Well, I made my first Angel Food Cake today (thanks Alton!). And it was pretty good!
Also, Kate gave us a wonderful set of super-quality cooking knives (as a late wedding gift), and I can't wait to start a-choppin'! I need to buy a steel first, though.

If you're in the mood for some cool QuickTimeVR tours, check out The Museum of Making Music.

Here's a tasty brown rice recipe: toast up some pinenuts and put them aside. Saute' some (like a cup) chopped onions in a saucepan with a little oil, and when they're soft add two cups of broth and bring to a boil. Add a cup of brown rice, reduce heat, and simmer for about 30 minutes. Then mix in a package of frozen spinach, thawed and drained, and simmer for another 10 minutes until it ain't so juicy. Mix in the pinenuts and you're good to go. The various textures and flavors make this a very enjoyable side-dish.

Hey it's Friday. And it's hot out there. Remember to drink plenty of fluids to stave off crankiness and disorientation due to dehydration!

We were reminded again tonight why we generally don't go to movie theaters or concerts regularly. We went to see Kurt Elling at the Power Center in Ann Arbor -- you know, not a jazz club, but a concert hall. There was a group of people there. a family, who simply didn't know how to behave. Most notably the father and his six-year-old son, who were seated behind us but felt free enough to move down to our row of seats. Throughout the entire show he and his son talked continuously -- he was explaining the jazz concert to his son, out loud, in real-time, as if it was a baseball game (incredibly enough, keeping with the ballpark theme, the entire family got up and walked out early, in the middle of the last song: "Well, they said it was the last song, so I guess we know how the concert ends, let's get out of the parking lot before everyone else!"). Worse still, when Kurt began to recite a Kerouac poem, this guy was challenging himself by reciting it, out loud, trying to stay one line ahead of Kurt ("AND IN WALKED GOD!!!").

Unbelievable.

People just don't know how to behave anymore -- universalize your behavior, people! If everyone talked during a concert, there'd be no point in paying $50 to go hear the music, would there? This isn't a television show. Listen to, let other people enjoy, the music and then discuss it on the way to the car and on the ride home. Jackie held me back a couple of times, though, when I was glowering in their direction about ready to throw them over the balcony (it's only about a 15-foot drop, so no serious injury would result, probably -- realistically, I may've just 'shh'ed 'em) -- which is why she's probably a much more likely candidate for Sainthood than I'll ever be.

Astounding. How evil were the Soviets? Among the 27 martyrs of the Greek-Catholic Church who were beatified in the Ukraine earlier this week, all of whom were martyred by the soviets between 1941 and 1973 is one Father Severijan Baranyk, imprisoned by the Soviets in 1941. His body was never found because, according to evidence presented for his cause of beatification, "he was boiled and served as soup to prisoners."

Michael Medved has a rather nice piece here about the feeling of sadness at the end of family vacations.

Ah, here we go.. McCourtie Park

There's this really cool park, not far away from here, along highway 12, near where it intersects with highway 127. In the depression, a rich guy who had made his fortune in the cement industry decided to turn it into a public gathering place, so he hired these artisans from Mexico trained in... well, I forget what it's called, but it's scupting drying cement so that it looks like organic material: trees, planks, rope, leafs, etc. There's a little creek running through the property, and over this creek at various points are about a dozen or more little bridges sculpted in this style, to look like they're made out of logs or planks or rope, or all three. And they've been there since the 1930s, and people come just to see the cement bridges.

Keefer is yowling again. One of these days I must check in on that cat.

Lurid Crap: Time Waster.

Hey there, folks! It's time for another wacky list of Victor's pet peeves (actually this is the first such list):

1. the phrase 'pet peeves.' I hate it.


2. people who say the Democratic Party is the "people's party," (unborn people need not apply).


3. umm... forgetfulness, I guess


4. ABC News caving to pressure from crazies in California, especially when it prevents me from seeing John Stossel, the only thing on that network worth saving.
   (In this particular issue, John Stossel interviewed a group of kids to find out if their public-school education had been fair and balanced as regards various theories regarding the environment, unanimously children had only been presented one theory as regards global warming. While parents initially gave their consent they later reneged when contacted by environmental coverup groups, who convinced them that it made their kids look like they'd been embarassingly brainwashed by the California Public Schools -- well, duh!).


5. people with more than 5 pet peeves.

"What can I say? It's good to be loved -- especially by Jesse Helms," --Bono

Rock ON!

