[LEMONS] 1.30.2004
Did You Ever Have to Decide
I'm an undecided voter. So I was looking forward to taking the Presidential Match quiz. But when I got my results back, I was even more confused than I had been going into it.My top match was Kucinich with 100%, followed by Sharpton and Kerry at 96% each, Dean @ 89%, Clark @ 88%, Edwards @ 80%, Lieberman @ 74%, and Shrubya @ 14%.
I'm glad Kucinich is in it, I think he adds a lot of important issues to the debate, and to the swing voters who will ultimately decide whether it's four more years of Bush he makes the others seem a less freakishly liberal. Likewise, Sharpton has been the highlight of the debates so far (including yesterday's). However, these two guys have about as much chance of being elected president as I do. If either of them wins the nomination, we get four more years of Bush.
I almost feel like supporting Kucinich makes you a closet Republican. And indeed most (but not all, not all) of the people I know who support him are white limo liberals, college students, and trust-fund enabled activists. These people are largely unaffected no matter who wins, or who loses. But I need a job.
Likewise, Sharpton has his own set of problems. Fairly or not, you can't think "Sharpton" without also thinking "Tawana." Furthermore, one of the areas where Sharpton will have the most problems with moderates is in the Mid-Atlantic region of New York, Jersey, Pennsylvania, etc., because these are the areas where people are most used to seeing him make an ass of himself on TV. History is everything. Which is too bad, because he's a dynamo and has raised better points and performed better in the debates than most of the other candidates. I especially enjoyed hearing the Rev. lambast BushCo on religion.
Lieberman is, for all practical purposes, a Republican. Furthermore he's got a snowball's chance. His campaign will end on February 4.
This leaves me with four candidates, realistically, Kerry, Clark, Dean, and Edwards. And the thing is, I realized after taking the quiz that it doesn't matter whose policies I support the most. The issue that you keep hearing matters most to Democrats this year is, unfortunately, the only one that matters to me: electibility. Because I know that no matter how bad a candidate is, they're preferable to Bush. Anyone but Bush. Anyone.
But who is that candidate? I still don't know. I still can't decide. How about you? What were your results? Will it make a difference in how you vote?
- l i n k -
1.29.2004
Ain't No Party Like a BART Train Party
Subway parties are the new flash mobs. Or something. They were a few months ago, at least. After puzzling commuters in New York, London, and even Toronto for a few years, it looks like they've finally hit the Bay Area, complete with Bay Area polemics:A round man named Michael with a shock of tomato-colored hair sneered and pointed his digital camera at the reporter. Later, he posted the photographs on the Internet, with commentary. "Fight the real enemy," it read above one photo of the reporter. "Damn the man," it said on another.In other words: everyone's welcome, everyone's beautiful, everyone's a part of this great grand unique community, this party-cum-public space. That is, everyone except you.
When the reporter approached Marc, the party's nonleader who was described by others on the car as both a chef and hacker, Marc asked to see proof of employment. He looked disdainfully when handed a New York Times business card, refusing to take it. Marc then declined to speak further.(snip)
Once back on the train, with the party crashed and the last car again as quiet as the first, Marc sought out the reporter. He let it be known that the reporter had been an unwelcome partygoer and the events of the evening did not belong in any newspaper, especially one interested in profits, he said.
"You are stealing our art," Marc said in what became a long lecture about corporate journalism. "You are commercializing our culture."
What's this guy thinking? It reminds me of the organizer at an Earth Day festival I attended a few years ago who was running around, angrily-yelling at everyone to "Get in the peace circle, or get out!" Both statements are a little antithetical to the message I assume each wants to promote. Subway parties seem great, and like a lot of fun. But get with it. Your happening is neither original nor creative (nor even underground, except in the most literal sense of the word, if you're advertising it on Tribe.net). You copied it. You swiped it. After you, assumedly, read about it in the paper. Parties are--or should be--fun. Not Festivals of Judgment. Stop oppressing me, Marc. And at least have your own idea before you go Sticking It To The Man for Commodifying your Art. You want to make some art? Come up with your own thing; do something original. You want to keep your party private? Don't advertise it on the Internet. The faux-hawk's a nice touch, though. That hasn't been done before.
I hate idiots like Marc.
- l i n k -
1.19.2004
TEH LION!!!!
This weekend, Harper and I went cycling in Point Reyes. We've been riding a lot lately, although not as much as we need to be. We're training for the AIDS ride this summer, which starts in San Francisco and ends in Los Angeles. We'll ride roughly 100 miles a day for six days, and raise $5,000 apiece for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Sponsor us.Tired of riding through the city streets, we hit the road Saturday. We both love Point Reyes, with its lonely roads, dairy farms, and wide open skies overlooking the oyster fisheries and amber waters of Tomales Bay. It's gorgeous:
That's me. Dapper, aren't I?
