Zachtastic!

My favorite wedding picture

2012-01-19T16:23:00.000-05:00

Lots of folks know the story of my wedding day, and the story of how I was 45 minutes late to the wedding. Luckily, the bride was also 45 minutes late, as were the best man, matron of honor, and various family members and cameras. It was all very thrilling.

Nearly as exciting as the drive to the church were the few minutes after the wedding, when we tried to cram in as much photography as possible before leaving for the reception. Many poses were struck, many flashes flashed, and then it was time to go. That's when Kelsi, then my sister in law for only a matter of minutes, took my favorite wedding picture.

Yes, that's me smirking as my wife rounded up the parents and directed us all back to the cars we had so recently left. We had a schedule to keep! Get a move on, people!

30 Days, 51,777 Words

2011-12-01T15:55:00.001-05:00

Yep. National Novel Writing Month 2011 has come to an end, and I have emerged victorious.

Now, I'm not going to claim that my project is a "publishable" novel. Or a "full-length" novel. Or a "coherent" or "good" or "well-characterized" novel. But it's a single story that moves through all the requisite plot points to resolve its central conflict.

More to the point, it's a single story of more than 50,000 words that was planned, outlined, and written in less than 30 days. That makes me a winner.

You Probably Should be Listening to Shannon McNally

2011-10-07T10:37:00.000-04:00

Shannon's albums are great (I'm especially partial to "Coldwater" and "Jukebox Sparrows"), but she really gets to show off her phenomenal voice when performing live. She comes across as a lot more country and a lot less roots-rock in this clip, but it's hard to care about that distinction.

I Love the Internet Too Much to Use Facebook

2011-09-26T20:58:00.001-04:00

For background, see my previous thoughts here and here. And to read about the last straw, go here.

In the early nineties, internet service started in a walled garden. You logged in with Prodigy or AOL and were taken to their own little online party. There were games, email, news feeds, and even some little thing called the "world wide web." You spent your whole online session interacting with the world from safe within the loving arms of AOL or Prodigy or CompuServe.

Then the world wide web matured a little bit. It got a haircut and a real job. It started providing things for you that only AOL and its ilk had provided before. Email could come in through Outlook Express via crazy new services like Hotmail. You read the news on websites run by newspapers. Usenet groups opened their doors (a little) and new discussions sprang up on evolving bulletin boards. Instant messengers like ICQ and AIM let you chat with your friends in real time.

The internet was full of possibilities back then. New companies sprang up, breaking new ground and pushing the boundaries of existing technologies. Interactive websites gave rise to e-commerce. Programmers figured out new and better ways to let web servers provide customized content. Audio and video codecs made it possible to listen, watch, and create. It was the information superhighway.

The rise of social media was supposed be the next step in the evolution of the internet. MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter really did redefine what kind of content was available; instead of only reading what was created and provided by distant strangers, people were able to post and read messages to and from their real-life friends. That content was all in one place, so your best friend's 200-word note on a movie was posted alongside your sister's update on her afternoon classes. Hundreds of people is fed information to hundreds of others.

That's all well and good, but it's not good enough for Facebook. Instead of just aggregating the information your friends want to share, they're aggregating all the information about your friends. It's a subtle difference with profound implications for privacy, but that's not my problem with it.

My problem is that it's reducing the entire internet into a stream of information that Facebook wants people to consume only via Facebook.com. News, video, books, and music are being channeled into Facebook. Thousands if not millions are now only interacting with those media from within Facebook's walled garden.

And it's making content producers and developers lazy; they're increasingly thinking only of how to place a product or advertisement on Facebook. Money, human capital, and untold man-hours are being poured into monetizing Facebook, rather than into creating engaging and innovative internet products.

That's not what I want, and that's not what I think is best for a free, energetic, and inventive internet. I don't believe that my withdrawal from Facebook will solve the problem, or that it will draw anyone's attention to this perspective. But for me, Facebook has lost its luster, and I can only see it as a marketing tool.

For the next month, my Facebook account will remain live, though dormant. Who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind. But it's much more likely that I'll deactivate the account on November 1st and go back to enjoying the internet again.

How to Join Twitter

2011-07-22T17:21:00.009-04:00

Everybody's talking about Twitter, but you've looked at twitter.com and don't see what the big fuss is. That's because it's a little bit hard to understand the point of Twitter until you're already using it. Twitter itself has a pretty good getting started guide, but even that can be a little intimidating. So here are some tips for joining up and getting the most out of your first day on the world's best/simplest social network.

You might think the first step is obvious, and it is… but it requires a few moments of contemplation first. Before you go to www.twitter.com and sign up, spend a second thinking about what name you want to choose for yourself. It can be a fairly obvious choice (I'm "ragboz") or obscure (a friend is named "morfaleji"). An obvious choice makes you easier to find and identify. That can be a good thing! On the other hand, an obvious choice makes you easier to find and identify, and that can sometimes be a bad thing. Think about what kind of Twitter user you want to be, then choose wisely.

Of course, you can change your username at any time. There's really no pressure here.

Now with your username in mind, go to www.twitter.com and follow the on-screen instructions to set up a new account. Twitter even suggests next steps for you, like searching for friends to add.

You can "follow" anyone on Twitter. Friends, colleagues, celebrities, news, and music are all valid choices. Please do not follow Ashton Kutcher.

Here's how it works:

If you follow someone on Twitter, their Tweets will show up on your Twitter timeline -- that's the main page you'll see when you go to Twitter.com. People you follow will also be aware of your existence and of the fact that you're following them. Some will probably decide that since you think they're interesting, you must be interesting yourself, and will follow you. That's great! Congratulations! Now whenever you post a Tweet, it will show up on their timeline.

To start off, I recommend you search for (use the box at the very top of the screen; the one with the magnifying glass) and follow:

ragboz (me!)
ebertchicago (Roger Ebert, Twitter all-star)
io9 (website covering all things nerdy)
DalaiLama (yep, he's on Twitter)
grantimahara (that guy from Mythbusters)
washingtonpost (for news)
pourmecoffee (some dry humor)

That ought to be a decent start for now. You can always find new people and organizations to follow by using the search box.

Maybe nobody's following you yet, and that's okay. It's a perfect time to send your first Tweet.
There's a box at the top of your timeline. Go ahead and click there. You've got 140 characters to say something. Things to remember:

Your followers will see this message automatically, but it's visible to anyone in the whole world. The internet does not do "privacy."
Your Tweet can be about anything that interests you, anything that happened to you, anything that might interest someone else, or any bit of nonsensical fluff that's floated through your life recently.
Please, please, please, do not post "Hello world" or "This is my first Tweet!" (Also, please never post "Good morning, Twitter!" or "Goodnight, Twitter!" Twitter cannot hear you. You're not talking to Twitter; you're talking to your friends.)

That's great! You're part of Twitter! Here are some next steps:

Tell your friends. Really. Twitter is better when you interact, and it's easiest to interact with people you know.
Retweet something. There are buttons on each Tweet to "retweet" -- that's taking someone else's Tweet and sharing it with your friends. It's a way of saying, "Hey everyone, this is cool."
Reply to someone. If one of the people you follow says something profound/silly/memorable, click the "reply" button on the Tweet and let them know. Just remember that it's not a private message, so don't say anything dumb.
It's always worth looking at the Twitter page and finding the "@ Mentions" tab -- that's where public messages mentioning you are listed. There won't always be anything there, but keep an eye on it, because the people who mention you are the ones you're most likely to want to interact with.

The thing a lot of people find daunting about Twitter are the symbols and abbreviations. There's really not much to it, though. Here's all you need to know:

@ragboz is just my username. That's it. Putting the @ symbol in front of a name means that it's a username. The symbol lets Twitter track it so that it can be brought to my attention (in the aforementioned "@ Mentions" tab)
# is the hashtag, and it's how Twitter users categorize their Tweets. It lets you express the purpose of your Tweet (#sarcasm) or join a larger conversation (#WorldCup) because other Twitter users can search hashtags and find your little Tweet amongst the pile of similarly-hashtagged Tweets. You don't have to hashtag a Tweet, and when you do, there's really no "right" or "wrong" way to do it.
RT and MT are just shorthands for "Retweet" and "Modified Tweet," which is just another way of sharing someone else's Tweet with your friends.

That's really all you need to know about Twitter, and to be honest, you could probably have figured it all out in ten minutes.

Not ready to give up on Facebook just yet?

That's okay! Twitter makes it very, very easy to connect with your Facebook account so that you're sharing your updates in both worlds.

Now Blogging... Elsewhere

2011-05-02T19:08:00.000-04:00

I would greatly appreciate it if all five of my readers would follow me over to the new digs at www.ragbourn.com.

Some things are essential

2011-03-19T08:26:00.002-04:00

I have a friend with a problem. She desperately wants to buy a new, 64gb WiFi+3G iPad 2. This need consumes her every waking thought. It drives her.

Of course, she does have a legitimate use for the 3G capabilities, and would get many hours of enjoyment out of the built-in webcam, chatting with her family in Pennsylvania and California. And since the new iPad 2 has a faster processor and more RAM, she'll be able to edit home movies and store them in the bountiful 64gb of storage. So I don't begrudge her the desire to buy this top-end tablet computer.

Her problem is that she already owns an iPad.

It's last year's model, doesn't have 3G capabilities, and only has 16gb of storage. The processor is a bit slower, and though it could probably edit video, it would be a slow and painful experience. There's no built-in webcam.

It is not the iPad of her dreams.

Being the hell of a guy that I am, I'm on the verge of helping her out by buying this sad, old iPad of hers at an unreasonably low price.

I don't need a webcam or a fast processor and lots of RAM; I have a MacBook Air that fills those needs quite well. I don't need to carry around my whole music library, either; it wouldn't fit even in 64gb, but I have a 32gb iPhone that's always with me.

What I do need is a toy. A little tablet I can play games on, watch videos on a plane, read emails on vacation, and amuse myself with when I ought to be doing something productive. So a last-generation, 16gb, WiFi-only iPad is a pretty great thing for a guy like me.

So that leaves me wondering what essential functions an iPad can fulfill in our household, and what essential applications will fulfill those functions. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Twitter. Obviously. I've become a Twitter junkie, and their free app looks more than adequate for keeping up with the endless stream of news and infotainment.
Reeder. Sadly, Reeder isn't free, but it's a great news reader that syncs with Google Reader, so I can manage all my RSS feeds in one place. Mmm... internets.
WeatherHD. 'Cause what good is a weather forecast if it doesn't have pretty HD pictures?
Instapaper. I'm an Instapaper junkie. It's a save-it-for-later service that lets you clip an online article, news story, blog post, or web page and read it elsewhere, even offline. It strips away the crappy formatting and ads, and creates an archive of your interesting internets to read at your leisure. I found it completely indispensable while traveling, but still use it daily even when I'm at home. Also, it's free for light-to-medium use.
NPR and NPR Music. Free access to NPR's news, shows, podcasts, and streaming concerts? Yes please. Also: go to Hell, House Republicans.
Kindle. I don't plan on reading many books on the iPad, since I own and love a Kindle already. But ebooks take up virtually no space on a machine, and there's no harm in keeping a few of them handy. Amazon's Kindle app is free and syncs with my Kindle, so I never lose my place in a book.
Netflix. This is pretty obvious too. The free Netflix app will play any movie in their streaming catalog. Granted, I have the same app on my iPhone and have only twice used it. But it's such a cool thing, I have to have it.
Angry Birds. Because... seriously. It's Angry Birds.
Dropbox. With 16gb of storage, having access to my online files almost doubles the amount of stuff I can keep on-hand.
TiVo. This isn't useful just yet, but a future update will turn TiVo's free app into a remote control for our TiVo HD, so I can manage our season passes and to-do list.
Simplenote. Ubiquitous text capture. Simplenote is the best note-taking application imaginable. It does one thing, and it does it well: text notes. They sync across all devices, so my to-do lists and other notes are always available.
Most importantly, either Screens or Air Display will let us use the iPad as a second monitor for our Mac Mini media center. That means we can manage iTunes libraries without turning on the TV, switching inputs, and pairing a Bluetooth keyboard. So apart from everything else, one of these apps could turn my cheap iPad into a dirt-cheap monitor that will make our lives easier, especially when Maya gets her iPad 2.

Didn't I mention that? Yeah, Maya's getting an iPad 2. She'll have better technology than me! We'll be a two-iPad household, with one of the iPads serving as Maya's main computer, and mine acting as a supplement to our media center, and a traveling toychest for vacations.

