| In the beginning, there was pure drivel. And lists. Now there is self-absorbed, pseudo-intellectual, stylized hipster drivel ... peppered with the occasional grain of truth. And more lists. These are the semi-autobiographical, semi-apocryphal musings of a tragically hip leftist satirist-wimp pro-proletarian anti-aesthete ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Jun 13 13:46:15 PDT 2006
I'm trying to move the party over to blogger, so look for postings future postings at: http://coredumpin.blogspot.com/. Why, I just wrote a little piece of nostalgia there a few minutes ago. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jun 05 15:30:56 PDT 2006
Part of the problem is ... (Uh oh! You can't help but expect trouble when one begins with words like that. But do not fret; the problem at hand is of the relatively benign, mildly annoying variety). So - umm - where were we? Ah, yes - part of the problem. Part of the problem is that our literary establishment has a very high expectation of authenticity from its writers, even (or especially) the ones dealing in fiction. Supposedly, you cannot write about something unless you have some level of experience with the matter at hand. Unless have lived through it. The curse of the beats, as it were. Which is all well and good, except for the fact that our best writers are often boring middle aged folks, that come from a fine tradition of MFA programs scattered in middle-of-nowhere towns across the country. So now you have a bunch of pretentious assholes, constantly searching for cred in all the wrong places. Fiction masquerading as non-fiction masquerading as semi-autobiographical work masquerading as something or other. People faking their pasts, feigning coolness, fuckedupness. Dude - it is fiction. Just tell us a good story, and tell it well. Wow - that was random! I, on the other hand, have access to indisputable cred. I have the new unreleased Thom Yorke album, thanks to an old friend. That makes me awesomer than all the fake writers. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue May 31 12:33:19 PDT 2006
Preparations for the World Cup are in full effect:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu May 25 13:38:26 PDT 2006
Couple of things: 1. It is a lot harder to pack one's bloggy-bags and simply move to a different location. I've been threatening to take this mutha elsewhere for a while now, but this slackers thing seems far too nice and convenient for me to just give up. In the end, I am a lazy man, and inertia always wins. 2. Instead of a "Now Playing" section like most blogs, we will do a "Now stuck in my head" section. Somehow this seems more relevant. Now stuck in my head: Billy Bragg - "A New England". You get your own version of the silent soundtrack of my life. And like most regular features on here, this will probably last for a sum total of one day. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue May 02 15:19:26 PDT 2006
I think I have just witnessed the single greatest moment in the history of television. Wow! |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Apr 25 17:05:49 PDT 2006
Dude, I just got Amway-ed! It is so weird when nice, normal folk - people you were friends with at one point - come at you from nowhere, talking about their new, revolutionary "Business Model". When someone starts throwing around terms like business model, be afraid. Be very afraid. Because "new business model" inherently implies that you don't have anything new to sell; you just have a new way of packaging it. And new is really just a euphemism for Amway. I guess Amway has finally discovered the Internet. Oddly enough, they are still trying their pyramid scheme shennanigans on the intar wubs. Which means that they try to get people to set up little online franchise stores, that all look the same and sell exactly the same thing. Except that they are competing with each other. Huh? I thought that the whole point of online business was the notion of consolidating the shopping experience into one centralized location, and to remove extraneous distribution issues. Their brilliant scheme seems to add distrubutors to a medium that is essentially geared to cut out the middleman distributor figure. S.m.r.t. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Mar 23 10:05:20 PST 2006
So, a lot has happened since I last rapped at y'all. We've changed our names. We've procured a new air mattress. And I got punched in the face. I am waiting at the bus stop, minding my own business, when this dude walks over and starts looking me up and down. He is giving me a weird look, making strange huffing noises. I actively look in the other direction, assuming that he is some crazy homeless person / drug dealer / panhandler. This staredown/ignoring tussle continues for a couple of minutes, until he walks right upto me and *WHAM!*. The fucker punches me right in the jaw. I am too stunned to say anything other than "What was that?!!", but crazy dude is already running away. That's it. End of story. Two days later, and I have a sore mandible, along with a very confused psyche. I have no idea why some random guy came out of nowhere, threw one solid punch at my face, and then ran away. It makes you think about things, about yourself. Why? What did I do? Is there some secret "Fight Club" clone out there? The truth is that random acts of violence simply happen - there is no point in digging deeper. Instead, it is much more healthy to focus on "fight revisionism". If only I had practiced my ninja fu skillz. As his fist hurtles towards my face, I deftly move my body to the left. Whiff. Nothing but air. This throws him off his balance, and I use the time honored Jujitsu leg swipe to take him down. Eat dirt scumbag! Booyakasha!! Wu Tang 4 eva!!! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Mar 16 13:58:45 PST 2006
What is Shreyas reading these days?
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Mar 09 21:59:35 PST 2006
Given how much music I've been attempting to absorb over the past couple of years, it is interesting to see how my tastes have evolved, and what strikes me as fresh. My current defintion of fresh seems to involve dense collages of hypermanic sound; a combination of noise and melody. I've moved away (somewhat) from complex syncopated rhythms, towards more basic, and some would argue, more primal percussive elements. And I'm seemingly more interested in the sonic, rather than rhythmic aspects of percussion. Enter, the Animal Collective. I saw them live this past weekend, and seriously, it was one of the best live shows I've ever seen. The music was crazy and manic and spastic, going back and forth between melody and cacophony. And they certainly didn't skimp on weird sound effects, odd clickety-clack noises, random animal calls, and pretty much anything that you could attribute to large doses of LSD. In the past, this is the sort of sound that I would have ignored as being "too busy", but for some reason, it is the only thing that my oversaturated brain will respond to, these days. It had been a while since I'd been to the Fillmore. I had forgotten about the ridiculous free posters that they hand out after the show. These things have honestly become a joke. They rarely have anything to do with the band that they are supposed to be for. As far as I can tell, they are the product of a random freshman arts student who knows nothing about the musicians in question, and designs the poster based on the sound of their name. Which might produce interesting results, if it weren't for the fact that they are just ... so ... bad. Ok - enough music crit for the day. I have a jeopardy question for you guys: A: I'm not sure as to whether or not it is actually funny, but it is definitely weird. Q: What is an internet meme? I have no idea why internet memes are so fucking weird. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Mar 06 21:29:11 PST 2006
This is pretty much the most awesome thing you can put down on a resume: Notable skills
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Mar 02 12:22:17 PST 2006
I've been formally diagnosed with hearing loss. My right ear has perfect hearing upto a certain point, and then seems to degrade rapidly for higher frequency sounds. My left ear has generally reduced hearing but there is no sharp dropoff point. Somehow, all of this is making me think of the Alien Loves Predator webcomic. Here is how this particular tangent was reached: Hearing Loss -> In space no one can hear you scream -> Alien -> Alien vs. Predator -> Alien Loves Predator (In New York, no one can hear your scream). |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Feb 27 17:26:11 PST 2006
Guest Entry #1 (or Don attempts to write a missive) Your blog design freakin' SUCKS. Black background with white offset text? Welcome to Loserville. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Feb 10 15:19:10 PST 2006
As y'all can tell, I've been horribly tardy at posting entries here lately. So, I came up with the notion of "Guest Blog Week". You guys get to write entries about whatever you want, and I'll post them here. Notice the lack of a "submit" button? Well, we don't have form support or anything in these parts. You'll just have to use good old fashioned e-mail to send me your love. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sat Jan 28 11:59:28 PST 2006
Weird how you sometimes unexpectedly connect with someone, and then they leave for someplace far away. Far away like say, St. Petersburg, Russia. Ok - maybe it isn't so weird. In fact, this sort of shit happens to me all the time. I'm considering making a list of all the people that have moved away, but it would be WAY too depressing. Weird how you've been in the same city as someone for ten years (especially when that co-location was preserved across three cities), and then they leave. Kablamo! Gone. Yes, I know that Brooklyn is the shiznit and all, but hey, someone's got to stick around and represent Oaktown. Even more weird, when the one old school, rock steady Oaktowner suddenly decides to pack his bags and move to the other side of the bridge. To the goddamn Mission. I once had a t-shirt idea: "The Mission is for Wannabe Oaklanders". Ok, so it lacked a certain pizzazz, but you get the point. Fuck you all. Sigh. Rob, M3, ND ... I will miss you. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jan 25 17:23:06 PST 2006
How about this for a new tagline: "Coredumpin': Like waking up covered in someone else's blood, but in a good way." Ok - so that wasn't strictly original, but it is better than "Coredumpin': Not a pedophile (Just so you know)" |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jan 23 14:39:53 PST 2006
Ok - so I got a little carried away with that last rant. No disrespect intended. The product of some frustrating discussions, that I really don't want to get into any more. It was unnecessary and rude. After all, pointless wankery holds a very exalted place on this blog! :) |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jan 11 14:38:48 PST 2006
Lately, I've been struggling with an inexplicable phenomenon. People all around me seem to be discovering "Spirituality". You know, the notion of something greater than our selves, the interconnectedness of all things, yada, yada, yada. Now these are otherwise normal, intelligent people. Not necessarily people with the same level of scientific rigor in their thinking as I have become accustomed to. But rational people, nevertheless. And frankly, this scares me a little. I've always found the whole quest for god/searching for a greater meaning in life question a little dull at best, and irrelevant at worst. Or was it irrelevant at best, and dull at worst. Either way, it always struck me as pointless wankery, because no matter how much something FEELS like it must be the truth, you just don't actually KNOW. In fact, you cannot know. Instead of worrying about whether or not there is a god, it would be much more productive to actually do something that is beneficial to society, thus increasing the sum total of good in the world, thereby creating a better world for yourself. Standard prisoners dilemma type stuff - mutual cooperation is better for the overall good of the system than dissension. I am all about bettering oneself as a human being, but this whole need for an external reason or purpose (aka the god metaphor) is what bothers me. Just be nice to each other, people. That is all that your garden variety prophet types were getting at. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jan 6 14:52:57 PST 2006
And lest I forget, So, yeah. There is is - Good Cheer Y'all! |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jan 06 14:32:00 PST 2006
This is an update on the "Best of" list from a couple of weeks ago. Here are my fave twenty records from 2005 as submitted to the fine folks at KALX Berkeley: Top 20 Records (2005)
I just picked up the new Wolf Parade, and I'm also really getting into the 13 and goD album. And while I really liked the Voxtrot seven inch "Start of Something", I only just got a chance to listen to the whole EP. Which is a shame, because I really dug them all. It is too late now. The die has been cast. My rule for the year is to stay away from technicalities. And what is a man, if he doesn't have his principles? (Shut up. That was meant to be a lame rhetorical question. A meta-question, whose only purpose is to underscore the lameness of the question in question). |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Dec 22 14:37:03 PST 2005
Don't worry - we'll have a final edition of our music list at the end of the month. For now, I'm enjoying the process. It has been a somewhat challenging time for me personally. Massive upheaval at work. Stupid apartment related crap that won't go away (Hello, $200 gas bills). Watching my friends wither and crumble under failed relationship stress. The sad part, in all of this, is that I'm letting it affect my relationship with Lil, which is, ostensibly, the one thing that has been working for me. So I'm taking stock here. By putting this out there, I'm attempting a reconciliation with the real issues, so that I don't create more problems for myself. And I'm going to look for a counsellor, so that I can actually have a trained professional help me cope with my stress. I've also been reading a couple of somewhat depressing books, which I would give up, were it not for the fact that one of them is genius and the other one is crack in paper form. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is an absolutely stunning graphic novel, chronicling a dysfunctional middle aged man, finding his place in the world. It will someday be recognized as a literary masterpiece for the ages. The illustrations are both simultaneously dense and minimal. One gets the sense that each panel comes with layers and layers of metaphor and meaning. I've honestly been content to stare at a single frame for close to an hour. Not to mention, the truly excellent writing. Like the illustrations, sentences are crafted carefully and meticulously. This is a labor of love, imagination and detail. Full of pain and pathos, it shines through as the "the first formal masterpiece of the medium" (New Yorker - 10.17.2005). And then there is Platform by Michel Houellebecq. Dirty, sexy, vulgar ... pornographic even, while flirting with moments of wit and depth. And thoroughly dark and chilling at the same time. I want to hate it and yet I cannot stop reading it. The protagonist is almost completely nihilistic, and could be vaguely interesting, but isn't, mostly because his main interests seem to revolve around Thai prostitutes. The first half of novel plays out like a creepy forty year male's sex fantasy. And yet, I am compelled to read on, because there is an intelligence behind the writing that I cannot ignore. And I've been promised that it takes a really crazy and dramatic turn towards the end, that has the potential of addressing meaning of life (or lack thereof) level questions. Kinda like Ghost Dog, and how he turned out to be gay in the end. Ghost Dog? Gay? WTF????!!! Poor Veej. Hey, this was fun. Maybe I'll continue a doing a book review column, a la Nick Hornby's Polyphonic Spree. Except it will be about books that I haven't finished reading yet, so that you don't have to worry about spoilers. And I don't have to worry about actually finishing the book. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Dec 20 21:23:37 PST 2005
Woo-hoo! Top 11 time again. The MMV edition. [ Hmm - Roman numerals used to be a lot more arcane in the last century. MCMXCIX is so much cooler than MMV. ] Still Simmering (These could still make the final cut) * Broken Social Scene - S/T * Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary * Monolake - Polygon Cities * LCD Soundsystem - S/T * Broadcast - Tender Buttons * Language of Flowers - Songs about you * Dangerdoom - The Mouse and the Mask Initial Cut 11. Various / Bloc Party - Silent Alarm Remixed (Soo much better than the original) 10. Aliplays - Todotesorosisland 9. Sleater Kinney - The Woods 8. Why? - Elephant Eyelash 7. Six Organs of Admittance - School of Flower 6. Tullycraft - Disenchanted Hearts Unite 5. Animal Collective - Feels 4. The Mountain Goats - Sunset Tree 3. Electralane - Bells 2. Thee More Shallows - More Deep Cuts 1. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - S/T And a special shoutout to the best compilation record ever released: Rough Trade Shops - Indiepop 1 This was by far the best thing that came out this year, even though it was essentially a compilation of indiepop from the 80s. Everything old is new again. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Dec 12 21:43:25 PST 2005
Previous entry written under extreme duress. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Dec 12 21:40:40 PST 2005
AMOUR-BOT I HATE LINUX111111111111111111111, AND IT'S DERIVIATIVES. GRRRRRRR. GRRLS ARE BETTer than unix!!!!!!!!!!!!!2112 I profess my undying love for Lil. sTOP BEINGHX SHREY IS AN AMOR-BOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!UCREEPY |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Dec 08 10:27:31 PST 2005
|
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Nov 30 14:31:59 PST 2005
Hey hipster boy! Shave off that stupid fucking 'stache, fer Chrissakes! And, in what (I think) is an unrelated question, can anyone tell me what the term "Dirty Sanchez" means? [ 2 minutes and 487,000 google entries later ] Uh oh! I just found out what it means. I wish I hadn't asked. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Nov 18 17:28:45 PST 2005
Friday afternoon. The sounds of cliq-hop. Deep in the bowels of an SSL_CTX OpenSSL Error. Version too many. BUILDING FLAVOR vendorcc32dbg. Caffeine coarsing through my veins. Complete sentences are for the weak. This is what it's like to be one with the machine. A buggy, broken, cranky machine. It's friday afternoon. I wanna go home ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Nov 11 10:59:14 PST 2005
"Because let's face it, only one thing is more incorrigible than my snobbery, people, and that's your indefensibly crappy taste in music". |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Nov 10 15:37:13 PDT 2005
The star tattoo is totally the hipster equivalent of the sorority girl butterfly tat. Can you think of anything more cliche? Oh wait - the hipster star on the elbow versus the butterfly on the small of the lower back (aka the women's spot). Nice observation, ND. And now for the hard part. I think I might have to finally move away from using slackers.net as my primary email/blog space. While I love the magnificent bastards (thanks Merlin) that run Slackers, unexpected system outages have escalated to the point where I can no longer count on any sort of reliability in the system whatsoever. Given that I don't have any guarantee of being able to consistently access this journal, or my email at a given time, and given that this ability is rather critical (see: hyperbole) to my life, I am being forced to consider other alternatives. On the flipside, this gives me the opportunity to get my own server space. Which means installing fun new software toys. Or porting the blog to a sexier format (Movable Type, here I come!). I'm dreaming about Ruby on Rails and RSS powered internet radio (I refuse to use the term podcast). Ambiguosly Olive, Call and Response and all the other blog/wiki ideas I've ever had. Welcome to Web 2.0. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Nov 01 14:02:42 PDT 2005
Man - I really don't like the White Stripes. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Oct 27 13:05:27 PDT 2005
So we're going to try a little accountabity (sic) here. Ok - fine ... accountabiLIty. These are the top sites not named google.com that I seem to be visiting these days:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Oct 27 12:49:09 PDT 2005
I wanted to not like them. They have a name that is both ridiculously confrontational and trite, at the same time. Too much hype. Too much press. Too New York. So, of course, their music HAD to be brilliant. Sigh. Ok, ok - fine. They are actually pretty amazing. "Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah" - your it band of the year. This year's Arcade Fire. Tons of people have written far better reviews than I ever could, so I'll direct you to pitchfork, if you want to read more. Or just listen. I'm wallowing in weirdo indie-rock goodness. Let the cool goddess rust away. Mmmm. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Oct 18 14:37:02 PDT 2005
daily affirmation (by way of mcube) look in the mirror and repeat after me: i AM ghetto enough... i AM pimp enough... i AM hip-hop enough... and goddammit, mufuckahs like me. The downward spiral continues ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Oct 12 18:46:06 PDT 2005
uh go to work y'all uh ride the bus y'all uh eat yo food y'all yes yes y'all |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Oct 09 17:06:31 PDT 2005
Wow. I have very little too say right now. How about a really terrible joke: What did Bob Pollard say to the blind dude? I see that you, too, are guided by voices. [ budhump bump ] |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Oct 05 19:05:50 PDT 2005
I think a shoutout to questionable content is long overdue. This may be a symptom of my overidentification syndrome, but a part of me likes to pretend that Lil and I are like Faye and Marten, in an alternate universe where the boy eventually gets the girl. I mean, she may just be a cartoon character, but Faye is fucking hot! And smart. And has hella cred. I'm falling in love, all over again! :%s/Faye/Lil/g |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Sep 30 12:42:59 PDT 2005