As we rode, we kicked up coveys of quail and were surrounded by swarms of Redwinged Blackbirds, hawks filled the sky, and we were practically having to beat off the deer and elk. We rode out to the north end of the point and were heading back again. It was late afternoon. We flew down the last downhill of the day, rounded the corner, and just as I began to shift gears, in anticipation of the upcoming hill, I lost my chain. I pulled my bike over to the side of the road, next to the base of a hill. The other side of this hill, in fact:
As I started to flip over my bike, I took a look around me, and noticed that I was in a really bad spot in the road, at the bottom of a hill and just around a corner where the fenceposts ran right up again the shoulder of the road. So I walked my bike forward a few feet towards a wider spot, when up from the bushes jumped A Very Big Cat.
Now, I'm not in the Big Cat Identification Bidness. (Nor would I want to be.) So I can't speak to exactly what kind of Big Cat this was--although I do have my theories--but I can tell you what he did. He jumped out of the bushes, by the fence, which were perhaps twenty feet away from my little plastic-toed bike shoes. The Big Cat, though not as scared as me, was definitely concerned, and ran straight away from me towards the top of the hill. What really got to me were his back muscles. Mamasan. He seemed to be roughly Rottweiler-sized, but he looked like he spent more time in the gym. Here he is:
Can't see him? Try now:
So. Big Cat. Big muscular Cat. Big Cat runs away. Which, when you're in close proximity to a Big Wild Cat, is generally the direction you want them to be going. But Big Cat only runs to the top of the hill. And then he (she?) stops. Turns. Sits. Looks down at us with those Big Cat ears framed in silhouette on the hillside. My first instinct was to run. But I wasn't making any time in those clickity-clackity road bike shoes. Harper, at least, is on her bike. Now, I read the papers. I do. And so I wasn't unaware of the two people recently mauled in Orange County. And so as much as I would have loved to quickly flip my bike and fix my chain, I'm not going to get into "submissive" posture either. I know the score, I'm not stopping to fix nothin'. No sir. Fortunately, along comes a car. We flag them down and Harper quickly explains. They blow the horn. They position their Mustang 5.0 convertible between me and the Big Cat. I fix my chain. We're on the road. Phew.
Afterwards, we drove back down near the Big Cat in our car (but still gave him a football field or two of room in which to maneuver) and snapped a few photos. Including this one, of the cat under the tree:
In the past year, or so, I've been attacked by a king cobra, a mugger, the Dengue Fever virus, and now a lion. Which is plenty.
- l i n k -
Stephen Elliott's Campaign Diary has some of the freshest political writing i've read in a long time. And it's filled with great ideas:
If every journalist, especially the TV news people, had to make a $50 bet on the outcome of each caucus and primary, and each campaign item they reported carried the results of their bets printed at the end of the article or scrolling along the bottom of the screen, people would know whether they were receiving a report from someone they could trustHe has a pretty damn good blog too.
- l i n k -
1.15.2004
The Numbers One Through One Hundred
One wants to bind them together. Two is under construction. Domain squatters creep at six and eleven. (I think Five has something to hide.) Nine remembers better days. That it takes till ten amazes me. Fourteen is unloved. At seventeen, a magazine. Eighteen, nineteen, and twenty one are adults. If you owned twenty, wouldn't you use it? 23. Twenty five is pretty slick. At twenty six, humanity. Thirty Talks Tokyo. Forty three fucking owns. Fifty four is an island of beauty in a sea of domain squatters. Fifty five is fun for the whole family. Fifty nine lives down the street. News at sixty, and again at seventy. Yee-haw, it's sixty three. Sixty six sucks. If you weren't expecting sixty nine to be nasty, you were kidding yourself. Ninety is all, like, mysterious, and stuff. I'm not going past this bullshit at one hundred.- l i n k -
1.14.2004
Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife, Dr. Dean?
I am, as previously and often noted, a religious guy. Thus I was naturally surprised to discover that an important element of Christianity involves voting for Republicans. Who knew? Apparently, you're not a good Christian unless you believe in tax cuts for the rich. Somehow, I missed this lesson in Sunday School. Perhaps it's hidden in the Davinci Code somewhere, I don't know. I haven't read the book of Cheney all the way through.All I know is religion and politics go together like Rush Limbaugh and Hillary Clinton at the Sadie Hawkins dance.
One of the things I dig about the USA is that whole separation of church and state thing. I mean, Vatican City has some bitching art, but I wouldn't want to live there. Or even Alabama, for that matter. I do enjoy drinking beer on Sunday. But thanks for the effort at saving my soul via legislation, fellas. I hope that works out for you.
I digress.
