wasn't all that bad, and did at least feature a surprise Stephen Fry appearance. (A surprise to

2006-09-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

My petty annoyances. Now with maps!A: The road which meets the road that goes to my house.B: My house (and what ghosts there do remain).C: This new house being built.The green stuff is apple trees, and they (among other things) block the view west and southwest from my house. So every day, or at least every day in happier, more productive times, I leave the house and at the end of the driveway

2006-09-15T01:38:00.000-07:00

I've been slowly going through the Arts & Letters Daily archive, and I just read the following. What's the opposite of timely insight?Scenes from a Revolution, by Norman Lebrecht"DVD is killing CD - what will it do to the book?" What in the world? The essay turns out to not even be about music or books, but films, and Lebrecht predicts a curious future where the ability to buy old films will doom

2006-09-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.(Apparently this blog is now 100% Things I Found At Wired Monthly.)((The robot front-end doesn't seem as interesting, in the story, as the spectrometer, and there is nothing about whether it represents some new thing in spectroscopy or not. Maybe you could just rent time on one and carry around a discrete probe disguised as a ring that beamed back the

2006-08-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

I can't get my new remote to work with the satellite box, and am filled with rage. Rage.

2006-08-13T01:05:00.000-07:00

Wired News: Foiling the Would-Be HijackerThe essence of it: A research project aims to introduce a host of integrated monitoring systems into airplanes to foil hijackers. Elaborate, extensive, omnipresent monitoring. Monitoring which could easily sound ominous and invasive if not handled with careful spin. Luckily, they've got someone on the job."We have to show it's not Big Brother watching you,

2006-08-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Wired: The Infinite ArcadeAbout how digital distribution is the future of video games. "I’d be amazed if the PlayStation 4 has a physical disc drive," says Phil Harrison, president of Sony Computer Entertainment. OK, fair enough, but let's be cynical.Companies that are banking on -online distribution will first have to solve the problem of online billing. Customers may be willing to pay 25 cents

2006-07-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, in New Orleans:Transvestite gang pesters Magazine StreetThe transvestites first appeared in March when they raided Magazine Street like a marauding army of kleptomaniacal showgirls, said Davis, using clockwork precision and brute force to satisfy high-end boutique needs.From Harper's always interesting Weekly Review.

2006-07-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

The picture at the other end of this link is great.

2006-06-30T18:58:00.000-07:00

I have rebranded my blog, which is now dedicated to teen angst and attacking the in-crowd here at Central City High School. Expect updates twice daily, at noon (if that jerk Tom Evans and his jerk field hockey friends leave me alone in the computer lab) and as soon as I get home.Item the first: Tom Evans loves to remind us of all the girls he said he hung out with at Central City Community

2006-05-27T03:13:00.000-07:00

Next in a series of critical somethings written from a background of almost total ignorance on my part: Why there are no indie video games.This essay seems to have a few oddities. To start with the nitpicking:Thanks to powerful new consoles, their graphics are approaching CGI quality.Movie quality CGI, he presumably means. The better observation is that games look more like their

2006-05-23T02:47:00.000-07:00

Here's something interesting I read at Wired today.Microsoft, chipmakers and PC firms aim to increase PC usage in the developing world with a new flexible payment program to lower the initial costs of buying a computer, the companies said on Sunday.From a comfortable position of knowing absolutely nothing about the economics of the developing world, I can comfortably postulate that there are

2006-04-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

Study: Infant Mars Suited for LifeAncient clays bearing telltale signs of standing water indicate the most likely time for life to have developed on Mars was about four billion years ago, before a cataclysmic global change left the planet cold, dry and plagued with acid water, researchers said Thursday.Fair enough. But the big news in this story, at least to me, is the notion that Mars lost its

2006-04-11T23:05:00.000-07:00

I was watching Frontline's episode about Tiananmen Square, and it was fascinating, even if it served to further convince me that the future of all humanity is a screaming Orwellian nightmare.But at the end, we hear from a number of journalists about the enduring legacy of this particular image (which I am totally going to display inline because I somehow doubt CNN is going to care about the

2006-02-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Apparently the U.S. Postal Service can also drive from Federal Way to my house by dinnertime. Hooray!

2006-02-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

According to Amazon, the U.S. Postal Service currently has a package belonging to me in Federal Way. Estimated delivery date: February 20. I could drive to Federal Way and be back in time for dinner. Are there no advantages to living in Amazon's home state?