Rediscovering the joy of emacs. And while vi certainly has its place as a an incredibly efficient quick and dirty editor, I cannot fathom using anything but emacs to work on more elaborate coding projects (short of a full blown IDE, which is overrated, imho). On the other hand, I'm still using plain ol' html for this site, so I suppose it doesn't really matter. Anyway, my ongoing quest for streamlining all the metaphorical stuff in my life (and emacs seems to be playing an ever increasing role in this), has led me to this paper. The idea of "self experimentation" is really intriguing. Rather than suggesting a million divergent self-help theories, this paper advocates running experiments on yourself. Change your sleep patterns, and monitor the effects on your behavior. Ditto for diet and weight. Given that each person operates in a slightly different manner, a generalized theory of whatever, simply doesn't apply to everyone in the same way. Instead, by carefully observing the effects of a specific change in your patterns, you can then figure out what works and what doesn't work for you. Lifehack customization baby! The trick is that this mode of thinking does not assume that a certain pattern will result in a desired positive outcome. Instead, it shifts the onus onto the observer to draw meaningful conclusions based on one's observations. Damn - now I'm starting to sound like the 43folders guy. Let me parachute into your small- to medium-sized companies to help you get your digital houses in order. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Sep 29 11:36:12 PDT 2005
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Sep 28 18:11:23 PDT 2005
Yikes. It's been long enough that I'm feeling very hesitant to write. I've had lots of half formed blog ideas that haven't really gone anywhere:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Sep 15 14:01:45 PDT 2005
The most frustrating way to start a morning? Burnt espresso. I swear to god, no one around here knows how to make a latte without burning it. You've been up since 5 am. You need your fix. This is downright cruel. Grumble, grumble, grumble ... Memo to hipsters. PBR is piss. Stop drinking horrible beer. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the hipster mafia deemed that Pabst Blue Ribbon was the de facto beer of choice for the scene. They were fucking with you. Pabst is only marginally better than Bud or Miller, which still puts it below swill or horse urine, in the grand scheme of things. Do yourselves a favor - get a nice strong gin and tonic. Much more painless; much faster buzz. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Sep 12 16:49:49 PDT 2005
I could have sworn I'd posted something between now and then. Oh well. In other news, I watched an incredibly bad film last night. I'm not sure if I can even use the word "film" in this context. All I can say, is that "What the @!#!$ do we know?" manages to offend every scientific bone in my body. We will sidestep the issue of whether or not bones have consciousness, and can be offended for now. Or not. Because that is the premise of this movie - quantum mechanics tells us that bones have consciousness. Seriously, this movie is ludicrious and absurd. Elizabeth's initial review was "Hooey. Hippie claptrap", which quickly turned into "Was this shit funded by scientology, or something?!!". It boggles my mind that this movie got so much positive press. The kind of pseudo science that it posits, is right up there with intelligent design, and all that rubbish. When will people get it? The purpose of science is to answer the question of "how". The purpose of religion and/or philosophy is to answer the "why". In other words, science can tell us how we are here, but not why we are here. That is beyond the scope and the intent of science. The problem is that there are way too many people trying to provide answers to the wrong questions with the wrong tools. Using science to answer "why" instead of "how". This is why all these weird theories seem to gain so much traction. It is seductive to be able to claim a scientific basis behind one's why question. The real "why" was already asked by Kool Keith: Why are you looking hard with a hood on and Timberland boots staring at me for one hour - when you could walk up and shake my hand? Why? Why are you making those mean faces in your videos with the fish lens effects? Why? Why do you walk in the clubs with 30 people around you and stand in the corner, with big bodyguards for no reason. Why? Why do you pull up, in valet parking, with your Benz, that is rented? Fronting on a cellya phone that doesn't work - Why? |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Aug 07 12:32:58 PDT 2005
It begins. We had the pre-wedding birthday bash for Lil yesterday. Thanks again to everyone that showed up and made it happen. Luka's is a really swell venue, and has the sweetest D.J. booth. And they serve fine Belgian beer. I'm turning into a Chimay nut. I'm flying to Seattle next Friday. Elizabeth is already on her way to Bellingham. In many ways, the stress of last week is starting to abate. Things are in motion. We've signed all the paperwork, so, legally speaking, we've already done the deed. Motion is awesome. [ Update: 09.01.2005: The rest of this entry was lost, because someone stole the machine that this site is being hosted on, while I was typing up the blog. Though I managed to save a local copy, the hard drive on my desktop machine has since died. My only conclusion is that since I'm all married now, anything that I had to say before the wedding is more or less irrelevant at this point. ] |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Aug 02 12:34:56 PDT 2005
If things can go wrong, they will:
Oh yeah - I'm getting married in a couple of weeks. The great thing about all the pre-wedding stress, is that once the wedding happens, it just completely vanishes. Poof. Gone. Just like that. I cannot wait! And I've changed my mind about Chuck Klosterman. The guy is a blithering idiot, despite the occasional moment of genius. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jul 22 23:30:21 PDT 2005
When in doubt, make a list (or my top five obsessions this year).
|
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jul 15 14:26:38 PDT 2005
Ooh, ooh, ooh - I haven't ranted about pop culture in a while ... IPod earplugs. Umm, why are people using these? They sound like ass (yes - ass) and they hurt the ears. Presumably, most of the IPod toting crowd has owned some kind of portable music contraption, prior to the advent of the mp3 player. And these listening devices, ostensibly used some type of headphone like mechanism, to deliver sound to the listener. Headphones that were perhaps ergonomically sound (adjective), and possessed a modicum of sound (noun) quality. And yet, these same kids would rather be seen wearing IPods (or white earplugs that look like they are plugged into an IPod), than enhance their listening experiece. The IPod as a fashion accessory. Ugh! And what's the deal with the new Weezer album? No grapes, no nuts. Literally. To put it bluntly - it is horrible. As a fellow KALXer said, "This makes me want to kill myself". Apparently Rivers Cuomo is on some sort of celibacy kick, and hasn't had sex in two years. And then he comes out with this dreck. Is there no kind starfucker out there that will offer herself up to him? On the flip side, Pinkerton, which was arguably about how he was having way too much sex, was by far the most brilliant moment in Weezer's career. Can no one else see the logic here? Rivers + Sex = Sweet Lovely Music. Rivers - Sex = Fecal Matter. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jul 06 12:12:09 PDT 2005
dunno - it was vaguely awkward, for some unknown reason. neither of us had that much to say, and something about our interaction still makes me uncomfortable. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Jul 05 11:42:18 PDT 2005
Notes from the long weekend: I learned a new bad word. Choad. The exact meaning of choad is unclear. Penis? Perinium? A penis that is wider than it is long? Nevermind the fact that the etymology of the word comes from Hindi (and the family of languages prevelant in Northern and Western India), where it means "Fuck". Especially funny, since I've been using the original choad all my life - bhenchoad, madarchoad, chodu etc. - and now I find out that a bastardized form of this has actually made it into the English language. Need to finish running my backup scripts. Will be back shortly ... I ate wild boar this weekend. Now, I've been a vegetarian for about five years, but this was an exception that had to be made. Anyone that grew up reading Asterix *knows* exactly what I'm talking about. Aaron says that you can't call yourself a vegetarian if you eat wild boar. Point taken. But I really had no choice. I know, I know ... these Indians are crazy (index finger going tap tap tap on my temple). And for anyone scratching their head in befuddlement, go read Asterix. Currently reading: The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell. Bless her soul. [This is meant to be an expression, given that I do not believe in things like divine blessing or the concept of a soul] I've been on this getting organized kick, thanks to 43 folders and David Allen's Getting Things Done. While I've picked up some neat-o tips, the critical thing is having a system in place that lets you get your shit together. I am not necessarily sold on the idea that there is only one correct approach to getting organized, and being more productive as a human being. I just need a system, or framework, under which I can operate, and 43F/GTD provides me with such a framework. Realistically, any sufficiently well developed system would do - I just like the geek centric approach taken by the people at 43 folders. And thanks again to my baby, for putting up with my crazedness this weekend, and for being a fine, fine girlfriend. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 30 10:02:50 PDT 2005
Arrr! Shiver me Timberlands™. Just finished reading Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists. Arrr! It be very arrrrwesome. Not that this has anything to do with the book, but why hasn't someone attempted to fuse hiphop with piratical terms? It would rule. Also, as the kind fellas at goats have so eloquently stated, "Monday is a highly ironic U.S. Holiday in rememberance of all the ideals we have given up in the name of security". |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jun 24 13:58:37 PDT 2005
The Spurs have won the 2005 NBA Championship. There is something neat about sitting in an olde English pub, sipping on your Bass, and watching a game 7 with a bunch of complete strangers. You nod at your fellow closet sports fan. Yes, I too, watch sports on occasion, in this bastion of the antisport. I too, am surrounded by people that constantly harrangue me about caring about something so ridiculous. Indie kids can be into sports too. There is a lesson in that somewhere. More lessons - The NBA finals have brought my love-hate relationship with Texas to the forefront. There are some pretty obvious reasons to hate on the TX, which is why I don't live there anymore. But I did enjoy my time at Rice, and I do have a soft spot for NBA teams from Texas - the Spurs and TD, crazy Mark Cuban and the Mavs, and, of course, my beloved Rockets. It was weird being the only person silently rooting for the Spurs in the bar. Note, that all rooting is done silently in situations like these, since none of us is truly "out" as a sports fan. What else? - America loves an underdog, but really needs its winners. It loves to see a Cinderella team do much better than expected, but in the end, it also needs the pecking order to be maintained. This is the American way: Cinderella team, that has no business being in the playoffs, goes way farther than anyone anticipated. However, Cinderella team then loses in the semis to the established juggernaut, which goes on to win the championship. Feel good stories all around. America needs dynasties, so that it can feel good about its place in the world. The Spurs seem to inspire that kind of feeling. Ironically enough, their three best players have foreign origins (Duncan - Virgin Islands, Ginobili - Argentina, Tony Parker - France), while Detroit epitomizes the American working class hero. Speaking of which, I felt a little pang of sorrow to see Detroit lose. This team is black and proud. This team is tru skool. When you talk about Dee-troit bas-ket-ball, you are talking about the grittiness of the hood, coming at you in full effect. The streets. I'll miss Chauncey and Ben and Tay and Rip and Dice ... and Sheed. Ra-Sheed fuckin' Wallace. If I were the kind of person that wore a hat, I would tip my hat to you guys. Solid! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 16 17:01:47 PDT 2005
Worst.Joke.Ever. There were two boys named Shutup and Manners hanging out by the lake. Manners goes for a swim. An old lady comes up to Shutup, and asks, "What is your name, young man?". Shutup replies, "Shutup". "Don't you have any manners?", says the old lady. Says Shutup, "Manners is in the water". |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 16 15:54:09 PDT 2005
Not to jump on the musicblog bandwagon (motherfuck the wagon, just join the band), especially, since I've been tooting the proverbial horn for a couple of years now, but I need to share. Thee More Shallows. 2am. Wow. Get it now. Haunting, melodic, dense, moody. urgent, pretty. Click here for a link to the mp3. And in a curious, everything is connected twist, the lead singer's wife's dog Winnie is playpals with our dog Oskar, via our downstairs neighbors. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jun 13 22:41:37 PDT 2005
<pontification state=drunk> I'm beginning to understand the ebb and flow of human relationships. That people fall in and out with each other, and that it is only natural for friendships to have a finite lifetime. Or, rather, that close relationships may or may not always continue at the same level of closeness. And that is OK. We move on with our lives. Years later, we may even come to some sort of reconciliation. But it is the acceptance of this dynamic, and somewhat transient facet of our lives that seems important to me right now. I don't have to try and resolve everything. Everyone may not always get along. I don't always have to be mediator-peacemaker. I can only control the threads that I hold. And if the occasional thread snaps, so be it. Human interaction is a very complex web, and rather than trying to redesign the pattern, it is sometimes easier to just flow along the path of least resistance. To let things unfold as they may. In the end, we'll all be all right. Even if we aren't friends anymore. </pontification> No, I'm not talking about you. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jun 13 14:42:02 PDT 2005
I still believe that, hip hop will rock and shock the nation. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jun 13 14:28:14 PDT 2005
I've been noticing an interesting trend (ok, maybe not quite a trend - more like a statistical sample of two) - flame wars over people being mean. The indiepop list just went through a holy war, about whether or not someone should have been snarky about the title of a compilation ("sweater weather or not, these are the songs that I got"). And now, the webcomics world is all up in arms over whether or not it was ok for the Penny Arcade guys to diss on some guy who went all metafizzistatical about art and comics in some documentary. I realize that we are all under a lot of stress, and that we could all use a little less negativity, but c'mon yaar. I know the new Star Wars movie sucks, and that Republicans are still evil, but let us all breathe, ok? Okay. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jun 06 17:31:45 PDT 2005
Discourse on the Letter "y" as a Transformative Suffix Ok - yes. That last list was boring, ranty and tired. Instead, we will focus on the suffix "y" today. As in y, when used as a modifier to transform any other part of speech into an adjective. For example: ranty. Or sceney scenesters. Or computery. Disco Shawn from KALX, and Elizabeth are examples of some of the more competent users of such suffixy words. I'm feeling non sequitury. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jun 01 16:07:03 PDT 2005
The 'music that has gotten really tired' list:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Mon May 25 14:13:48 PDT 2005
This is great - a keyboard with blank keys. Because, apparently, looking at your keyboard only slows you down. The uber geek already knows where all the keys are. Wait - lemme guess - the next step would involve doing away with monitors too. In all seriousness, even if this keyboard could make you a more effective typist, I'm a little baffled at the eighty dollar price tag. I mean, does it really cost that much to NOT print anything on the keys? |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon May 16 12:27:50 PDT 2005
It feels really nice to have a Home. I came back from a three day backpacking trip with some major chafage on my inner thighs, thanks to all the sweaty hiking. I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice to have some talcum powder like substance to soothe my itching". Lo and behold, there in the bathroom cabinet was a bottle of Whole Foods, non-toxic, organic talc like powder (since they don't make talcum powder anymore). And all I kept thinking was "Wow! We live in a home. We have random STUFF! Stuff that you only use every once in a while". It is this accumulation of occasionally used stuff that completes the transition from place of residence to Home. And (ok, this is really a complete unrelated thought, so the "And" is superfluous). Is it just me, or is it weird that there are people that brush their teeth at work? It is just me, isn't it? |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Apr 28 17:46:46 PDT 2005
Someone wrote this on the craigslist missed connections about moi: not a MC! i love it!!!! - 24 (berkeley) Reply to: anon-70644228@craigslist.org Date: 2005-04-28, 9:55AM PDT Only in berkeley (KALX) could i call a DJ on the radio (and they answer the phone), and request a song, and it plays on my way to work!!!!!!! i LOVE IT!!! (i only have a radio in my car) i requested LCD SOUNDSYSTEM/TRIBULATIONS!! i totally needed to hear it on my way to work---that's why i have KALX on speedial!!!!....hell yae!!!!! that freakin rocks! connections man, connections.........They were talking about ME! Can you believe it? I'm a fucking rockstar!!! |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Apr 21 15:40:39 PDT 2005
The new pope has referred to himself as a "humble worker in Lord's vineyard". Umm - doesn't the act of calling oneself humble, point to a certain degree of hubris, thereby negating any claim to humility that one may have? Fucking Papacy. It's all a load o' shite anyway. We die, and then we cease to exist. That's it. End of story. There is no deeper meaning to it all. I wish we'd stop making up fairy tales in our heads to make ourselves feel better. Fucking humans. And what is the deal with all these indie reunion tours anyway? In the past couple of years, every single band that has ever been considered "influential" has decided to get back together, since there is suddenly a market for this sort of thing. It started with the Pixies and Mission of Burma. Then it was Slint. New Order. Gang of Four. And now, supposedly, Dinousaur Jr.??!!! This is going too far (picture Bastion from The Neverending Story slamming his book shut). I should boycott these shows on principal (of course ... I won't. I'll end up giving in and going anyway, since I'm a borderline addict). Fucking indie kids. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Apr 18 16:54:46 PDT 2005
Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who: "I'm not gay, but my dick is ..." Only at Zeitgeist! |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Apr 15 16:46:26 PDT 2005
Time for some linky love ... Recursive Kitties! (Hint: Try clicking on next cat. Ad infinitum ... ) Google Maps. I discovered this far too late, but their interface is ohmigodiwannacuminmypants slick. This is exactly how to do it right. And why google will eventually take over the world. I'm just waiting for them to write an operating system. (And for that extra ooh, check out their satellite view). This is like comparing a modern computer to an old Commodore 64 (Yes that used to be 64 kilobytes, kiddoes). A PS2 to an old Atari console. OS X to the MS DOS. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Apr 15 10:04:26 PDT 2005
From the last NBA fan standing department (you can safely ignore this entry, if you don't give a bleep about basketball): The 5,6,7 seeds (Sacto, Houston, Denver) in the west are separated by a single game. And EVERYONE wants that number 6 seed baaad, since it means playing the free falling Sonics. The 5 and the 7 seeds are basically fucked, since they either have to play San Antonio ('nuf said, assuming Tim Duncan is healthy - okay ... so that disclaimer negates the 'nuf said), or Dallas, which has just won 9 of its last 10 games. Watch for some interesting "botched" games as the season winds down. At this point, the 6 spot is more like the 3. And I would give anything to see Steve Nash win the MVP - a bonafide indie boy (complete with the moppy haircut and obscure musical taste), anti-war activist, intellectual, Canadian, and, may I add, a damn fine point guard, who only happens to have lead an otherwise slightly above average Phoenix team to the best record in the league. Why, I think I may have a bit of a boy crush on him. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Apr 12 21:23:17 PST 2005
Wow - I just spent 4 hours fucking with ITunes, downloading schitt, erasing unwanted crap, renaming ID3 tags, sampling this, that and the other, making theoretical mix CDs ... Just so you know, my latest twin musical obsessions are math rock and twee. I'm desperately aspiring to be both twee as fuck, and overanalytically mathy. Unrelated: I'm debating the philosophical and ethical issues that arise from crossing a picket line, when you are sympathetic to the cause of the striking employees, but fall under a different job classification, and therefore are not directly affected by the picket or the union. The joys of being an unabashed bleeding heart liberal. Elizabeth likes it when I talk about her in here. She said something pretty funny the other day, but I cannot remember what it was. E - what was it that I was supposed to write in here, anyway? |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Apr 05 20:49:49 PST 2005
All right. I'm back in the game again. Acquisition of lotso brilliant records in the past few weeks. This is stuff that I'm seriously in love with.