If I decide to buy my friend's old iPad, that is. Clearly I haven't made up my mind just yet.

Just about had it up to here

2011-03-18T09:13:00.001-04:00

...with Facebook. Here's an exact transcript of my thoughts when I decided to try a new and exciting iPhone app this morning.

"Bah, it wants me to login with my Facebook account. What harm could it possibly do? After all, I don't keep any personal data on Facebook and I monitor my privacy closely. The worst that will happen is that it will post something to my wall and I will delete it. I hate that lazy developers won't even bother to use oAuth anymore, and I don't want to encourage this behavior, but I'll just try it out. Okay, click the next button. Next again. Next... gah! It's sending join-my-network invitations to all my friends! Uninstall! Uninstall!"

Yes, it went through my Facebook contacts, picked the people with whom I most often interact, and decided to invite those people to install their app and join my network.

So those people, through no fault of their own, have now been spammed because of my Facebook behavior.

I actually managed to uninstall the app before it had contacted more than three of my friends. And I'm pretty sure those three people are going to be reasonable about it.

But this is EXACTLY WHY Facebook is bad for the internet. Not only has it fostered laziness on the part of developers by encouraging them to simply outsource all their account-processing work to Facebook, but it has also created an entire culture of services and apps that are designed to do nothing more than advertise themselves to my friends.

You know what, developers? If I like your product, I'll tell my own damn friends about it my own damn self.

You know what, Facebook? I don't even know what to say to you. You're not the proximate cause of my bitterness, but there's no doubt in my mind that you had a hand in this little incident. Don't think I'll forget or forgive.

What I listened to this week

2011-03-11T22:53:00.000-05:00

It has been an odd week. Unsurprisingly, that is reflected in my musical selections.

1) Nilsson. Everybody's talkin' about him.

2) Goldfrapp. Anything from "Head First" is going to be stuck in your head for days or possibly weeks. That's because it's basically a Roxette album.

3) She Keeps Bees. Nicely low-fi, simple garage rock. Plus, it's a pretty cool name for a band.

4) Portishead. It's rare that a band be so frequently cited as influential, and yet be so infrequently imitated.

Why I'm Leaving Facebook (Someday)

2011-03-09T20:25:00.001-05:00

Why I'm Leaving Facebook

I love the internet too much to participate in its downfall. I love email, and instant messaging, and frolicking though links. I love that the internet lets people be creative in the ways we communicate with one another.

Facebook is a walled garden, and that's a problem even the mighty AOL couldn't overcome. But the real problem is that it's stagnant. It was stagnant from the very beginning. No matter how many sites integrate Facebook buttons, or how many people use it as their primary means of communication, Facebook is still stagnant. It doesn't have the full range of creativity and possibility offered by the unconstrained World Wide Web. It never has, and it never will.

More to the point, those who rely on Facebook also lose those avenues of creativity. Rather than create a new website or real-world marketing campaign, Adidas slaps an ad on TV and tells people to go to facebook.com/adidas for more information. Instead of organizing workers to demand better conditions in their factories, people just "like" an article and circulate a Facebook petition. Those things are not evil, or wrong, or even completely ineffectual. Unfortunately, they have become replacements for other actions or avenues of communication, and that's bad for everyone.

It's even bad for Facebook.

Even more than all that, I'm supremely uncomfortable with the fact that my every action is being recorded and fed into a program that is used to make marketing decisions. Sure, that happens with Google and Bing, and the Washington Post certainly tracks user behavior. But with Facebook, those advertising models aren't just based on my actions; they're based on my friends and their actions.

If I'm friends with William and William "likes" a Budweiser page, then there's a database somewhere that is waiting to serve me a Budweiser ad.

No big deal, really. But that's the sort of thing that happens with every action and interaction on Facebook. Even if I never share any personal information or "like" a page or article, Facebook has a marketing profile for me.

Remember that computer you had in college? It ran Windows 95 (if you're as old as I am) or Win98 or Me. It came with Outlook Express, which helpfully integrated with your Hotmail account. You emailed with your friends, signed up for notifications from your favorite record store, and felt like you were connected to the world.

Then one of your friends clicked on a link in an... uh... adult website, and ended up with a virus on his computer. It ransacked his Outlook Express address book, and suddenly your pristine Hotmail account was receiving dumptruck loads of Russian spam. You did nothing wrong, but the internet's cloud of mosquitoes and horseflies descended upon you nonetheless.

No matter how well you control your behavior and activity on Facebook, you'll always be at the mercy of your friends' worst judgement.

For more than a year now, I've been bored with the superficial social interaction of Facebook, and wondering if it justified the cynical marketing exposure and risk to my personal contact information. For a long time, it seemed like the risks were worth the rewards. The balance has been shifting steadily toward the "no" end of the scale. It's not quite there, but I feel like I'm nearing a tipping point.

Why It Hasn't Happened Yet

In short? Because there are a few of my friends who only contact me through Facebook, and I don't want to lose touch. I have to wonder if they'd shift back to email should my account suddenly disappear, but I'm not yet ready to take that plunge. The scales are pretty equally balanced, and in this case, I'm more than happy to err on the side of staying in touch.

But I'm warning you, Facebook: thin ice. The next move that either erodes my ability to interact with my friends or chips away with my ability to preserve my online identity... then I'm outta there.

You probably don't know what music to put on your iPods

2010-11-10T06:46:00.004-05:00

...so let me give you some advice on filling up those playlists for the month of November.

1) Anything from Shannon McNally's Coldwater. It's a great album, and all the tracks are thoroughly appropriate autumn listening. "This Ain't My Home" especially goes well with dry leaves and pumpkin beer.

2) A couple tracks from the band She Keeps Bees. I recommend "Release" and "Ribbon," but honestly, most of the tracks on their album sound quite a bit alike. That's fine, just as long as you don't put too much in your playlists.

3) Horses by Patti Smith. The whole album. You really can't overdo this one.

4) Some Peter Case. The album Flying Saucer Blues is an autumn favorite, but the song "Evening Raga" from Beeline is also a perfect fit. If you have access to Susan Cowsill's cover of Case's "Honeychild," that's also an excellent choice.

5) Neil Young. Obviously. Harvest and Everybody Knows this is Nowhere are the best choices, but it's tough to go wrong with Neil in the fall.

6) "Season of the Witch." Just because. Donovan's recording is the definitive version, but there's a lot to be said for Dr. John's distinctive growl this time of year, even if his version is only on the Blues Brothers 2000 soundtrack.

7) The Last Waltz. No explanation necessary.

Three shows for the price of one

2010-08-18T11:04:00.005-04:00

Last night, Maya and I went out to watch Shannon McNally perform at a little restaurant in Vienna. It's the same place we went to see Shannon play five years ago, and it's still a weird little venue, but the food ain't bad, and the music was great.

There were two opening acts, both of which were surprising in one way or another.

REBECCA PRONSKY

Rebecca is a singer/songwriter from New York with a great voice that she's not afraid to use. I had never heard of her, but maybe that's because I'm not a New Yorker, and I'm not Polish. (She told a funny story about one of her songs being picked up for use in a Polish soap opera, and two fans of the show actually coming to one of her gigs in New York.)

I was very impressed by her vocals, and her guitarist was also pretty good. Here's a YouTube clip of her performing "Hard Times," which she dedicated to Bernie Madoff:

ANNE McCUE

I've been a fan of Anne McCue for a few years, so it was a nice bonus to find out that she was going to be one of the opening acts for this show. She performed without a band, which initially disappointed me, because I know how capable she is of bringing the full rock 'n' roll experience. She's a hell of a guitarist, so I had been looking forward to some craxy solos and fiery riffs.

But solo, with just an assortment of guitars, I actually found her music all the more impressive. She played a few acoustic, a few electric, then sat down with a lap-steel guitar for a tune before closing with a ukulele.

I couldn't find much on YouTube of Anne performing solo, but here's a nice clip that showcases her acoustic chops, sprinkled with some wry observations about being a woman in a male-dominated industry:

And if you're interested in seeing what Anne is like with a full band, check out this video of her performance from this past Monday night in Delaware. Yes, she's covering Hendrix.

SHANNON McNALLY

Of course, the real reason I wanted to go to this show is that Shannon McNally is probably my favorite contemporary artist. She's a talented songwriter with an amazing voice and a great band, all of which are great reasons to go out and see someone live. But when you come across an artist with all three qualities, you shouldn't miss an opportunity to catch a show.

Last night, she opened with the first track from her new album. "This Ain't My Home" is a great, slow-burning song and one of my current favorites. It's also a great showcase for her very tight backing band, Hot Sauce. They played a good mix of new material, covers, and older songs, including a smoldering rendition of "Down and Dirty," which I had always thought of as more sultry than smokin'. I stand corrected.

I've heard people describe Shannon's lyrics and music as being very Dylanesque, and I wouldn't quibble with that description too much. But it's obvious that Shannon herself knows that she owes a big stylistic debt to a huge range of artists from Dylan to Waylon. She's not afraid to pay homage or reinterpret, and she's not shy about acknowledging her influences, whether they're the great old blues singers, the folkies, the outlaws, or the rockers.

A great example of that is the song "Lovely" from her newest album. It's a laid-back but enthusiastic love song that has an undeniably southern soul sound. Throughout, she alternates between powerful and lilting singing and the occasional half-mumbled spoken phrase that really invokes the Dylan comparison once again.

Then, smack-dab in the middle of the song, she drops in this verse:

I was born to run
You were born to be mine
We'll take cover, baby
Come on, give me your hand
Cause I just got off of that mountain
And you know where I want to go
Straight down the Mississippi River
To the Gulf of Mexico

That goes into my book as the best musical shout-out in history.

For folks who haven't had the good fortune to catch a live show, here's a good YouTube clip of Shannon McNally and her band performing a couple songs from "Coldwater." And yes, the first song is a Waylon Jennings cover.

More information than you require: What's wrong with me, and what's wrong with health care

2010-07-20T17:48:00.004-04:00

I have kidney stones. Or maybe not. I don't know how to judge the balance of the evidence, but several medical professionals have examined a set of CT scans and determined that I don't have little bits of sharpened mineral burrowing their way through my system.

That may sound like good news. In a lot of ways, it's great news.

I fear, however, that the good is outweighed by the bad.

For one thing, it has taken exactly two weeks to reach this conclusion. During that time, I had constant abdominal pain. Lacking a diagnosis, I had only ibuprofen and a heating pad to combat the pain. Two weeks later, I still have no diagnosis, and thus no prescription for pain management.

More bad news comes in the form of the medical community's inability to communicate with its patients. Between the time I received the CT scan and the time I was given the news that it turned up no kidney stones, six and a half days elapsed with no word from my doctor. In that time, I placed no fewer than fifteen telephone calls to the doctor and his assistant, each time reminding them that I was in pain and awaiting a diagnosis. In the end, I had to track down another doctor from that department and have him paged after hours.

Finally, we come to the nightmare of scheduling. Immediately following my CT scan, the doctor told me to schedule a follow-up. The next available appointment is August 3rd, or twenty-eight days after my pain began. With a sigh of resignation and a dead soul, the doctor's assistant informed me that there was nothing she could do.

Then, for a beautiful moment, I thought I found a loophole. I took the day off work and checked myself into the emergency room. Blood was drawn. I was scanned with an ultrasound machine and X-rays were taken. My CT results were analyzed. I was poked and prodded and questioned by three doctors, two nurses, and two medical technicians. Over the course of nearly four hours, I began to feel as though I was in the care of medical professionals.

Unfortunately, the result of all that was that they could find no reason for my ongoing pain. They checked my gall bladder, right kidney, liver, and appendix. I was prescribed two antacid medications; the thinking, I suppose, was that even though there was no indication that my problem was related to stomach acid, it's easily treatable, and no harm can be done by keeping a lid on my stomach acid.

Upon discharge, I was instructed to follow up with a gastroenterologist, who could rule out further sources of pain. I was told to make such an appointment "as soon as possible" and given the phone number of the hospital's gastroenterology department.

Their next available appointment is August 30. That's 41 days from now, or 55 days since the pain began.

Once again, the assistant in charge of scheduling explained that there was simply nothing she could do.

Politicians spent much of last year arguing about whether or not our health care system needed to be repaired. One side endlessly repeated the mantra that we have the best health care in the world. That may be the case, but our access to that care is sadly lacking.