Keefer's yowling up a storm. I don't know if he has food. I should check on that.

A lot of people come up to me and ask me if I know any good zen koans. The only good one I know is this one, I learned in my Eastern Religions class, about six years ago:

Two buddhist monks were walking along the bank of a river. After a while they
came accross a woman standing on the river bank, wishing to cross the river.
Of course at that time, monks were forbidden from even looking at women, much
less touching them, but nonetheless one of the monks picked the woman up,
per her on his back, and carried her across the river. Then he crossed back
to the other monk and both continuied on their journey down the river bank.
After another several hours, the other monk turns to the first one and says
in disbelief, "You KNOW we're not supposed to even look at women, much less
TOUCH them, I can't believe you carried that woman across the river!!"
To which the first monk replied, "I put that woman down hours ago.... Why are
you still carrying her?"

Well, after recalling that one, people usually ask if I know any others, so here's one I threw together (special thanks to my nephew for putting the idea of the parachute into my head).

So two buddhist monks are in a plane, and the plane starts to crash, but
there's only one parachute. So one of the monks says "I'm the elder monk,
so I must have the parachute, as I'm much closer to reaching enlightenment
than you." The other monk agrees and the first monk jumps out of the plane.
The other monk settles back into the cockpit to enjoy a last cup of tea.
"Hey," he says, "who took my backpack?"

I do reckon I enjoy a good koan every now and again. I think there should be a show on every night called "Late Night Koans, with Dr. Zen," that would just be a live hour of zen koans every night.

Oh wow! How cool is this? There really is an inherent beauty in Latin, even in something so simple as this.

Check out these Life Principles. It's like self-help but on a whole 'nother level (two of them, to be exact). Anyway it's really cool to see someone invoking Classical ethics towards a such a Percyian goal.

Well, I have to say that the in-laws' anniversary party was great fun! Good food, good company, and one of my nieces was stomping around singing one of my songs. How cool is that?

Also my mom is doing quite well. So goodness abounds!

Whoa...! And someone's slimmed down!

If I had a summer to spend in Southern California and a couple spare thousand dollars, this looks like it'd be a lot of fun. The director of the program was on television a few months back and had a hilariously brutal attitude towards most of the scripts she's seen.

I'm really digging on the O Brother... soundtrack. I wonder if the Mongers (wow! An incredible new look to their website!! And their new record will be out soon -- sweet!) have this album yet... or if I'm just a really big roots poser.

If for no other reason....

I know who has a crush on George Clooney! I know who has a crush on George Clooney!

Booyah!

Frequent readers of this blog will know of my constant struggle against the cold water faucet in our bathtub which, up until about three minutes ago, was constantly leaking. Well, it leaks no more. It's fixed. Resolved. Over. Done with. Game over.

I finally broke down and picked up the O Brother,.... soundtrack. Very nice presentation as regards the liner notes. I'm supposed to go change the litter now.... I really hate this waiting.

Well, the surgery should be just about over now. I haven't heard anything. I'll call a bit later.

Jackie and I watched O Brother, Where Art Thou again tonight. There's a lot you pick up on the second time you see it: just how often do they say that someone is looking for or that someone can provide them with "answers?" or just who the Devil is to whom Tommy sold his soul ("The Law! The law is a human institution!"). And the interactions between Charles Durning's Governor Menelaus "Pass the Biscuits," "Pappy," O'Daniel (speaking of which, the names in this movie are just all very clever) and his son and staff will always be amusing, no matter how stumpy, er how many times it's watched. Oh well, it's a funny movie. The DVD also had a preview for Unbreakable which I think was compared unfavorably to The Sixth Sense when it first came out, but which I think is actually the better film (on many levels -- though it's surprise ending will never elicit the same worldbending response as The Sixth Sense's).

Anyway, I really enjoy that movie.

Has anyone used Blogger's spellchecker yet? Pretty darn cool -- though neither "Blogger's," nor "spellchecker," are recognized words (yet).

Well, it was too wet to mow, I didn't need to pick up the porch-swing afterall, and my mom's going into surgery early tomorrow AM so there wasn't time to visit. I did do the grocery shopping (I "saved," $25 at Kroger, woo-hoo!). If we could only just eat millet trips to the grocery store would be so much more inexpensive.