|
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 30 12:28:16 PST 2005
I feel like everything is changing around me. One of my favorite co-workers just announced that she is retiring. I feel a pit in my stomach. I will miss her dearly; she was one of the few people at work with whom I felt any kind of meaningful connection. Relationships are ending. People have been moving away. Everything seems to be in a gigantic state of flux. Megaflux, even. I'm starting to feel antsy and restless. Like things are coming to a head. What kind of head? - I have no fucking clue. I am starting to feel like I need to do something though. Move. Act. Do something, or get caught in the eternal rut of stasis. [ Where stasis is analogous to the tired electroclash/dancepunk movement of 2003, and the hipster scene that it generated. The rehashes keep getting increasingly boring. It is time for something fresh. Something deeper. Something darker. Something brighter. ] |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 30 11:43:15 PST 2005
How do you define homoplatonic? 
|
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Mar 15 15:50:50 PST 2005
Things I have learned in the last couple of days:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 09 14:09:56 PST 2005
I was reading this New Yorker article about Jonathan Lethem's adolescence, and was struck by how painfully hip he was, as a teenage boy. I mean, he listened to Eno and The Talking Heads, with Pink Floyd ringing in as the lone guilty pleasure. He read Calvino and DeLillo. He watched French New Wave Cinema including films by Goddard and Truffaut. Compare and contrast this with my blatant unhipness growing up. Pink Floyd was the greatest band in the world. Period. I had GnR and Def Leppard and, *gasp*, Bon Jovi to round out my musical tastes (I'm just going to ignore my Vanilla Ice phase). Books - I read trashy paperbacks (Sidney Sheldon, Fredrick Forsythe et al.) and Sci Fi (I still stand by the scifi though). And I think I remember listing Die Hard, Big and Star Wars as my alltime favorite movies. On my Rice roommate matching form, I listed Pamela Anderson, Bill Gates and Albert Einstein (is Einstein enough of a saving grace?) as the three people I'd most like to be stuck on a desert island with. Now, granted, part of this can be explained away through lack of exposure, from having grown up in a foreign country. But even within that context, I failed to avail of the amazing diaspora that was Indian art and music and lit. I didn't listen to much Zakir. I didn't read Rushdie or Vikram Seth. Let's face it: I was a philistine. Or to put it more optimistically - a late bloomer. I didn't really discover Art until my mid twenties. And I still find myself being floored by things I was supposed to have discovered 15 years ago. So as I poke around past entries, I fully realize that they often smack of naiveté. But in a way that naiveté is all I really have. Honestly, I'm glad I cultivated my tastes only recently. While I occasionally feel like a dilettante (or is it debutante?), I find myself being much more receptive to a lot of things that I, frankly, was not ready for earlier. And even now, I find myself becoming older and jaded, missing the initial earnestness as I become increasingly discerning (or perhaps cynical?). We'll see how it all plays out ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 02 13:28:53 PST 2005
Top 5 Worst Fashion Statements:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Feb 28 18:28:42 EST 2005
I just called my credit card company and I got the following message: "Due to inclement weather, we are experiencing unusually long hold times. Please stay on the line, and the next available specialist will assist you as soon as possible". What??!!! I mean, how is inclement weather related to credit card customer service, in any way? And since when did they start calling them specialists? Whatever happened to representative? |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 23 09:58:08 PST 2005
In a sense, everything here is a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson, right from the front page, down to ... umm ... other stuff here. HST will be missed. But I have a feeling, he isn't going to miss contemporary America all that much. I'm inclined to say, "Fuck it, dude. Let's go bowling". |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Feb 18 16:53:45 PST 2005
I miss the ODB. I really do. Don declared yesterday ODB day. And Raka sent me this link about the real Russell Jones. All, I have to say is this: Ol' Dirty - you wuz da craziest muthafucka of dem all. Because, deep down, you knew that Wu-Tang is for the children. I feel honored to have lived in the age of the ODB. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Feb 14 13:46:57 PST 2005
Dude ... I have a new idol: just cause you're hung like a moose doesn't mean you gotta do porn. (Kumar, from Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle) |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Feb 04 14:19:16 PST 2005
So, my girlfriend and I are having this debate, and perhaps you can help. The topic up for discussion is the definition of the term "cyborg". One of us thinks that a cyborg is a human brain with a mechanically enhanced, or robotic body. The other thinks that a cyborg is an electronic brain with a human body. Now, I cannot, for the life of me, remember which side of the argument I was on, in the first place, so I have no idea which one of us was right (even if I knew the answer to the question). Either way let me know what you think ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Feb 03 16:01:54 PST 2005
I've been asked what marriage means to me. Certainly not an easy question, given my strong aversion to religion and the fact that marriage is, fundamentally, a religious idea (in an ideal, non-religious world we'd simply have civil unions). Add to that my discomfort over the fact that marriage is a discriminatory and unequal institution (at least in the US of A), that has been a lightning rod for conservative groups to hate on gay people. So how do I reconcile the notion of wanting to get married with all of the above? My reasons are hard to articulate beyond the "it feels right, and I want to do this" sentiment. I suppose, it is simply my way of declaring to the world that I have found the "one". Or, at least, a singularity in the spacetime continuum. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jan 28 12:32:49 PST 2005
I don't think I have given explicit props to the Arcade Fire for their wonderful album "Funeral", yet. So I'm doing it now. Mad props to the Arcade Fire. I'd forgotten about the notion of letting an album simmer, and allowing it to grow on you. And my, how it has grown! I've gotten too used to sugarhigh style instant gratification. Now, here is something that sounds even better after 138 listens. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jan 26 14:51:16 PST 2005
G is for:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jan 24 14:44:11 PST 2005
The only thing worse than a travel blog is a regular blog that turns into a travel blog, becuase the blogger in question is on vacation somewhere. It mostly just turns into unbearable tedium, since said blogger generally writes about the existential despair that accompanies being a twenty/thirty-something bourgeois intellectual with blue collar aspirations, which doesn't necessarily translate into good travel writing. Good travel writing is hard, and takes a lot more skill than whining about the color of your office furniture, or putting together a list of the top ten post-proto-punk bands of the year. This is why I have condensed my entire India trip into one word. Anyway, I'm back home now. Hi. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jan 24 08:58:32 PST 2005
vadai |
|
The Daily Dump: Sat Jan 01 17:11:12 PST 2005
These go to 11 Best Records of 2004:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Dec 30 13:05:05 PST 2004
I was erasing old numbers from my cell phone and I came across yours. I could not bring myself to delete it. Sigh. You are the lone holdover from my past. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Dec 23 11:47:06 PST 2004
Snorting lines (or, you can always quote other people to make up for lack of inspiration): "music that sounds like it was made by happy robots." "a sailor is sexy; a pirate is sexier" Google Suggest "What is legal? ... What is illlegal? ... What is barely legal? ..." |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Dec 13 21:07:33 PST 2004
Confession: Some of the timestamps on this blog are made up. Oh, they are accurate for the most part; It is just that I occasionally have to fudge the seconds value when I do not have a handy UNIX date command readily available. This sometimes produces amusing results. Like this. What is perhaps even more pathetic/brilliant is that Elizabeth and I sat down, wrote a little perl script to awk out all these values, and created a frequency table to analyze patterns of numbers that I |
|
Further analysis will reveal that these numbers are not, in fact, random. If you look closely, you will notice a preponderance of numbers with adjacent digits. In other words, numbers that can be described by the formula {10*n + (n ± 1)}. Funny how the human mind works. Cryptanalysis rules!
Or to put it another way: "1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature." - Max Cohen, Pi |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Dec 05 20:59:38 PST 2004
He-Man peed on your fuckin' rug, dude |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Dec 05 11:38:49 PST 2004
E is in B'ham. I'm all alone for the weekend. I took the dog out, watched 'Ray', finished my book, saw two shows at the Mile High. Will be whoring my soul by purchasing Banana Republic clothes today. And I will purchase a CO detector. Now for the ratings so far (throwback to the time I wrote these terrible reviews): 1. Book - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon. Fucking brilliant. Touching, clever and funny. If only everyone thought like our little autistic protagonist, the world would be a kindler, gentler place. 2. Film - Ray. Decent film. Somehow biopics always seem like mainstream sellout-for-the-masses versions of documentaries. That having been said, Ray transcends the genre by delving into character rather than trying to tell a story, which seems to work well enough. And you should probably just hand Jamie Foxx the Uncle O' already. 3. Show - The Fucking Champs, The Mass, Von Iva. First Von Iva. Two words. Ugh! Yuck! Yet another lame electroclashy rehash with hot girls strutting their stuff. This is so over. The Mass on the other hand were everything that Von Iva were not. They played some kind of Indie-Death Metal-Jazz hybrid, that was pretty goddamn sweet. The FC were good, but honestly the Mass totally stole their thunder. The long instrumental metal solos seemed a little tame in comparison. 4. Show - Film School, Citizens Here and Abroad. Much more of a straight up indie pop show. I absolutely love Citizens (and their other band Dealership). They are the most adorable band EVER. The guy behind the drums has this fantastic smile, that is simply infectious. Film School tried to do a more serious "we're a San Francisco shoegazer band" thing, but it just felt pretentious (even though their music wasn't bad). 5. New Music - 6 Organs of Admittance - Compathia. Ohmigod. 6 Organs (Ben Chasney and others) are sooo good. Think acoustic folk guitar, with darker tribal chant rhythms and a really spooky vibe. I've haven't heard anything quite like it. And I really quite like it. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Dec 02 15:46:10 PST 2004
From the 'I hope you didn't just make that up. That is beyond dumb, beyond the "so-dumb-it's-funny"' department: - How does one tell the difference between a meat thermometer, an oral thermometer, and an anal thermometer? - The taste. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Nov 29 16:32:03 PST 2004
I've been thinking lately that our entire society is, for the most part, constructed upon a series of Granfalloons. For the uninitiated: A granfalloon, in the religion of Bokononism invented by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat's Cradle, is defined as a "false karass". That is, it is a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless in terms of fulfilling God's design. The most common granfalloons are associations and societies based on a shared but ultimately fabricated premise. As examples, Vonnegut cites: "the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows -- and any nation, anytime, anywhere." [Wikipedia definition] Listen - I believe that the purpose of life is to find one's true karass. I'm tired of meaningless interactions predicated on connections that are more coincidental than spiritual (I'm not a huge fan of the word spritual, because of the associated 'spiritual' can of worms that it opens up, but it is the best word that comes to mind. For now, let us take spiritual to mean something describing the nature of a human spirit; i.e. a person's fundamental ontological properties). History's fundamental flaw is that it lumps people into these granfalloons, without attempting to address the nature of the karass. We've been conditioned to think in terms of the granfalloon. To seek connections based on the madeup commonalities. I am saying all this because I have recently encountered both karass and granfalloon members, and am attempting to make some sort of internal reconciliation. If this all seems unbearably cryptic, it is probably means that you have not read enough Vonnegut. And so on ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Nov 16 10:09:57 PST 2004
newyork.craigslist.org > missed connections > Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight - m4m last modified:Thu Nov 04 16:46:00 2004 email this posting to a friend Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight - m4m Reply to: anon-47785163@craigslist.org Date: Wed Nov 03 19:11:50 2004 I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streek, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you. it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests Copyright © 2004 craigslist |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Nov 12 16:39:41 PST 2004
I'm probably the last remaining NBA fan out there, but is anyone else as excited as I am to see scoring waaay (yes, three 'a's) up, this year? As in, teams are regularly surpassing the 100 point barrier. As in, if we are being forced to relive the 80s politically, why not throw in a little showtime era b'ball to make it slightly more bearable? Yeah! Also, not to get too comp-dorky on y'all, but breadth-first-search is cool. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Nov 09 17:17:03 PST 2004
So, to escape the post electoral blues (has it been a week already? Damn!), we decided to commune with the llamas and the goats. Honestly, this picture says it all: 
I love my baby. And that is the single most important thing in the world! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Nov 4 09:53:46 PST 2004
I must not fear. - Litany Against Fear, from Frank Herbert's Dune. Yesterday was a pause. A deep breath. Now it is time to weigh the options. It is what it is; the cards have been dealt. Here is what we need to do: Be grateful for what we do have, while we have it. Bond with the ones we love. Reach out to our fellow human beings. Humanity transcends man-made abstractions like "America" or "The Republican Party". Retreat Inwards. Fight the little battles to make our own personal world a better place, because it all begins at the grassroots. I'm not feeling very hopeful about overarching change, so, perhaps, it is important to fortify our own little spaces (physical, mental, ideological), so that we may continue to have the freedom to believe what we believe in. Say to yourselves, that you will not change anything about the way you carry on. Keep on keepin on, mah brothas and sistas. We have each other. We'll make it through this. Also, Canada is a very beautiful country. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Nov 02 14:16:46 PST 2004
The suspense is killing me ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Nov 01 15:13:23 PST 2004
This is it. One way, or another, it will all be over tomorrow. Ok, so maybe it won't be over tomorrow, and the election will be fought in the courts for the next several weeks. One can still hope. And make sure you hope for a decisive Kerry win, because anything else will only feed to the post electoral chaos. In the meantime, I'm readying my ballot for my first ever election. The California Props and Measures are hella confusing, but I think I've pieced it all together, thanks to my trusty rule of thumb - when in doubt vote with the Guardian. California's system of letting voters make decisions on fairly complicated fiscal matters is pretty much retarded. Isn't that WHY we elect government officials? Isn't that the whole point of a democratic republic? We elect people that we trust, to make decisions about matters that us, common folk, may not be best suited to make. But if I must, well, then I must. This information has been distilled from material provided by various sources including the California Democratic Party, the California Greens, the trusty SF Bay Guardian, the League of Women Voters, the official election guide, and my own sense of right and wrong (what was that word again ... oh yeah ... morals. Not to be confused with morals, as espoused by GWB and the christian right).
My Ballot:
NATIONAL
President
John Kerry (Duh)
Senate
Barbara Boxer
House of Representatives
Dist. 9 Barbara Lee (Hell Yeah! And fuck the Greens for not endorsing her)
CALIFORNIA
State senate
Dist. 9 Don Perata
State assembly
Dist. 16 Wilma Chan
Ballot measures
Prop. 1A NO (the dreaded "A" suffix)
Prop. 59 YES (Open source for the masses!)
Prop. 60 YES (Save the third party from 62)
Prop. 60A NO (Never trust a prop that has an ancilliary A)
Prop. 61 NO
Prop. 62 NO (This one is interesting but screws over third parties)
Prop. 63 YES
Prop. 64 NO (Now why would anyone make big business even LESS accountable than
it already is?)
Prop. 65 NO
Prop. 66 YES (I'm all for a more limited strike zone)
Prop. 67 NO
Prop. 68 NO
Prop. 69 NO (Scary Big Brother Shit)
Prop. 70 NO
Prop. 71 NO (Hard one. I'm all for Stem Cell research, but this is overfunding
SCR at the expense of a lot of other critical needs)
Prop. 72 YES (If the state won't pay for health care, the corporations bloody well better!)