I have a full-time job. I'm 32 years old and have better than average health insurance. I eat right, don't smoke, and engage in no high-risk activities. In short, I'm one of the easiest people to treat, but I can't seem to get treatment.

Our doctors may be great, but I'll never know. By the time I get to see a gastroenterologist, there may be irreparable harm done to my body. The pain may intensify to such a degree that I am re-admitted to the emergency room, at an astronomical cost to the hospital, the insurance company, and the taxpayers. Or my condition may resolve on its own, after having caused me weeks of pain. There's no way of knowing. Or rather, there's no way for me to know; a doctor specializing in problems with the gastrointestinal tract may know.

I guess I'll just have to wait six weeks to find out.

Quote of the day: Steve Earle edition

2010-05-28T17:43:00.002-04:00

Introducing his song "Fearless Heart" on Austin City Limits, way back in 1986:

"You can either get through life or you can live it. And if you want to live it, there's only two things you need: an inquisitive mind, and a fearless heart."

If you hated the end of LOST, you were watching the wrong show

2010-05-24T18:06:00.003-04:00

Over the last few weeks, people have whipped themselves up into a frenzy, preparing to hate the series finale of LOST. Nobody seems to believe that the show is capable of satisfying its fans.

I'm a pretty big fan. I've watched all the episodes. I've read a lot of Q&A sessions with the producers, watched the DVD special features, and poked around on Lostpedia. And I'm enormously satisfied with not just the finale, but the series as a whole.

The difference between me and the haters is that I knew which show I was watching.

This is fundamentally the result of a misunderstanding. Part of that is the fault of the writers, but I'd advise anyone who was unhappy with the finale -- or the last few seasons -- to sit back and ask what the show was actually about.

The best answer to that question can be found by examining what our characters are trying to accomplish.

Before we talk about the questions, here's the answer: None of this show's characters were trying to find out what the island is.

Think about it. There were only a handful of characters who were investigating anything about the island, and they weren't asking the big questions. Most of the Dharma Initiative were looking for something very specific, which wouldn't help advance the story, or increase the audience's understanding. Would it have made a difference if Pierre Chang and Stuart Radzinsky had sat down and had a conversation about electromagnetism? What if Daniel Faraday's research into moving a consciousness through time had been explained even more than it already was?

No, our characters only cared about defining the island in terms of what it did. And on that question, we had six years worth of answers, beginning with the moment the passengers on flight 815 survived their crash. We were shown -- not told -- what the island *did*. On that front, answers abounded.

More than that, the characters had specific questions, quests, or goals that were all addressed at some point. Jack found his faith and his purpose, and completed the journey Locke started. Sawyer finally got off the damn island. Kate rescued Claire. Sun and Jin found each other. Hurley took on the mantle of leadership and now is in a position to do a lot of good for people. Desmond did awesome things, then got to be with Penny. Ben found some measure of redemption and started to mature into something resembling a human being. Those are the things that motivated the characters, and so that's the story we were watching all these years.

And of course, Richard, Frank and Miles just plain survived. That counts for a ton.

If one of those characters had embarked on a quest to determine the exact nature of the island's source of power, or to witness the mechanism that moved it through space and time, then fans would be right to demand explicit, "tell-me" answers.

But seriously, people… if you watch a cooking show and don't learn how to change the oil in your car, that's not the show's fault.

It's long past due, but I will no longer dignify these people with web links

2010-05-19T16:57:00.000-04:00

...or brain-time. In raw minutes, I believe I have dedicated far too much of my life to anger and frustration. Therefore I resolve:

I will no longer pretend that I have a grudging admiration for Sarah Palin's ability to manipulate the media.
I will no longer engage climate-change denialists in an attempt to disprove their paranoia.
And I will no longer be respectful of the religious convictions that lead people to wage war on high-school science curricula.

Honestly, those things are just not worth my time anymore.

Sadly, these decisions seem to have curtailed my blogging activity rather radically. I don't know if that's a commentary on me, my obsessions, or the media.

Apparently Shannon Curfman is still around

2010-02-03T19:11:00.004-05:00

I knew she took a break after "Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions," but last time I checked up on her, Shannon Curfman hadn't returned to the studio.

Which was probably a good thing. There were some good songs on her debut album, and it's hard to deny she had some serious vocal and guitar talent, but... she was fourteen years old when it was released. A few years out of the entertainment biz undoubtedly did her a world of good. I mean, seriously, that industry could be incredibly toxic for a teenager.

In any event, she released a few singles and EPs in recent years, and a full album in 2007. Check the lead single from that album, which does a good job of showcasing her strong, bluesy voice and some nice shredding.

The screen cap and camera work are a little silly, though.

Getting back to my roots

2009-11-03T13:36:00.004-05:00

In the words of Nick Lowe, lately I've let things slide. I need to re-establish old (awesome) habits.

From National Geo:

Carrying the remains of a roughly 30-foot (9-meter) giant squid in her jaws, a female sperm whale, with a calf at her side, swims near the surface off Japan's Bonin Islands in the northwestern Pacific. Taken on October 15, this and other "absolutely sensational" new pictures offer rare proof of the sperm whale's taste for giant squid, said giant squid expert Steve O'Shea of the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.

Look, I do not favor the death of squid, because if there's one thing more terrifying than tentacly death, it's the AVENGING GHOST of tentacly death. But still, I remember as a kid being captivated by the notion of an epic struggle between whale and squid, happening far below the surface.

Great love song, or THE GREATEST LOVE SONG?

2009-10-30T12:35:00.002-04:00

I dare you to watch this without smiling.

Quick hits, fast beats

2009-10-30T11:16:00.003-04:00

Fall has arrived in DC, which means that I go to work when it's dark, come home when it's dark, and take a lunch break when the drizzle slows down. I think my musical choices over the last two weeks reflect that reality.

Cause Cheap Is How I Feel, by the Cowboy Junkies. This song makes me want to work its title into my conversations, but I expect that would lead people to believe that I have low self-esteem. Really, it's just that I think it's an awesome song that uses some excellent phrasing to bring its emotional heft into the real world.

Once in a Lifetime, by the Talking Heads. In or out of the band, David Byrne is rapidly becoming one of my favorite artists. He makes me want to have white hair.

Cry for Love, by Iggy Pop. Speaking of old dudes who are way cooler than I am. Note: It wasn't until I watched a bunch of his live performances on YouTube that I realized how desperate Anthony Kiedis is to grow up to be Iggy Pop.

A Horse in the Country, by the Cowboy Junkies. Sure, it's one of the Junkies' happier songs, but it still has that touch of everyday melancholy that makes the band such a good fit for gray fall days. The verses start with sad reflections on the mundane:

The money would be pretty good if a quart of milk was still a dollar
or even if a quart of milk was still a quart

This weather I could almost stand if the sun would shine a little brighter
or even if the sun would shine at all

Caption contest

2009-10-18T10:30:00.002-04:00

Me: I wonder what the cow is thinking.
Maya: It's thinking, "Mmmm... grass."

An anniversary, of sorts

2009-10-12T12:04:00.007-04:00

In the fall of 1999, I spent a semester at Westfield State College in beautiful Westfield, Massachusetts. It's a small school in a very nice area of Western Massachusetts, and it had an excellent exchange arrangement with my home campus. I got to pay in-state (Montana) tuition, and was frequently treated as an honored guest of Westfield State. For instance, we exchange kids had free use of the college's fleet of 15-passenger vans, which we used on more than one occasion to visit Boston, or Montreal, or Washington, DC.

It was ten years ago last weekend that I first visited the city to which I would eventually move. And it was ten years ago today that I emailed my friends and family a report on my adventure. Here, reprinted in its entirety, is that same email:

-----Original Message-----
From: Zach Ragbourn
Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 8:22 PM
Subject: Weekend in Washington DC

...or, How I Got 9 College Kids Lost on the East Coast

I'm sending on this feeble story in the hopes that it might amuse y'all.

Let us begin by saying that a moderately large -- 9 persons in all -- group of students from Westfield State and UMass Amherst embarked on a monumental (ha!) journey to the capital of our fair nation. So that we might save money, we decided to leave Westfield late at night, and arrive in DC early the next morning. With that said, I present to you a chronologically-ordered list of events that transpired this weekend.
Depart Westfield State College, Friday, 11:45pm
Arrive DC, Saturday, 8:00am
Nap time. Actually, only the driver and I (the humble navigator) napped. The other 7 went on to secure places in line for the White House tour.
Sleep through the White House tour. Not my fault.
Connect with main group, visit Washington Monument, 12:45 pm
Proceed to the Lincoln Memorial, 1:15 pm
On to the Vietnam Wall,
and the Korean Wall.
Then the FDR Memorial,
and the Jefferson Memorial.
Buy 8 (one girl had a friend to visit in DC) tickets to watch the Capitols/Kings NHL game at MCI Center.
Run into Dan Keller (U of Montana student) on the street outside MCI Center.
Dinner at Planet Hollywood, DC. Loud, flashy, mediocre.
Watch Capitols tie the Kings in overtime. Neat floor shows, 3 big fights.
Sleep. Plan to awaken at 9:00am to get tickets to the Holocaust Museum.
Wake up at 9:15 to discover that nobody in my hotel room is up. The 5 girls in the other room are ready to go. We ditch the 2 sleeping Canadians and their silly Idaho friend. We can do that, because the Canadians are from Quebec.
Bum around until our scheduled tour of Holocaust Museum at 12:15
Exit Holocaust Museum at around 3:15.
Indecision.
Group A (Zach and Brittany) head to the Smithsonian. Group B (four people with strange priorities) hop the Metro for Arlington and the Capitol.
Air & Space Museum, 3:17pm. Geared toward little kids. Almost no substance at all.
Natural History Museum, 3:45pm
American History Museum, 4:45pm
Brittany and I got lost on the way back to the Red Roof Inn. Now that I'm thinking about it, that's a hefty bit of foreshadowing...
Meet up with Canadians, silly friend and silly friend's DC-native friend. Take the subway to dinner. Neat subway.
Dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. Very good Thai Spicy Pizza.
Attempt to convince DC-native friend that I'm from Canada, too. Didn't work. Not my fault.
Bummed around DC for a couple hours.
Slept lots.
Wake up, 9:15am, pack van. This time, it's my turn to drive. Brittany is the navigator.
Brittany is a California driver. 'nuff said.
Ahem. Attempt to locate *Starbucks* coffee in DC. Left DC at 10:00am.
Brittany plots a course to take us *around* and not through Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and NYC.
Ahem. Arrive Philadelphia.
Oh, while we're here, let's see the Liberty Bell!
And get a Philly cheese steak!
Back to the road. I've now driven a 15-passenger van in DC and Philadelphia. Woo!
New Joisy Toinpike. Stupidly, Brittany and I ask a toll-booth operator for directions.
Follow directions. Arrive at another toll-booth. Ask for further directions.
Those of you who know the area know where the Verrazano Bridge is. We didn't. So we followed the man's directions to "Go over the Verrazano Bridge."
Atop the bridge, Brittany says, "Hey! The Statue of Liberty!" We thought she was joking.
Arrive Brooklyn.
Battery Tunnel, the Bronx, Holland Tunnel. It's hard to remember what order they went in. But it took us the better part of 80 minutes to find an entrance to the turnpike again. During that time I was subjected to every form of ridicule known to mankind.
Ok. It's getting on toward 3 now. Maureen (the silly friend with the DC-native friend, not that it matters) managed to take over navigation. Brittany sulks. Maureen gets us on an expressway with no exits. We watch helplessly as the Garden State Parkway fades into the distance.
I got us back to the Parkway. There we saw a dude with Missoula license plates. He didn't stop and roll down his window like we asked. Bummer. But his license plate said "My grass is blue." He must rule. I think he was a hippie.
Disgusted or otherwise, Maureen takes over driving when I pull over and shout (I'm sure that the answering cry was not one of joy but sorrow) that I quit. She soon has us stuck in traffic.
Back roads through lovely Connecticut. It's dark by now.
Arrive Westfield State College, 9:15pm.
So, for a relatively small time investment, our WDC trip blossomed into a thing of ferocious beauty and ravenous fury. Or vice-versa. You may mock my poor navigational skills, but remember that I brought joy and laughter into many lives. For example, at one point in NYC, I stopped the van and ordered everyone out. Kary, ever the joker, quipped, "So you'll just pick us up on your next circle through the city?" Ah, a laugh at my expense.