Well, another busy weekend, folks. Today it's mow, then a grocery run and a trip to Lowe's to buy a porch-swing for the in-laws, then to see my Mom before her surgery on Friday, which is when the in-laws come over here to garden and eat dinner, before their party all-day Saturday, which means Church early Sunday before work. Then it's another week of work and another packed weekend. Someday I'll get some new music made. Someday, just not this month.

You know, as much as it pains me to admit it, because it's not something we've really budgeted for, I think the one thing I want most in the world (aside from, you know, a happy marriage, a long-ish life, and lots of children) is a piano. A piano that works. I used to spend hours and hours at college just playing the piano. Sneaking into the auditorium in the wee hours of the morning to play the beautiful Steinway they had hidden there underneath the quilted blanket (and sneaking out again -- quickly -- when the security gaurd would come a-knockin'). Of the memories I can write about, I don't think there's one happier. Our next house should have a HUGE room in the basement with nothing in it but a beautiful piano.

"Spirituality." In and of itself it is worthless: such complete and utter, mindless and meaningless bullshit.
"I want my religion to comfort me."
"I don't want my religion to judge me for the things I do, or other people for what they believe."
"I think basically all religions are more or less equal, it's just pretty much what you like."
"I like champagne because it tickles my nose!"

Try this:

The day of wrath, that day
which will reduce the world to ashes,
as foretold by David and the Sybil.

What terror there will be,
when the Lord will come
to rigorously judge all!

...

The book will be brought forth
in which all deeds are noted,
for which humanity will answer.

When the judge will be seated,
all that is hidden will appear,
and nothing will go unpunished.

....
So, then, what is the purpose of religion and "spirituality?"

O king of redoutable majesty,
who freely saves the elect,
save me, o fount of piety!

Remember, good Jesus,
that I am the cause of your journey,
do not lose me on that day.

....

It is salvation. That should be comfort enough.

Anti-satorical thought for the day:
It's not really deja vu if you're really doing the same thing and going to the same places every day.

Laboratorio delle Arti Musica e Spettacolo -- my last name makes a cool Italian acronym!
And check out the QuickTime filmato of little kids playing minimalist, avante garde compositions. This site rocks!

Well, that was a close one. For a moment there, I thought I'd need to call Leo (check out his Blog!). Windows was kickin' up a "windows protection error, you need to restart your computer," message everytime I'd start the computer and then would drop me into safe mode (Oh, foul descent into the heck of 640x480res and 4-bit color). Restarting it using a previous day's registry seems to have 'fixed,' the problem.

Pretty flowers from the USVI.

One of the television shows we try to watch every week is EWTN's The World Over. Tonight psychologist and author Dr. Paul Vitz was the guest examining the relationship children have with their father and how this shapes their faith later on in life. A good and loving father tends to raise children who look to God as a good and loving father. A child with an abusive or abandoning father tends to see authority and religion in the same light (i.e. abusive and absent) and is more apt to wind up an atheist -- Vitz referenced Nietzsche, Freud, and Russel -- reknowned atheists who all had lost or despised (or both) their fathers. In absense of a father (or father figure) boys tend to grow up replacing the father with some higher principle (materialsm, communism, etc.) and girls tend to grow up to replace the father with another individual, as opposed to anything abstract (though feminism and goddess-worship were mentioned as abstract alternatives): Simone de Beauvoir actually said that "Sartre is my god." Dr. Paul Vitz: "Poor her! She kissed him repeatedly and he never turned into a prince! Jesus would've made a much better choice!"

Anyways, it was very interesting (certainly it gave me some new respect for psychology) and it's (obviously) something you don't really hear about these days in the popular media or public schools -- what with the Big Push to make everyone genderless. In such an androgynous, genderless society it doesn't take a mother and a father to raise a child, but two women, two men, a woman and The State, or what have you.

A lot of people wonder why that computer-animated MySimon guy falls down at the end of his television commercial. He's not hypoglycemic, as many think. No, it's really the flash from the digital camera that makes him collapse.

Here's the reasoning: (I had to watch it about a dozen times before I made the connection). I think he had his pupils dilated because he'd just been to the eye doctor (examination... $19, $28, and $58 dollars!) and so he was very sensitive to the light. He didn't even want to go to the party, but his live-action girlfriend made him go, so he was a little upset and resentful to begin with (which explains why he lays into the other party guests, telling them how much money they just wasted). By the end of the party he's been so exiled by the other party guests that the only one there who can tolerate him is the dog, who he ridicules for spending too much on his little doggie collar.

Hmmm...

