Main Contents
Archives: January 2009
30 January 2009 | 2:20 PM
Officially, the iconic metal band Metallica has been dead to me for ten years as a result of their decision to treat their fans as thieves. Unofficially, though, this video made my day:
Now when someone comes out with a ukulele version of “Master of Puppets”, I’ll be really impressed. Oh wait, it’s already been done. Anyway, Metallica’s still dead to me, but I take solace in the fact that things like this probably make Lars Ulrich’s blood pressure rise by fifty points.
Posted by Andy in Awesome (To Me, Anyway) |
Comments (0)
30 January 2009 | 10:48 AM
As a parent myself, I have a lot of respect for other people who have kids and parent them well – I certainly am far from perfect at it, and I take guidance and inspiration from those folks whom I think do a kick-ass job of raising their kids. And while I’ve certainly done things as a dad that I’ve later wished I hadn’t, I believe I can safely say that none of my regrettable parenting moments seem to be things which will scar my children for life. Unfortunately, that’s more than I can say for one Crystal Walden (side note, of course her name is Crystal, right?), who – not wanting to let motherhood prevent her from having a good time – got stinking drunk, dragged her 10 year-old son to a truck stop and made him watch while she got freaky and/or deaky with a trucker inside his rig. Oy vey:
My favorite bit about this admittedly shocking and repulsive story is the statement she made to the judge in open court explaining her actions:
“It’s only because I was drinking tequila,” Walden said during her Monday arraignment.
It sounds like Jose Cuervo was decidedly not a friend of hers that night I guess. In any case, this sort of puts some of the things my own parents did to me when I was a kid in perspective. I’d like to publicly thank my folks for their restraint.
Posted by Andy in Fail |
Comments (0)
29 January 2009 | 1:13 AM
Fresh of the heels of my marginally successful attempt at a poetry mashup, I’ve decided to take another stab at the art form tonight. Once again, I’ve picked a fairly random playlist from my music collection, and once again I will cull one line from each song listed therein. This time, though, rather than rely solely on the first line of each ditty, I’ll instead choose the line or lyric that I think is the best that each song has to offer. Here goes:
Experiment #2
Poetry is no place for a heart that’s a whore
Tangled too tight and too long to fight
It’s love that leaves and breaks the seal of always thinking you would be real
All these things we’ll one day swallow whole
Was there a voice, unkind, in the back of your mind?
It’s a helping hand that makes you feel wonderfully bland
I can never say “no” to anyone but you
And here I rest where disappointment and regret collide
Its okay, the struggle for things not to say
You were an island to discover
But where I’m headed, you just don’t know the way
I cannot find the heart I gave to you
Again, it almost works. There’s a strained quality to it – I can’t tell if that’s because the novelty of this form has worn off already or if it’s because the simple act of me having to critically decide which phrases from the songs move me most requires more creativity than I can muster. Oh well, it’s too late for me to quibble with it – it is done.
Oh, and because I know it’ll come up, here’s the track listing, in order of the lines above:
- “B.M.F.A.” – Martha Wainwright
- “He Lays In The Reigns” – Iron & Wine with Calexico
- “Where Does The Good Go?” – Tegan & Sara
- “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” – Radiohead
- “Last Goodbye” – Jeff Buckley
- “Country House” – Blur
- “The Figurehead” – The Cure
- “Title and Registration” – Death Cab For Cutie
- “If You Wear That Velvet Dress” – U2
- “A Warning Sign” – Coldplay
- “Turn On Me” – The Shins
- “Glass” – Ingrid MIchaelson
G’night.
Posted by Andy in Play For Today |
Comments (2)
28 January 2009 | 12:26 AM
It seems that my “Play For Today” experiment would be more aptly titled “Play For Every Other Day” given my output of late, but I’ve been swamped. Plus, in case I haven’t mentioned this, manufacturing creativity is really fucking hard. In fact, I’m not altogether certain that what I’m doing is creative, per se, or merely my own Bataan Death March of personal expression. Either way, because I’ve slacked a bit recently, I’ve decided to whip out two haikus. Ready….get set….emote!
five am
Slowly, quietly
tiny footsteps, wooden floors
wake up, tired old man
the usual
Same table each time
we wouldn’t know how to eat
anywhere else, huh?