But really, it was the most fun I've ever had in a 15-passenger van. Or in New York. And how 'bout them Red Sox? 23 to 7? Jeez

A few notes on this historical document:

White House tours are considerably harder to get nowadays than they were 10 years ago. In fact, it wasn't until I had lived in DC for a good 4 years that I managed to finally take the tour.
The MCI Center is now the Verizon Center, which is probably a great symbol of all that is wrong with the telecom industry. And the Caps are still a pretty weak team.
When I ran into a fellow UM student, we were carousing through some sort of street festival with lots of quick food choices, mostly of a kebab nature. I have no idea what it was, when it will happen again, or whether or not to wish for it to show up in my world.
I have never seen that Planet Hollywood again. It may have disappeared.
The hotel we stayed in is across the street from a video store that proudly advertises its "Adult-Action" movies. I always figured that meant naked kung-fu.
Probably my most vivid visual memory would be the escalator ride up from the Dupont metro station, and drinks at the Big Hunt. I was very glad to discover that both those things are every bit as awesome as I remembered.
Starbucks is laughably easy to find in DC now. But ten years ago, driving a white whale of a van full of tired and cranky college kids, it was an epic undertaking. I choose to believe that Starbucks wasn't as ubiquitous in the DC of 1999 as it is today.

The return of Friday iPod blogging

2009-10-02T10:32:00.002-04:00

After finally rebuilding the core of my music library and re-creating a system for serving up a good mix of tunes for my commute, I think I have finally achieved some stability in my music world.

Here's some of the noteworthy stuff that my new system served up this week:

By Your Side, by Sade. I looked up "smooth" in Wikipedia, and was shocked to see that Sade's picture isn't there. Please fix this, internet.

Johnny Come Lately, by Steve Earle. For a hard-charging country rocker, Steve Earle sure seems to draw a lot of inspiration from the red-headed folks of small north-Atlantic islands. Here he is with the Pogues, juxtaposing the story of a WWII fighter pilot with that of his son, a Vietnam vet. As usual, it's full of evocative and pointed lyrics, southern twang, and the kind of messaging that makes you wonder why any Republican would ever buy his records.

Jailer, by Asa. I won't even get into the fact that there are several artists with this name, all grouped together in iTunes, which led me to wonder how a European rapper could do such credible reggae. Let's suffice it to say that Asa hits all the right notes and delivers the kind of reggae tune that would be right at home in Marley's catalog.

Remember This, by Shine. Back in the day, file-sharing services were actually about discovering new music, not just about forcing Metallica to starve to death. Sites like Audiogalaxy were very good at helping new or obscure artists send their work out to the world, and listeners ended up being exposed to some great stuff we would have otherwise missed. Shine is one of those bands that never achieved any sort of widespread fame. They produced some very competent alt-rock tunes that I enjoyed a great deal. Unfortunately, I lost most of their material in the Great Crash of 2009, but "Remember This" survived.

Starry Night, by Iggy Pop. From the same 1990 album that had Iggy collaborating with Kate Pierson and John Hiatt, this is a fun, jangly tune that I can never quite get out of my head. I only have the digital version, so I lack liner notes, but I would be shocked if that's not David Lindley on guitar.

Kandi, by One Eskimo. Smooth, sad song by a new group I know nothing about. The video was a free download at Starbucks a couple weeks ago, and I finally got around to watching it:

Balance

2009-09-24T12:00:00.002-04:00

It isn't all that rare for giant squid to become caught in deep-sea fishing rigs. What is rare is for the squid to still be alive when the fishermen figure out what happened.

On July 30, during routine test runs for an upcoming whale study, the team dipped their giant net more than a third of a mile (a half kilometer) down and came up with something "really crazy," said Anthony Martinez, a marine mammal scientist with the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service.
Measuring about 19.5 feet (6 meters) long and 103 pounds (47 kilograms), the likely juvenile giant squid was alive when netted but didn't survive the ascent to the surface.

Obviously, there are many reasons I wish that we didn't keep accidentally killing squid. Not least among them is the fact that it's incredibly difficult to advance scientific understanding of any animal if all you have to work with is a corpse. But I also don't like the situation because nobody ever made a terrible (terrible) horror movie about dead squid.

Yeah, I watched an atrocity the other day. It was a SciFi (SyFy!) Channel movie from 2006 about a 200-foot-long, freshwater squid that lived in some random North American lake for a couple decades, snacking on fishermen. I didn't pay close enough attention to figure out where this cinematic gem was set, nor did I see any reason presented for the squid's ability to survive in the lake. I can only assume that it was an incredibly deep lake with an overabundance of Pategonian toothfish swimming about, undiscovered for decades.

As a matter of fact, I didn't even catch the title of this movie. That's how bad it was.

Luckily, the squid was able to eat a couple teenagers and a salty old fisherman during the movie, providing some measure of vengeance for all the real squid hauled up to die in fishing nets.

A rare music post

2009-08-07T19:20:00.003-04:00

A couple weeks ago, the external hard drive holding my music library crashed. It made some weird noises when I plugged it in, but other than that, it was completely dead.

No big deal. That's why I run nightly backups!

Except... the nightly backups, which had been running, would not restore to a freshly-purchased hard drive. Apparently in the two years I'd been running the backups, the software had actually overwritten the original backup index, and so didn't create a complete copy; just copies of files that had been modified in the last few months.

All of this resulted in me re-ripping a couple hundred CDs and contacting iTunes to ask if they would be so kind as to let me re-download my purchases. After several weeks of poking around, ripping, downloading, bargain-hunting on Amazon, and careful reconstruction, I have managed to restore about 90% of my music library. It's not as organized as I would like, and there are some embarassing omissions, but I finally feel as though I have a handle on things.

Of course, anytime one delves into one's music library, one is bound to rediscover things. Here's a couple of songs that I've unearthed:

"If You Were the Woman and I Was the Man" by the Cowboy Junkies and John Prine. If this song doesn't do anything for you, then you have no business listening to music.

"Love Hate" by Shannon McNally. From Shannon's very first EP, this cut grew out of the recording industry's desire to clone Alanis; I can see why a studio operating under that mandate would wait five years to release anything by this artist, because there's absolutely no resemblance. This is a laid-back southern groove, complete with lap steel and horns. It's a perfect showcase for Shannon's earthy voice and crazy accent. Plus, I love this lyrical turn:

I'm damned if I shoot
I'm damned if I don't
I can't go back with empty hands so maybe I just won't
Go back at all

"Alright Guy" by Todd Snider. It's a little ridiculous that this song achieved some fame when it was recorded in 2001 by random country singer Bubba McTwang (okay, so his name is Gary Allan, but it's not like you've heard of him anyway). This is a typical Snider song, which I figure would alienate most country audiences... it's full of references to smoking pot, makes fun of hicks, and has an enormous dose of self-depreciation. It's a great song, and I especially love that it dates itself with a couple pop-culture references that would go right over the heads of a modern audience.

A lesson for Democrats and anyone who thinks that bipartisanship is a virtue in and of itself

2009-07-15T12:39:00.002-04:00

One version of a health care overhaul bill has passed out of its Senate committee on a strictly party-line vote. Was it because Democrats rammed it down the throats of the Republican minority, not allowing them to work toward a more bipartisan bill? Was it not watered-down enough by conservative interests?

We all know, via the fabulous Washington press corps, that the only way to produce good legislation is by making sure that Republicans -- who represent a whopping 25% of the country -- agree whole-heartedly with 100% of the provisions in any bill. It's called "bipartisanship," and it is the only thing that reporters care about.

So why in the world did those nasty Democrats shut the Republicans out of the process?

Oh wait.

The panel has been in mark-up for weeks now, and along the way, has approved 160 Republican amendments--and for all that largesse, not a single member of the minority voted in its favor.

That's right... Senate Democrats gave the Republicans weeks of debate and one hundred and sixty amendments. They probably also washed and waxed several cars, all while apologizing for not doing more. And after all that bipartisanship, the vote is exactly the same as if Republicans hadn't been allowed to muck things up.

Two lessons here:

1) Republicans are not interested in governing. They're only interested in theater.
2) Democrats are suckers.

Let's hope at least one of those lessons gets through to Max Baucus before his committee tackles health care reform.

The future of television

2009-07-01T14:37:00.004-04:00

Now, I haven't seen the show in question, nor have I actually sat down and watched shows created by the same tag-team of creative juggernauts, but I still must sit in judgment of a new series called "Defying Gravity."

Here's how the Hollywood Reporter describes it:

"Gravity," whose cast includes Laura Harris, Christina Cox, Malik Yoba and Florentine Lahme, is set in the near future and revolves around eight astronauts from five countries who undertake a mysterious six-year mission through the solar system.

Okay, fine. I'm all about near-future stuff, and even though I think claustrophobia and closed sets are cheap gimmicks, I'm usually pleased with the results.

But TV producers have a long and glorious history of taking plausible and promising premises and turning them into the offensive goo that oozes from millions of TV screens in America for too many millions of hours every week. This particular creative team has already produced such serious-minded television programming as "Gray's Anatomy," and "Desperate Housewives," which are acclaimed for their high standards, creative storytelling, and mature approaches to interesting societal issues.

But here's what jumped out at me. Not just its roots in the world of sex-oriented prime-time soap operas, but the actual stated direction of the show, straight from the mouth of a network exec:

He describes the show as "having a sci-fi premise but being told in a female-friendly way."

It is clear that "female-friendly" in this context means, "lots of sex, presumably between hot women and tubby middle-aged men who are married to other, equally hot women." And the "sci-fi premise" ensures that the sex will be conducted in microgravity.

I can't see what could possibly go wrong.

I don't think this means what they think it means

2009-06-29T18:10:00.001-04:00

From MSNBC:

According to Paramount’s exit polls, 91 percent of the audience thought the sequel was as good as or better than the first “Transformers”

No point in going to the theater

2009-06-26T23:58:00.004-04:00

After reading this review, I feel like I've already seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I had no intention of watching it, but odds were good that it would end up in by DVD queue someday, had my Transformers urge not been pre-sated by this review from io9.

It starts thus:

Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.

And gets better from there.

The problem with Enterprise

2009-06-23T11:13:00.003-04:00

...aside from the scripts, acting, plots, and directing, is that it makes the universe too small and incestuous, and renders pointless everything done by other installments in the franchise.

A couple months ago, I decided that what my life needed was a daily dose of Star Trek. Rather than go through any effort at all, I instructed my TiVo to simply record all shows with "Star Trek" in their titles, and to delete all but the five most recent episodes. That shotgun approach to collecting television episodes (or "televisons," as they are affectionately known in my home) has brought me to several conclusions:

William Shatner was not a bad actor; he was a stage actor. It's easy to see him projecting his performance out to the back rows, ignoring the camera and microphones. The result isn't particularly appetizing, but it's forgivable.
Shatner was YOUNG.
Patrick Stewart has an incredibly powerful presence. And despite his stage background, he knows how to rein it in for the cameras.
The original series and the Next Generation had, on the whole, very good scripts that hit the right pace, treated their stories and characters with respect, and -- more importantly -- tried not to waste the audience's time. In the early days, this was probably due to the rather extensive use of novelists as screenwriters, but whatever the cause, these two series were well-written, well-produced television shows.
Deep Space Nine is never on TV.
Voyager was crap.
Enterprise was worse.

It is to the subject of Enterprise that I must, reluctantly, return. It is by far the most-broadcast of the Trek franchise, and so it just keeps showing up on my TiVo. I hate it, but find myself watching in rapt fascination, trying to make sense of not just the moment-to-moment plot absurdities, but the overarching philosophy. After weeks of careful observation, I have determined that everyone and everything involved in Enterprise was lazy. Lazy plots, lazy acting, lazy scripts. The reason I could never make sene of the overarching philosophy is that the show is so damn lazy, it never got around to figuring that out for itself.

What do I mean by lazy? Take, for example, the subject of villains. In a prequel series, ostensibly about mankind's early forays into the enormous Rodenberry universe, the showrunners repeatedly turn to staples from the other shows. This morning, I watched fifteen minutes of an episode wherein Captain Jonathan Archer (who is frequently explicitly described as "a remarkable man," but is never seen doing anything even remotely remarkable) is being pursued by a Klingon with a personal vendetta. In an infinite universe, that nemesis is none other than the forefather of a family of Klingons who make trouble for the good folks on TNG and DS9. Oh, and Data's creator shows up to do some bad stuff. So do Romulans testing a prototype of the ship that Kirk faced down in the Cold-War classic "Balance of Terror." And the Borg.