More to follow on that.

Oh, and I had the weirdest dream last night: I was auditioning to become a writer for Angel in front of David Fury and Joss Whedon (who looked oddly similar to the Coen brothers). Anyway, I was there with two friends who wanted to become actors for the show. Each of us, though, by means of an audition had to come up with and act out a little skit. Mine wasn't very good (basically Angel was trying jokingly to tell Cordelia that she'd won a jackpot of some kind by asking her how much she made, hourly). As I was leaving, I noticed a cage full of McCaws. "Are those McCaws?" I asked (don't worry, my dreams are devoid of awful puns). "No, they're some sort of parrot," they replied.

I was a little upset, but then not so much so because I'd just won the They Might Be Giants prize package, and also I could respect their decision because my sprinkler was throwing icy cold water into their pool during their party.

Don't ask me what it all means.

Er, now that I've just alienated everyone in the country... I'm sorry!! Anyhoo, I finally got to see O Brother, Where Art Thou? last night. And while I agree with Terry Teachout that the Coens may be true nihilists at heart (so to speak), I think this film, like The Hudsucker Proxy before it, will take me about five or six viewings before I start to catch on to that fact. Very enjoyable movie, though: funny, stylish, and with lots of digital post-production in terms of the color treatment (yum!).

I haven't listened to this, and I really don't intend to, only because most of the adherents to the Mosaic Law (including myself) tend to believe that the 10 Commandments are listed in order of declining moral severity: meaning that breaking the fourth is even more serious than breaking the fifth (I'm using the standard traditional Christian numeration here). Anyway, for those of you who are interested, Dear Marshall.

I mean, where does that f!wad get off? Dissing one's own mother... the one who brought you into the world... on a record? And where do all of you who bought the record get off, supporting such disrespect -- especially those of you who bought it for your 10-year-old children (although you folks, especially, deserve whatever sort of adolescent terror they can dish out upon you -- can you say "pistol-whipping?" -- for poisoning your kids' minds with such evil)? And where do we all get off as a culture that it wins a Grammy(tm)?

The "good," news -- I suppose -- is that given the fast and loose definitions of personhood in circulation it will very soon be legal to "abort," "fetuses," which have already been born (Clinton was in the process of supporting a bill which would've made it legal to kill a child over a week after it's birthday). Let's just hope they make allowences in Debbie Mathers' case and extend this period of post-natal "termination," to at least 24 years.

Well, company has come and left, and we had a great time (though I suspect I may've undercooked the steaks). I really enjoy hanging with my cousins which are about our age. It's really cool to interact like friends, and yet have so much in common.

I've been too busy running around being hot today to really have any profound thoughts. I read another of Terry Teachout's move reviews which I really enjoyed, even though I'm far too sensitive and outraged to in a million years ever see the movie he reviewed (though apparantly, I now have to locate a copy of the movie, Panic). Another article in that same issue of Crisis by another of my favorites, Peter Kreeft. Just can't wait to get off the computer and go read it!

Oh, yeah, baby! Four more voices of polyphony, absolutly free. Heaven (well, a mere reflection thereof, I should say) is an OS stored on Flash RAM upgradable over a MIDI interface.

I can't tell which makes me more sad: reading Rolling Stone, listening to talk radio, or watching "news magazine," shows on television -- sad to the extent that none of the above makes me terribly sad (perhaps pensive?). I guess what makes me most sad is realizing how far we've (in terms of our friends and our peers) come today, such that conversation and discussion on certain topics isn't possible anymore, unless you stick to predetermined, "socially-acceptable," (where what is socially-acceptable has been dictated particularly by one side of the debate) party lines.

Friendships have been wrecked because a person's beliefs are, even if unstated, not something they leave at the door -- or leave all together! And this is what saddens me.

Busy, busy, busy! I have to go into the crawlspace now. Then vacuum, then buy food, and then, hmm, who knows what else.

It will indeed be a busy day, today. My cousin and her husband are coming up from Cincinnatti and we've got just 8 crazy hours to turn our house from a humid, dusty house into a spotless, clean, comfortable house -- or, at the very least, a house which may be walked through.

Stupid ant! I gave you one chance to get away and yet you come crawling up my leg again. Say hi for me to your brothers and sisters... in Ant Hell!

(I realize I may be giving the impression in this post that our house is a bug-infested hovel. That is not at all the case).

Yardwork rocks!!!

