A Double Reprieve

I'm giving thanks twice today. Both for Michael, my oldest son.

For reasons unknown, he's been obsessed with enlisting in the Marines when he graduates high school next year. The attempts of those of us who love him to dissuade him have fallen on deaf ears. Methinks it's the only way he, as the oldest son, can possibly rebel against a radical father. Long story short, he found out today that he needs to be seizure-free for five years before they'll take him. It's been less than 6 months.

There was a horrific car crash on the West Seattle Bridge early this morning. It was closed from 2:30 to 11 this morning. The fire was so bad they couldn't tell what kind of car it was let alone who was inside. It was 3 of Michael's homies. Yesterday was the last day of school. Everyone was at Alki partying, so much so that the police had to break things up at 11:30. As fate would have it, Michael didn't go with his friends, the friends that died hours later. My heart goes out to their families.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Look where JetCityOrange showed up

Every once in awhile, JetCityOrange escapes this blog and the web site and is spotted out in the wild.

The Mosquito Ringtone

Now that NPR blabbed about it, everyone knows about the mosquito ringtone, not just kids. Only the young can hear high frequency sounds. Some bozo invents a device to scatter loitering kids. Kids use high frequency ringtone to hide text messages from teachers.

Me? I make a 17KHz tone WAV file. (WAV files don't use the same lossey compression MP3 files do.) Beware that most cell phones probably can't reproduce a 17KHz tone anyway.

Enjoy!

Nashville

Nashville for a week. Never been here before. Visiting old friends and attending a barcode conference that began on 06/06/06 (as in "666"). In Dixie.

Nashville is an art town. Met lots of artists and musicians courtesy of Paul who's been here for years. Blaine drove over from Macon for the long weekend. The three of us together again.

Late flight and lost baggage balanced with a free upgrade to a minivan. Came in handy when I found myself hanging an art show on Sat. A CD release party complete with belly dancers.


Learned about mockingbirds first hand in Linda and JQ's yard. Saw TN's largest Oak tree at someone's house who went to school in Seattle (Cornish no less). Learned that Nashville has the world's only full-sized replica of the Parthenon (went twice)and the largest community of Kurds outside the Middle East.


Love the homes. Love them. Old, individual, beautiful, set far apart (by Seattle standards), and lots & lots of brick. Great yards and porches. Magnolias everywhere. Still haven't had any local BBQ. Yazoo Brewing Co rocks in spite of their hours. Their rye is a classic. Fireflies and crickets at night too.

And I took pictures. Tons of pictures. Some which will undoubtedly turn up as Windows wallpaper images and Google Pack Screensaver collections over on JetCityOrange.

I could go on but won't. Suffice it to say, I'm comin' back.

Why God Made Bandwidth

This is why we have 1's and 0's: to push content like this around the globe. Watch this...

Dixie

I'm in Nashville. First time. Hanging in Franklin. Artists and musicians. Hanging with Paul and Blaine.

Plane was late. They lost my luggage. Free upgrade to a minivan.

Hangin' (other's) art. Hangin' out. In Dixie. Below the Mason-Dixon. Walking among Civil War ghosts. Past statue of Klan co-founder. Stories of rebel flag. It's a Southern thing. I'm not sure I understand, this Yankee Black man.

Haven't had the BBQ yet. Not enough pictures taken. Fireflies though!

It's a Google world after all

Google and Dell get in the bed the same day eBay saddles up to Yahoo! Bill and Steve both must feel left outta the party.

Lay and Skilling get what's due and Blair and Dubya continue the lies. And we have a military puppet running the CIA. I feel better now.

Have camera, will cause trouble.

I finally got around to making a new photo collection for the Google Pack Screensaver

I love the Azalea Bud wallpaper

Summer looms before us.

The 3, count 'em, 3 R's

This recent posting on craigslist proves that our children ain't learnin' no math: "3/4 pitbull....1/3 lab.........FREE>>>>>"

Back in the day

Back in the day I remember how magnets were something to avoid or at least something to be isolated. Why? Because they screwed up floppies.

Remember floppies? My laptop doesn't even have a floppy drive.

Floss

Corn on the cob, mango, salmon, and chicken. All well worth the floss they require.

Bikes? Did someone say bikes?

So I'm riding my bike again. and then this site pops up.

Coincidence? I think not.

Bored?

If you're bored, watch this.

Thank you Easter Bunny. Thank you!

Imagine my surprise when I opened my basket this year...

Someone with too much time on their hands

Clyde turned me on to this incredible video. Just when you think you've seen something wild, the next one blows it away. Something tells me knowing what the text says would only diminish the experience.

Timelessness

Lesson learned: if you stay at home on a cloudy day listening to ambient music, you lose all sense of time.

Not necessarily a bad thing.

Spam

Spam seems to come in waves. Sometimes stuff appears to be from one country or another. A couple months ago I noticed a lot of stuff seemed to have no date and Outlook put it at the bottom of my mail list. The latest twist is spam with my real name in the subject line.

Odd cuz almost no one calls me "Elmer".

Big Love

I admit, I'm hooked on Big Love, HBO's new Sunday night polygamy hour. I have HBO on Demand so I've caught all three episodes in real time and invited Michelle and Drew over to watch the first two which they'd missed.

I see I'm not the only one weighing in on this either.

I don't watch TV (my big screen is for movies) but Big Love has me hooked. Why? Most TV shows are one of a handful of basic plots (cops, funny families, doctors'n'nurses, etc.). This one is different. Way different.

How different? It hits up against taboos. Strong taboos. Non-traditional family structures, non-mainstream faith, cults, pedophiles, to name a few. Several people I've talked with find Big Love genuinely disturbing. And for that alone, it qualifies as non-trivial TV.

I gotta say I'm having the time of my life shooting photos for the Google Pack Screensaver. Great little screensaver that rotates between the photographs in a designated folder. What's great about the Google screensaver is that it "tosses" the photos down at random locations and angles, just like you're tossing real photographs on the table.

So far I've done photo collections of Alcatraz, poker, and neon signs among others. I'm having fun planning these collections than anything I could be printing. And that's what digital photography means to me: digital (as in non-print) output.

Works for me.

My current Marfas (79843)

Big Love on HBO. As if handling one woman is do-able. Three? Puh-leeze. Not that I'm not hooked...

The Bay as second city. And I always thought it would be Vancouver or Boston.

Now my oldest wants me to do acupuncture on him, not Miki. Silly me, I thought he didn't want it at all. Guess that answers the question about me wanting to treat my own kids. Guess I don't have a choice after all.

Psychoacoustics, binaural beats, and the Schumann Resonance. As MP3 now, podcast later.

And flower essences. Bach Flowers of course but others too. Botanicals, always back to botanicals.

As much as I love movies, I haven't been in a theater for 4 or 5 months. Long live Netflix.

It looks like I'm gonna have to learn QuickBooks. Great. In my spare time.

Herbal liquors. Way beyond Jagermeister. I'm collecting nips, mostly from Ledger Liquor in Berkeley.

And lastly, I spoke with Les Blank on the phone last week. Big cultural hero.