It would seem that the vast and complex universe that Captains Kirk and Picard explore is actually very small, and Jonathan Archer beat them to everything. And then, evidently, forgot to write it down. 'Cause wouldn't you think that if Archer had made some record of how he stared down and defeated the Borg, Picard and Riker (and Shelby and Janeway, for that matter) would have known what to do? Or at least not been forced to spend so much time figuring out who and what the Borg are?

I'm not even coming at this from a fanboy-ranting-about-continuity perspective. I'm coming at it from the perspective of a television viewer who has ALREADY SEEN THIS BEFORE.

And that's the big problem with Enterprise. I can't figure out why they bothered. The producers don't seem to have anything new to show us. I mean, at least with Voyager, they tried. They produced crap, but it was crap that we hadn't seen before.

Enterprise is what happens when the clock-watchers get put in charge of a franchise.

Sadly, I have also become a clock-watcher. After a few hours of job-hunting, kitchen-cleaning, and general puttering around, I frequently find myself with a little time to kill. And so the time tries to kill me with the unfathomable waste of minutes and brain cells that is Enterprise.

Oh, and the theme song is awful. AWFUL. It's like a Creed song, only less edgy, less interesting. and less meaningful. And I hope y'all know what I think of Creed.

Come with me if you want to live

2009-06-22T20:26:00.001-04:00

Courtesy of Netflix and TiVo, I recently conducted a brief survey of the impending robot wars. We all know that the machines will one day rise up and kill us all, but there exist several schools of thought on when and how this will happen. I wanted to get back to basics and really come to grips with my fate, so I checked out the iconic machine-vs-man franchise, but limited myself to the pair of films made before the series became craptastic.

Yes, I'm talking about "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2: Judgement Day."

I've got to say, I was pleasantly surprised by "The Terminator." For all of its 1984-related badness, it turns out to be a pretty decent movie on quite a few levels. The hair, the music, and the Arnold were all predictably awful, but that doesn't matter, because the central characters were Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, who were portrayed by competent actors. The film's tiny little budget forced Cameron to make the story revolve around relatively straightforward -- though well-executed -- chase pieces rather than blockbuster-style effects bonanzas. Watching the movie now, with expectations set by T2 through T4, it was a breath of fresh air to see "The Terminator" as a much simpler, more concrete movie than the later installments.

"Terminator 2: Judgement Day" is clearly the movie that James Cameron had wanted to make the first time around. It's very well-structured and the execution is flawless, but it's really not the sort of film that cries out for a sequel. Where the first movie was a sci-fi adventure that was set in a world we all know and understand, T2 was set in the world of summer blockbusters. And audiences don't leave summer blockbusters thirsty for a thorough exploration of characters and concepts.

So those are my general impressions. And now it's time to discuss -- if you'll pardon the expression -- the elephant in the room.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was undoubtedly the best man to portray a sort of armed washing machine. But Robert Patrick as the T-1000... man, that guy is COLD. He imbues the character with a sort of detached malice that is way more intimidating than anything Schwarzenegger's wooden-faced performance could evoke. Much as Schwarzenegger is the figurehead the franchise, he really is the weakest part of these movies. Robert Patrick is the better villain, and Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn are the better heroes. And the station wagon is the better actor.

Stand By Me

2009-04-30T22:41:00.000-04:00

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Your daily Rockford line

2009-04-27T18:49:00.002-04:00

Rockford: "Look Slossen, I don't wanna fight with you. I really don't. In fact, I'd actually hate it."

YouTube find of the day

2009-04-23T11:22:00.004-04:00

From JazzFest 2007:

I was going to offer bonus points for naming the singer and guitarist, but it says it right on the video. So bonus points for naming the pianist without clicking through. Double bonus points, in fact, since you never see more than the top of his head.

Freaking awesome

2009-04-18T18:56:00.001-04:00

Your daily Rockford line

2009-04-15T18:55:00.001-04:00

Rocky: "What's going on?"

Rockford: "I don't know."

Rocky: "Who are those guys?"

Rockford: "I don't know."

Rocky: "Well, what do you know?"

Rockford: "Nothin'."

The best piece of writing I've come across lately

2009-04-14T19:44:00.004-04:00

Yeah, it's a little old, but it's new to me.

From a 2003 Ta-Nehisi Coates piece in the Village Voice:

I've got a running joke with my girlfriend. It starts in an alternate reality where I'm 20 years older, single, and childless. I've also gone all John Hinckley over Condi Rice, and somehow I manage to finagle my way into a social event where she is a guest. When she's off to herself and no one's looking, I whisper in her ear, "I hate everything you stand for. You take orders from a tribe of orcs who worship the Stone Age and mistake myopia for morality, and brutality for strength. You are a disgrace to your people and their long history of forcing this country to live up to its lofty ideals. Furthermore, you are the most beautiful woman inside the Beltway. Come away with me to a desert island. We will make beautiful arguments together."

Your daily Rockford line

2009-04-14T19:21:00.001-04:00

Jim Rockford: "You don't want a private investigator, you want a bodyguard."

Susan Alexander : "Chicken?"

Rockford: "Of course. Goes without saying."

Your daily Rockford line

2009-04-13T15:52:00.001-04:00

Rockford: "Before you take a bite out of something, you make sure it's something that won't bite you back."

Your daily Rockford line

2009-04-12T00:22:00.000-04:00

Rocky: "You know, all those years I was walking you to Sunday school? I'm beginning to get the feeling I wasted a lot of shoe leather."

The daily Rockford quip

2009-04-09T11:57:00.001-04:00

Audrey: "I keep waiting for the inevitable what's-a-nice-girl-like-you."

Rockford: "Well, the details are probably too painful to get into."

While I wasn't looking, we won the culture wars

2009-04-07T18:04:00.002-04:00

When you know you're on the right side of history, it's hard to imagine what gets the other side motivated to go out and fight in the morning. We call ourselves "progressives" for a reason, and we have always won in the end. Every time -- and I mean every time throughout history -- that conservative forces line up to stop the march of progress, they're pushed aside, and the good guys win the day.

So it's not like I lost hope and closed my eyes and ears during the last days of the culture wars. I saw the writing on the wall with the backlash against Bush's wrongheaded policies and the neocons' attempts to enshrine their ideologies in the American government. It was their end-run play, and we should have recognized their desperation at the time.

Then came the 2006 elections, when gay marriage, immigration, abortion, and all their other drums of war failed to boil the blood of the American populace. The general public, it seemed, was just a little less concerned with the nation's eroding moral fiber.

And of course the 2008 presidential campaign showed the shocking impotence of the forces who had once so presumptuously called themselves the "moral majority."

So I knew it was happening. But it wasn't until this week that I realized it had all come to an end, and that the culture war was was over. It sounds like I'm not the only one who needed to have it spelled out for me:

Your daily Rockford line

2009-04-07T17:57:00.002-04:00

Man: "Hey, I got a black belt in karate."

Rockford, holding a golf club: "Good, 'cause I got a black belt in seven-iron."

Your daily Rockford line

2009-04-06T17:05:00.001-04:00

Linda Bannister: "Do you always come equipped with smart remarks, or are you just showing off?"

Jim Rockford: "Little of both."

What gets me through the day

2009-03-31T13:17:00.002-04:00

The Rockford Files, streamed to my television via Netflix and TiVo. Best. Thing. Ever.

I shouldn't imply that I've been using it as a crutch to get through the last few months of my employment downturn, since I only discovered it this morning. But I do imply that I will use it to get through the next few months of employment downturn... should said months occur in the first place, that is.

Favorite line so far:

Woman (examining bruises on Rockford's face): Have you been fighting?
Rockford: No, the other guy did all the fighting. I just sat there.

The dumbest thing I've ever heard

2009-03-17T07:43:00.002-04:00

Okay, I haven't blogged much lately. In part that's because I haven't had much to say, and not many interesting things have happened in my life. But when stuff like this comes up, I have to break radio silence. Because this may be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I use my fingers as quotation marks, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? Not very long.

That was Michael Steele, the head of the freaking Republican party. How long will he be there? How long? Not very long. The saddest part is that Steele's soon-to-be-brief stint in the national spotlight will probably end for reasons other than his massive ignorance, which seems to be about the only quality that Republicans prize these days.

The perfect analogy for my uninspiring literary analysis

2009-02-08T18:28:00.002-05:00

H. P. Lovecraft is to horror fiction as Led Zeppelin is to death metal.

Discuss.

Okay, here's what I mean:

Years and years ago, all I knew of Led Zeppelin was that various music critics and bands credited them as the progenitors of heavy metal. Marilyn Manson was about to burst onto the scene, and Spin and Rolling Stone had articles about Zep's legacy. As many of you know, Marilyn Manson is one of the worst things to happen to music -- ever -- and so my initial impression of Zep was that they were responsible for the atrocities visited upon the world by the likes of Puddle of Mudd, Saliva, and Godsmack.

Of course, when I actually listened to "Over the Hills and Far Away" or "Bring it On Home," I came to a different understanding of things. And now years later, I'm going through the same learning experience with H. P. Lovecraft's short stories.

Lovecraft was an American author who lived mostly in New York and Rhode Island, and wrote the bulk of his stories between 1905 and 1935. Had I come to Lovecraft's works without having ever heard of him before, I would categorize what he wrote as "science fiction." After all, he created a mythology about ancient extraterrestrials, and his stories revolve around various humans who uncover evidence of the aliens' existence. Nothing too surprising or off-putting there.

Unfortunately, I had always known of Lovecraft as a forefather of the horror genre. And if you stop by your local bookstore and take a peek at the cover art on some of his anthologies, you'll definitely walk away with the impression that he wrote stories about human torsos, trees that eat faces, and rivers of blood and eyeballs. So far, having read all of one and 2/3 of another anthology, I have encountered none of those things.

Rather, Lovecraft's notion of "horror" seems to be the simple emotional response people will have when confronted with something outside their realm of experience. Something... "alien," if you will. So basically, his characters investigate some strange event, encounter an alien, and react with horror. Hence, he wrote "horror" fiction. And millions of angsty teenagers in black trenchcoats gobbled up every word, thus solidifying Lovecraft's reputation as -- kinda literally -- the Marilyn Manson of short fiction authors.

I've gotta say, though... the dude could write. He manages to craft some seriously dense narratives that are descriptive and engrossing. His mythology is complex and memorable. And the underlying concept of what has been called "cosmic horror" -- the idea that much of the rest of the universe is simply outside our ability to comprehend -- is pretty darn compelling. I can see why the angsty teenagers love it, but I can't really understand why publishers have opted for violent and gorey cover art.

To those of you with an affinity for Poe, I heartily recommend Lovecraft. If you like science fiction or weird stories, check out "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Colour of Space."

Now I've got Led Zeppelin stuck in my head.

Gluttons for information

2009-01-20T22:31:00.002-05:00

If you want more on the Purple Ticket Debacle, check out this account from a TNR writer.

I know from personal experience that Jesse Jackson was a purple ticket holder, and I hear that Al Sharpton was too. Expect to hear more on this if either of those gents was denied admittance to the inauguration.

Terrible

2009-01-20T17:29:00.003-05:00

For me, Maya, and Kelsi, Barack Obama's inauguration was a truly awful experience. Not only did we not get to see the inauguration, but the terrible planning and unsafe conditions actually made today one of the worst experiences any of us have ever had. Instead of sharing a joyous and historic moment with our friends and peers, we spent our day being crushed and thrown about by a crowd that had nowhere to go.

Along with thousands -- tens of thousands, according to some estimates -- of ticket-holders, we milled in a crushing crowd along D Street for about five hours. During that time, we saw only one PIC volunteer, who had very little information and did not attempt to direct or control the crowd. By the time we learned that our designated security checkpoint was permanently closed, the crowd had pushed into a dead end with no signage, no police, and no idea where to go. At least five people near me collapsed and needed medical attention. In only three of those incidents did EMTs arrive; nurses and doctors in the crowd tended to the injured in the other cases. With no crowd control, no police or medical presence, and thousands of tired, frustrated people forced into bottlenecks and dead-ends, it was an incredibly unsafe situation. An incredibly unsafe situation that the Capitol Police and DC Metropolitan Police seemed perfectly happy with.

