Absquatulate

A study in contrasts

Tuesday night I was flipping around the channels, looking for some background noise as I puttered around the apartment doing some chores. ( Let me inform you dear reader that we don't have cable, just regular old broadcast TV so flipping consists of six channels.) I flipped through the regular crap of pseudo drama, news crap, Bob Hope special, MTV2, American Idol rehash on Fox, and then a true gem!

On PBS they were broadcasting the Mostly Mozart Festival Live from Lincoln Center featuring a young Chinese pianist named Lang Lang. He took to the stage and he and the orchestra began to weave a most amazing and beautiful tapestry of music! Lang Lang was passionate and amazing, the orchestra perfect, the music, Mendholsson! I flipped up one station to hear some 13year old girl trying to belt out a Donna Summers tune. I was simply struck with the juxtaposition. On one channel, something beautiful and lovely and amazing and that should be enjoyed by more Americans more often. On the other, corporate schlock scooped out to the masses with ice cream scoops. How could people willing subject themselves to a performance that consists of a host who doesn't even want to be there and braying bleached teens trying to make it BIG when a 21 year old virtuoso from China was playing his heart out with great emotion and skill and creating something truly beautiful?

So ask yourself what beauty you've seen today. Not titillation. Not lust. Not slick marketing and political glad handling. Just beauty. Go out and find some if you need to or (even better) create it yourself and marvel in a world where such wonderful things exist.

Compensation

Is it too much to ask to provide some extra cukes or olives on a salad which I've just requested that you hold the tomatoes and the croutons *and* I've refused the bread that goes along with it? You're charging me $3.99 for this salad which presumably includes everything. When I decline a fixin' should I not get some sort of compensation, say, a few more olives for the three tomato wedges you saved today?

Jerks.

Hear: dook! YES! || Feel: grip just so... look at ball... watch the backswing... too many things to think about!!! || See: <form> || Cook: Grilled Marinated Tuna Steaks and impromptu gazpacho || Go: out for dinner with some of your husband's college friends

Tao thought of the day

Tao Te Ching # 11 The Nature of Usefulness
Thirty spokes will converge
In the hub of a wheel;
But the use of the cart
Will depend on the part
Of the hub that is void.
With a wall all around
A clay bowl is molded;
But the use of the bowl
Will depend on the part
Of the bowl that is void.
Cut out windows and doors
In the house as you build;
But the use of the house
Will depend on the space
In the walls that is void.
So advantage is had
From whatever is there;
But usefulness rises
From whatever is not.
[Translated by Raymond B. Blakney]

Ramble On

Looking for something different from my usual musical rotation to code to I called up my exceptionally meager list of MP3s and took a gander. A friend had burned a disk full including a few Led Zeppelin discs that languished in my tape deck collection, and never gave much thought to buying the CDs for. It just seemed like the kind of day for Led Zeppelin, sunny, warm, bright. I threw a few random tracks into the mix and got to work. But only for three tracks...

You know when you're listening to a song and those few first chords strike your ears and immediately your entire being is transported to that one moment?

It's 1993 and it's just before the start of my senior year in high school. I'd gone on a retreat for an exceptionally geeky thing called "Foundations for Teaching Economics" where kids from all over the eastern seaboard went to Delaware for a week and participated in discussions and talks on economics, business, and leadership. The group was... well, as someone put it, "Lots of Chiefs, not enough Indians" but there were a few kindred souls in the bunch.

David Petner lived in Pennsylvania and I lived in RI but for that week in Delaware we were best friends. We had similar backgrounds, a love of music, band, theater, and English. He'd seen Harry Connick Jr. perform live and I was astounded that not only he *liked* HCJr but that he'd seen him in concert! *swoon* I was in the throws of my Led Zeppelin phase and he'd always loved their music but didn't know much about them. We bonded, we talked through all hours of the night, we confessed secrets. At the time, I'd just borrowed from my best friend in high school Joy the brand new Led Zeppelin boxed set and we promised to send each other mixed tapes of what we thought was the best of the respective artists. Because, how could we NOT?