ALAMEDA COUNTY
Ballot measures
Measure BB YES
Measure CC YES
BART Board
Dist. 3 Roy Nakadegawa
AC Transit Board
At large Chris Peoples
Dist. 2 Christine Zook
Peralta Community College District board
Cy Gulassa (Area 6)
Oakland ballot measures
Measure Y YES
Measure Z YES
BART District
Measure AA YES
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Oct 28 13:01:05 PDT 2004
On the flipside, I feel significantly more anxious and discombobulated today. It has also been a while since I have written an entry in the more classical self-obsessive/depressive blog mould. It's good to be back. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Oct 28 12:47:59 PDT 2004
Wow! What a yesterday!! I did my fundraiser show on KALX and raised nine hundred and twenty dollars. Waaaay more than I had dreamed of. Then I went in to work and got a nice little raise. And on the night of a spectacular lunar eclipse, the Red Sox finally slayed their demons and won the series. I was sitting by the window in a cute little South American restaurant, sipping my cabernet, eating my tapas, watching the moon slowly emerge from the shadow of the earth, contemplating this day with my amazing girlfriend. This has been a really good day. Nothing went seriously wrong, and a number of things actually went quite well. Let's drink to a lifetime of days like this. As Andre 3000 would say "Amen ... I mean ... Alady!". |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Oct 21 17:34:38 PDT 2004
On this great day, we are all Red Sox. Or as we like to say in Oakland, Fuck the Yankees. Which brings me to another important issue. Myself. I've been avoiding all the addictive agents in my life. I've voluntarily cut myself off from politics, porn, weed (which, in all fairness, I'd already done, several months ago) and coffee. And the results have been outstanding, I tell ya. I seem to be free from the anxiety that has been gnawing at my insides for the last couple of months. I feel less depressed and more alert. To the point where I, Shreyas Premankur Cholia, have actually embraked upon an exercise program. Fuckin A'. [The exercise video, for interested parties, is called Warrior Wellness, and will ensure that I can lay down some serious whoopass on any given boss creature in any given video game. For the way of the warrior lies in the strength of his/her joints. As they tell us in Warrior Wellness: Joint Strength, Joint Strength, Joint Strength.] |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Oct 21 16:20:18 PDT 2004
Fucking Ikea |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Oct 13 14:08:52 PDT 2004
I'm surprised I haven't mentioned this already, given that I've been tossing the idea around for a while now. Here is the concept: A cellphone that doubles as an electric shaver. Think about it. Instead of yapping away on your cellphone while driving to work, you could be SHAVING. Most of the electronics already exist in your phone's vibrate mechanism. And really, it is about as arbitrary as sticking a camera into your phone. Genius, I say. Patent-worthy even!! |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Oct 08 13:20:36 PDT 2004
Inspired by a fellow blogger, I have decided that this weekend is going to be music reorg and purge weekend. Which means that I will go through all of my CDs and records and mp3s and destroy anything that I don't like. Yes I said it: DESTROY!!! Get pissed Destroy! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Oct 07 14:25:59 PDT 2004
One of the more encouraging byproducts of the current political climate, is that it seems to have led to a phenomenal spurt of artistic creativity. And as always, I am feeling an intense need to share this with the world. So, I give you my list of ten things that gave me hope in the past year. Though not all of the following works are political in nature, they are all very fresh and exciting. And they have managed to capture that elusive little bugger - hope.
|
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Oct 04 11:05:24 PDT 2004
That's not funny: Excerpts from McSweeney's latest Bush joke collection. "But make it a double, for I am in some serious pain." "I'm sorry, my mind is on other things," says Jesse. "Can't think straight. The election, it's been gnawing at me." "... The whole country seems a little down in the dumps. Maybe we should all joke more." I guess I'm not the only one suffering from acute pre-electoral depression. But Jeesus, what the fuck is going on? |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Oct 01 08:52:31 PDT 2004
This is, perhaps, one of the loveliest ideas that I've read in a long time: People Reluctant to Kill for an Abstraction. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Sep 30 23:28:57 PDT 2004
Wow. Kerry destroyed Bush in the debates. Damn! (I loved the part where Kerry was like ... blah blah blah ... I wrote a book about it ... blah blah blah. That's right bitch, I wrote a fucking book. Can you spell nuclear for me again Georgie?!!!) |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Sep 28 18:01:42 PDT 2004
As the election draws nigh, the depressive reality of four more years has cast a pall of gloom around me. I am no longer convinced that anyone's vote matters anymore. One way, or another the motherfuckers will rig the system and steal the election. I'm trying to focus on other things, but I can't pretend that the elephant (metaphorically and literally) in the room, is a figment of my imagination. Dark days are ahead. I feel like the common folk in the Lord of the Rings, as they prepare for the inevitable scourge that will destroy their way of life. Sauron seems unstoppable. Our last hope lies in the hands of two little hobbits, as they embark on their perilous quest and attempt to unmake the ring of power in the fires of Mount Doom. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Sep 17 11:17:19 PDT 2004
And now for something truly depraved. The formerly anorexic Olsen twin(s) are now hawking McObesity. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Sep 16 13:08:26 PDT 2004
Hold up, Hold Up! What is with this anti-emoboy backlash that seems to be spreading across the nation? First, Bust magazine, and then this. All we ever wanted to do was to make out with cute indie girls. Girls who consciously shunned the testosterone laden stereotype, for boys like us. I can't help it if these so called progressive women, can't get past their own media driven insecurities. All of a sudden you have the "indie sorority girl", who was only fronting as a hipster because cosmo said it was cool, and nice boys like us get tagged with stupid labels like wimpster. Turns out she wanted the fratboy asshole all along. Well, fuck that. We don't need the poseur progressive grrls (who spell grrrl with 2 r's instead of 3). (Though we wouldn't object to sleeping with them). I'm reclaiming the Emo Boy tag in the name of all that is good in the world (messenger bags, Saucony™ shoes [more on that later], independent record labels, buttons, foreign cinema, Believer magazine, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). Screw all you haters. We don't need you anyway. We'll find our shy, sensitive, sexually ambiguous, slightly awkward gRRRls on our own, thank you very much. And take off those stupid fake glasses. Phew! As for the Saucony™'s, have you noticed how prevelant they have become among indie-hipster types. Not that I'm implying anything here, but I have been ogling them for over three years now, way before all these nouveau hipsters bought into the hype. Now, circumstances have prevented me from ever actually owning a pair, but I always wanted to, dammit. That makes me the OG hipster. And yes, I specifically googled the ™ symbol, just for this entry. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Sep 15 14:24:06 PDT 2004
There was this kid, that I went to school with, that wrote this song. It went something like this, "I like depressed more than happy / cos happy only makes me sad / so depression please kill my happiness". It was quite dreadful. Anyway, for some reason, the words and the melody to this song, have made their way into the infinte repeat section of my brain. Can somebody please make it stop? On another tangentially related track, I'm slowly sinking into a pall of depression, thanks to the current political climate. Things seem somewhat hopeless. I feel an acute sense of powerlessness against forces far greater than me. Uninspired. Restless. Numb. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Sep 02 21:13:31 PDT 2004
So there is this particular sub-genre of Asian girl. You know, the kind that wears white running shoes and light blue jeans and typically has a dorky whiteboy boyfriend. You know the stereotype. Well, umm ... yeah. I guess I have nothing terribly insightful to say about this stereotype ... I was just cataloguing the existence of this type of person. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Aug 25 16:31:34 PDT 2004
The blog reconstruction project continues. Soon, me droogies, you will have a brand slick new movable type powered cheetah, in place of this clunky-yet-lovable behemoth. Ugh. I hate my metphors. I wrote that just so that I could hate the metaphor. I just realized that this is exactly what I sound like on the radio. Make rambling incoherent statement, along with obscure pop culture reference. Then insert self referential comment. Apologize for previous statements. Self deprecate as needed. Add congratulatory note for being suitably self deprecating. And so on ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Aug 23 15:51:06 PDT 2004
Ok! This is your chance. I'm doing a KALX show tomorrow morning (0600-0900 PDT), and I'm taking requests. Write to me and I'll be delighted to play your bidding. And don't forget to tune in at http://kalx.berkeley.edu. Cheers! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Aug 18 16:41:16 PDT 2004
What? Built to Spill are back together again?? And nobody told me??!! Well, they're playing at Slim's tonight, but I guess I'll be missing them since I'm going to the Stork Club to watch my wonderful and lovely and talented and very dear friend Lauren, play with her band Fire Wrecks the Forest (which, Lauren agrees, is a terrible name, but we've been unable to persuade the rest of the band to change it). Y'all should come out too ... it'll be neat-o. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Aug 16 15:01:01 PDT 2004
Back from my long, arduous west coast tour. I return, bloody, but alive. And in an attempt to preserve a degree of normalcy in these trying times, I present yet another (albeit brief) music list. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Aug 05 12:09:27 PDT 2004
So I'm finally getting to the point where a single gigantic html file for a blog is becoming a tad unweildy. Which means I might actually be open to redesign suggestions, since I'm going to have to write a some html munching perl code anyway. The initial debate: several bite sized chunks leading back to the beginning vs. a smallish front page with about 10 entries + the rest of the blog on a second page. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Aug 04 11:14:04 PDT 2004
This is it. It has arrived. We are in the beginning stages of a living, breathing dystopia. If you stop to think about it, our society today has successfully realized a number of dystopic visions, that have been postulated in film and print, over the past hundred years. Consider ...
What bothers me is how subtly and insidiously it crept up upon us. The euphoria of the nineties, blinded us into wild optimism. Then 9-11 came and blindsided us into a creepy apocalyptic pessimism. All of which left us completely vulnerable to the aforementioned forms of control. The dystopia has arrived. Welcome to the machine. So I might have gotten a little carried away there, and that rant could use a touch of editing, but throw me a bone people. A frickin' bone. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jul 30 11:40:23 PDT 2004
So which of these is more of an overshare? Telling someone you have a> a hairy ass b> a 3rd testicle or c> a small penis Hypothetically speaking, of course ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jul 23 10:39:31 PDT 2004
This is what happens when lomography meets beer meets self-indulgent personal makeover idea. 
And get this ... The military is now offering free breast augmentation as an incentive to enlist. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jul 21 15:41:07 PDT 2004
Does any one else think that the media's reluctance to reveal the name of Kobe Bryant's accuser is a tad ridiculous? Especially when the name is merely a google search away. Try it. Oh ... and Spiderman is now officially kickin' it in a desi stylee. Say hello to Pavitr Prabhakar. While this is slightly amusing, I'm also slightly irritated by it. This is merely the culmination of several years of cultural cross-pollination, that has diluted the quality of entertainment coming out of the Indian media. Original ideas seem to have been completely replaced by a whole-sale borrowing from the west. You see it everywhere in the Bollywood ... Music that sounds exactly like the latest American shit pop numbers ... Plot lines that are ridiculously derivative of the Hollywood blockbuster of the month. Not that there isn't some amazing stuff coming out of India (Jhumpa Lahiri, Dipa Mehta, the MidiVal Pundtiz). I'm just concerned that the mass media in India, is starting to emulate all the worst aspects of the American media, and that is a sad sad thing. Hmm ... after all that, I'm starting to reconsider my thoughts on Spiderman India. Compared to all the other drivel, this actually seems like a pretty clever appropriation of an American cultural icon. This might actually be somewhat interesting. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jul 16 16:19:13 PDT 2004
... And Kisses for the Lasses The fact that Anticon and why? and cLOUDDEAD exist, gives me reason to continue believing in music, just when everything was starting to sound really tired. cLOUDDEAD's 'Ten' has to be hands-down, the best album of the year. I've honestly never heard something so weird and wonderful. Pretty, quirky, dark, dense ... these are all adjectives that come to mind. And it gets better with each listen. If this isn't the best thing that has happened to music, then the terrorists have won already. Well, since cLOUDDEAD is now defunct, maybe they have won. Robin suggests calling Elizabeth "The One" in response to my last post. I'm thinking of taking it a step further and calling her the "Kwisatz Haderach" Why won't neo-emo bands just give it up already? All that was good about emo, happened pre-1999. Watching all the talentless hacks trying to open for Braid last night, only made Braid look that much better. Emo is dead. You were either around in the 90s and you were really good (Braid, Fugazi, Joan of Arc) or you are a poser that showed up after the party was over, and simply want to cash in on the latest MTV bandwagon (like me ... though I'm willing to admit it, which gives me a teenie bit of cred. And I'm officially a college radio-electronica boy, so I'm exempt from criticism. And I have ovaries, which grandfathers me in as a pre-emo emoboy). About the ovaries ... I must have them, because I periodically go through the emotional equivalent of a pms, complete with mood swings, cramps, depression, cravings etc. And I'm always talking about my feelings and processing everything. And I'm whiny as hell. Ovaries - the true mark of an emoboy. Ouch ... I'm listening to horrible hold music. I will take that as a sign and shut up. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jul 08 10:50:29 PDT 2004
I did it. I proposed to Elizabeth. I'm getting married next year. I feel luverly. I'm also looking for alternatives to the word fiance. It just sounds odd. So far we've come up with "beyonce" and "partner". If anyone has a halfway decent suggestion, please write to me. I'll be happy to blogit. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jun 28 17:56:23 PDT 2004
Carpenter ants in the dresser Flies in the screen It will be too late by the time we learn What these cryptic symbols mean |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jun 23 17:18:31 PDT 2004
It's still early, but I figured I might need a point of reference, come end of the year. So I'm making a "best movies of the first half of the year" list. Here we go:
Background Noise: Bass Drive on iTunes. bhup chik .... bhupchik bhup chik .... wa wa wawa wawa bhup chik .... bhupchik bhup chik .... Holland is in the Euro 2004 Quarter finals, despite the heartbreaking loss to the Czech Republic, thanks to a flurry of goals against Latvia, and a lackluster German team that failed to do anything against a depleted Czech side. I would absolutely love to see them do well, but supporting the Dutch national football team (and i mean "real" football ... the kind where you actually kick the ball with your foot) is a sure fire way to set yourself up for disappointment. It is a bit like supporting the Redsox. They always field a great team, but they always manage to break your heart every single time, by losing in the most dramatic fashion. All I can do is hope for the best, while waiting for the inevitable meltdown ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Jun 15 17:32:40 PDT 2004
RIP Ralph Wiley. Just last week, I was telling Don about how I though Ralph Wiley was an absolutely brilliant writer, and that he doesn't get enough respect, given the general disdain that the literary world holds for sports writers. Here was a man that rivalled Hunter S. Thompson in both flair and intelligence. And everything he said bore a sense of poignancy, even if he was simply shooting the shit. Hearing about his death, so suddenly and so young, has filled me with a genuine sadness. I haven't felt this way about anyone in a while. Which means I am not nearly as excited about things like my new Believer subscription, or my brand new Objective Humanism book (I love getting packages in the mail), or this absolutely HILARIOUS link: I'm a lucky for your love |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 10 17:36:33 PDT 2004
I don't buy it. I simply don't. All these so-called polls that show Nader polling at 6% - it's a load of rubbish. Back in 2000, when Nader was arguably at the height of his popularity ... back when people were genuinely dissatisfied with the lack of any discernable differences between Bush/Gore ... back before W pushed us drastically to the right ... even back then, Nader pulled in a measly 2% of the national electorate. I find it hard to buy into the notion that support for Nader has *increased* in the past four years. All you ever hear about is how former Nader voters are annoyed with him, pissed even, for having the audacity to run this year. My guess is that this phantom 6% comes from the real life equivalent of internet trolls. People who like to fuck with the system by being contrarian, for the sake of being contrarian. People who think that polls are essentially stupid, and think they are being funny by picking someone unexpected. Either that, or the polls are simply garbage. Or both. However, these polls might turn out to be interesting in a roundabout, systems-theory sort of way. Given that most Americans seem to believe everything that the media feeds them, including these aforementioned polls, it might affect turnout such that Bush voters become more complacent and end up staying at home. Or it might push Kerry to actually do something to rile up his disaffected, disenfranchised base. See ... it's like a giant feedback loop. Chaotic systems. The waxing and waning of caribou populations. Lunar cycles. The rise and fall of the tide. The global stock index. It's all connected. Dirk Gently, holistic detective, for Prez! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 03 10:56:18 PDT 2004
Found this on the sinfest site. Preserved here in all its mildly amusing glory: New reality shows slated for the fall season: The Candidate. George W. Bush and John Kerry spend a whole month together in a mansion filled with lobbyists. Who will get in bed with whom? Don't miss the sizzling behind the scenes deal-making. Each episode concludes with both candidates handing out long-stemmed roses to their favorite special interest groups. The Apprentice of The Dark Side. The evil Emperor must choose among several aspiring Sith Lords, all vying for the coveted job of "Darth Executive," in charge of overseeing construction of the Deathstar. Each round eliminates a contestant with the famous tagline "You're fired," and is then zapped with lightning and thrown off a ledge to his infernal doom. Aramaic Idol. The nation wide search for the next messiah. Come put your healing powers to the test and go head to head with other saviours and miracle workers for the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever amen. Produced by Mel Gibson. CNN Cribs. News Anchor Edition. Paula Zahn gives a sneak peek of her kickin' pad in the O.C., all West Coast flava y'all cuz the bitch is mad bangin' wit the bling bling, know what I'm saying? Holla! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed May 26 17:15:56 PDT 2004
So I was having this argument with a friend about how cliched and annoying most turn-on lists are (in the context of internet personals), and he made some point about honesty (even a cliche can be honest), and I rambled on about originality (or lack thereof), until I decided that the only way to settle it would be to make my own turn-on list. I guess the moral of the story is "Do as I say; don't do as I do".