The crowning moment was when a second set of security gates opened for a mere 30 minutes, closing in our faces at exactly noon. But the defining moment was when this tired, confused crowd of thousands came across a lone police outpost in the form of several officers lounging against their car. Instead of yelling demands or vulgarity, the crowd asked -- over and over -- "Please tell us what to do." At first the officers said nothing. Then one of them actually said, "Well, you're not getting in, so you're just taking up space right now."

Yeah, we're all hopping mad, and some of us are devastated that we were locked out of witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Washington Metro PD and the Capitol Police have earned a bad name for themselves today.

ZOMG MONTE

2009-01-18T23:09:00.001-05:00

Monte Montgomery is playing at the State Theatre in Falls Church on Feb. 5. I'm totally there.

Correcting a misunderstanding

2009-01-16T15:05:00.003-05:00

It has come to my attention that some Americans believe "Slow Turning" is a Keith Urban song. It is not.

Ordering tip

2008-12-19T09:13:00.003-05:00

For the lady ahead of me at Starbucks this morning:

When you order your drink "extra hot," you're also ordering my drink "extra hot."

Explained so I can understand it

2008-12-10T09:33:00.002-05:00

This is why I turn to DCist for news and analysis on the important legal and Constitutional issues of the day:

Another scholar, Michael Stokes Paulsen — who also decides that Clinton's appointment is unconstitutional — explains that an even sillier technicality may provide the way out:
There is one last chance for Hillary. The Emoluments Clause provides that its rule applies to any senator or representative, "during the Time for which he was elected." Perhaps the rule of the Emoluments Clause does not apply to female U.S. Senators.
This writer must strongly argue that, in the spirit of the Saxbe Fix, this particular loophole be named the Rohan Rider, named so after Éowyn, the improbable heroine and daughter of Rohan, who slays the Witch-king of Angmar during the Battle of Pelennor Fields despite an ancient prophecy foretold by the Elf-lord Glorifindel that the Lord of the Nazgûl would not "fall by the hand of man." (Yeah, you feel me.)

Darlington County

2008-12-08T08:42:00.001-05:00

For this week's installment of "Best Song Lyrics Ever," we turn once again to The Boss.

Drivin' out of Darlington County
I seen the glory of the comin' of the Lord
Drivin' out of Darlington County
Seen Wayne handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper's Ford

More Feist in your Tubes

2008-12-05T14:48:00.003-05:00

I've seen a few clips of Feist playing this tune, and they're all good. But one more can't hurt, can it? It's her fantastic cover of Ron Sexsmith's "Secret Heart," and her live version is significantly more rockin' than the album version.

The rockin' week

2008-12-03T16:23:00.004-05:00

The first week of any month is always a special time for a guy like me, who rebuilds his iTunes playlists on a monthly basis. This month I had a lot of material to work with, since I picked up a couple new albums courtesy of a much -appreciated iTunes gift certificate. Sadly, one of the albums (the White Stripes' "Icky Thump") is on standby while I wait to devote some dedicated listening-time to it, and another album ("Chinese Democracy") is frankly not going to find its way into my rotation until I'm desperate.

Here are the week's musical highlights:

Freeway, by Aimee Mann. Aimee is so much more than just the German girlfriend in "The Big Lebowski." For example, she's the only musical guest to ever have a speaking role in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." And she's a pretty great songwriter, too. I'm digging the leadoff track from her latest album. The song is "Freeway" and the album is the awesomely-titled "@#%&*! Smilers".

Beautiful Boy, by Kelli Ali. Every couple months, I say to myself, "Whatever happened to Kelli Ali?" I then look her up and find that her 2004 album "Psychic Cat" was her last release. Which is cool, because it's a good rockin' album from a girl who's best known as the original lead singer for the Sneaker Pimps. And Beautiful Boy has a great groove that blends her pop-rock sensibilities with her trip-hop experience. But this time, I looked up Kelli's discography to find that she released a new album last week. I gotta get me some o' that.

Raspberry Beret, by Hindu Love Gods. Because what you really need is Warren Zevon and REM singing a Prince song. No, really... that's what you really need.

Down Along the Lea, by Mary Lou Lord. Best song ever.

Never Been to Spain, by either Hoyt Axton or Elvis Presley. Both versions are on my playist. Obviously the Hoyt version is superior, but that ain't a knock on Elvis.

Alright Guy, by Todd Snider. I came across this song when I was scanning YouTube for a different Todd Snider track, and was instantly taken with the story he told about this song when he was introducing "Conservative Christian Right-Wing Republican Straight White American Male" to an audience. Long story short: he made fun of Garth Brooks and Chris Gaines. Won me over instantly. Plus, it's a classic Snider song, featuring a laid-back hippie who just can't get ahead in the squares' world.

No wonder this guy looks so familiar

2008-12-03T15:23:00.001-05:00

Turns out that's George Harrison's son. Cool.

Well said

2008-11-26T10:23:00.003-05:00

In case you haven't been following the politics of civil rights in California, here's the quick version: After gay marriage was legalized in California, and 20,000 couples married, a law was passed overturning the earlier court decision, and California now bans gay marriage. Shockingly enough, the campaign to pass this ban was financed in large part by religious groups.

Even more shocking, a lot of people are very upset with those religious groups. Said religious folks are very sad that they're now the target of boycotts and some extremely unflattering press. After all, they were simply putting into practice their religious beliefs, and shouldn't we all respect that?

This is all just a long way of saying that I really like the way John Aravosis describes the intersection of religion and politics:

When you use the power of the state to rip away my civil rights, and force me to live by your "values," you are no longer practicing your religion. You're practicing politics.

Processing my disappointment

2008-11-21T17:16:00.004-05:00

Okay, I wasn't entirely disappointed in "Quantum of Solace." But it missed the mark, and was an unworthy successor to the series reboot that got off to such a promising start with "Casino Royale."

First, let me stipulate that Daniel Craig was great. And that Dame Judi Dench is phenomenal, and ought to be declared a national treasure. (If only the Brits had a way of granting a person some sort of cultural significance via ceremony...)

With a few glaring exceptions, the effects and stunts were also top-notch. Where the movie fell down was on something much more fundamental than script, direction, acting, or production. "Quantum of Solace" was a disappointing (though not bad) Bond movie for the same reason 1989's "License to Kill" was unsuccessful.

In fact, the parallels are kind of stunning. Both are the second outing for a fresh-faced Bond. Both rejected the East-vs-West mythos of the earlier Bond franchise. Both settled upon Latin and South America as an epicenter of intrigue. And both turned away from the spy movie motif in favor of the revenge movie template. And the sad fact is that revenge movies just aren't that interesting.

There was a lot to like in "Quantum of Solace," but it was sidelined by Bond's desire for revenge. The movie attempts to set up Quantum as the SMERSH/SPECTRE of the new series, and that's a good thing. (Though my advice to budding criminal syndicates out there: don't wear self-identifying lapel pins.) The writers' instinct to look for intrigue and conspiracy in South American republics is laudable. But none of that matters to the audience, because it doesn't matter to Bond.

On a technical level, the actors and producers did pretty much everything right. (The exception: According to Maya, you should never use a CGI stuntman to do something that a human body simply cannot do; it kinda jumps out at the audience as blatantly unrealistic.) But doing everything right in the service of a faulty premise is going to result in a movie that is enjoyable in the moment, but ultimately disappoints.

Of course I'll buy it when it comes out on DVD. Heck, I even own "Never Say Never Again" and "Moonraker," which I wouldn't even use as coasters. Even though it wasn't a serious misstep, I think "Quantum of Solace" made a fundamental error, and that's a cryin' shame.

Friday's music - the list of shame

2008-11-21T16:26:00.003-05:00

This has not been a proud week for me, musically. I must admit some things that would embarrass a lesser man, and I can't even compensate for that shame with any new revelations or evidence of good musical taste. Let's just rip the bandage off quickly.

1) Africa, by Toto. But it's not as bad as you think. I haven't actually been *listening* to it, but I can't get it out of my head. Whoever left the pet door open and let this varmint in is going to get a stern talking-to, but recriminations can wait until the pest has been expunged. I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AAAAA-FRICA... Please, please make it stop.

2) Chinese Democracy, by GNR. Axl's return is not exactly a tour-de-force. It's more of a howl of dying relevance. A screech against obscurity. A single released simply to prove that he still exists. (Note: I still do not believe the album actually exists, but I downloaded the single out of morbid curiosity.) Axl, like Billy Corgan and Perry Farrell, seems to believe the way to "modernize" his alt-rocker image is to take a few courses from the Twiggy Ramirez school of guitar, and pile the eighties-tastic riffs high with an abundance of fuzz. That, my friends, is not a modern sound. It's the sound of an old man trying to prove to the kids that he can dig their funky new sound.

3) I Tried to Rock You, by Leona Naess. No shame in this, but I've never claimed that Leona is anything more than a pop singer. A good one, that I enjoy very much, but she's not a visionary, she's not obscenely talented, and in fifty years, Rolling Stone won't list her as one of the most important artists of her decade. But whatever. The thing that matters is that this song and its album have the coolest title of any pop song ever: "I Tried To Rock You But You Only Roll."

4) Bittersweet Me, by REM. Back in highschool, I was once called upon to name my favorite band. At the time, I was very rebellious in that I-don't-want-to-talk-or-make-eye-contact way, and so I strove for anonymity at every turn. In front of my WHOLE ENTIRE MATH CLASS, I said that REM was my favorite band. Nothing against the boys from Georgia, but that just wasn't true. They were simply the least-remarkable, yet still successful band I could think of. That incident still haunts me, both for what I said about myself, and for what I said and thought about a perfectly respectable if unexciting band.

5) The Joker, by Todd Snider. Admittedly, Todd Snider's version is much more fun, and is objectively better than the original atrocity visited upon the world by the villain Steve Miller. But this is still a pretty wretched song. I should have spent my time listening to Todd's masterpiece: "Conservative Christian Right-Wing Republican Straight White American Male."

It kind of feels good to get all that off my chest. Here's what I should have been listening to this week:

1) Downbound Train, by Bruce Springsteen. The Boss can bring the remorse and the rock at the same time, and it's a potent combination. This is every song Jon Bon Jovi wished he had written.

2) Don't Do It, by the Band. See my previous comments on the matter.

3) Down Along the Lea, by Mary Lou Lord. A great combination of MLL's lyrics, her little-girl vocals, a flute, and bagpipies.

4) Thank You, by Sly and the Family Stone. Funk as an art form was perfected by Sly Stone. Nuff sed.

I'd forgotten how great these campaign ads were

2008-11-21T16:20:00.002-05:00

The latest rumor is that Big Bill is on the short list for Secretary of Commerce. That'd be pretty neat.

Quote of the day

2008-11-14T15:01:00.000-05:00

"I don't try to make a movie that sucks. It just happens naturally sometimes, you know?"

- Bruce Campbell

Since it's November

2008-11-14T13:29:00.000-05:00

And since "The Last Waltz" is my Official Movie Of Thanksgiving, here's the Band with the Staples, performing "The Weight."

It's a flawless performance of a fantastic song, especially if you don't let yourself get distracted by Rick Danko's drug-induced gyrations. (His *singing* doesn't suffer at all, but his balance was obviously impaired.)

How to start a movie, how to end a concert

2008-11-10T13:20:00.003-05:00

This isn't new to any of you (and if it is, please correct that deficiency immediately). But it is awesome. Here's the Band performing "Don't Do It" as the last song in the encore of their 1976 farewell concert. It was used in the opening credits of "The Last Waltz," which is the best musical film ever, even though Martin Scorsese managed to insert himself into far more scenes than was strictly necessary.

I still listen to music

2008-11-07T11:43:00.005-05:00

But that's the only interesting thing I do, apparently.

I'm still making sure to mix the new with the old, and to keep songs and artists rotating through my playlists fast enough to avoid burnout. Ruling the roost this month are:

Kings of Leon - On Call. Don't you hate it when you think you've discovered something cool and obscure, only to find out that the song you're digging is several years old and the band now has an actual big-time hit? That happened to me. KOL's a pretty solid alt-rock band, and I apparently like their earlier stuff better, but the stuff on the radio ain't too shabby neither. Check out them performing their new single, "Sex on Fire."

Jem - Crazy. I'm pretty sure there's a banjo in this song, which is my current favorite off Jem's new album. But the banjo's not the best part; the best part is the fact that Jem still has a phenomenally smooth voice and still dishes out the poppy goodness. It's lightweight, catchy, and utterly substance-free. When I'm in the mood for pop, I don't mess around with stuff that pretends to be otherwise.

