Author: geoff

Random 10

Late on this – sorry:

  • “The Flood” by the Nails (from Corpus Christi)
  • “Soothe (Chicane Mix)” by the Furry Phreaks (from John Digweed’s Northern Exposure II: East Coast)
  • “Closure” by Opeth (from Damnation)
  • “Asylums in Jerusalem” by Scritti Politti (from Songs To Remember)
  • “Nine Cats” by Porcupine Tree (from On The Sunday Of Life)
  • “Straight On ‘Til Morning” by The Legendary Pink Dots (from From Here You’ll Watch The World Go By)
  • “Nothing But Heartaches” by the Supremes (from The Ultimate Collection)
  • “I Won’t Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar” by the United States of America (from Psychedelic 60s)
  • “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Simon & Garfunkel (from Old Friends)
  • “Clementine” by Pink Martini (from Hang On Little Tomato)

Now that’s a really mixed bunch! Anyone else remember The Nails? Back in the late 1980s they were something of a one-hit wonder, with the delightfully witty “Eighty-eight lines about forty-four women”, but the other tracks on Corpus Christi are definitely worth a listen. Unfortunately they got tangled up in all sorts of contractual B.S. and disappeared without a trace.

Mandarin? Hmmm…

Another intriguing web quiz (mainly because my score was atypical):

I’m a Mandarin!

You’re an intellectual, and you’ve worked hard to get where you are now. You’re a strong believer in education, and you think many of the world’s problems could be solved if people were more informed and more rational. You have no tolerance for sloppy or lazy thinking. It frustrates you when people who are ignorant or dishonest rise to positions of power. You believe that people can make a difference in the world, and you’re determined to try.

Talent: 54%
Lifer: 13%
Mandarin: 64%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.

A sort of vacation… concluded

When last I blogged, the family was cautiously considering the nutritional value of ginger ale (flat), saltines, jello, and chicken soup (risky). However a general, if slow, trend of recovery was evident, and on Monday I went with Kate, Mark and Tommy down to Monterey harbour. It was windy, chilly, and intermittently rainy, but Tommy in sunglasseswe put a brave face on it. After lunch, we drove up to Carmel Valley Village to visit my brother-in-law (also Geoff) at the garage he runs, and then explored the area above the village which we used to visit frequently. (Still as beautiful as ever.) [Click Tommy for some pictures.]
On Tuesday we drove up to Berkeley to visit Chris and his wife, see their exquisite Hearst-era apartment, and explore the campus of CDSP. After dinner at a kosher vegan Italian restaurant (only in Berkeley!), we drove across the Bay Bridge and down to SFO. I dropped everyone off at the Hyatt Regency, turned in the rental van (verdict: functional, but uncomfortable), and returned to the hotel via the airport shuttle.
And today we flew home. When we left for California last week, we were aware that we were heading into a Pacific coastal storm and leaving behind beautiful spring-like weather in New England. It was something of a shock, therefore, to see the “weather at destination” displayed as “snow showers, high 36”. Ah, well. Unlike the outbound flight, the return trip was mostly uneventful, even though Tommy didn’t really relax until we were landing at Boston. (In geek-speak, he fell asleep as we crossed MILT at 170 knots and 3,000 feet, fully established on the ILS approach for runway 4 right.)
And when we got home, I found that I’d received the first piece of (snail-)mail addressed to my new business! But that’s a different subject.

Not exactly what we'd planned….

On Thursday morning the five of us flew from Boston to San Francisco. Tommy had his own seat, with a car seat strapped into it, so he got the window! The flight was fairly uneventful for the first 4 hours; then Tommy threw up onto himself and me. Half an hour later, he threw up all over Kate. We tentatively attributed this to the fact that it was his first flight.
At SFO we picked up a minivan, and headed south towards Carmel. Tommy was still sick. We arrived by mid-afternoon, and had an early dinner and hit the sack. The following afternoon, Chris arrived, by which point Merry and Kate were both feeling unwell. At this stage it all gets complicated, messy, and hard to remember. All five of us were affected; late that evening there was a run to the local E.R. for diagnostic tests and a litre of saline drip; Chris also drove over to the all-night pharmacy to fill some prescriptions. And as each of us got rid of the virulent GI bug, we slept… for hours and hours.
By comparison, the other events – like the near-collapse of the ceiling in a guest unit bathroom, or hunting all over Salinas for an Amtrak bus – were unimportant.
More coherent blogging will be resumed when circumstances permit….