2006-01-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

Yakima hits the internet meme bigtime.

2006-01-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

New Year's WindfallOver the course of the holiday I was moving some stuff around and found a very dusty five dollar bill crumpled up behind my monitor. Then, today, when I blew the dust off of it to take down to the store for some delicious snacks, I discovered a ten dollar bill hidden inside the crumpled up five. So, free money! It may not be a sound investment strategy, but I seem to get a lot

2005-12-30T03:42:00.000-08:00

My eleven favorite songs, according to iTunes.1.) "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate," Mission of Burma2.) "Grass," Animal Collective3.) "Naked As We Came," Iron & Wine4.) "Slippi," Animal Collective5.) "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)," The Arcade Fire6.) "Neighborhood #2 (Power Out)," The Arcade Fire7.) "My Dog," The Fiery Furnaces8.) "We Can't Predict The Future," The Flaming Lips9.) "Go Find Your

2005-12-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Robot Demonstrates Self AwarenessReally? I'm not sure what to make of this story, which popped up in the Boing Boing feed today. The gist of it is that the robot can distinguish between a reflection of itself in a mirror and an identical robot, but how is only fuzzily explored. That is, there's basically nothing in the way of technical detail. Not that the presence of such detail would

2005-12-12T16:37:00.000-08:00

Buried deep in Pitchfork's story of the Decemberists bid for mainstream success with Capitol Records is this extremely exciting news:Meloy and Decemberists drummer John Moen also appear on the forthcoming self-titled Minus Five album, due February 7 on Yep Roc. Meloy sings on the song "Cemetery Row". "I've been a Young Fresh Fellows fan from eons ago," Meloy said, referring to Minus Five leader

2005-11-17T01:42:00.000-08:00

Here's an unsettling story about old CIA interrogation techniques. I accept that when force is used the mistakes that accompany human endeavors turn deadly, and that governments are no smarter or more ethical than the individuals that make them up. But could our government at least refrain from making The Prisoner appear more factual than fictional?Also, re the CIA: what's with these guys? I

2005-11-14T23:31:00.000-08:00

Variety Egg Hands Out An Earful Of Applesauce Re Night Stalker Getting The Icy MittFor instance:Eye hasn't officially ordered a back nine on that show, but if it turns in a solid perf this Friday, the pickup will be a no-brainer.. . .Meanwhile, ABC has pulled the plug on its revival of "Night Stalker," halting production on the skein effective immediately. Seg skedded for this week will be

2005-11-12T04:22:00.000-08:00

I find it odd that I've seen more TV promotions for the King Kong video game (excuse me, for Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie) than for King Kong the movie. Maybe they haven't completely switched on the promotional campaign yet, and granted that a commercial for the game counts as a commercial for the movie, but with a budget of two-hundred million plus dollars I'd expect

2005-11-04T00:17:00.000-08:00

A worrisome indicator: Philips HeartStart Home Automated External Defibrillator. "Recommended because you added Star Trek The Next Generation - The Complete Seventh Season to your Wish List. . ." It goes on to suggest that the confluence of TV science fiction in said list apparently indicates I'm in the market for a machine to keep my heart beating.

2005-11-03T17:31:00.000-08:00

Actual topicality!Of all the various pro- and con-Alito information out there, this piece by William Saletan seems to me to be the most in-depth examination, despite its, well, cheekiness, of potential trouble, re reproductive rights.Now, here's my question, Judge. Do you really think an undue burden for a grown woman is the same as an undue burden for a teenager? Do you think a woman deserves no

2005-11-02T21:36:00.000-08:00

This week I've decided to stay up to date on current events. Or, rather, I've decided to stay up to date on current events beyond DVD news and music reviews.I picked Slate as my main source, both on account of generally finding something interesting to read there and because of their daily roundup of what's in the major U.S. papers (so long as we define "major U.S. papers" as the Washington Post,

2005-10-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

In the midst of the war he offered us peace. . .To be filed under Irresponsibility, Fiscal: I bought Battlestar Galactica season one today. At Wal-Mart, which is always a little depressing. Not so much for, you know, political or economic reasons (well, maybe for economic reasons), but because I go there and just wander around aimlessly.I would have bought the Lost set, but it was behind glass,