Immediately upon returning home I got a fresh blank tape and the boxed set and got to work. Countless summer hours were spent arranging the songs in just the right order on my little dual tape deck boom box. From upbeat down to reflective, then back to a crescendo of rock, then a contemplative finish. Going from side A to B the music flowed, and I managed to fit in all the songs I wanted without large gaps at the end of either side. It was one of the best mix tapes I'd done and I was proud to send it to the boy in PA. I received his mix tape in the meantime. A boy, actually sending me a mix tape! This is the BEST. We weren't boyfriend/girlfriend or anything like that but we just liked each other, knowing full well that distance would eventually erode what was built over a hectic summer's week in Delaware.

And the finishing song on one of the sides was Thank You by Led Zeppelin, and I don't think I've heard it much since that summer. He went to PC, I to Rochester. He visited me when he was visiting colleges and we met up at an Italian restaurant and it was like that week in Delaware all over again (although our parents were nonplussed, I think.) We lost touch into our freshman year of college. I heard through second hand accounts that he'd left PC and finished his degree at William & Mary and that's when I didn't hear anything more, and eventually didn't think of him much.

But I'm thinking about him now.

I wonder what ever happened to him.

The Cows Have Come Home to Roost

When I was in college I worked as a student secretary in what was then known as the University Computing Center. One of my jobs was to stock the course catalogs in the office and make sure there was enough for the students and faculty who couldn't figure out the university's Gopher system to look up the courses online. I was flipping through them one day and noticed a summer course in wine tasting. *Snort* Wine tasting? Who on earth would pay $200 to take a five class course on wine tasting!? The other secretary and I had a good chuckle over it; what bourgeois pigs these people must be wasting all that money merely to sip wine.

As I am sitting here six years later, trying to figure out what wine to bring for a cookout I thought to myself, "You know, taking a wine tasting course would be useful."

No More Netscape

Zeldman is daily reading for me, and he should be for you too. Today he posted that Netscape was finally kaput, AOL having laid off the rest of the Netscape staff. What surprises me is that it hasn't really registered on other sites such as MetaFilter, slashdot, boingboing, kottke.org, textism.com, megnut, &tc. &tc. &tc. Why is that? Is this such a non-event that only idiots like me are taking note? I know it's been more or less known that this would happen when AOL partnered with Micro$oft but still, it's an event worth noting isn't it? I can't help but feel a slight twinge upon hearing this news. Netscape 2.0, with it's cute little navigation themed design and spinning stars was my introduction to the web. It's a shame it is gone. To bastardize a popular quote, "Netscape is dead. Long live Netscape."

UPDATE 11:00am: I posted this at 10:30 today, and as of 10:57, Slashdot has a fresh post on this topic. I assume perhaps this will happen in the days to come. Just goes to show you that I'm ahead of the curve! Or something...

OMG TEH AEWSOME!!!1!1!@

This past weekend was one of the best I've had since... well, since February, when a few of us old college buds descended upon Jess and her apartment in NC for a long weekend of insanity, tequila, and Dr. Mario. This most recent trip had everything you could hope for in a meeting of the internet minds. In short:

Danken:

• To the nicest hosts. Suz, Quinn, you guys are absolutely the best. Thanks so much for allowing a slew of strangers into your house!
• Quinn at the airport, complete with signage (how cool! someone waiting for me at an airport with a sign. I'm famous!)
• Suz, for the best homemade MacNCheese I've ever had. Tender, cheezy, and WOW stewed tomatoes really round it out!
• For the fairly uneventful trips down and back.
• Four... no, five machines set up in the kitchen for Quake, QW, QIII, Diablo II.
• Burnout2 on the Game Cube. Crashing cars has never been so much fun.
• Virginia Beach, lots of sun, our own patch of sand, great bodysurfing waves, awesome crab cakes and Yeungling on draft.
• Cute kids who were excited for the squishy guys to come visit. How adorable can a 3 year old be? Pretty damned adorable when he tells you, "You're BEAUTIFUL," when you are fresh out of the shower. Yeah, he was just buttering me up in case he needed something later but it was still cute. :^)
• M&M's, Chips Ahoy, Triscuts, cheddar, and lots of Pepsi. So much that the first night I was up until the caffeine wore off around 2:30am.
• Crazy eggs
• Frosted Flakes with turkey bacon. Yes, that's cereal, with bacon. It is good.
• Finally getting to meet Nifft in the flesh. Drat the luck forgetting my big ass axe at home!
• A string of exceptionally late nights.
• Central air.
• Macadamia nut coffee with real cream.
• Pig, for taking alot of time to comfort N8r T8r when he was fussy, and getting all googily eyed over him. :^D
• Phineas, for being a total kook and funny to boot.