Allrighty, then... now I need to think of a clever domain name to register. Too bad I'm not smart that way.

Joy, joy, joy. My weblog links page, Annuli Catenae, is up and running.

Alton's show tonight was about making angel-food cake. I'd always wonder how it was made, and it looked like a lot of fun! His show is exactly the kind of show I'd like to do, if I were ever good at anything (you know, to the extent to which people would watch me do it).

Kind of makes you reflect on cooking in general, though: we all eat, and yet we don't all cook. Among those who do cook, there are undoubtedly gradations of aethetic excellence (the intellectual and cultural relativists, mind you, still need to eat, and so their slimy grip has not yet extended this far: you don't really hear anyone say that flavorless corn mash tastes just as good as superbly prepared filet mignon, unless they're trying to sell you a whole lot of corn mash). Cooking is perhaps the last of the ancient skills which can impress your friends and confound your enemies: take ballroom dancing courses (please, they're a lot of fun!), but how often to people get to see you dance, really? Take fencing lessons, but how likely are you to duel in public in the next six months? But cooking, ah... cooking!

This is the last of the true arts.

Listening to a portion of Janacek's Glagolitic Mass. Yesterday my 15-CD boxed set, Credo: 1,000 Years of Sacred Music arrived. If you're looking for a great introduction to sacred music for around $30 and don't already have copies of Mozart's or Verdi's Requiem then it's probably worth picking up. No liner notes -- the production is rather bare-boned -- and don't look for 20-bit mastering here, but nice to have the chance to hear Grieg's Ave Maris Stella. Lots of good stuff on here.

Speaking of which, someday I want to do a CD compilation of just all the Dies Irae I can find.

At times the genius of the band Parliament is truly staggering. I hope there's a scene in Disney's upcoming Atlantis cartoon where they show Sir Nose, D'VoidofFunk (great encyclopedia, there, by the way) and Rumpofsteelskin jammin' at the Motor Booty Affair. Somehow, though, I doubt it will be a centerpiece -- but, But, BUT you never know with those Disney animators -- they're wiley!

This was kind of painful to consider: 100,000 frozen, fertilized human embreyos (living human beings, in an early stage of development) in this country -- and the best possible end that these 100,000 living persons can hope to meet, the outcome which grants them the most dignity possible as human beings, is that they're allowed to remain frozen until such time that they all eventually die.

How could a parent look at a child borne of in vitro fertilization and not see the five or more brothers and sisters they've consigned to a freezer in a labratory somewhere to eventually die? How could a such a parent love such a child, having done something unspeakable to other children just like him? And can you imagine what it will be like to grow up knowing that you exist because your parents essentially chose you to be born and killed the rest of your siblings? Will you truly be able to love your parents, knowing what they did to others just like you?

The Adventures of Putty Guy: Clay Blues Guitarist

If it has done nothing else, I think the McVeigh execution has given people a cause to reflect...
Some thoughts:

• Are Americans really that much more important than, say, the Sudanese that 168 lives here warrants a memorial and 300,000 executed Sudanese Christians warrnants a small story on page 8 comprised mainly of a map of Africa illustrating where Sudan is located.


• If McVeigh really believed he was at war (and depending on how loosely you define "war," you can see how he might've thought that), could his terrible act ever become un-justified in his mind? Does he think he's only being executed because his side didn't win the war? How many thousands of times more innocent civilians did we kill in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, and Baghdad than McVeigh in O.C., with the same general excuses (freedom, love of self-rule, fighting an evil empire, they attacked first, etc.). Ethics lesson for the children: So is murdering innocents always wrong, or only if you don't either win or have the full weight of congress and executive power behind you (or, ideally, both)? Oh, wait. I can't answer that, they took away my copy of the 10 Commandments.


• I think there is definately a need for peace in the world, and we can't keep covering up and masking evils with more evils. Despite what anyone thinks, it's most likely that executing McVeigh won't make anyone feel any better than he felt when he took 168 lives. I realize that's a rather ironic statement. To my knowledge he has expressed no remorse. He felt as justified in doing that, I'm sure, as we do in executing him.


• "Expressed," remorse is often bullshit anyways. The contrite heart doesn't need to cry on the witness stand or on national TV.


• Life is cheap, is not precious. Those who claim otherwise are branded as bigots and backwards-thinking reactionaries. The right to "closure," (whatever the heck that could be) for a few people exceeds even the right of entire others to exist.

Anyway, nothing's been solved.