Fleet Foxes - Mykonos. Holy crap. I didn't think bands were allowed to make music like this anymore. I thought CSN had a restraining order against the industry. This track -- and most of their songs -- incredibly dream-like, full of great harmonies, and is meticulously arranged. Even on a low-quality video of a live recording, it's an impressive song with a lot of layers.

Sam and Dave - Hold On, I'm Comin'. Darn right.

Creedence - I Heard It Through the Grapevine. Still my favorite version of the song, and I won't apologize for that.

Don't believe their lies

2008-10-17T12:26:00.002-04:00

With Best Buy Deal in Place, Guns N’ Roses Album Finally Arrives
10/17/08, 11:27 am EST
It’s a day many Guns N’ Roses fans thought would never come: Chinese Democracy, the album Axl Rose has labored over for more than a decade, will finally hit stores on Sunday, November 23rd...

There is simply no way that this is true. It's all part of Axl's decade-old publicity stunt.

To the lifeboats!

2008-10-08T15:30:00.004-04:00

"Quickly! Save yourselves!"

That's sort of what I imagined the leading Republican thinkers saying to themselves as I read this from David Brooks:

"[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party."

and

"[Obama is] phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team. I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes."

I think this could be important. Brooks is a leading voice in Republican circles, and while it's not entirely unheard-of for Republican columnists to call out their own or to praise a Democrat, it's beginning to seem like the vanguard of Republican ideology and policy-crafting is trying to detach itself from the sinking ship that is McCain-Palin. To this outside observer, it certainly looks like Brooks and his cadre of elitist intellectuals think that Obama will be our next president, and that they need to preserve their reputations by disassociating with what they perceive to be a weak and failing Republican campaign.

But of course, Brooks is a partisan, so as soon as McCain stabilizes in the polls, my bet is that Brooks will recant or write a soaring column extolling the virtues of McCain's time in a POW camp. At least for the moment, though, I think we see the crews preparing to cast off and leave the good ship McCain to its watery fate.

Here's a phrase you don't see every day

2008-10-02T16:23:00.003-04:00

"Boycott Google"

Take a moment to laugh.

Seriously, this right-wing group is urging its members to boycott Google, because of Google's corporate support for gay marriage in California.

Let us know how that works out, guys. (Actually, first... let me know how that works.) Meanwhile, I'm going to boycott any Metro seating that's on the right side of the car, because I'm unhappy with Metro's on-time performance.

Deep thought of the day

2008-10-01T11:06:00.001-04:00

I still hate Windows.

Hippos

2008-09-05T14:33:00.001-04:00

For some reason, this article in the Post makes me sad.

But at least it reminded me of this old one in the LA Times.

Hearts and minds

2008-09-05T13:38:00.002-04:00

Many of you know that John Mellencamp recently impressed me by publicly asking John McCain to stop using his songs at campaign events.

Apparently, the message was only partially received. McCain has stopped using Mellencamp tunes (which are, by and large, thematically antithetical to John McCain's campaign anyway), but he hasn't started asking musicians' permission before blasting their tunes at public events.

...which has prompted Heart to join the McCain-Cease-and-Desist-Club.

“Sarah Palin’s views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song ‘Barracuda’ no longer be used to promote her image. The song ‘Barracuda’ was written in the late ’70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The ‘barracuda’ represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there’s irony in Republican strategists’ choice to make use of it there.”

I'll have to remember to download "Barracuda" when I get home tonight.

Quote of the day

2008-08-29T09:14:00.000-04:00

"Just don't screw it up, buddy."

-Michelle Obama, before State Senator Barack Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Quote of the day

2008-08-28T15:59:00.001-04:00

The advent of tracking polls is one of the worst things to happen to democracy since Nixon switched on the tape recorder.

-Ezra Klein

Worth watching

2008-08-27T13:48:00.003-04:00

As Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson said, this is the best speech you missed last night:

Lunchtime observations

2008-08-27T12:47:00.005-04:00

1) A dude in a gnarly mid-nineties truck was stopped at the intersection of First and East Capitol, blaring the Smashing Pumpkins song "Zero" with his windows down. You don't see that every day in DC, for this is not the land of the carefree slacker. I give him 10 out of 10 for enjoying his day.

2) It has now been so long since I've been in contact with cigarette smoke that even just walking behind a woman with a cigarette induces actual nausea. I cannot imagine what would happen to me if I walked into a smoking bar.

3) If you dig on instrumental surf guitar, I highly recommend Pollo Del Mar's album "The Golden State."

4) I have now eaten between 2 and 4 Burrito Brothers burritos every week since the first week of January. They're not fantastic by any means, but they really get the job done.

Quote of the day

2008-08-25T13:11:00.000-04:00

You know, Cheney is probably a human being, who, in all likelihood, has emotions just like the rest of us.
- Steve Benen

Realistic

2008-08-20T17:53:00.001-04:00

From the Onion:

Monster Got Tina
OKEECHOBEE SWAMPS, FL—According to sources, the monster got Tina, 18, despite her having been right behind the other remaining survivors just moments ago. Mounting evidence, including Tina's blood-soaked tank top and the sound of crunching bones and tearing flesh coming from the bushes less than 15 feet away, has dashed all hopes of ever recovering the teenager's remains. As of press time, the monster appears to have finally succumbed to its shotgun wounds and—OH GOD! OH DEAR G—

Three-Way Side-by-Side: Thunderball

2008-08-19T16:18:00.009-04:00

Apparently, it takes a vacation to return me to my Bond-reading habits. This time around, I thought I'd read the Bond novel that was so good, they made it into two movies. I speak of course of the inimitable...

Thunderball

Novel: 1961
First Film: Thunderball, 1965
Second Film: Never Say Never Again, 1983
Villain: Emilio Largo (novel and 1965 film), Maximilian Largo (1983 film)
Bond Girl: Domino (novel and 1965 film), Domino and Fatima Blush (1983 film)

Plot: How did Dr. Evil describe it? "Oh hell, let's just do what we always do: hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage. Yeah? Good."

Novel vs. Film: Really not much to say here. Rumor has it that Fleming wrote up the plot first and foremost as a screenplay, and it shows; Thunderball has all the requisite elements of an action movie, requiring virtually no plot or pacing adjustments to bring it to the screen. Minor tweaks, of course, but I suspect they were based more on production concerns than anything else. (For example, the novel features an American submarine chasing the evil-doer's yacht. That would have been hard to stage in 1965.)

1965 vs. 1983: Nothing but unanswered questions here... How did Sean Connery not get massively bored when filming the 1983 version of his own 1965 film? And how was he not thoroughly appalled at how awful it was? Why did Never Say Never Again's screenwriters feel it necessary to change the name of Largo's yacht from Disco Volante to... wait for it... Flying Saucer? Why was Rowan Atkinson cast as a comic-relief British agent? Or, for God's sake, why was there a VIDEO GAME DUEL between Bond and Largo on the Flying Saucer? The bottom line is that Never Say Never Again violated Mike's Law for covers: if you can't do it better than the original, don't bother.

Parting Observations: This is one I'd really like to see adapted for the relaunched Daniel Craig franchise. The plot would be exceedingly relevant these days. I never have considered Never Say Never Again to be a canonical Bond film, and I never will. It did nothing to improve on the "original," and only served to make the world anxious for a new, younger actor to take over the role of the world's most famous spy.

It's true... I'm a bad blogger

2008-08-19T16:13:00.002-04:00

But, in addition to being a bad blogger, I'm also back from vacation, so there's a little good news mixed with the bad. A little butter in the potato, as it were.

Maya and I spent a luxurious week in glamorous Montana, doing such high-class things as:

Attending the Western Montana Fair's annual demolition derby
Sitting in a river
Reading books
Driving to a battlefield
Sitting in the same river for a second time
Throwing pieces of plastic at trees, and occasionally missing
Having dinner with Julie, Steve, and their dogs

All in all, it was a successful trip. There may be photos later, but I'm as bad with a camera as I am with a blog, and there's really no guarantee that I'll be able to:

A) Remember to post pictures; and
B) Find my camera

Video and comment of the day

2008-08-19T11:12:00.001-04:00

First, the video. Yes, this song has been stuck in my head all day, and I have no idea why.

And check out this awesome comment I found on its YouTube page:

i freaking [heart] this song!!!! me and my bf sang it like the whole ride back from Creation fest! (5 hrs!) we prob drove my youth leader crazy! THANKS for POSTING! awesome vid and song!!!!!!!!!

No response seems necessary.

Raiding

2008-07-29T13:57:00.003-04:00

The AFI Silver was showing one of my all-time favorite movies last weekend. Luckily, Jeremiah and Leslie knew about it and invited everyone out for a fabulous evening.

I had an omelet for dinner. With beer.

Then we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen, and it was fantastic. This was far from the first time I've seen it, but it still managed to be a completely new experience for me.

My impressions:

I know the costume designer wanted to create an iconic look with Indy's hat, jacket, and whip. But the early reveal in that South American jungle was really impressive on the big screen.
Karen Allen was great during the 10% of the time she wasn't screaming. (Contrast with Kate Capshaw, who was awful during the 30 seconds of non-screaming screentime she had in Temple of Doom.)
It was clearly an origainal print, which is awesome.
Some sound-leveling problems, especially toward the end, made spots of dialogue difficult to follow.
The Nazi-face-melting effects just weren't all that good. Hard to ignore the SFX flaws when they're twenty feet tall.

Also, I keep wanting to make a joke, but I can't quite put it together. So I'll present the elements as a do-it-yourself project for y'all:

Indy and Sallah spent a long time trying to pry up the hatch to the Well of Souls.
This was supposed to be the Big Moment, where a lot of the film's pent-up anticipation would be released.
It was slightly anticlimactic, and took the action in a different direction than we expected.
Indy was forced to stay inside the hatch, pushing a button every 108 minutes, or the world would end.

Do with it what you will.

From sympathy to empathy

2008-07-29T13:55:00.001-04:00

"Poor dog," I thought as I watched a Capitol Police bomb-sniffing dog inspect an enormous tanker stenciled with the words "SaniJohn."

Then I watched the SaniJohn tanker pull up to the construction site right across the street from my office.

To the three interns I saw walking to the metro together

2008-07-17T19:14:00.002-04:00

Of the three of you trying, only one managed to pull off the seersucker suit. Hint: it was the girl.

Counting monsters

2008-07-15T17:04:00.003-04:00

This is exactly why I read Rolling Stone's blogs.

As if you needed another excuse to visit the Smithsonian

2008-07-14T18:03:00.003-04:00

I hear the "Taming a Goat" exhibit is gone, which is sad. That was my favorite place to take tourists, because it was such a bizarre little piece of work. But it looks like the Natural History Museum is getting something even cooler than a stick-man trying to drag a stubborn goat:

A 326th Airlift Squadron aircrew landed at Dover Air Force Base, Del., July 11 with two giant squids in its cargo compartment.

The two sea creatures were transported in a C-17 Globemaster III cargo aircraft from Europe and will be delivered to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The female preserved specimen, which will become the largest on display in the United States, measures 24 and a half feet long.

Yes, DC is getting more squid. We already have one in the Natural History Museum, but it's not 24 feet long. And honestly -- and I say this as a squid enthusiast -- it's in kinda ratty condition. "Preserved" squid are usually specimens that have been mangled by nets, mistreated in shipment, and are only vaguely squid-shaped by the time museums get around to sticking them in tanks. Hopefully, these will fare better than the squid of the past.

The squids go on display at the end of September. I will most likely be there.

Actually not the worst band I've ever seen live

2008-07-14T15:30:00.003-04:00

The title of this post does not refer to Third Stream Giants, the fabulous little outfit we saw at the Grog & Tankard on Saturday. Nor does it refer to the opening act, a nameless 40-something cover band that was clearly enjoying the hell out of themselves, and were clearly having the hell enjoyed out of them by the 50-something crowd.

No, I'm talking about the intervening act, a band whose name I didn't catch. They claimed it was their third show together, and I kinda believe them. They were nervous, hadn't practiced much, and had some pretty fatal issues with mic/amp leveling. All those things mean they could be telling the truth about it being only their third gig. But they were SO nervous, and has SO little practice and such HUGE volume issues that I'm inclined to believe it was their first gig in front of an actual audience. I cut them a ton of slack, and wish them the best. (Advice: get a drummer.) Besides, it's not like they were the worst act I've ever seen.