Nien Danken:

• To the idiots at Continental who cancelled TM's flight with no warning. Damn STRAIGHT you put him on another plane ASAP.
• Jellyfish at the first beach we went to. Some bigger than basketballs!
• Detroit and the stupidist layout of restaurants ever. All were packed and had long waits and the food was teh sux0rs.
• The morons at Yahoo Travel and NW Air, who printed on my itinerary NORTHWEST as my airline for our trip home when in fact it was a Continental flight. Do you see CONTINENTAL on this page anywhere? Oh, my bad, it must be the "CO" next to "EXP" at the very end of the airline description, which starts with NORTHWEST AIRLINES. If it's Continental, freakin PRINT the whole name so we don't have to spend 45 minutes in line behind a whole family moving to Manila just so the ticket agent can say "Oh, no, that's a continental fight." GRR.
• Kodak DC3200. 41 pictures, that's all I get? *sigh*
• 99% humidity. Heavens to Betsy! Running a mile and a half in that kind of humidity nearly killed me!
• Deer eating all of Suz's blackberries.
• To the asshats who broke into TM's house and stole a Jar full of Change: May the devil slice your abdomen open fill your intestines with the change you stole and beat you with it. Jerks.

It was great to get home and pet the cats, but... quiet. And... there are no computers in the kitchen, no wireless network to get on, no little Ben running around being impish and funny. No N8r T8R to coo at, no Vedder snores, no Phineas making funny faces, and no 99% humidity to kick my arse while trying to run. A little sad, but the weekend was just amazing. Thanks to everyone who could make it, and here's to NYC in September!

Hear: oh SHIT that's our flight! || Feel: relaxed || See: dry heat || Cook: for lots of people || Go: to the beach.

Meeting people I've never met.

So, I never really thought I'd be heading to the house of someone I've never met to hang out with other people I've never met for a weekend in a city I've never been to. But ah, such is the miracle of the internet! (Although, I never would have done this if I wasn't going with my husband and meeting up with people I *did* know.) Heading south for a few days so posting will be light ("lighter than this!?" you incredulously guffaw. Yes.) I shall return Tuesday, after spending a weekend with a tomato, two or three creatures of indiscriminate nature (what is a Fraz anyway? How about Phin?), a pig, a Suz and her Quinn, a toddler, a N8r T8r, the intiminable Vedder, and many, many video games. So have yourself a great weekend.

Hear: A Perfect Circle || Feel: ready to leave || See: rain... no, sun... no, rain. || Cook: Woodland Omlette (baby bellas, chevre, fresh herbs, garilc) || Go: to Virginia

Ah, mini-vacation!

The past holiday was just lovely. Enough heat to make me just a shade of cranky, but only the palest shade. Lots of sun, a beach party on the lake, a house party next door with our neighbors who are cool. Then hiking down in Stony Brook Park through waterfalls on a day when in the city it topped 87 degrees, but down in the park it was cool, green and the water icy and refreshing! The beauty was leaving just as the throngs of ill-mannered kids and their equally rude parents arrived. We needed more charcoal than you think for such a little grill but look out, grilling has been added to our culinary repertoire. We then did lots of car research, cleaned the apartment, broke up some fights between Bean and Gwen, and had heart to heart talks that were nothing but good. It was a little lonely with most of our friends being out of town or otherwise tied up with familial obligations, but it was lovely just the same. Here's hoping your holiday was as pleasant as mine, if a little cooler.

Sometimes

Do you ever have one of those days where you just have no motivation to do anything the goddamned universe says you have to, where you just want to get up and walk out and just get in your car and drive to some spot and get out and walk around for a while with tank top and shorts on preferably while hiking up a waterfall? Where you find yourself grasping your coffee cup so hard that you have to pry your fingers from around the porcelain white rim and you just stare at the contents praying, hoping for the magical elixir within to bless you with some revelation, and it does and it's that there IS no revelation to be found here but you're still feeling that feeling and you just hope and wish that you could be anywhere but here just for today?

Yeah.