|
|
The Daily Dump: Tue May 25 15:57:52 PDT 2004
Incorrect usage of "it's" really irritates me. Yes, I occasionally fall into the same trap myself, but I've always aspired to purge these pages of such errors when I come across them. For that matter, poor spelling and juvenile use of abbreviation (ur, l8er, 4ever) bother me just as much. I am the dyslexic's worst nightmare. I wonder why I have such intolerance towards dyslexia. I realize that it is a genuine disability, and yet, I have little to no sympathy for dyslexic writing. Perhaps, it is because of my deep-seated need for consistency. Inconsistency really unnerves me on a fundamental level. More stuff to ponder ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue May 25 11:54:49 PDT 2004
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle somehow adds a touch of glamour to the act of performing domestic chores. There is art in making a sandwich. Poetry in washing the dishes. I'm suddenly enthralled with the idea of cleaning the apartment. A clean and tidy place can work wonders for one's state of mind. Who knew?!! |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue May 18 17:51:24 PDT 2004
It's done. I'm officially an American citizen. It feels slightly weird but satisfying ... a sense of accomplishment tinged with worry, given the current direction of this country. I went to the ceremony by myself, and after it was over I went to a cafe and had a coffee, a bagel and some fruit to contemplete the meaning of it all. Somehow, it seemed fitting that I was alone. I have no idea why this was fitting. It just was. Interestingly enough, the immigration officer presiding over the ceremony adopted a fairly apologetic tone about the treatment of immigrants by the INS (as a result of the enforcement of certain laws enacted by Congress). He encouraged everyone to vote if they felt the need to do something about the situation. Very telling indeed! Or maybe "only in San Francisco" is a more approriate response. Anyway ... still taking it all in. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon May 17 17:10:51 PDT 2004
Yes, Coachella was truly magical. Music, friends, moments - all of it. And the Moment, as it were, took place as we were driving to the Coachella grounds, inching our way through concert traffic, smiling, nodding, winking at our fellow hipsters in surrounding vehicles. Cue up The Postal Service's "Recycled Air" on the stereo ... I watch (I watch) the patchwork farms' slow fade (slow fade) into the ocean's arms calm down (calm down), release your cares the stale taste (stale taste) of recycled air Lauren, David, Elizabeth and I all gently whisper the parenthetical "i watch / slow fade / calm down / stale taste" parts in unison, just underneath our collective breath. There is a quiet buzz in the car as we all look at each other and smile at ourselves. You did too right? It's showtime! |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon May 17 16:25:54 PDT 2004
I officially become an American citizen tomorrow. As I contemplate what it means to be an "American" in this day and age, I am struck by the dichotomy between Bush's America, and the America defined by the founding fathers and the constitution. This nation truly had a visionary group of people defining its original guiding principles, its ethos. These were men who truly believed in concepts like equality and civil liberties and individual rights and religious freedom. And this was more than 200 years ago. It seems that our present government is hell bent on creating an America founded on fear and intolerance. Funny how we were so much more "progressive" 200 years ago. When I pledge allegiance to America tomorrow, it will be to the America envisioned by the founding fathers - not the farce for a democracy that has been created by the motherfuckers in power right now. I'm actually quite excited about this prospect, mostly because I finally get the chance to vote. Which is a chance to finally do my part towards restoring some sanity to this mess. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed May 12 16:21:21 PDT 2004
It is interesting to see all the hubbub about whether or not Bush will drop Rumsfeld, particularly when we already know that it just isn't going to happen. See, most of us in the progressive wing figured out a while back that Bush never had any real power to begin with. It is Cheney and Rummy that call all the shots, and Rummy sure isn't going to fire himself. It is time to step back and use this opportunity to expose the administration for being beholden to no one but itself. It is time to finally show America that Bush is a moron, a mere puppet in the hands of some extremely dangerous idealogues. It is time for John F. Kerry to step up and provide us with a clear vision for the future, instead of simply finding fault with the ineptitude of our leaders. Let the neocon nightmare end. Please! (I finally emerge from my self imposed moratorium on reading the news, and all that I get in return is the ugliness of reality. Bombings, Torture, Beheadings. I desperately want to climb back into my cocoon). |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Apr 30 11:05:04 PDT 2004
I'm off to Coachella. I'm seeing the Pixies. The freaking Pixies!!! I'm tempted to throw in a 'nuf said, but the Coachella lineup is so amazing that it doesn't do justice to all these other fabulous bands. So I'm forced to namedrop some more, and give a special shoutout to Mogwai, Dizzee Rascal, Prefuse 73, Death Cab, Kraftwerk, Bright Eyes, Stereolab, Pretty Girls, !!!, the Evens, 2 many DJs, Kool Keith, Le Tigre, the Flaming Lips, Trail of Dead, the Stills, the Sounds and, of course, The Cure. Oh, what the hell ... I'll throw in Radiohead as well, even though I've seen them, like, 5 times in the last few years. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Apr 21 15:37:59 PDT 2004
Yes Mukul. Particle Detectors notwithstanding, I agree that "there's nothing finer than dragging a tiny diamond kicking and screaming through plastic furrows". Ah, the magic of vinyl. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Apr 19 14:17:43 PDT 2004
"Through The Wire" and "Takeover" almost approach the mash-up sensibility where there's this pride in seeing how little new material you can add to the source elements. In "Through The Wire" the creative act of musicianship (ignoring the lyrics for now) is loving the Chakha Khan song, making the through the fire/through the wire pun, speeding up the vocal and selecting the bits you want to loop. And that's IT--apart from the drums--that's the entire musical content of the track With the comparision to Puff and Bad Boy, I'm not implying KW (Kanye West) doesn't deserve his praise... it's just interesting the way it verges on that kind of conceptual art practise where the citation is the act of authorship, the extreme being that "painter" (help me out here somebody) who just appends his signature to reproductions of famous artworks. It also relates to that curious syndrome familar to anyone who's ever deejayed, or in a slightly paler form, ever made a mixtape, whereby just the selection of a track somehow accrues a tiny portion of the credit properly due solely to the person or persons who made the track. I say "tiny" but the whole cult of DJ in housetechnoclub etc is based around the near-wholesale migration of applause and worship from those who made the tracks to those who re-present the tracks... And, closer to home, criticism of course has something of that aspect... "reflected glory" isn't quite the right way of describing it because it's more intrinsic somehow, more of a deeper connection... the psychology of it entails somehow feeling like your appreciation of something is so deep and intense and righteous you almost might have been in on the making of the object of admiration yourself. A delusion of course! And in keeping with the spirit of the above piece, I have, in fact, borrowed it from here, and re-presented it to you, as an intrinsic part of my own blog, thus conferring some of the artistry contained there-in upon myself. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Apr 19 11:58:33 PDT 2004
Who knew that the search for the top quark was intextricably linked with the effort to restore all the fine music in the Library of Congress archives! Science and music working hand in hand ... it is everything I ever dreamed of!! It's like last night i had that strange dream / Where everything was exactly how it seemed / Where concerns about the world getting warmer / The people thought they were just being rewarded. Mmmm ... The Postal Service. Where was I again? Oh yeah ... Restoring old Leadbelly records using particle mapping techniques. This is why I love working at the lab. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Apr 09 17:18:01 PDT 2004
Dude ... I have a new flat screen monitor on my desk at work. It is sooo sexy. Mmmmmm. I just want to stay at work all the time and hang out with my sexy new LCD screen. It's like liquid. CRTs are so 1986. I want to bathe in the 1600x1200 magnificence of plasma. I have been touched by the light, and it feels so good that it almost feels dirty. Ok ... strike the almost. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Apr 07 17:52:54 PDT 2004
Back at it ... tonight ... http://kalx.berkeley.edu Thursday morning ... April 8th 3:30 AM (PST) ... I'm on until 6 ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Apr 05 16:22:17 PDT 2004
I came up with a little maxim - "There is no truth; there is only context". Ponder on that for a while. I will expound on this in a couple of days. After you've had time to think about it. My first show went ok, considering the fact that both the transmitter and the on-air computer were having technical problems. Talk about trial by fire. I'll put up my playlist when I get it back from the station. In all honesty, I was not dissatisfied with my debut. And if I stopped mentally replaying all the little flubs, I could even venture to say that I was quite pleased with the show. But that involves not dwelling on every single mistake, which is a virtual impossibility for someone as neurotic as myself. So there. In the meantime, here is my current "stuck in my head" playlist. I've tried to get these songs out of my head but ... oh well:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Apr 01 13:56:51 PST 2004
Less than 24 hours away ... April 2nd ... 3:30-6 AM Pacific Time ... My first official radio show. Only on KALX Berkeley ... 90.7 FM in the Bay Area, or on the internet at http://kalx.berkeley.edu I don't actually expect anyone to stay up for the show, but if you happen to be in a convenient part of the world, or are conveniently suffering from insomnia, feel free to tune in. And no ... this is not another April Fool's joke, to keep you up in the wee hours of the morning. This is Fo' Reel. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Mar 25 16:17:22 PST 2004
Vegas. Wow ... what a weird weird place. Gaudy, Tacky, Shlocky. Elizabeth describes it as the last bastion of sheer unbridled capitalism/commercialism. It is almost kinda interesting to see what happens when you combine oodles of money with oodles of tastelessness. As someone with little to no interest in gambling, I was mostly there for the spectacle. And while the spectacle was remarkably uninteresting if you were looking for something "interesting", there were plenty of shiny objects to keep you mesmerized. It felt like a weird drug trip. Which made me especially glad that I wasn't actually doing any drugs at the time. We walked along the Strip, wearing bright yellow jumpsuits and the words "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" stamped in erasable ink on our foreheads. The kind of thing that might have gotten a reaction in San Francisco. But in Vegas, it just left people bewildered and/or scared. Yes, it should have been obvious. Vegas is not random, quirky weird - it is just weird weird. Gambling is retarded. I simply do not get it. People talk about how calculating the odds makes gambling an intellectual exercise. But most games have the odds stacked against the player. Which means that in the long run, you end up breaking even at best. Hell, you can get a better return on your investment in a savings account. I fail to see how putting money down, and then waiting to see what happens to that money is exciting. Especially when all that happens in the interim is a slot being yanked, or a bunch of cards being dealt. I can almost get sports betting, since the event itself is inherently exciting. But pushing buttons or throwing dice? Yawn!!! Dealing with depressed friends, while on vacation, can be taxing to say the least. You love your friends, and want them to feel better; but at some point their depression casts a pall on your entire trip, and the negativity just drags you down. But such is the nature of friendship - through good times and bad times. I just wish I could do something to cheer him up. I wish I could just shake him out of it. Dammit ND ... you are so fuckin' money and you don't even know it. It might not be evident from this entry, but I had a reasonably good time ... I think. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 17 14:54:09 PST 2004
So much to do, and yet I am compelled to procrastinate. Presumably, there is some evolutionary basis for the slacking instinct. So if you ignore a problem for long enough, it really will just go away, yeah? I'm honestly too hot to feel any kind of inspiration, hence the blah blah blah. I'm feeling retarted. I'm filled with ennui. This entry is generic, boring, apathetic and inane. Even self-reference won't be enough to save it. Ok, bye. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Mar 12 17:10:18 PST 2004
Now stuck in my head for most of the day: Pharcyde - She keeps on passing me by [including the horns ... "PAWANOWAO ... She keeps on passing me byyyyyy"]. Oh ... and if you happen to be up at 6am PST tomorrow morning, I'm doing my first show on KALX (90.7 fm in the Bay Area, or listen online at kalx.berkeley.edu). It's my first show (or my zeroth show, since I'm still in training) on the air, but this is a year's worth of time and effort finally coming to fruition. And any suggestions for a good on-air DJ moniker are more than welcome. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Mar 05 15:08:31 PST 2004
Ack! I broke one of my resolutions. I caved in, and bought a new book, before having finished something from my existing stash. But with a title like "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It", how could I resist? Besides, I needed something to go with my goat-cheese/mushroom/apple/walnut sandwich and my Italian coffee. Needless to say, the book has almost nothing to do with Yoga. Brilliant, I say. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 03 17:28:10 PST 2004
I've solved the cube! You see, once you stop approaching the Rubik's cube as a problem in spatial geometry, and start looking at it as a series of transforms, solving it becomes much easier. Perform a sequence of moves, and note how it changes the state of the universe (insert dorky comment about how a 3 dimensional "universe" is so 18th century). String together the right set of such transformations and voila! In fact, all of Rubik's puzzles are really just manifestations of the same problem: how does a series of actions change the state of the system, and how can one apply a series of successive "macro" state changes to arrive at the desired state. Basic computer sciencey stuff - transforming a given problem into a standard universal problem. The foundation for the P vs. NP question. Gawd ... I'm such a fucking geek! |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Mar 01 15:13:41 PST 2004
I'm getting really tired of politics. I mean *really* tired! In some sense, this country is in a holding pattern until the next general election. People will try to trade barbs. Accusations will be flung in both directions. Candidates will pander and grovel. But barring some rather dramatic, unforeseen turn of events, nothing will happen between now and November. America has a clear choice ... Bush or Not-Bush. Kerry has very little that gets me super-excited, but he represents Not-Bush, so I will probably vote for him. And it is unlikely that anything will really make me change my mind between now and November. So I'm going to stop reading/listening to the news until then. No more tearing my hair out in frustration, because it's all bollocks anyway. In November we will act swiftly and decisively, and the nightmare will end. Just register to vote. That is all that matters. Kill your TV! Get off the Internet ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 18 12:03:42 PST 2004
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra - greatest movie of all time! |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Feb 17 15:04:34 PST 2004
Say it Loud: Happy Birthday Shreyas!! Ok ... so the Gay Marriage debate. I have yet to hear a single sound logical argument against gay marriage. In fact, I now have an even better idea (Ok ... so it isn't necessarily an *original* idea ... in fact, I'm stealing this entirely from Lil, but it is a fantastic idea, nevertheless). Let's ban marriage. Period. The only thing that the state should formally recognize is a civil union. Marriage is a relic from the church anyway, and violates the whole separation of church and state dictum. Besides, it doesn't come close to identifying the rather complex living arrangements that people in today's society have come to. So do away with marriage as a state recognized entity, and make civil unions universally applicable. Now that is almost too rational, which is why it would never pass muster among the politicians in Washington. As for passing a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and woman - well, it would effectively make Bush the first president to constitutionally codify bigotry. Brrrr! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 11 14:53:49 PST 2004
Please pardon the interruption. Was having server issues. AFS saves the day. I will reproduce the entry that I wrote on my backup blog at blogspot, complete with the original lower case text: backup blogging so i guess this is now my backup blog. i can't post to the regular coredumpin' site so i'm going to have to scratch my blogging itch here. listening to the new pornographers - "the end of medicine" sounds dangerously like the shins. ok, so, more importantly, for the first time in a while, i feel a sense of hope, for the political future of this country. there seems to be enough simmering discontentment among the general populace, and even a lot of republican types seem to be getting increasingly irritated with dubya's brainfucked economic policies. not to mention the iraq fiasco, and the barrage of doublespeak being spewed by the administration. i think the dems actually have a shot, despite the lack of a truly compelling candidate. for a while, i was convinced that we were under the connivances of a vast right wing conspiracy. now i'm back to thinking that the bush administration simply consists of a bunch of smarmy morons, who really don't have a clue as to what they are doing, while masking it under a veneer of bravado. i still think bush has the upper hand in the next general election, but the democratic contender (prolly john kerry) has a very legitimate shot if he actually decides to harp on some of the real "issues". seriously, if nothing much changes in the next few months, bush could get hammered pretty hard. well, at least i can hope. and, i think, howard dean, despite his rather ignominious fall from grace, was the best thing that could have happened to the democratic party. he was the only candidate with the balls to criticize iraq, and he has effectively shifted the national debate to the point where the president is finally being held accountable for his actions. so even if (or rather when) dean withdraws from the race, he has done his part to keep the other dems honest, and has single-handedly revitalized the "democratic" wing of the democratic party. word! |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Jan 13 11:16:21 PST 2004
So apparently, I'm not just earnest ... I'm earnest goes to camp. And this, according to my dear beloved girlfriend. Obviously, we're not winning the war against (earnestness/terrorism/drugs). |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jan 05 11:14:32 PST 2004
... and a Happy New Year to you too! I had a nice long break, during which I did absolutely nothing. Which was fantastic. My computer was broked, so I had a fairly extensive internet free period. Which was also fantastic. [Le Tigre lyrics running through my head - "Get off the internet. Destroy the right wing"] I guess I should provide you with some rants/raves, now that I'm back online. First - Bad Santa. I have a litany of complaints about this movie, but I'll just say this. A film with such serious pedigree (Terry Zwigoff, the Coen Bros.), is obligated to be better than this. In the end I could only cringe so many times. Speaking of movies, I ought to put up a 2003 top 10 list, but I honestly didn't watch that a lot movies last year. Here is the best that I could come up with:
And in case I haven't said this at some point - Douglas Adams ... most underrated writer of our time. He is a genius in a very true literary sense. Re-co-nize! |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jan 05 10:15:18 PST 2004
Well - I finally have access to a working computer again (translation: I'm at work). Honestly though, it was quite nice not being tethered to my laptop over da holidaze. But more on that later. For now, I give you my official (bonafide? definitive? Nah, stick with official) Top X albums of 2003, where X is a variable somewhere between 7 and 20. X varies based on my mood, the current temparature on Mars, the price of salmon in Venezuela and various other seemingly random, yet somehow fundamentally interconnected holistic factors. Can you tell somebody's been reading Douglas Adams? Anywaaay ...