Travel en masse

We’re off to California on Thursday for a family trip. In this case, “family” refers to both the travellers and the destinations. (Visitors and visitees?) There will be five of us, occupying most of one row of seats in a United 757 from Boston to San Francisco, ranging in age from 10 months to 55 years. We’ll be visiting grandparents in Carmel (actually great-grandparents with respect to Tommy), as well as Chris and his wife in Berkeley.
I wonder if Tommy will like listening to Channel 9….?

You be the judge….

It has been suggested that one reason I like The Divine Comedy‘s album Absent Friends is because of the lyrics to the song “Come Home Billy Bird”. I’ll let you be the judge:
William wakes with his clothes on.
The morning call has been and gone,
And he might not make the flight but he will try.
Bit by bit it comes back to him,
A bunch of Belgian business men
And a strange drinking game, oh God why?
Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller.
Come home Billy Bird.
He hails a cab but the driver sucks.
He drives so slowly and he talks so much
That it hurts Billy Bird’s aching brain.
He runs from the cab to the check-in desk.
She says, “no way”, but William begs on his knees,
“Please, please, please”. “Well OK”.
Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller.
Come home Billy Bird.
Drenched in sweat he finds his seat
And with the luggage squeezed down beneath his feet
He begins to think that things can’t get no worse.
But then a voice says, “bags that can’t be stowed
In the overhead locker must go below in the hold,
Please let go, thank-you sir”.
Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller.
Come home Billy Bird.
He runs on past the carousel
Screaming, “damn my luggage all to hell.
I can buy a new shirt and tie any day”.
He rides from the airport into town,
To the high-school football ground
Where his son has just begun his big football game.
Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller.
Come home Billy Bird.

Just exactly how messed up are things in Iraq?

River just wrote that television stations in Baghdad broadcast the following warning:

“The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”
[…]
It confirmed what has been obvious to Iraqis since the beginning- the Iraqi security forces are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.
But it also brings to light other worrisome issues. The situation is so bad on the security front that the top two ministries in charge of protecting Iraqi civilians cannot trust each other. The Ministry of Defense can’t even trust its own personnel, unless they are “accompanied by American coalition forces”.

So what are Iraqi civilians supposed to do?

“It means if they come at night and want to raid the house, we don’t have to let them in.” I answered.
“They’re not exactly asking your permission,” E. pointed out. “They break the door down and take people away- or have you forgotten? […] Besides that, when they first attack, how can you be sure they DON’T have Americans with them?”

A little bit Catch-22, a dollop of Lewis Carroll, and a splash of George Orwell….

Sully discovers anti-atheist discrimination

Andrew Sullivan finally realizes that there’s real discrimination against atheists here in the USA. He quotes Volokh:

In 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a mother to take her child to church each week, reasoning that ‘it is certainly to the best interests of [the child] to receive regular and systematic spiritual training’; in 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court did the same, partly on the grounds that weekly church attendance, rather than just the once-every-two-weeks attendance that the child would have had if he went only with the other parent, provides superior ‘moral instruction’.

And he concludes:

Imagine if Christian parents were denied custody because of their faith. O’Reilly would have weeks of programming. But atheists? Naah. When Christianists declare that they are fighting for religious freedom, bring this issue up. It will determine whether they are in good faith, so to speak, or not.

N.b.: the whirring sound you hear is Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave.

Random 10

“Oi! iTunes!! Wotcha got for me today?”

  • “Behind Blue Eyes” by the Who (from Who’s Next)
  • “Triad” by Jefferson Airplane (from The Best of Jefferson Airplane)
  • “Grind Me Baby” by DJ Rush (from Keoki – DJmixed.com)
  • “Accident on 3rd Street” by Al Stewart (from Russians & Americans)
  • “Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard” by the KLF (from Chill Out)
  • “Nota Bossa” by The Funky Lowlives (from Buddha Bar 2)
  • “Travelling Song” by Pentangle (from The Pentangle Family)
  • “The Lord Is In This Place” by Fairport Convention (from What We Did On Our Holidays)
  • “What You Are Listening To” by Porcupine Tree (from Up The Downstair)
  • “Come On (Let The Good Times Roll)” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (from Electric Ladyland)