Following this pitiable performance were the Third Stream Giants, featuring the amazing Justin Duff on saxophone. And seven other guys, but Justin's the only one I know. Did you catch that? The part where it's an EIGHT-PIECE BAND with a horn section? Awesome. They played a fantastic blend of originals and covers, but even the covers were pretty unique. Take, for example, the eight-part a capella harmonizing for "Join Together" or the Vegas-inspired, brassy arrangement of "Beat It." Unique covers. Their originals brought some pretty serious funk, which I'm a big fan of.

Tragically, they don't have a CD out. Even more tragic is the fact that they play 90% of their gigs in Fredericksburg, which is not nearby. Since I am bound by a solemn oath never to link to a MySpace page, you'll have to dig around on their website for samples.

Oh, and the worst show I've ever seen? Pavement. By far.

Last Friday's music notes, delivered on Monday

2008-07-14T09:17:00.003-04:00

No, I do not own an iPhone 3G. I'm perfectly happy with my "old" iPhone, especially since the software update came creeping across the wires last Thursday night, allowing me to enjoy all the goodness of the new iPhone without the hassle of built-in GPS, wireless broadband... or spending a ton of money.

All of which is my way of saying that I expect my musical life to become more interesting because of an app I downloaded called Shazam. When it's running, it uses the iPhone's built-in microphone (did you know the iPhone was also a phone? Weird.) to listen to whatever song is playing nearby. Then it taps into various online databases, searching for BPM, tone, pitch, and other music-techy stuff to figure out what the song is. Shazam keeps a list of the songs it's discovered, so we happy iPhone users can then spend money on those tunes. It even provides a handy link to the song on iTunes, if it's available. It's pretty neat, and I'm looking forward to replacing my standard what-was-that-song technique. (Hint: It involved misunderstood lyrics and Google.)

Since I haven't loaded up Shazam with overheard songs yet, last week's tunes were (mostly) a mix of my old faves.

1) Headlock, by Imogen Heap. iTunes says this is now my most-listened-to track, finally surging past numbers 2-5 (which may or may not all be Shannon McNally tunes; I'm not saying). I love Imogen's smooth voice, but I've lately come to appreciate her talent for arrangement. This song has quite a few layers, and I'm sure that each would sound weird and un-musical on its own. But taken as a whole, it's a great piece of music.

2) 14 Years, by Guns n' Roses. No, I'm not over "Civil War" yet, but I wanted to add a little variety to my GNR revival. My only observation is that I had somehow failed to ever notice how much Axl LOVES to build his songs around a piano. That's not exactly in-line with my perception of the man.

3) Lien on Your Dreams, by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. BRMC brings the rock in wildly different ways with each of their albums. This track is from "Baby 81" which is full of fairly standard-issue electric rock. Nothing on this album is as good as the tracks from "Howl," but this song stands out for doing all the things a rock song should: blast you with drums, force you to sing along with the chorus, and make you wish you could play guitar.

4) Never Met a Girl Like You, by Edwyn Collins. Everything about this song makes me think it must have been in a Tarantino movie. Maybe I only think that because Collins' other hit was one of the signature tunes in "Austin Powers." Anyway, this is a mid-nineties alt-pop affair that borrows heavily from the rock conventions of the seventies. (Note: if I'd had Shazam on my iPhone two weekends ago, it wouldn't have taken me two days of Googling to figure out the name of the song that was playing in Target. Just sayin'.)

5) Killing In the Name, by Rage Against the Machine. Because sometimes you just need LOUD on your morning commute. And on those days, there's actually something reassuring in hearing Zack de la Rocha shout, over and over and over again, "F*ck you, I won't do what you tell me."

Y2K run amok

2008-07-11T04:43:00.000-04:00

As a guy who's spent the better part of the last week updating his personal information, I feel I'm uniquely qualified to address this excessively trivial concern:

It's a pain in the butt to have to enter a 4-digit date for my birth year on everything.

Honestly, it's not tough to instruct your database to treat a 2-digit year as an append to a "19" prefix. C'mon, people... this is the 21st century. Which is kinda the (ironic) point here.

UPDATE: I tried to publish this post without a year in the "Date" field. The error message informed me that the correct format is MM/DD/YY. Thank you, Google.

Explains a lot, really

2008-07-10T10:11:00.001-04:00

It's great that we live in an age where people have access to very detailed historical records. It affords us the opportunity to look back on our formative years and perform some sort of self-pyschoanalysis.

So, this is why I turned out the way I did.

Beth and I watched these videos (and more, sadly lost to the haze of memory) untold thousands of times when we were growing up. Dad had set the VCR to record late-night music video broadcasts, and we were mesmerized. It was music... with video! So innovative! So fresh! So new!

Dad and Beth believe there was also some Michael Jackson on that tape, but I have no memory of such a thing. There's also dispute over whether or not "We are the world" was represented. We're in complete agreement on the presence of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," but there's no embedable YouTube version of that one.

Should be a good winter movie season

2008-07-01T12:02:00.000-04:00

(Thanks, Jeffro.)

The evolution of Conservapedia

2008-06-30T09:01:00.003-04:00

This post is little more than an excuse to give a tip o' the hat to one of my favorite blogs, and a wag o' the finger to one of the dumbest things on the internet.

Wag o' the Finger: Conservapedia. Conservapedia is one of the right wing's great online experiments. In order to balance the well-known liberal bias of "science" and "technology" on the "internet," some "leading" conservatives created this outpost online. It's a bastion of unhinged, clueless, ideologicall-driven group-think, trying desperately to prevent its members from being won over by "facts" and "logic" and "evidence." It's amusing for its utter lack of connection to reality, and disturbing for the fact that it represents the thinking of people with a lot of political power.

Tip o' the Hat: Ars Technica. Ranging from new gadgets to bills being debated in the House Science Committee, Ars covers a lot of territory. Mostly, they write about the intersection of science and technology with public life. They're one of my favorites, and they do good work.

So check out the slice of awesome that ensues when Ars takes a look at some recent idiotic behavior on the part of Conservapedia. It's called, "Bacteria Evolve; Conservapedia Demands Recount."

The week in tunes

2008-06-27T09:46:00.006-04:00

My musical themes haven't changed much in the last month, but I guess that's the hazard of embracing a monthly playlist system. By the end of the fourth week, I'm a little (but not a lot!) tired of some of the songs, and I'm itching for new stuff. So even as I'm closing out the month with some really solid stuff that I enjoy, I'm hitting iTunes and Amazon pretty hard right about now.

Here are the songs that are topping my list right now:

1) Civil War, by Guns N' Roses. Damn straight. It's been a GNR month, and July is shaping up to be the same. "Civil War" betrays Axl's fondness for 8-minute songs, epic stories, and pianos. What makes it work is the band's ability to build momentum and keep the energy and noise level up for the last six minutes. After listening to this and "November Rain" a few times, and realizing how much work went into just the instrumental arrangements, I have begun to understand why it takes Axl six (or sixteen) years to write and record songs. Chinese Democracy is gonna suck without Slash, though.

2) My Superman, by Santogold. Santi is still rocking my world. Her genre-hopping album can produce a track for any mood, and this is a good workday-ending track that recalls Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, and Portishead at their best. It's got a throbbing, downtempo beat and some quirky vocals that make it the perfect song to put on while I'm walking between the Supreme Court and the Capitol on my way to the metro station. By the time I'm underground, I swear I've forgotten about the preceding ten hours.

3) Starry Night, by Iggy Pop. I've returned -- as I always seem to do -- to Iggy's 1992 album Brick By Brick. This happens about once a month, usually because I want to hear "Candy" or "Livin' on the Edge of the Night." But the whole album is great, and so I'm always rediscovering a track I'd forgotten about. "Starry Night" could be a David Lindley tune, with its kinda-reggae guitars and chirpy, inconsequential lyrics. (Well... as chirpy as you can get when you're working with Iggy Pop's vocal range.)

4) Tones of Home, by Blind Melon. Because it's from The Official Album of Summer. This song in particular makes me want to find my old 1991 Hyundai, buy it back, and drive through northern Idaho on a roadtrip to Boise's now-defunct River Fest.

** Extra Super Special Bonus Blind Melon Song **

One of my faves, that I just found on YouTube. The video's straight out of the mid-nineties, but the song's still fantastic. Here's "Change" from The Official Album of Summer:

5) Blue Sky, by the Allman Brothers Band. Thanks to Jeffro for posting a video of this song and reminding me that I'd fallen behind in my self-assigned Allman-appreciation listening.

Incentives

2008-06-24T09:51:00.001-04:00

Why do I always end up giving money to Democrats when I spend the morning reading Republican blogs?

Move completed, unpacking to commence shortly

2008-06-23T22:04:00.000-04:00

Moving phase 1: Packing. Status: complete.
Moving phase 2: Moving our crap to new apartment. Status: complete.
Moving phase 3: Clean out old apartment. Estimated completion: Sunday.
Moving phase 4: Unpack and organize new apartment. Estimated completion: Winter 2008.

Updates as events warrant.

Overseen

2008-06-23T14:18:00.002-04:00

Reproduced in full, here's an email I received from Maya last Friday:

I just saw some bow-tied republicans terrorist-fist-jab each other in the cafeteria.

Update, re: Santogold

2008-06-17T11:42:00.001-04:00

When I said that I was listening to Santogold to the exclusion of all other music, I exaggerated.

I'm still listening to G'N R.

A funny thing happened on the way to the record store

2008-06-16T16:38:00.004-04:00

So, I've been digging Santogold's eponymous debut album lately. To the exclusion of most of the rest of my music library, in fact. I'm reveling in the fact that it's an album, y'know? There's no filler, no song choices dictated by the potential for radio play or tempo balance, and there isn't a track on the album that I'd skip.

The only problem I have is one of taxonomy. My iTunes library is very reliant on smart playlists and genres. I made a decision many years ago to assign genres based on albums rather than artists or tracks, because... well, because a guy's gotta draw a line somewhere.

But now I'm faced with an album that jumps genres willy-nilly. One track's got a phat beat that wouldn't be out of place in a Massive Attack lineup. Another sounds like Siouxsie, and another sounds like Cyndi Lauper. Some are obviously influenced by the weirdness of Bjork and M.I.A., and others are clearly ska. Then there are the alt-pop aspects, such as the single "L.E.S. Artistes."

So what genre do I assign to this fabulous the album? No idea. And that vexes me. (Yes, I own other albums that do the same thing, and I went through this same tooth-gritting just-pick-one process with those, as well. This isn't unfamiliar territory, but it is unpleasant.)

It seems, though, that I'm not alone in this dilemma. It turns out that music stores and even Santogold's own record label didn't know what kind of music she produced. Everywhere you look, she's classified as R&B or hip-hop. Santogold has a sneaking suspicion that it's because she's African-American:

I interviewed Santi last week and I admitted I was surprised when I finally heard her music, because I kept reading that she was a new R&B or hip-hop artist. But what you're doing is straight-up pop, I said. She laughed about it, but confessed that it was starting to grate:

"It's racist (laughs). It's totally racist. Everyone is just so shocked that I don't like R&B. Why does R&B keep coming into my interviews? It's pissing me off. I didn't grow up as a big fan of R&B and, like, what is the big shocker? It's stupid. In the beginning I thought that was funny. I'm an 'MC', I'm a 'soul singer', I'm a 'dance hybrid artist'. And some guy said I looked like Kelly Rowland!"

I'm not saying that record labels are racist bastards. (Though I do believe that they are evil.) I'm just sayin' that when I do finally settle on a genre for her album, it won't be R&B.

The whole album's awesome, and I don't really like this video, but here's "L.E.S. Artistes" on YouTube:

Memo to the Republican Party

2008-06-16T13:48:00.001-04:00

In re:

Jindal insisted the federal and state government should not “impose” their views on local school districts

Memo begins:

STOP PRETENDING THAT FACTS ARE THE SAME AS OPINIONS.

There's a reason we have two separate words for the two concepts.

Thank you.

Stop me if you've seen this one

2008-06-10T09:02:00.001-04:00

I'm cautiously optimistic:

Speaking of moving

2008-06-09T13:15:00.002-04:00

I'm selling my old TV on craigslist. Naturally, I expected a smattering of not-really-interested replies, lowball offers, and flakeouts. I also expected some scam attempts.

But this one raised the bar for all future scam artists:

i am presently not in the States to complete the transaction by cash... i am sending the item to an orphanage home based abroad as a token present to the poor kids

Scammers, I believe you have just met your king.