|
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Dec 22 12:27:23 PST 2003
Now unveiling ... the first of several end of the year lists [ Drumroll ] "Better Late Than" - Top Ten albums heard last year, that were released before 2003
|
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Dec 17 16:02:20 PST 2003
Now I grant, that this might be a little untimely, but ... Whatever happened to "Trick"? Everyone that is somehow involved in trick-or-treating, labors under the assumption, that "Treat" is really the only valid option available to them. No one engages in trick anymore. I'm starting a movement to bring back the trick. Join Us! |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Dec 12 14:14:49 CST 2003
Trystero The unnamed anxiety gnaws at me. It's been four days now. I tap my foot incessantly. My mind keeps wandering, focus is difficult to achieve. I can't shake the feeling that I'm forgetting something, missing something. Dull headaches, mild dyspepsia, occasional insomnia. I have absolutely no idea what is causing this. It's like I'm skirting around some central fundamental issue. A shell without a core. Think Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49". |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Dec 05 09:54:09 PST 2003
Goddammit! Someone broke into my car. They stole all of 4 CDs. I'm just really irritated right now. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Nov 24 15:00:18 PST 2003
Let's not mince words here. I'm not exactly brilliant at keeping secrets. Why, some may say I have a penchant for (*gasp*) gossiping. Now, given my predilections, imagine my condition, when I discovered that I had been entrusted to not one, but two rather earth shattering pieces of information. Let's just say that weddings and hos feature prominently in the discussions. Beyond that, mum's the word. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Nov 21 15:13:16 PST 2003
Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Fuck Blogger. Fuck the truth. Fuck trying to please everybody. I took this shit offline because I started having run-ins with the truth. People getting pissed off, as it were. I decided, back then, to start fresh; to start a totally new blog. But then I went back and started reading my old stuff. And bad as it was, it made me laugh. The new stuff was shiny and pretty, but it was missing a certain je ne sais quoi. So I'm coming back to the old watering hole. Back to the old format. Good old semi-autobiographical, semi-apocryphal semiotic guerilla warfare (wtf??? ... somebody please shoot me already ...). Anyway - I bear no ill will towards anyone. If I said something about you here, that you didn't like, I was probably just making a poor attempt at creative writing. I'm certainly not above embellishment. So accept me for the flawed, fumbling writer that I am, and I promise to love you back. As for the not-so-innocent, I can't really help you. |
|
the daily dump: Mon Jul 21 14:48:21 PDT 2003
it's time to listen to some all girl summer fun band. sha-na na-na na-na. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jul 17 12:15:10 PDT 2003
i have a newfound fascination with lowercase type. there is something quite seductive about it, in a minimalist kind of way. that's about as far as i've gotten with that particular line of thought. yeah ... i like lowercase type. on a more sombre note ... how do people deal with the death of someone close to them? or rather, how do people deal with the death of someone close to someone they are close to? her grandmother died yesterday, and i felt rather helpless. there was nothing i could really say. all i really wanted to do was to hold her, but geographical separation made that a tad impossible. i've never been very good at dealing with death. i've either just shut myself off completely, or made pathetic attempts to "be there" for the bereaved. the results have consistently been spectacularly bad. honestly, i just don't know what to do. it is a sad occasion, and yet, i've never really been able to assimilate that pain and sorrow in the moment. i just feel really weird. sometimes i'll try to make myself cry, and sometimes i can eke out a tear or two, but more often than not i just feel like an idiot. i guess i'm supposed to feel something, but no one has ever told me what that is, or how to feel it. does this make me evil? i don't know. somehow, it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the stuff w. does. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jul 17 11:02:01 PDT 2003
I had it all figured out, and I didn't even know it. It was really just a project to alleviate chronic boredom. Well, it turns out that masturbating daily is actually good for you! It says so right here in this article. I love science! |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jul 11 10:26:24 PDT 2003
I have discovered the universal counterpoint to everything. It is ... (drumroll) .. Baby Got Back. Think about it. Take any bold, emphatic argument or deep, soulful lyric and simply refute it with "I like big butts, and I cannot lie ...". For example: Point - "I think the people of the world were grossly misled by the Bush administration in its claim that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction" Counterpoint - "I like big butts and I cannot lie ... " Or, take this Bright Eyes lyric: "You are just a piece of the puzzle so I think you had better find your place. And don't go blaming your knowledge on some fruit you ate." To which I would say - "I like big butts and I cannot lie ... " It works like a charm, every single time. Sir Mix-a-lot is a genius! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jul 10 14:47:44 PDT 2003
Lil has been my girlfriend now for all of two hours, and who do I run into? A certain S. S ... the girl that I briefly dated a couple of years ago. The girl that broke things off because I was presumably too dorky (though she never said so) back then. I've been thinking about the moment when we would randomly bump into each other for years now. The moment when I would get to strut and preen and gloat. Lookitme ... I turned out to be halfway cool after all. Of course, the actual encounter was nothing like that. We spent most of our time trying not to be nervous around each other. She did end it with "Here is my number. Call me", so I suppose it went ok. Oh .. and I'm also hanging out with A___a tonight. Helping her with her film. What is it that makes a guy so much more attractive, as soon as he gets a girlfriend? Like I said, two hours into the relationship and I'm already fending off exes. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jul 09 11:21:26 PDT 2003
Random Noise: I am now the proud owner of a black "=" sign, etched onto my lower neck/upper back region. Yeah bitch ... I got a tat ... I'm hardcore like dat. I have been referred to as a whiny emo boy. I have mixed feelings about most emo, but I think I'll take it as a compliment. Or whine about how emo sucks. Copious amounts of sex ... mmm ... good. 7 hours of sleep really messes you up. It's like you haven't had your solid 8 hours, so you feel just a little off. And yet, it's not like 5 or 6 hours where you know you haven't slept enough, and can just deal with it. Send me your noise. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Jul 01 14:28:40 PDT 2003
I'm writing this out of sheer defiance. I scoff at the face of my insecurity. I fart in its general direction. I don't care how much my writing sucks ... I will continue to spout my rubbish until kingdom come. I'm going to write my way out of this slump. That's right boyo ... deal with it. So I taught my first class at the radio station last night. It had all the awkwardness of a first date. (The whole point of it, is to get it out of the way.) Anyway, I survived, and my students seemed to have actually learned something, so it wasn't all bad. Why, they probably even thought I was cute in this nervous, clumsy, spacey way. You know, in the same way that most chicks think that neuroticism is totally sexy. That's right Shreyas ... you go on thinking that. Never underestimate the power of self-delusion! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jun 25 16:00:15 PDT 2003
I'm suffering from a crisis of confidence. I feel incompetant at everything. For example ... I fucked up the spelling of incompetent back there. Stress from too much stuff to do. Claustrophobia from having too many people in the house. Feelings of deja vu. Feelings of deja vu. It's like I don't fit into my own skin anymore. I'm not comfortable with who I used to be ... I'm not comfortable with who I am now. This is a huge setback - I mean, I was really beginning to "own" my personality, just a few months ago. I need to check out for a while. Now that I've been californicated though, I think I might be suffering from Hotel California syndrome. You can check out anytime you want ... but you can never leave. (a great line no matter what the indie snobs say). Talk me into coming back if you want. Or go visit my roomie Tara's blog. Maybe she can pick up the slack for a little while. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Jun 22 20:25:11 PDT 2003
The Summer Solstice has many revelations to offer. First of all ... I am a nerd. Not a geek - geeks are way too hardcore, and are often unable to relate to "the real world", as it were. Nerds, on the other hand, revel in their intellectualism, armed with the knowledge that it's all bullshit really, but that it's fun to wax intellectual anyway. My dearest friends are people that share this sensibility, and I absolutely love them for it. We can talk about music, veganism (especially since none of us is actually vegan), physics (yay quantum mechanics!), politics, elimidate (file under so bad it's good ... which makes it classic nerd fodder) sex, spelling bees (yes .. we have a bonafide former national spelling bee champ in our midst), drugs, relationships ... all this while connecting on a deeper spiritual level at the same time. This revelation brought to you by the bonfires on the beach, and co-sponsored by a ridiculously cold solstice night that necessitated huddling by the fire. Hanging out with some of my non-nerd, musician type friends further accentuated this revelation. They are very nice people ... but in the end ... ya know! Oh ... and randomly bumping into A___a, was rather awkward and uncomfortable, even though we were perfectly nice to each other. I'm still feeling a little discombobulated and strange. This is supposed to be normal, part of the whole process - but I wish this feeling would just stop. Or I wish I could turn this into a witty epiphany ... no such luck right now ... oh well! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jun 18 14:44:39 PDT 2003
I'm finally beginning to "get" Joy Division. They are the kind of band that often elicits the response: "Yeah, I respect them, but they aren't my thing." I've heard that line from way too many people, and, until recently, I was one of them. The key to understanding JD is to appreciate the cultural and historical context that created them (they created?). Too pretty to be punk, too raw and edgy to be new wave ... they are the critical link between the two. Listening to "Substance", one can just feel this tension manifesting itself in Ian Curtis' voice, in the raw energy of the guitars, in the moodiness of the synths. I know that this has all been said before, by a million other music critics, but I wanted to share my moment of discovery. And I'm now offering this moment to all interested parties. Listen to the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks. Then listen to New Order's Movement and/or Power, Corruption and Lies. THEN listen to the Joy Division compilation album, Substance. The truth will manifest itself. The usual feedback link. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jun 16 17:03:51 PDT 2003
Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief" is easily the best album I've heard all year. They've finally reached a point, where they are comfortable with the fact, that they are, indeed, the most relevant band of this particular musical era. ("this particular musical era" being defined as the last 10 years or so). As a result, with "Hail to the Thief", they finally achieve that elusive balance between live instrumention and electronics. It is the logical next step in their evolution, and is more seamless and fluid than anything they've done so far. Their music is brilliant and paranoid and schizophrenic and painfully beautiful as ever. But for the first time, one can almost ... almost hear a note of optimism in their music. This is, of course, very quickly concealed by their bleak and ever-cryptic lyrics. But one gets the sense that they actually had fun making this album. That Thom Yorke and co. actually had a laugh or two in the process. Ok ... maybe not a laugh ... but perhaps they cracked a smile along the way. Anyway ... that tiny, tiny shred of optimism turns out to be the key to a masterwork. Hail to the most important band of our time! I guess this naturally calls for a list of most relevant bands over the course of history. So here goes (Does not include non-rock (I hate that expression, but it's the first thing that comes to mind) genres ... I'm going to have to make a separate list for Hiphop, Electronica, Avant etc. .... So ANYWAY ... here goes) ...
You could disagree with me by sending me a note, but you'd be wrong. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 12 20:35:11 PDT 2003
OK ... I have about 11 minutes to write this before my computer goes good night. Asheville was way radder than I could have possibly imagined. A very liberal little town with a vibrant alterna/hippie/gay community, holed up in the backwoods of North Carolina. Which made going to an extremely boring HPSS user conference almost bearable. I'm in the window seat of a 757 ... the sky is a gorgeous shade of mellow orangy-azure. A sea of fluff underneath us ... occasionally parted by some meteorological Moses to reveal the brown cracked wasteland that is ... ummm ... it could honestly be one of about 6 states ... anyway ... I don't get people that pick aisle seats ... giving up beauty for the minor comforts of pragmatism. And an illusion of pragmatism at that. Five minutes of battery power left. I feel a bit lovesick ... plane journeys make me feel this ADDENDUM (written on June 13th at 3:07pm): I promised myself I would only write that entry until my power ran out, to preserve the sanctity of the mood, so I'm leaving you to fill in the rest. Use your imagination. Feel the ambience that I was trying to create. Wow ... will the pretentiousness ever stop? Hmm ... Maybe you could answer that not-so-rhetorical-anymore question. Let me know what you think. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 05 15:41:32 PDT 2003
I am adding a brand new feature to my little blogg. I will include a little link with each entry, and clicking on it will let you send me mail. That way, you can say stuff like ... "Wow ... I totally agree" or "You are a moron, and you should shove it up a very uncomfortable place". And the mail will automatically reference the entry that you are referring to, so I will instantly know exactly what you are babbling on about. Here ... Try it. Thanks to Robin for the idea! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jun 05 13:48:40 PDT 2003
I have a copy of Radiohead's unreleased new album, "Hail to the Thief". Therefore, I am inherently cooler than all of you. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sat May 31 05:48:11 PDT 2003
Groan!! I hate being up this early. Especially on a Saturday. Jetlag has whacked my sleep schedule. My dad deals with this sort of thing all the time, and it never seems to affect him. And he tends to deal with 12 hour increments, no less. Mad respect to ol' Premankur. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri May 30 09:35:56 PDT 2003
Home ... back in SF. With a newly discovered spirit of D.I.Y. creativity. Sprinkled with a dose of zen. And some killer records. My soundtrack for London:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu May 29 01:13:23 GMT 2003
Hiya! If you've been wondering why the S-man hasn't been posting much here lately it's because I've been chilling out in London baby (observe the GMT in the date). It's been a mad adventure full of art crimes vs. street crimes and culture jamming and hazy hash hangamas and monkey choosing and crunching beats till 3am and ridiculously long overdue reunions and d.i.y. pong and patanking and lovely accents and wha-eva ... The one thing that I find rather amusing is how so many Americans have adopted British accents here. A little bit like I'm doing right now ... if you listen very closely to your screen. It's quite lovely, in'it? Ok ... wha-eva. I'll see you back on the west coast tomorrow. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon May 19 18:16:54 PDT 2003
Man ... I went to see the Matrix Reloaded last night ... and I got CARDED!! How ridiculous is that? I got carded for the fucking Matrix. I'm twenty six years old ... two six. I'm about to have a major self image crisis. I liked the movie, though the prolonged action sequences got a little boring after a while. Maybe it's because we were so spoiled by the first movie. The plot was interesting, but it could have used some forward progress ... there were too many things left unanswered at the end of the movie. As my friend Matt put it ... it was basically a two hour teaser for the third movie. The idea of Agent Smith being a self replicating virus within the Matrix was pretty fresh. The anomaly hypothesis, that allowed for a regenerative matrix with imperfections integrated into the system was really neat, but it took a while for me to get past the jargon and to assimilate the idea itself. Now try getting past that last line of jargon without watching the movie. :p. What else ... OK ... so the whole rave scene in Zion was a bit Burning Man ... but I'm sure that was intentional. In some sense, Zion is a lot like Black Rock City ... the last bastion of the free people in a very tribal, anarchic sense It embodies the idea of rebellion against the chokehold of an insiduous blandness that generates a mind-numbing level of control over our lives. Wow ... I think that sentence actually holds up to my grammar checker. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri May 16 20:07:29 PDT 2003
Isn't it great when you can write a piece of code, that appeals to both your rational and aesthetic sensibilities? When the solution is elegant ... poetic even. When all the lines of code seem to flow towards their natural conclusion. No kludgy errors or exceptional cases. Pure floetry! |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu May 15 10:40:16 PDT 2003
My weekly Onion Horoscope: Aquarius: (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Sure, you're dizzy, hot, and dehydrated, but think how much worse it would be if that clothes dryer didn't have a little window to look out of. Ohmigod! They nailed it. That description fits me to a tee. Maybe it's time to reconsider the whole astrology thing. :) |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu May 15 10:40:16 PDT 2003
The morning after and things feel much more serene. I'm coming closer to achieving oneness with the way it is. Not quite the original Bruce Hornsby "The Way it is", but not quite the 2pac cover either. Somewhere in between. Can't wait to go to London next week. Be sure to catch my FinalScratch set live on ambientTV. This time around, the revolution is being webcast. Word! Ooooh .. almost forgot ... my baby sisser did her first e last night. She was so happy and blissful and in love with everything. I love you Ami. And Chols ... as your big brotha, it is my duty to tell you to be careful, and not do it very often and yadda, yadda, yadda ... but right now I just want to give you a big hug. :) Afterthought: It feels good not to write with as many "I"s. Aesthetically, and spiritually. Welcome to version ... umm ... what version are we upto at this point, anyway? |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed May 14 17:49:04 PDT 2003
A___a and I just broke up, even though we were never dating. Go Figure. It feels like a proper breakup though, so we must have been dating on some level. I'm stating the obvious here but breakups feel shitty. Maybe we'll get to have breakup sex when I see her again. Is breakup sex even a real construct or did I just make that up? Somehow, my Manchester kick seems oddly appropriate, as strains of Joy Division float through my head. [ Love, love will tear us apart again -- ] |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed May 14 11:59:23 PDT 2003
I'm into all things Manchester these days, thanks to "24 Hour Party People". The Sex Pistols ... Joy Division ... New Order ... The Happy Mondays ... The Hacienda ... Factory records ... Tony Wilson, played by Steve Coogan, is the host of this quirky, funny, obnoxious and charming ride through the early 80s Manchester punk/post-punk/new wave scene. Instead of writing a whole bunch of shtuff I'll just leave you with a couple of moments from the movie. Tony Wilson, on the birth of Rave Culture: "They're applauding the DJ, the medium, the beatification of the beat. This is the moment when even the white man starts dancing". [ The beatification of the beat ... that's brilliant. ] And midway through the film he quotes Fitzgerald on American lives not having second acts, then pushes the narrative forward: "This is Manchester; we do things differently here. This is the second act." [ with reference to New Order rising from the ashes of Joy Division after Ian Curtis' death ] |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu May 08 18:15:59 PDT 2003