2005-10-24T02:12:00.000-07:00

Texas: The Wrap-UpLeaving NASA early, we faced the long drive back to Fort Worth. We drove through a forest, and past a statue of Sam Houston, and the prison museum, and then I was supposed to provide accurate rush-hour navigation through Dallas. Surprisingly it all worked out. The rest of our time was spent at my cousin's house, for the most part, which was nice enough; I like family gatherings

2005-10-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

So I guess I should make some comment about Serenity. I saw it. It rocked. It is kind of a downer. It isn't doing particularly well, profitwise. I'd much rather have a nice seven years or so of Firefly. I'll probably go see it again at least twice, with various people.And now what media events do I have to look forward to? Am I actually going to have to make my own fun? Luckily my TV schedule is

2005-08-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

Google Slows Library Project to Accommodate PublishersLate in May, a group of publishers challenged the Google Print for Libraries program as a major breach of copyright. Oddly enough, the group was the Association of American University Presses (AAUP; http://www.aaupnet.org), a group of nonprofit, self-confessed niche market publishers whom, one might have thought, would have seen the Google

2005-08-10T15:25:00.000-07:00

Today I am all about sending e-mails and looking at pictures of Ethiopia. One e-mail was about pictures of Ethopia, and it was a dopey little missive sent to a famous person. So, while still peaking on my fan letter rush, I figured I would continue talking about my now long-passed trip to Texas. Only I can't find my notebook at the moment, so we'll have to do without precise dates. Or

2005-07-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

"Circumcision May Decrees AIDS Infection"(as mentioned in Wired News's Elsewhere Today section)It was not going to be a pleasant Conference of the Germs. They were never particularly festive occasions; dour symposia on topics like global albedo management, ocean current analysis, animal husbandry, and the thousand other details required to run a planet like Earth. But there was a new item on the

2005-06-24T01:40:00.000-07:00

Curious (and foul-smelling) SerendipityToday was zombie movie day, if two films count as day-defining. (And one didn't start till midnight. A taxonomic poser, I suppose.) The original Dawn of the Dead and Dead Alive, shown as part of IFC's "Hey, go spend some money on the new Romero film" promotion, as best I can tell. And I guess I probably will, but anyway, after finishing Dead Alive I came in

2005-06-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

Well, here goes Year 25.

2005-05-29T22:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while at work, I was idly flipping through Friday's paper when I came across an article about Camper Van Beethoven, a favorite band of mine currently out on tour. I was very surprised to see that Yakima was one of the stops. (That evening, at 9 PM.) So I decided to go, despite not really being the sort of person who, traditionally, decides to go to rock shows at the drop of a hat, not

2005-05-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

Everything I have to say about Star Wars 3 (6) [Revenge of the Sith]: It had all of the problems of the other two: goofy interpersonal relationships, leaden dialogue, weird pacing, among others, but, unlike them, it did not introduce any new problems of its own. And if that sounds like powerfully faint praise, it is, but I went in with greatly lowered expectations and was not disappointed.But is

2005-05-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

Game developer still intent on releasing Prey.Reading through the article, it seems like what's actually in the works is a new game based on Prey's original design brief, which was, I think, unearthed in a series of clay pots stored deep in the Arizona desert.Vaporware jokes aside, I'm interested to see what developers do with the Doom 3 engine. (I'm sure there are other games in the works that

2005-05-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

So far this week, my acts of thesis procrastination have included listening to This American Life, doing some laundry, baking a cake, and composing a list of things I've done instead of working.If I were to write five pages a day (that is, of a final, ready to hand in draft, as opposed to the pile of disconnected and isolated notes, false starts and false conclusions, and general philosophical

2005-04-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

Austin to Houston, via San Antonio; the morning to the very late evening, with a sidetrip to the 19th century. 3/9/05My Grand Texas Plan involved lots of shopping in interesting places for authentic Texan curios, but as it turned out this was an aspiration I was alone in. As a concession, Wednesday morning we stopped by BookPeople, basically because it was what you get when you Google for "austin

2005-03-31T14:28:00.000-08:00

The problem with this whole Texas diary thing is that I didn't actually do much note-taking on the trip. I wound up exhausted at the end of each day, with little will to write. So, you know, pretty much business as usual. But there was also another concern that made me question whether I'm cut out for this sort of thing. A sizable fraction of the driving portion of the trip was spent in arguments