Still trying to figure this site out. I think it has something to do with the mysterious name.

I went back and watched the BMWFilm directed by John Frankenheimer (who also did Ronin), and that one was pretty cool, especially with the commentary turned on in which he discusses just how many BMWs they destroyed while making it.

On the other hand, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a movie I've seen recently which was as funny as The Emperor's New Groove, which we just saw tonight. Very enjoyable, full of heart, and a truly funny cartoon -- something very rare these days.

Thinking about it a little more: movies like CT, HD and Mulan tend to give one the impression that all of the aristocratic woman in medieval China were eschewing marriage and family life in favor of "following their own destinies," or whatever vocation which doesn't involve family life. I wonder if that's a reflection of our own country's view of motherhood and family these days or if has something to do with the contemporary Chinese view of motherhood, which can be summed up in the words "involuntary sterilization," (and women who refuse this tend to wind up falling from fourth-story windows of government health clinics).

It's all about legitimization, you see. It's in the movies we watch and the Happy Meals we feed our children.

Midway through Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Shannon called. I like all the flying around and stuff because that's a lot like Tenchu. I didn't like it when the guy got the chakram or whatever embedded into his skull. I felt kind of sorry for him and his daughter because they were just trying to avenge his wife/her mother. But then I kind of have to think about all the gaurds and stuff I killed when I was playing Tenchu. I wonder if when the kids who are kids today grow up they will be sensitive to anything. Probably just their own feelings, I'm guessing.

The faucet mocks me still, for I am a failure. I give up. It can leak us all into the poorhouse for all I care... it won't bring back the broken screwdriver or heal the puncture wounds on my hand.

I'm feeling much better now. I got an awesome deal on Black Angus NY strip steaks ($3.99/lb!) and they were melt-in-your-mouth good when grilled on our newly-cleaned grill. That, and Jackie got me Drunken Tiger, Master Dragon or whatever it's called. I can't wait to see it! Life is good.

Life
is
good.

Oh, and the oven-cleaning thing worked (for the grill grates). It turned all the icky grease on the grill grate into grease soot, which washed right off with a garden hose!

One could be forgiven for exclaiming "Balderdash!," were the implications not so immense and terrifying:

"The Cultural Creatives think for themselves. They scan the world and put together their own Big Picture. They are 'information junkies,' but they make their own syntheses, eschewing authority. They are thinking intuitives. 'On the deepest level,' Ray writes, 'they are powerfully attuned to global issues and whole systems. Their icon is a photograph taken by an astronaut that shows the earth as a blue pearl hanging in black space.'"

"How does one become a Cultural Creative? It doesn’t have anything to do with upbringing or social demographics. It’s a 'conversion process,' Ray says, often precipitated by a period of intense unhappiness or pain, which then leads to experimentation and the shattering of old values. Often a major life-crisis (health, finances, career, relationship) opens the way to this shift."

Babel, 2001. "Major life-crises," have a way of shaking us to our very core, leaving us open to a great deal of suggestion. Whether this suggestion be of something which brings us closer to the vision of Truth and Beauty (that is to say Angelic or beatific inspiration), or of the other sort, specifically that if ye eat of the tree of Knowledge ye will know Good and Evil and be as God, (i.e. self-idolatry and the possibility of Demonic possession or influence). What people don't need to hear at such a time is that man is the measure of all things.

What's truly insidious, though, is that these people feel the need to marginalize themselves from the rest of society. In fact, this self-deifying attitude is already being taught at every level of our public-eduactaion system. It's being forced upon us in our music, in our movies, and in our literature (if that still even can be said to exist anymore). Your revolution already happened, and look at its fruits: coercion, abortion, murder, anomnie, euthanasia, divorce, depression, loss of liberty, and a sense of general miserableness. Marginalizing yourself at this point to distance yourself from the unpleasantness you've caused isn't going to fool anyone. The true cultural creatives are those who seek the path of Truth amongst the diseased piles of horseshit you've left lying around everywhere.

"Choose life, choose death. Choose a blessing, choose a curse." Just don't bring the rest of us down with you.

Home tip for the day: Greasy, grimy grill grates got you going crazy? Pop 'em in your self-cleaning oven and run them through the clean cycle!

Okay, so that's not really my tip. It's from Alton Brown, and since I just threw the grate in the oven a few minutes ago I don't know if it really works or not (especially when your grates get as greasy as ours got). I'll let you all know how it works out.