Indie Rock Shrey Hits Indie Rock Bottom 
|
|
The Daily Dump: Mon May 05 17:08:06 PDT 2003
Spotted, scrawled on a random San Francisco wall: Bush is an agent of Sauron. And continuing the earlier discussion on un-boy/girlfriends, Robin wrote this great little response: how about "decline to state"... like on the voter registration form. "i have political opinions, but i prefer not to check a party box because i dont have the exact same opinions as anyone else, and i'd prefer for you to not be able to assume what i think."... which is pretty similar to "i have an emotional entanglement with her, but i'm choosing not to use any of those words that already mean a lot of things by themselves, things which may or may not apply to the current situation with this person." I'm glad I have friends that think. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun May 04 12:36:32 PDT 2003
Disjointed blog entry follows. I think I might have overdone it this weekend. It's a bad sign when the only cure for your hangover is more alcohol. This Sunday afternoon is going to be all about sitting on my ass and watching basketball. Even if Tracy "Muad'dib" McGrady just got beat by the Pistons (grrr!). Oh, and just to clarify ... A___a and I are officially "not" dating. As in, the term dating is stupid and has way too many annoying connotations. We are, in a sense, "undeclared" (thanks for the term, Andro). We are in that nebulous, undefined territory where we are more than just friends. But don't call it dating. Yesterday afternoon was nice. Raka, Nadeem, Sarina and I sat around knocking back some brewskis, discussing love and sex and relationships. It's still weird to think that Nadeem is 36. Anyway, I think I learned a lot about life from that discussion. Or more like, I learned about how little I really know, which is cool too. And I'm starting to sound like Socrates now, which means I'm under pressure to say something stupid and inane. Ok how about ... "You said you a wanksta, and you need to stop frontin". I love that word ... Wanksta. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Apr 30 16:59:51 PDT 2003
Mr. DK and I are chatting on the phone ... S: Man, you have to see my new shoes ... they are so cool. Blue Adidas sneakers with yellow stripes. I want to come over and show them to you. DK: Well Shrey Doggie ... I wanna show you my new shoes. I bought these new bowling shoes. S: Ok, we've got to get together and check out our new shoes. DK: Wow ... we are such women, Shreyas. S: I think I just have a new blog entry. That doesn't even sound very funny anymore. I guess you had to be there. Ok .. this one is a little better. Here is what A___a said to me this morning: it's like you inhabit this parallel universe where nothing is real except entertainment and our brains. you're just at the other side of a beautiful black hole. I kinda like that. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sat Apr 26 17:29:44 PST 2003
Dude ... Friendster is da bomb. It's like napster only with real people instead of music. It puts the peer back in peer-to-peer. The old ghost-to-ghost hook up from the Three Investigators. Sign Up, befriend me, and prepare to be assimilated into the matrix. This is the mainline. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Apr 24 17:29:55 PST 2003
I'm convinced. I have a permanent cold. I'm a magnet for cold germs (assuming that that the cold virus exhibits ferrous properties). Whine, whine, grumble, cough, cough, sniffle, grumble. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Apr 23 00:53:10 PDT 2003
I have this friend, who keeps drawing the wrong kind of attention from boys. Pattern: She meets random boy at party. Boy starts hanging out with her and develops an interest. She doesn't necessarily invite the attention deliberately, but she certainly doesn't discourage it. And then, of course, she ends up in these incredibly awkward situations with said boys. For a while, I was mostly just amused by the situation. But having witnessed such an episode transpire today, I'm starting to feel really bad for her. She is a tad flirtatious, and I use the term tad euphemistically, but one would hope that most people can distinguish flirting from genuine interest. And one would hope that the boyfriend card would dissuade any would be suitors from pressing the issue. But, I guess, the average male in the Bay Area is hopelessly single and will grasp at anything remotely resembling affection. It's a sad state of affairs really. Pathetic even. The fallout of a horribly skewed male:female ratio. I don't claim to have never mistaken simple friendly gestures for something more. But I have enough dignity to back off when I don't sense a reciprocal level of interest. Watching my friend fending off guys who just can't seem to take a hint makes me very sad. Men must be neanderthals or something. I don't know, I guess I'm not a real man since I don't quite get the whole pushy thing. Besides, as my old friend J No used to say ... if she is cute, she must have cute friends ... so it doesn't hurt to actually be friends with her. Wait [Duck] ... Noooo ... this doesn't apply to all my wonderful female friends, whom I love and respect very very much. Y'all know that, right? |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Apr 21 18:48:39 PDT 2003
I just found out that people are actually reading this thing. People that I don't necessarily know. People that could theoretically fund my as yet unwritten slipstream novel, or uncomposed minimalist symphony, or undirected abstract silent film. Ohmigod!! The pressure is on. I haven't been here in a few days. Lots to ramble about ... From an email to Lil: Have you seen "City of God"? It is hard, but fucking brilliant. It made me realize how much I hate all the crap that gets passed off as cinema these days. I'm starting to develop a moral problem with films like Anger Management and What a Girl Wants. My friend Raka pointed out that I couldn't technically use the word "moral" to justify my snobbery. As in morality has nothing to do with taste. Except, in my opinion, equating morality with snobbery is as arbitrary as equating morality with religion. So as long as people continue to justify morality on the basis of religion, I will continue to use it as a basis for critiquing crap movies. Thursday night: I'm bored and decide that it would be a good idea to get drunk/stoned by myself. In the shower. Getting trashed in the shower is actually really fun. I highly recommend trying it sometime. I can already feel my life taking on a distinctly Seinfeldian turn. Saturday night: I get a phone call from a certain PS (names have been withheld to protect the innocent, now that people are purportedly reading all of this). Now, I haven't seen or heard from PS in about 8 years. PS is visiting town from London. PS also happens to be the first girl I ever kissed, back when I was a wee 17 year old. Anyway ... I was all ready to get my mack on when I discovered that (a) PS is now PB, thanks to the bonds of holy matrimony and (b) even if this marriage were to be in a, say "difficult period", we are very different people now, and she is totally not my type. Even if she is still smokin' hot! I couldn't be attracted to someone that doesn't have sexy indie cred, could I? Someone that dresses in little black gucci dresses? That's so on the boring side of mainstream. Nah ... it would never work. Too west side story. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sat Apr 12 10:50:00 PDT 2003
"How to be Good" left me rather frazzled. It ends on an extremely depressing note, with no hope for any kind of catharsis. You wait and wait for the twist, as the protagonista becomes increasingly desperate and hopeless. And at the very end, she is simply forced to continue leading her sad and pathetic life. Yup ... life sucks ... and then it's going to continue sucking. I love Nick Hornby's style of writing, and his brilliant little quips and insights. But the lack of resolution in this book only makes me frustrated and depressed. So, I dove back into the frivolous comfort of pop culture, and put together a brand new music list to pick me up. It's a pretty useful technique, I must say! I'm back to thinking about how television commercials are incredibly irritating, and yet, many of them seem to have incredible soundtracks. The Levis buffalo stampede commercial with the Mogwai song. The VW commercial with Nick Drake's Pink Moon. And yes ... all those irresistably catchy Gap commercials (Just Can't Get Enough, Mellow Yellow ...). Simply detach yourself from the product, and focus on the music. Talk about unintentional(?) cross promotion. I wonder if this sort of product placement works on other people too? |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Apr 09 13:14:18 PDT 2003
Reading "Life after God" is making me think about death. I don't really think about death very often because it seems so remote. Which only goes to show you that I am still in my twenties, and not mentally capable of giving up the notion of invincibilty. In any case, I am still not thinking in terms of "what if I die?". This is more of a "how will I die?". I think it would be quite fitting if I died of something like SARS ... given my frequent battles with various strains of the cold virus. Because SARS is really just a big, nasty, overgrown cold. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Apr 04 16:49:34 PST 2003
I swear to god, I had something clever and semi-insightful to say, but I can't, for the life of me, remember what it was. Grrr! Don't forget to change your clocks this weekend, kiddos. It's Daylight Saving Time y'all. Speaking of which, did you know: The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time. Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Similar examples would be dog walking time or book reading time. Since saving is a verb describing a single type of activity, the form is singular. Nevertheless, many people feel the word savings (with an 's') flows more mellifluously off the tongue, and Daylight Savings Time is also in common usage, and can be found in dictionaries. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Apr 02 14:34:36 PST 2003
Amusing myself by repeatedly rewriting this line. This is attempt 11. I just feel a little off color today. It's cold outside. I didn't get much sleep last night (whiny cat + shared bed = lack of sleep). Things seem like a bit of a drag. Reading Coupland's "Life After God" (funny and clever, but depressing) is certainly not helping. I don't feel like any social interaction today. Here is what I'm going to do when I get home ... pop in Suzanne Vega's Solitude Standing, curl up underneath my sheets and alternate between dozing and reading. This is turning into a cliche |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Mar 31 23:59:59 PST 2003
Death Valley is a truly amazing place. A powerful, spectacular, transcendent place. I don't know if I have the right words to describe it. Or maybe, you can't really convey the feeling of the place in words. That, and I'm really tired because we just drove for 9 hours. I'll finish this blog entry tomorrow. And yes, I know that my previous entry is lame. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Mar 28 16:57:41 PST 2003
Top 5 Blog Improvement Projects:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Mar 28 12:23:22 PST 2003
I had an epiphany this morning (groan ... not again) ... No, no ... bear with me here. I've realized that I would rather date a music nerd than a musician. This is proving to be a very profound discovery, and really explains my relationship with the world, with art, with intellectualism. And my relationship with people. A___a, has this crazy artist's temperament, which I admire and respect. But it isn't me. So I need to understand and appreciate her for what she is, but ultimately, I'd rather be with someone that is in tune with my own special neuroses. I have much to learn, and maybe we'll be ok in the end, but after a very emotionally taxing night with her, I have some figuring out to do. Heading off into Death Valley tomorrow. I think it'll help dust off some of the cobwebs in my head. (I just recycled that expression from a mail with Adam ... and I just recycled the concept of recycling expressions from Robin ... will the meta-ness ever end???!!) |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Mar 24 23:50:54 PST 2003
My mind is a blank slate. We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties. My brain must have shorted somewhere. Anyway, I have nothing to say for now. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Mar 23 19:51:03 PST 2003
Against the backdrop of a cruel and senseless war, a romance begins to develop between our hero and a certain peace protester mentioned earlier in this blog. During difficult times, such as these, we turn to love as the only effective way of dealing with the harsh realities of war and hatred. College basketball has already failed our hero as a source of comfort, as his bracket threatens to come completely undone. He can now only hope and pray that 'Zona wins it all. Our hero has also attempted to find solace in live music, and while he gives The Music and The Vines props for putting on a kickass show, he has decided that they will not, in fact, be the saviors of rock and roll. Our hero is beginning to realize that use of the third person can get really annoying, really fast. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Mar 21 01:45:15 PST 2003
We saw this girl being whacked by the cops for trying to give someone a flower. That's A___a in the back with the sign. Poor Alina ... she ended up getting arrested and has spent the last 12 hours in jail for civil disobedience. I am very very disappointed in the SFPD. Fight the Power! 
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Mar 20 02:17:32 PST 2003
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war; All pity choked with custom of fell deeds: And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, With Ate by his side come hot from hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war; That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial. William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1 |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 19 16:19:09 PST 2003
Will somebody PLEASE explain to me why we are going to war? I'm going to walk out when the shit goes down. I don't expect it to ease the overall sense of helplessness and depression that I feel, but it'll be good to be around other like-minded folk. And show your support for peace, by leaving a lighted candle in your window. Salaam. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Mar 18 16:12:04 PST 2003
I am having another existential crisis. A "What does it all mean?" phase. I'm considering philosophical anarchy, as a possible means of reexamining some of my most fundamental beliefs. A looser, more agnostic belief system in place of my current atheistic, and rather rigid, ontological ideas. Perhaps, Feyerabend may provide some answers. So far, all I have is this list of things that are evil:
|
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Mar 14 14:13:25 PST 2003
A certain friend of mine, who shall remain unnamed, insists on going commando as a matter of principle. Now I find myself in a similar situation, thanks to a laundry emergency. All I have to say is ... uuuunnngggh ... very uncomfortable. And the chafing! How do you deal with the chafing, man? |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 12 17:15:54 PST 2003
geekblog entry: I've been playing with Commodore 64 emulators. The C64 was awesome. Thinking about LOAD "" and PRINT CHR$(147) and POKE 53280,1 and SYS16384 still gives me goosebumps. I'm totally getting off on hacking away at it, especially with the aid of the trusty C64 Manual. What I didn't appreciate back then was how just hardcore the C64 was. To do anything serious, you simply had to read and write shit directly in and out memory. As in POKE value into memory. Just like that. Or PEEK at value in Memory. The entire machine available to me, using BASIC no less. Like I said ... hardcore. Those were the days man. On the other end of the spectrum, I must say that I really really like the Java family of programming langauges, libraries and tools. It encourages a very clean and modular way of thinking and building your code. This is exactly what software engineering methodologists have been trying to preach to the world. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a game of Ghostbusters waiting for me. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 05 16:48:28 PST 2003
He who controls the spice, controls the universe I've shied away from talking about the imminent war so far, but I had an epiphany last night. It is now completely clear to me that the whole thing is ludicrous. For one thing, the dangers of Saddam are being completely overblown. I really don't think that he would attempt to actually use his purported weapons of mass destruction against the US. Why would you want to actively seek a war with the US if that is exactly what you've been avoiding? It makes no sense for him to deliberately provoke the US into bombing the shit out of his country. He may be an irrational, despotic leader, but he still possesses certain basic mental faculties ... one doesn't stay in power for this long without them. Then, there is the issue of him possibly using these weapons against other middle eastern countries. Since when did this government begin caring about peace in the middle east? If peace were a genuine motive we would have done something to address the Israel-Palestine issue a long time ago. Let's call a spade a spade ... this war is about cheap oil. Now this may prompt a few "No Shit Sherlock!!!" reactions. I mean, none of this is completely new, but the glaring transparency of it all has only just hit me. The argument that Saddam "ain't no saint" doesn't hold water because, at the end of the day, he really isn't a serious threat to us. We are attacking a country unprovoked because the government can't stop sucking the oil industry's dick. (Images of a phallic oil tower being massaged by Dubya's lips). Yuck. The right can be so sanctimonious at times, it makes me sick. We are about to embark on genocide because we refuse to cut down on our consumption ... because we refuse to explore alternative forms of energy ... because it is the American way to have the right to an extravagant and wasteful lifestyle. No wonder, the rest of the world hates us. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Mar 05 15:51:51 PST 2003
Diane was right. The world is changing, music is changing, drugs are changing, even men and women are changing. One thousand years from now there'll be no guys and no girls, just wankers. Sounds great to me. It's just a pity nobody told Begbie. You see, if you ask me, we're heterosexual by default, not by decision. It's just a question of who you fancy. It's all about aesthetics and it's fuck-all to do with morality. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Mar 03 13:52:30 PST 2003
I can't believe it's March already!!! Maybe it's the change of the seasons (an odd concept for California - I guess I'm using the term season metaphorically), but my life is starting to seem like fun again. We ended up at this art opening on Saturday night where Matmos was doing the music. It felt very nouveau artsy hipster trendy. A 2003 version of the Andy Warhol/Giorgio Moroder crowd. Like I was in a Greenwich Village gallery. Lots of very beautiful people, so the eye candy was spectacular. The funny thing about it is that I never seem to feel self conscious at places like this, even though the scene is pretentious as hell. I revel in my blue-collarness (yes ... I watch sports) and in my academic intellectualism (yes ... I read books on Chaos theory and Social Anthropology) and in my ability to spill beer all over myself. This sort of thing is just so damn amusing. Celebrated Tobias' birthday at Ocean Beach. Beach volleyball, homoerotic wrestling and some football (as in soccer). It was a blast. I'm sending a shoutout to Tobias, Jeremie, Agnes, Thomas and Kaoru ... I love you guys. The girls whooping the boys asses in beach volleyball ... there was something kinda cool about that. Topped it all off with a Noise Pop show. Tortoise did a very nice set. Two drummers + Two bass players + mad samples and electronic noise. The original "Drums and Bass" of indie rock. I went to bed tired but happy last night. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Feb 27 15:41:29 PST 2003
I can be such a book polygamist. I have some pretty serious commitment issues when it comes to reading. I have this chronic streak of infidelity, this compulsive need to start a new book. Sticking it out with a book ... I mean really going steady with a book ... finishing it from start to finish, without cheating and resorting to little trysts on the side - that takes work and dedication. I keep dumping them, before our relationship has a chance to blossom. My current set of lovers ..