2005-03-17T17:07:00.000-08:00

I should mention that I spent I lot of time trying to figure out how to describe cities at night. I wanted to avoid descriptions that carried a lot judgmental weight. I wound up with both flowers and fungus, because they do look a little like an uncleaned surface in a humid climate, but I didn't want to be all "The HUMAN PRESENCE is like a VILE GROWTH upon the FACE of the EARTH."But mostly, and I

2005-03-17T16:11:00.000-08:00

"this tunnel is a Texas mile"Seattle, 10:30 PM (Pacific Time), 3/7/05There is some urge, I guess; some kind of genetic timebomb quietly ticking away, that drives people in my family to prefer the late night ionospheric howl of AM radio. Granted, we're in the mountains, and yes, a little noise can keep you alert. I don't dispute these facts. The real problem is that once we clear the Cascades,

2005-03-07T16:32:00.000-08:00

Today I leave to spend a week in Dallas, Texas; the easternmost point I've ever been to. Possibly the southernmost. My intention is to keep some sort of diary of my trip. This seemed like a good idea until I came here to post my pre-trip thoughts, and discovered I had none.The weather in Dallas is stormy and quite a bit cooler than here, where we are enjoying, if that is quite the right term for

2005-02-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

House: painted. (Though not completely. I was going to finish up the dining room corners today but was distracted by sleep, toast, television, and things related to item two. ((I guess I should mention I was only painting the dining room.)))Computer: faster than ever. A blistering 45.2 kilobytes per second! Episodes of This American Life play with less buffering than before.I've been slowly

2005-02-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

I've got a new(er) computer and have spent the last two days trying to work out the kinks. Of the three mice I own, one is fifty miles away, one doesn't seem to work, and the one which does work is my least favorite. I've got a faster modem but it claims its connecting at a slower speed, which probably just means this computer is more honest with me than the last. At any rate, I couldn't

2005-01-15T23:01:00.000-08:00

Slightly Uncomfortable Signs of Adulthood: The realization that, while riding in a car, the driver of that car is not necessarily better at driving than you are.

2005-01-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

It was true. He was simply a man who didn't know what to do with himself, for he didn't know yet who he was. It's sometimes easier to find a job than to find oneself and John hadn't yet gotten around to doing the first. How could he know who he was? Some find themselves through joy, some through suffering and some through toil. Johnny had till now tried nothing but whisky. A process which left

2005-01-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

Oh man: According to Errol Morris' website, his first three films, as well as his TV show, are coming out on DVD next month. Of course, it also seems to suggest that A Brief History of Time is already available, which Amazon disputes. Still, I am pleased and excited. I'm a big fan.

2005-01-07T11:40:00.000-08:00

Re Arctic Sovereignty Issues Race is on to claim the Arctic Circle Deep inside the Arctic Circle, hundreds of kilometres beyond the frontier of human habitation, a solitary red flag with a white cross flies in the freezing winds, its pole hammered into the unyielding rock of Hans Island. Next to it, a plaque tells the world the Vikings have returned. The tiny island, a hostile wedge of rock

2005-01-02T01:18:00.000-08:00

Oh, yeah, and I want to write a screenplay and finish my comic book script this year, too; as well as find my copy of the reissued In Rock by The Minus 5. Where did I leave that, anyway?

2005-01-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

International Year of Wary Enthusiasm There are some things I've got to do this year, and some things I want to do, and here they are, in no particular order, but jazzed up with bullet points. Write my undergraduate philosophy thesis. This leads to graduating college. It also happens to be the most important thing here, but after this the order is random, I promise. Write most of the first

2004-12-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

If I had readers, I'd hope that they were all enjoying their assorted holiday seasons. It turns out, somewhat to my horror, that I'm not all that big on fudge. I've got a piece right here, and while it doesn't contain any of the extraneous fudge ingredients that strike me as being, at best, totally unnecessary (walnuts?), it just isn't working for me. This is a problem, as there is rather a lot

2004-12-24T01:41:00.000-08:00

In her diary entry for October 9, 1942 Anne Frank wrote But that's not the end of my lamentations. Have you ever heard the term "hostages"? That's the latest punishment for saboteurs. It's the most horrible thing you can imagine. Leading citizens - innocent people - are taken prisoner to await execution. If the Gestapo can't find the saboteur, they simply grab five hostages and line them up