Good night, poetry-lovers – too bad you didn’t get to read any poetry!
Posted by Andy in Play For Today |
Comments (0)
28 January 2009 | 12:07 AM
When the hell did this happen? I turn my back for a week or two, and suddenly Lindsay Lohan is wasting away while Jessica Simpson is, well, a little more Rubenesque than usual. Now, I’m not saying that America’s (former) sweetheart has been secretly eating LiLo (after all if so, Samantha Ronson’s gonna be pissed – heyo!), but something fishy is going on here, and if I cared I would totally get to the bottom of it.
Posted by Andy in Ummm...? |
Comments (2)
26 January 2009 | 10:23 PM
Today was one of those days where I felt like I was a hamster on a wheel – so much energy expended to get me, well, nowhere at all. On the other hand, I got to use one of those wicked upside-down water bottle thingies – that was pretty sweet. Anyway, enough about me: on to the silly links!
- Isn’t it remarkable that these days women have overcome years of objectification over their mere looks, so they can instead be objectified for their business prowess….and their looks? You’ve come a long way, baby! And on a side note, the Spanx chick? Seriously? Yeesh.
- This official/unofficial remix of Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” video is even awesomer (look it up) than the first one. I mean, it’s got K-Fed making his “Popozao” face!
- Suddenly that sweater that your Aunt Phyllis knit you for Christmas doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
- “This is what it sounds like when dolls cry.” Dear lord, I wish I could take credit for that phrase, but I can’t. (NSFWOAITSSR – Not Safe For Work Or Anywhere In The Solar System Really)
- Looking for a laugh and have ten minutes to kill? Have a go at this ridonkulous thread from a dating service’s message boards, in which things go from bad, to worse, to oh-my-god before your very eyes.
- Something tells me that if you’re the type of guy who’d buy one of these, you’re never going to get into double-digits. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.
- Drawings of stars in their britches and braces. Of particular note: Dolly Parton and Tom Cruise.
- Can you grow the next president right in your own home? Yes you can. Now all we need is a Sarah Palin version of The Clapper (it turns on and off when you wink) and we’ll be all set!
- Aw man, if this product goes global, my hands will be of no use to anyone anymore.
- I’ve never thought of myself as a superhero before, but it turns out I have several of these superuseless superpowers. My personal favorite is Complimentary Chameleon.
- I know it sounds impossible, but someone has invented a guitar whose design and concept actually prevent the guitarist from getting laid.
Posted by Andy in Linksploitation |
Comments (0)
26 January 2009 | 12:46 AM
After another brief hiatus from my little experiment in creative schadenfreude – this time due to some actual work I which, much to my chagrin, I couldn’t avoid tackling any longer – I’m back and better than ever. Well, I’m back, at least. For tonight’s installment, I’m going to give a go at something I’ve been curious about trying for a week or two now – namely, creating a lyrical mashup. I’ve long been a fan of traditional audio mashups, in which DJ’s take tracks from two disparate songs and figure out how to meld them into one ditty (for an amazing example of the art-form, give this a listen), so I wondered if taking the aural piece out of the equation might still leave us with something, well, worthwhile. To give myself a little bit of a structure to leap off from, I’m borrowing an idea from a blog I came across a million years ago, First Lines, which (briefly) compiled a list of the the opening lines of works of literature. In my case, I’ll focus on opening lines of songs, and just to bring a bit of sanity to this (so I don’t spend all night listening to every song in my collection), I will grab a single playlist that I’ve already created and use only the songs in it as fodder. Keep in mind that the concept of what constitutes an “opening line” is pretty vague – perhaps the only creative part of this exercise is deciding where to snip? It’s a bit choppy, I’ll grant you, but I was a little surprised at how well it (almost) works:
Experiment #1
I was friendly with this girl who insisted on touching my face
Nobody’s perfect, and that’s something that I’m sure she’ll know.