Progressive synth-pop from someone who loves her computer.

It'd probably be best to ignore the immediately previous blog. Move along folks, nothing to see here, nothing to see :)

Tonight's theme is random thoughts, held only together by the thin membrane of tissue which keeps my brain from slopping out my ears.

Who can express the intellectual attraction one feels for something that is truly interesting? Not in the sense that it is curious, because that implies desiring a knowledge of that thing or person for knowledge's sake, but because it is truly something worthy of interest. Not alien, necessarily, because what is so boring as something for which your experience has no frame of reference? Something, though, to which you can relate, something which promises depths to be plumbed, which may just bring a heightened sense of meaning to your life, which can not fill the void you never knew you had, but help you on the path upon which you've already started. I think a lot of people are interested in the wrong things, even people who realize where their interests lie.

Does "interest," the word, come from "inter est," which would be Latin for.. what, exactly? (Reaching for the 1876 edition of Leverett's Latin Lexicon, which is falling apart but who cares because it's 125-years-old and I bought it for $5). Hmm. This would mean that "interest," implies that your mind is, literally, "among other things." Oh, I wish I had a dictionary handy (and not in the crawlspace).

Who keeps a 125-year-old Latin lexicon on hand, just a few feet away, but keeps their English dictionaries boxed up in the crawlspace?

Perhaps that's as it should be, though. It was Ronald Knox, I believe, who, when asked to baptise a child in the (then novel and presumably trendy) English vernacular (and this would had to have been pre-Vatican II) as opposed to the classical Latin, is said to have replied matter of factly, in essence, you and I may speak English, "but the Devil knows Latin."

Who here remembers the "Jonathan," episode of Buffy from the fourth season where Xander says, "librum incendere," and the book bursts into flames? What did Giles say after that: "Xander, don't speak Latin around the books,"?

So many disconnected experiences make up my self. But I deny Hume and insist that a soul underlies them all. You can't have a comb without the spine -- ever try to comb your hair with just bristles?

I definately think the Sutter Home Cabernet Savignon is better than the, um, other wine I usually drink. Shoot... what was it called? Barrel O' Something or other... oh, Woodbridge, that's it. Too darned acidic.

While gazing upon box upon box of books I wished I could up and get a job where I could just read all day interesting books. And then I realized that was called college, and I'd already been. And then I was sad.

A class B license... decided to play it safe, huh? Come back again and show us how it's done.

Okay, so AnalogX is my new hero, if only for his TagMaster program which lets you rename .mp3 file filenames using their ID3 tags, in any order. I know that sounds like a super-geeky thing to be happy about -- and believe me, it is -- but MusicMatch doesn't do it, WinAmp doesn't do it, and Siren doesn't do it and this is going to make burning CDs of .mp3 files a lot easier. I think.

This wasn't open when I was in DC, but I think I'd like to visit there someday.

I could hear this book calling to me from the crawlspace. I found it only the fourth big box of books.

"Begin with the reverse hypothesis, like Copernicus and Einstein. You are depressed because you should be. You are entitled to your depression. In fact, you'd be deranged if you were not depressed. Consider the only adults who are never depressed: chuckleheads, California surfers, and fundementalist Christians who believe they have had a personal encounter with Jesus and are saved for once and all. Would you trade your depression to become any of these?"

- Walker Percy, "Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book"

"Hiya, fellas! I'm doomed!"

I just finished cutting the grass. Just call me Masaharu Mow-imoto!

Do you want to see something funny?
Go to cdnow.com and look up my CD:

Robot Love

Check out that cover art! I wish I was cool as Nat!

Oh, darn, they fixed it. A couple of hours ago they had a picture of Nat King Cole next to my album. Oh well, check it out anyway -- they have :30 second sound samples of all my songs up there.

OKay, now this is a game! After spending three hours trying to clear the water temple in Majora's Mask last night, nothing's better than tearing up NYC for a few minutes in a '60s-era Continental.

Just in case you were anxiously awaiting a new song, here's a new song. I wrote and recorded it all in about four hours, so don't come crying to me if you don't like it. On the face of it, it's a kind of tragic ballad about a girl's weblog, but it's really about all of us, I suppose.

I don't know if I could accurately explain the romance associated with learning (rather, knowing) a foreign language. Perhaps it's just being able to have that intimate bond with the culture and concepts of a different people? (These CD-ROMs, by the way, are supposed to be really good. It may be time for me to brush up on my Latin).