A few months ago, Harper, being the kind of person who gives her hard earned money to organizations she feels are worthwhile, gave a chunk of change to KQED. This made me happy because--no matter what People magazine may say--I find Charlie Rose to be The Sexiest Man Alive. (Charlie, if you read this, I loved the Franken interview. Never before have you seemed at once so coquettish, and yet so commanding. But make not those eyes at Al again; those eyes are just for me. For shame, Charlie, for shame. Call me?) Um. Yeah. So, KQED sent us Newsweek as an appreciation bribe, or something. I enjoy reading it during my leisurely hours in the W.C. The most recent issue is All About Howard Dean.
So what kind of questions should major news organizations ask the Democratic frontrunner? Well, if you're a Newsweek reporter or editor, you already know the answer to this question. It isn't foreign policy, or the economy, or the environment that voters care about. No, no. What we want to know is, "Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?"
What, what, what, WHAT?
Did I miss something? Are the trains not running today?
Is this a campaign interview, or a Sunday school confirmation class? Who fucking cares? (I mean, aside from the fundies who aren't going to vote for Dean anyway because he doesn't believe in putting people of other faiths to the sword.) How do you answer a question like that? What business did the reporter have asking it? What business did his editor have running it? How would Thomas Jefferson have answered such a question? How about Joe Lieberman?
I'm perplexed. I was so upset when I first read the question that I had to punch a journalist. It didn't help. But I plan to keep it up. I'll let you know how that works out.
- l i n k -
1.12.2004
He's the snapmaster.
Bobby Badfingers.- l i n k -
1.07.2004
Nice Chops
Macworld Expo was, for many Mac fans, disappointing this year. No new notebooks. No new towers. No new iMacs. And the $100, 1GB iPod that everyone was expecting never materialized. Instead, Apple rolled out a colorful line of MiamiVicePods, the perfect accessory for any 80s guy from South Florida who drives a half-million dollar automobile and lives on his boat with a pet alligator. And the business card-sized anodized aluminum exterior is perfect for the doing lines on-the-go. (All kidding aside, I seem to be one of the few people who think the new iPods are a good value for the $$$, even if I detest the color scheme.)But I was okay with Expo. And I'm no Kool-Aid drinker, I hold Apple in relatively low-esteem, despite using a lot of their products. Of course, I've bought two new Macs in the last few months, and have no plans to buy anymore anytime soon. For me, Expo was all about the software, namely GarageBand. (And Apple even had the decency not to name it something silly like iBand or iJam.)
Before you poo-poo GarageBand, before you dismiss its $50 dollar price tag, or its inability to wipe your ass, put yourself in the position of the average 20 year-old musician. GarageBand is THE killer app for young musicians for two reasons: it's cheap and easy.
Music recording has changed immeasurably over the past couple of years. But some things are just as true today as they were over a decade ago, when I was a 20 year-old musician. Specifically, just about the only musicians who could afford really great gear were either old guys in their 30s and 40s with solid day jobs who would have already made it if they were ever going to, the independently wealthy, and professional musicians. When I was 20, my attitude towards all those types could be summed up in two words.
I've used (or messed around with, rather) Cubase and Digital Performer and a handful of loop-based audio apps. They rule. They own. And all of them that have any umph whatsoever tend to be far more expensive than your average young musician can afford, and have pretty steep learning curves to boot (with the possible exception of Reason on the latter). But in terms of the price, you can't compare it to one of the professional-level sequencing apps. For $50, the apt comparison is a used four-track that records to cassette.
The price is one thing. The kids these days--with their P2P apps and cracks and serial numbers and all that hooey--they tend to say "yar" and raise the Jolly Rodger rather than Master the Possibilities. But the learning curve is quite another. Sure, GarageBand won't (one would hope) do everything that some of the major VST apps do. But it doesn't look like Steve Albini's robot, either. If what we saw onstage yesterday was any indication of reality (and until the product arrives, who knows if it is), GarageBand has a simple interface, similar to one Mac users are already familiar with. And at $50 (which will get you the entire iLife suite), it's cheaper than a foot-pedal, and perhaps even easier to use.
So, no. It isn't for everyone. It isn't for professionals and older hobbyists who can afford six-thousand dollar packages. It's for kids. It's for garage bands. Just as no professional video editor wants to cut a broadcast commercial in iMovie, neither would you want to record your major label debut with in GarageBand.
But for a demo. For an Internet release. For something, (something!) to get the music out of your head and onto a CD, this is the killer app.
- l i n k -
1.03.2004
Coming to ABC This Fall
One turned out to be a 5-year-old boy with the same name as a suspected Tunisian terrorist, another was an elderly Chinese woman and a third was a Welsh insurance agent. Together, they fight crime.- l i n k -