‘I might be old but I’m someone new,’ she said.
She’s so strange
This is the moment that you know that you told her that you loved her but you don’t.
God that was strange to see you again
Bright, just like the stars above me
On my picture shelf, statues mocking me.
I heard you cry aloud all the way across town.
There’s still a little bit of your taste in my mouth.
You sure you want to be with me? I’ve nothing to give.
Please remember me happily by the rosebush laughing.
This is how it works, it feels a little worse
How does it feel like to wake up in the sun?
I live at the top of a mountain.
Every day I wake up and it’s Sunday.
I want to crawl back inside my mother’s womb.
Give it to me, don’t give it away.
You want to know why I hate you? Well I’ll try and explain
You said I’d wake up, dead drunk, alone in the park.
And I’m not going back into rags or in the hole.
Why should he come back through the park?
Extra credit to those of you who can name all of the songs in question without Googling the lyrics.
Posted by Andy in Play For Today |
Comments (6)
25 January 2009 | 11:23 PM
When I was a middle schooler, learning about the crafting of the Constitution in social studies, I remember one of the things which affected me the most was a painting, Howard Chandler Christy’s Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States. It’s like an American version of DaVinci’s The Last Supper, and the piece always struck me as the sort of All Star Game of American revolutionary history: why, there’s Thomas Jefferson shagging flies in left field, Ben Franklin’s behind the plate, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t get George Washington to bat cleanup! Even though it was well after-the-fact and not necessarily historically accurate, it conveyed to me the immediacy and, more importantly, the momentousness of the occasion in a way that hit really close to home. I mean, to a twelve year old, if literally every person you know of from 1770’s colonial America is gathered in one room hovering over a piece of paper, you can bet your tetherball-playing ass that it’s a pretty fucking important event.
Last week’s presidential inauguration created a similar opportunity for us to be singularly aware of an event’s significance as it was going down. These days, we don’t have to wait 170 years for someone to come along to capture the moment for us: technology means it can indelibly retain its visceral impact. The crowds were huge, sure, but what struck me most as I pored over this 1474 megapixel composite image of the event is the star power of those in attendance. Now, inaugurations generally feature the luminaries of government, both past and present, in their galleries – it’s sort of the nature of the beast. But typically the rest of the country (and, by extension, the world) has been content to watch the event on television, sometimes not even live. It’s not that the peaceful transfer of power from Harrison to Tyler to Polk (or Reagan to Bush to Clinton for that matter) isn’t important: it’s just that it’s all become rather routine, which I suppose is what our nation’s founders might’ve intended it to be. After all, a hum-drum succession generally means no coup d’état or military junta is rattling around in the captiol, so the quieter the better, right? Still, everyone knew that this inauguration was different. Do you recall the nation grinding to a halt in the same way when Jimmy Carter was sworn in? Or for George H.W. Bush’s inaugural? Of course not. Add to that the fact that today’s media has turned even the bit players of Washington’s political scene into household names, and the inaugural becomes a sort of Oscar ceremony for our nation’s capitol.
In any case, after being appropriately impressed by the size of the crowds and the pomp and circumstance of it all, I got over my patriotic pride and began scouring the image (thanks to its wicked zoom and pan ability) for a who’s who of American society. While I didn’t find any James Madisons or Alexander Hamiltons, it was striking who turned up. And so, here’s a little scavenger hunt for you, call it Obama Bingo – see if you can find:
- Dubya giving the ol’ sour-puss golf-clap.
- Poppy looking as if he’s attempting to reprise Ernest Borgnine’s role from Ice Station Zebra.
- Denzel Washington standing next to someone who appears to be Sidney Poitier, with Sean P-Diddly-Dang-Doodily Combs just behind him.
- Antonin Scalia daydreaming about new and exciting ways he can misinterpret the Constitution and trample our democracy.
- Dick Cheney looking like the lost lovechild of Jack Abramoff and Dr. Strangelove.