2004-12-20T01:55:00.000-08:00

He also had a complete crush on his escort. The name Anchovy suited her - she struck him as a small canned cold fish. Eddy found this perversely attractive. In fact he found her so attractive he was having a hard time standing still and breathing normally. He really liked the way she carried her stripe-gloved hands, deft and feminine and mysteriously European, but mostly it was her hair. Long,

2004-10-05T01:38:00.000-07:00

I found this website, "Done Deal: Script and Pitch Sales" through this Blogger "notable weblog" weblog. And, anyway, oh man. It is something else. A He-Man movie set to be directed by John Woo? "Hip Hop Nanny"? Some others follow. Title: Starship Dave Log line: A massive fireball from space hits New York's Central Park and an ordinary man emerges unscathed. The man turns out to be a spaceship

2004-10-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

The Dark Knight Strikes Back, Forward To continue my sad little DKSB analysis: Lots of things feel arbitrary in it. Why is Green Lantern living on some other world as a green blobby thing with a family? (I'm willing to accept that the GBTs are part of some Green Lantern backstory I'm not familiar with, but the question remains: Who are these people/things and why should I care?) Why is Robin now

2004-09-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I attempted to keep a diary concerning everything I came across while watching television. It didn't quite work out, but what follows is everything I managed to write down: 4:00 PM: Good Eats. The best show about food ever? Certainly one of the only cooking shows concerned with how cooking does what it does. (I'm trying to avoid saying "the science of cooking," since that's what

2004-08-19T22:55:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Kingdom Come yesterday. Old Man Batman is definitely one of my favorite characters. Why isn't there an Old Man Batman regular series? I've never bought a Batman comic, but I'd buy that. The ending to Kingdom Come felt a bit too bright and quick. But again I'm unable to say what I would have prefered. The image of Superman going nuts and tearing down the United Nations building

2004-08-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

Dueling Headlines Unintentional irony or comic juxtaposition can sometimes be found at Google News: from the Kansas City Star: U.S. Pledges Aid to 9/11 Trial in Germany from the Washington Post: U.S. Denies German 9/11 Retrial Key Witness I suppose one could also say that this is also an example of the curious power of headlines, or the multifaceted nature of truth before it is necessarily

2004-08-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

I meant to distract myself from not being able to write fiction today by writing in my blog, but it turns out there are a number of entertaining distractions from that as well, many of which do not require any actual expenditure of effort, and therefore are quite appealing. I haven't sunk to playing Bejeweled yet, but I am close. Some comics I have read recently or am reading: Astonishing X-Men

2004-07-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

Apple's Cheaper, Juicier iPod As part of a pilot program, Duke University plans to give iPods loaded with school calendars and other information to its 1,800 incoming freshmen. Students can download class materials to listen to anything from audio examples of textbook exercises to Spanish songs.I happen to still have one of the "Welcome to college!" packages handed out at the beginning of the

2004-07-18T23:33:00.000-07:00

On not finding the second season of Angel anywhere in town: Hey 20th Century Fox, I totally want to give you fifty of my dollars in exchange for your mopey vampire-themed entertainment, but it is difficult to do when it appears to be missing from the entire Greater Yakima Retail Sphere. I should probably join the rest of the world, and get myself some sort of "electronic" money. I would be

2004-07-14T22:06:00.000-07:00

After finishing The Crying of Lot 49 I was unsure what to read next. I was on a pretty good streak with the Pynchon novels, but I don't own a copy of Gravity's Rainbow, so if I wanted to read them all in the order they were written I would have needed to go to the bookstore. There were literal piles of books I need or want to read scattered around, but none of them really appealed to me at the

2004-06-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

After not having bought a comic book in several years, I was finally drawn back in by, embarrassingly, a Big Celebrity Event. (I'm not sure how or when I went from amused skepticism about Joss Whedon to creepy fanaticism, but that's what happened.) I would have bought it at the socially acceptable Borders in Yakima, no doubt sandwiched between copies of Magnet and Granta, so as to say, hey, OK,

2004-05-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

I added a new book to the sidebar. I'm beginning to think that's not enough space for proper reviews, though, and the idea of just keeping a list of books I've read plus a few vague impressions strikes me, at a few months remove, as being kind of pretentious. More so than blogging in general, I mean. Which is already up there.