- Some dude in the left gallery representin’ in a Packers hat.
- Dan Quayle trying to remember if “freezing” is spelled with one “z” or two.
- Clarence Thomas nodding off, murmuring “affirmative action my ass” in his sleep.
- Hillary preparing to give her husband a look that says, “Bill, I saw you staring at Michelle Obama’s ass during the oath.”
- Jenna and Barbara Bush looking like they’re attending a funeral.
- Al Gore pondering the carbon footprint of the ceremony.
- Chief Justice Roberts wondering if anyone noticed.
- Yo Yo Ma taking a picture of the proceedings (and patting himself on the back for bringing his outdoor cello with him).
- Morgan Freeman taking things in, just a few rows deep, reverse Kangol and all.
- Aretha Franklin and her new-Lexus-ribbon hat.
- Newt Gingrich, looking as if his blood pressure is rising 10 points for every stanza in the President’s speech.
In all seriousness, it’s pretty awesome to be able to peek into this amazing moment in our history. And all seriousness aside, I’m a little pissed that I can’t find Oprah anywhere.
[Via Geekologie]
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (2)
23 January 2009 | 1:13 AM
Admittedly, it’s been a while since I was out there in the job market, but I remember the sting and humiliation of dink-letters very well, thankyouverymuch. That said, I am pleased to say that, though I’ve been turned down for more jobs than I can count, I’m pretty sure I never received a resume response quite like this one:
I believe the phrase you’re looking for is, “holy fucking shit!”
[Via sim sandwich's Flickr photostream]
Posted by Andy in Ummm...? |
Comments (1)
23 January 2009 | 1:00 AM
Believe it or not, I actually have been keeping up my end of the ol’ creativity bargain the last few days. I’ve been coding like a banshee (come to think of it, do banshees code?) in an effort to bring a really awesome extant web application into the Facebook sandbox, but sadly because I’m doing that work under the auspices of a non-disclosure agreement with the folks behind the site, I can’t very well publish snippets of my code here for y’all to see. Take my word for it, though: it’s awesome.
Tonight I’m forcing myself to take a little bit of a break from programming so as to actually live up to the spirit (if not the letter) of my resolution. While I’ve got a couple of embryonic musical ideas, they’re not even well-formed enough yet for me to commit to audio yet, so I’ll have to do one or two of those this weekend. Instead, as a change of pace, here’s a lyric (or, at least, part of one), some loosely-connected scraps of sentences I’ve been clinging onto for a quite some time. Now before you read this, keep in mind that, after twenty-odd years of adoring The Cure, the lyrics I come up with tend to be incredibly overwrought and self-indulgent. Others – read, Robert Smith – pull this sort of introspection off very well. I, on the other hand, usually pummel it to death with my bare hands (or, in this case, my pen and journal). I wouldn’t exactly call it autobiographical in the conventional sense: the theme of this jumble is not focused upon any one incident from my past, or rather if it is it’s also at least tithing to several other periods of my life as well. Hence the (unintentional) disconnectedness of it all. My hope is by actually exposing these things to some air here on the inter-webs, I’ll be a little bit more likely to gain the perspective needed to polish up this turd or call it dead.
Sleep
Twenty-four hours ago
you didn’t know
and everything seemed so easy.
I’d made my bones about you
snatched every breath that they drew
and buried them deep
in the ground somewhere.
Now it’s all been said
we’ve raised the dead
and this thing is making me queasy.
Funny how such simple words can
throw the doors to hell wide open.
Bury me deep, please
in the ground somewhere.
I’ve been living hand-to-mouth
I’ve been staring at my feet
I’ve been hiding from myself
I’ve been lying through my teeth
I’ve been sitting on my hands
I’ve been trying not to breathe
I don’t want to go to bed
I just want to go to sleep
Now that I see it in print, I think I’m going to go ahead and preemptively call time of death at around 12:59a, CDT. I dropped “queasy”? Seriously??? Yeesh.
Posted by Andy in Play For Today |
Comments (0)