2004-05-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts Weirdly dated website for an aggressively forward-looking research association. Also, neat Blogger redesign.

2004-04-20T21:31:00.000-07:00

This is a small diary of an average workday. I've been told my job is somewhat unusual, or at least enough so that people tend to be a bit incredulous when I tell them what I do, which is this: I'm the weekend (and holiday) obituary clerk for a newspaper. The job sounds more interesting than it actually is, if that's possible. I don't write obituaries. At the most I edit them, and that sparingly.

2004-04-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

"Universities, even modern universities, are not in the business of maintaining security over information. On the contrary, universities, as institutions, predate the "information economy" by many centuries and are not-for-profit cultural entities, whose reason for existence (purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of scholarship, and then teach it. Universities are meant

2004-03-27T20:01:00.000-08:00

Ever since I found out David Fincher, director of such films as Fight Club and Panic Room, worked on Return of the Jedi, that fact has left me inexplicably freaked out. But I think I've figured out why. Fincher is a cutting edge (just like me!) director. (Even though I personally have only thought one of his films was particularly cutting edge, namely Fight Club.) Star Wars, on the other hand, is

2004-03-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

I bought a new hard drive yesterday. It's larger than every hard drive I've ever owned previously combined. So I guess I'm cutting edge now.

2004-03-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

Why socialism must take to the stars! I think. Linked here for use in my Contemporary Apocalypticism paper, via Ken MacLeod's weblog whose URL I don't remember.

2004-03-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

This post used to contain a Java program, as a way for me to get it from the computer on which I wrote it to the computer I needed to save it on. But now it doesn't.

2004-03-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

Nearly extinct secret language for Chinese women. I had one odd dream this morning, a sort of alternate ending for The Matrix + The Prisoner expressed in explicitly Biblical terms. (There were murderous bubble things floating around.) Keanu Reeves and his wife went down to the seashore, the sea rolled back, the earth cracked open, the sky peeled away, and it was generally bizzare. "I understand

2004-02-21T00:10:00.000-08:00

I have no idea what this weblog is about, but check out those Iranian political cartoons. Edgy. Iranian blogs galore!

2003-12-05T12:23:00.000-08:00

So The Flaming Lips have been nominated for a Grammy (It's in there somewhere.), and, OK, awards are useless and so on. The thing is, they're up for Best Alternative Album, for the album Fight Test. Except, the Lips down have an album called Fight Test. They've got an EP called Fight Test. And it's, you know, OK. But it is seven songs, three of which are covers (including Kylie Minogue's "Can't

2003-12-03T21:48:00.000-08:00

An article about Jeff Mangum I want to read when I have more time.

2003-11-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

I did it, though I don't know why Here's a little parable about the dangers of excess free time and cash. On Monday, my friend Brad had his PC's power supply give out on him, at about the same time as half the electrical grid in town. (Events which you might presume to be connected, but I'm a little fuzzy about the chronology.) Meanwhile, I had just been paid and, flush with wealth, headed out

2003-11-22T00:39:00.000-08:00

Tom tells me I should check out the band Hawksley Workman.

2003-11-15T01:46:00.000-08:00

The briefest of updates follows, inspired by being incredibly bored, despite having a world of entertainment at my fingertips. (Should I play Medal of Honor or Grand Theft Auto? Oh, I don't know, life is so hard, it's totally unfair. Books recently read: Genesis through The First Book of Samuel, otherwise known as, The First Book of the Kings. Thanks, King James! So I'm reading the Bible. (

2003-10-22T23:14:00.000-07:00

Scientists oppose new space station mission NASA Launched Mission Despite Warnings Well, at least it's pretty up there.

2003-10-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

I'm no longer sure that technology is what it's cracked up to be. I mean, sure, without it I would die, or more likely never be born, or even represented among the species of Earth, lions being not as discouraged by semi-clever apes as they are really clever ones. Sure, maybe homo erectus could get by for awhile, but where are they now? But the survival of humanity aside, I'm faced with the fact

2003-09-25T00:57:00.000-07:00

Well, my current living situation makes posting here slightly more difficult, not to mention what it bodes for my already lackluster writing habits. I will complete this story though, I promise. Ideally once I get my very own upscale yet affordable apartment, though at the worst I will just go hide in the library and try not to get distracted by all the books. Elsewhere I've written about what