|
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Feb 27 14:07:15 PST 2003
There seems to be an effort to reunite all the people from my high school class. In theory, it would be nice to see what everyone has been doing for all these years. I mean, it's been ten years since I last saw many of them. However, scanning through the pages of the guestbook, I keep running across the same banal cliches. A pretty popular one seems to be - "I've been working hard and partying harder!!!". It's almost like everyone has this inherent need for self affirmation and validation. It's an ethos that has been driven into our collective subconscious through years of bad Reader's Digest pieces. Doesn't anyone have anything more interesting to say about themselves? Isn't the "work hard-play hard" culture ultimately destroying the fabric of society? I, for one, am proud to say that I don't work very hard. Never have really! I've gotten by on a combination of brilliance and luck. And I certainly don't run around proclaiming how hard I party. Been there, done that. That is so freshman year of college. Oh, I certainly don't mind the occasional binge here and there, but I'd like to hope that I've grown up a bit too. C'mon JNS class of '93 - how about something original and different? Disclaimer: There were actually some entries in the guestbook that were fairly interesting, so there is hope. I'm just whining about the people that insisted on sounding hackneyed and cliched. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 26 17:01:47 PST 2003
Dammit. Flaky club owners have made me cancel my party. This really sucks! I'm annoyed. Pissed even. On the court last night though, I was butter. Draining in-your-face jumpers. Going airborne. Making ridiculous circus shots. I had the flow. Top 5 reasons I know I'm in the zone (OR you can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me):
|
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Feb 24 17:00:33 PST 2003
In case I forgot to send you the email, treat this as an invitation ... From: Shreyas Cholia <scholia@lbl.gov> Reply-To: shreyas @ slackers.net, popatcherry @ yahoo.com To: Shreyas Cholia <scholia@lbl.gov> Subject: Y'all gon' make me lose my mind ... up in here, up in here Y'all, y'all y'all ... It's birthday time with your host Docta Shrey aka Shrey Diggetty Dogg aka DJ Monkeyfuck ... ok no more bad DJ names ... just a kickin party with some supafresh music. I'm now 26 (time for the obligatory "I can't believe you are so young/old", depending on your demographic) and I'm getting together with Amber, Stirling and Byron to throw a party at the Cherry bar in Soma. The party is called POP!@Cherry ... use your imagination ... it's a loose theme. But honestly, I'd just like to see you guys there. I'll be DJing for a bit, if that's an incentive. And get the word out. We want to turn this into a regular party, so the more people we can get, the better. Important detail: Make sure you rsvp, with the number of guests you plan on bringing ... either to shreyas @ slackers.net or popatcherry @ yahoo.com so that I can put you on the guest list. (It'll be $6 otherwise). Or call me at (510) 459-7869. Party Up -Shrey Official flier follows ... Amber and Stirling Productions are pleased to announce: Oooooo <POP! @ Cherry> oooooO Friday February 28, 9pm-close hip hop / breaks / fresh beats provided by: DJs Page, Byron, Shrey (aka monkeyfuck) and dubwise. At the Cherry Bar (the old Covered Wagon) 917 Folsom @ 5th, San Francisco 2 blocks from Powell BART Birthdays celebrated: Amber, Stirling, Shrey and Dave Byron. Invite your friends / Dance your ass off No cover with RSVP ($6 otherwise): popatcherry@yahoo.com (this is our email address and will not be whored out to promotions companies. We just want to know you're coming and want you to get in FREEEEEEE!) Kisses FOR YOU if you come! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 19 17:57:50 PST 2003
Random Thoughts: - Why is music the only real populist form of art in our culture? This is especially intriguing given how visual we tend to be as a species. - I am burned out on the whole Emo-Indie thing. I need to go back to comfort music. At the end of the day, I'm still college-radio electronica boy (Thanks to Robin for that title). Listening to old Aphex Twin in the car was nice. - "Is it just me, or does every leader from every single country today seem like a giant dick?" ... Jon Stewart is a God! - I've just traded my indie-combover for a tossed caeser. The hipster handbook is teaching me all sorts of new things in the domain of all things deck. - And how much longer before my usage of the term "deck" loses its ironic implications? If you pretend to be something for long enough, do you become that thing? Vonnegut had a point. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 19 17:57:50 PST 2003
I didn't want to muddle the birthday entry with this. Anyway, I have spent most of the day exchanging emotionally-taxing-what-does-this-relationship-mean sort of emails with A___a. Not fun. She seems to think that we are just very different, and claims that I just don't get her or relate to her. I was like, I barely know you ... these things take time. You can't expect to be instant soulmates with everybody. She finds me extremely attractive in a I-want-to-kiss-you-all-the-time sort of way. But she doesn't feel herself with me. This is ridiculous. I don't need drama in my life. I mean, I'm not sure why she won't just chill and let this sort itself out. Does every friendship have to be this crazy intense spiritual connection between people? I don't think I can handle her at this point. I like leading a relatively drama free life. That gives me time to make up interesting stories in my head. The only things I want to have to worry about are real issues ... Is Emo the death of Punk? Was Rushmore better than Tanenbaums? Does my hair have the right cowlicks? Things of that nature. Self Obsession rules!! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 19 17:12:46 PST 2003
Man ... what a week! Net result ... I am now 26 years old. Friday: 1900 ... I decide I want to spend my birthday weekend in Austin with my homeboys/girls. I start looking for cheap tickets online. Saturday: 1800 ... I have just landed in Austin, Texas. Ali is coming to pick me up in a bit, but she is running late. Ami is supposed to come too, but she hasn't even left campus. I'm stuck staring at SUVs with "Don't mess with Texas" bumper stickers. It's good to be home. I'm not even being sarcastic. There is a lot to be said for nostalgia. It feels just like old times. Monday: 0000 ... A bunch of us chillin in this bar in Austin. Happy Birthday to me. Curiously, the juke box kicks in, right around midnight, with my selections. A clairvoyant jukebox that just happened to know when to throw on my music. Nice. Now we are getting drunk to the Pixies, the Pogues and VU. It's going to be a good year. Monday: 2000 ... Dinner at an Afghani place .. drinks at the Albatross. Raka bought me The Hipster Handbook. This is the most brilliant thing anyone has given me. The definitive guide to all things "deck". Read it, and you will know what your's truly is all about. Or not ... I mean a true hipster would never be caught dead with a book like this. Anyway ... it's really funny. And in the spirit of hipster literature, the onion has just done an article on David Foster Wallace. I think this might be the best onion article ever. Unlike the last couple of years, this birthday did not begin with a drug binge of any kind. I must be getting old. It feels good though. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sat Feb 15 01:09:32 PST 2003
I watched one of the most powerful and important films of my life ... Mr. and Mrs. Iyer by Aparna Sen. I have not been moved in this manner since the Bjork movie. Irrational violence and hatred make me very very sad. I feel very powerless against these forces and this can get somewhat depressing. My only recourse is to attempt to live a life of dignity and respect for humanity. No self indulgence for this entry even though it was a rather interesting Valentine's Day. Dignity is a very underrated concept. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Feb 13 15:08:03 PST 2003
First concert of the year - check. Smokey and Miho at the Great American Music Hall. Quite Lovely. Dreamy, Jazzy, Ethereal. Post Structuralism at its best ... Brazillian Influenced rhythms being performed by a Japanese electropop vocalist and a country-western guitar player with some wicked horns and percussions thrown in. Delightful. The opening band was crap though. Can't remember their name ... something that sounded like Monkeyfuck ... which would have been appropriate if you ask me. Am I the only person that thinks the name "Monkeyfuck" is funny? |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 12 01:16:01 PST 2003
I've got some new threads and some new music. I feel so tragically hip, as mcube puts it. Ok ok ... time out. It is time to step back a bit. I'm pulling my own card, as it were. Even though, I think the expression "to pull one's card" means something entirely different. Half of this blog is the product of my brain taking a shit ... a self aggrandizing satire. The question is ... which half? The lines between reality and satire have become so blurry that I can no longer tell the difference anymore. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Feb 07 16:06:05 PST 2003
I have come to certain decisions: - I'm going to start volunteering at KALX, arguably the best college radio station in these parts. I've been in a bit of a musical rut lately, and I'm hoping this will slam me out of that. I fully expect it to be overwhelming, but hey, nothing ventured... - I'm moving to the city. Getting my very own place. Our lease situation has made this decision a lot easier. We move out on April 15th. - I'm going to get serious about DJing and music. This means finally putting out that long-awaited mix CD and potentially getting hooked up with a regular gig somewhere. Amber wants to start a party (beginning with our big birthday bash) at this place called Cherry. It'll be downtempo-hiphop type stuff ... which could be very dope. So if that works out, I'm set. In the grander scheme of things, it feels like there is forward progress in my life right now. I've got some momentum. Work is going well, and I'm getting into some interesting projects. I'm taking a couple of classes at Berkeley. My hair is starting to grow into a very stylish looking britpopmop. Could getting laid really have made that much of a difference? Well, well. Time to move the chains. 1st and 10. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Feb 05 13:46:04 PST 2003
Two naked bodies intertwined, breathing softly, stretched out asymmetrically across the sheets. My hand running over a topologically impossible tattoo, tracing the black ink in an infinite loop. Strains of Velvet Underground filtering through the door. For one beautiful weekend, I was given the chance to peek into the heart of love, to wrap myself in it. And then it was ripped away. She is perfect. Amazingly cute. Has a RiotGrrl/Emo/Punk sensibility about her. Extremely intelligent. Understands and appreciates the finer points of science and philosophy. Is beautiful. Fantastic lover. Agrees with me in that Sci Fi is pretty cool, but fantasy is crap. Great taste in music. Has well thought out opinions on things. Falls right in the middle of the sexual identity continuum. A combination of diffidence and confidence. Oh ... and she likes me. There is someone in her life, but it is complicated. Ok .. way complicated. Nothing could happen between us, because we live in different places ... have other people complicating things. But she stays on a couple of extra days, at my suggestion. The tension mounts. Now I've made her do a bad thing. But this feeling is incredibly strong. It just feels right. Spooning me, she says "wow ... you are so me-sized" (No Allen ... that is not a dumb phallic reference ... our bodies are the same size ... idiot!). I didn't expect to feel this intensely about her. But, even if it was headed nowhere, it was completely worth it. My Riot Grrl is gone now. My heart is despondent. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jan 30 15:48:59 PST 2003
... so i had this really strange dream. I was in this play .. a musical starring Bjork ... except I was playing Bjork, or more like I was Bjork. It was 20 minutes till curtain call and I had to put on this outfit which looked like the dress on the homogenic cover. I was singing All is full of Love ... or it might have been hyperballad. And then I freaked out because I had all this stubble and these sideburns which I had to shave before the show, and I had been growing these burns for a long time. Now when I woke up this morning my shaving cream was missing. Really! Pretty weird, huh? And no ... I don't even want to think about the gender reversal / cross dressing implications of that dream. :) Why am I telling you all this? I have no idea ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jan 29 17:29:42 PST 2003
Dilemma: I want to start doing Yoga. However, it has become so trendy these days, that I feel like people will automatically assume that I am a poseur for doing it. Not that this is necessarily a huge deterrent, but I also have the added pressure of being Indian; which attaches all sorts of social and cultural implications to the yoga thing. Implications that I might not be ready to handle. But I do so miss the warm feeling of my muscles stretching, my body performing all sorts of impossible contortions (touching my toes comes to mind), my mind in a hyperenergized state of calm. What to do? |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jan 22 23:51:36 PST 2003
drunk ...wine ... chez panisse ... ali .. thanks for talking me through this. fuck it all. fuck the world. little mac ... he's a LIVE ANIMAL!!! prrrr. prrrrrrr. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Jan 21 11:09:41 PST 2003
head groggy, pounding cold tuesday feels like monday - must write bad haiku |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jan 20 15:42:53 PST 2003
Sniff. Sniff. Blasted Allergies!!! Weekend Update: Fighting for peace at the anti-war rally ... encouraging to see tons of people (the official report said "tens of thousands") come out and make a stand against a deluded and extremely misguided foreign policy. So far the official count on the prez is: conservative-97/compassionate-0 The Raiders are in the Superbowl!!! Sweet. I love dancing to good drum n bass. Checked out John B spinning The Cellar. I haven't had this much fun dancing in a while. And I loved the fact that most of the kids at this place were tru-skool dnb hedz. It's all about the break and the crazy gyrations and spinning on your head and grooving to the off beat. Dance mutha focka dance! My knee hurts like a beeyach. I am seeing a doctor this week. |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Jan 16 11:37:40 PST 2003
The perfect evening: Tom Waits playing on the stereo. A Bukowski novel in my hand. A $15 bottle of merlot. Heaven. |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Jan 15 21:05:07 PST 2003
I've been hella tired at work for the past couple of days. Also suffering from these bouts of anxiety, which often translate into insomnia. So I'm a little fucked up right now. I think the problem is that I get waaay too neurotic about girls that I like. Every time I meet someone cool, it's that happy bouncy feeling at first. (Like after Friday night, when A___a and I were cuddled together till 3am). Then the paranoia starts to creep in ... What if she thinks I'm a freak? Or worse, what if I'm too normal to be a freak? Should I call her now? Am I being too eager? Shit! I waited too long ... she has already moved on past me. Did I talk too much? Why the hell did I tell her that? Why won't she call? I emailed her ten minutes ago ... how come she hasn't responded? Aaaaah!!!! Yo ... Yo Shrey ... YO!!!! Just chill. That's right ... breathe .... |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Jan 12 18:47:21 PST 2003
I'm really bummed out. I lost $5 worth of free coffee. I thought I had an insurmountable lead in the movie ultimatum game (MUG). I was cocky enough to begin discussing terms of the coffee transaction before actually having written a blog review. And then Elisa beats me with a come from behind victory. Now I know what the Giants or the Browns felt last week. For the record, I'd like to state that the MUG is dumb. And yet, I find myself participating because Allen's word is like gospel. Anyway ... the particulars. I watched both The Limey and He Got Game, this past week. The Limey ... very Steven Soderbergh. Choppy visuals. Temporal discontinuity. Snappy Dialogue. Tries pretty hard to be arsty, and actually succeeds on occasion. While Soderbergh is a bit derivative in his directorial style, he actually manages to do a pretty good job at imitating his influences, and the end result is quite stylish. He is like the whole garage punk revival thing (think "The Hives"). Not necessarily very original, but quality music nevertheless. Segue: The Raiders just beat the Jets 30-10. Yeah Baby! So the Limey is about this British guy (Terrence Stamp) who has just gotten out of the clink, and goes to L.A. to avenge the death of his estranged daughter. Stamp is a bit of dick actually, so when he ultimately discovers that he was, in a convoluted way, responsible for his daughter's death, and is all pained and remorseful, I was thinking, "That's right asshole ... your limey arse got what it deserved". His character is completely unsympathetic and as far as assholes go, he never comes close to Begbie. Anyway, the Limey runs around town roughing up assorted baddies while tracking down Peter Fonda (his daughter's lover), who plays an annoying Hollywood film producer type. There is plenty of drama and action through the movie, and this is where Soderbergh seems to be at his best. Nicky Katt is really good in a minor role as the cynical waster-intellectual who embraces the thug life. He also delivers the best line of the movie: "I'd tell you to blow it out your ass, but my dick's in the way". Anyway ... the action eventually leads to the climax with Stamp and Fonda wrestling each other. I won't give away the end, but I suppose the movie was ultimately about redemption. So all in all, a good movie, but not all that memorable. Three out of Five. He Got Game ... another movie about redemption. It had the usual Spike Lee moments of gratuitous and somewhat incredulous scenes (Ray Allen's college visit, which included two naked pornstars waiting in bed to fuck him ... that was a bit ... I don't know ... over the top). But the movie sucked me in, and at the end I was itching to play some roundball. The premise ... Ray Allen is a superstar high school basketball phenom (a la LeBron James) and is being recruited by several colleges/NBA teams. Additionally, his name happens to be "Jesus", which makes him an instant media celeb. Everyone around him is trying to get a little piece of Jesus, and he feels tremendous pressure from all corners (sex, money, obligation, bling-bling, fame ....) To add to this, his father (Denzel Washington) is serving time in prison for having accidentally killed Jesus' mom, and he is left to raise his little sister on his own. Now Denzel has a secret deal with the state Governor, who has promised to reduce his sentence, if he can convince Jesus to go to Big State ... the governer's alma mater. Needless to say, Jesus blames his dad for his mom's death, and the story takes off from there. Denzel is stellar, as always, and Ray Allen delivers a surprisingly good performance for a professional athelete. It has some pretty cool basketball scenes, and the story moves really well. Plus I got to brush up on my ghetto slang. This movie is hella tight, and has a pretty high flyness quotient. Four out of Five. Sho Nuf! Yes ... my reviews suck ... but like I said .. MUG is a dumb game. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Jan 10 22:44:40 PST 2003
I'm heading to what could be the dopest party of the year. Plus movie reviews for "The Limey" and "He Got Game". Keep it right here on coreDumpin. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Jan 06 00:14:37 PST 2003
So I have this really annoying zit on my nose. Make that on the inside of my nose. The kind that is underneath the skin and hurts like a mother, but is virtually unpoppable given its subepidermal nature. To the pain! Back from the Holidaze. Wrote a couple of blog entries of a rather personal nature, that I don't really feel like publishing anymore. I will say this though ... one of my New Year's resolutions is to achieve an average masturbatory rate of 365 times a year for the next year. The "average" factor gives me the flexibility to increase or decrease my daily self-abuse rate as I see fit. Anyway ... TX, Snowboarding and hanging with my near and dear was all very fun. Tonight was Trivia Night at the Albatross. We (Don, Sarina, M3, Raka and meself) were doing quite well, until we got reamed by the music round. And I thought I was good at this whole music thing. You know what ... the more I think about it, we would have won if the music hadn't been such white honky stuff. I call racial bias. I call cultural discrimination. This is an outrage. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Dec 25 01:14:43 CST 2002 Isn't it funny how it has been such a fantastic year for music, but somehow, this has coincided with an incredibly lame year for the movies? I mean, say what you will about the Strokes/Vines/Hives/White Stripes phenomenon, but it has actually been a very good thing for music. I am still discovering a ton of amazing albums from 2002 and find myself constantly revising and rerevising and adding to my top 10 music list for the year. And yet, as far as film goes, I am really struggling to come up with just five good movies. It's the anti-2001 (which saw so-so music, but great movies). So here is what I saw as far as good films go ...
|
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Dec 18 12:31:18 PST 2002 Do you realize how insanely catchy Video Killed the Radio Star is? Boys night out. Dr. Dru, The Donner and Shrey Doggie in da house. We got so ripped. Don is talking about this hot girl he saw on BART earlier and is saying "Man, you just want to fuck the shhhh ... " when the music stops and he is the only one talking in the entire bar and everyone seems to have all of a sudden ceased conversation. Yes Don, so you were saying something about wanting to fuck the shit out of her. Reminiscing about old times ... how I was so green and virginal when I moved out to Berkeley, how Don was such a freak and Andrew ... well, Andrew was always the cool one, but Don and I ... we're all grownzup now. Is Kordell Stewart a Maricon ... Jeff Garcia is totally a maricon ... for that matter ... Don, what about you ... I mean Andrew and I have both had semi-bisexual experiences ... Don ... are you a closet gay man? And how do you pick up a waitress anyway? The Ivy Room on a Tuesday night is pretty divey. Andrew is so drunk he drops his chilicheeseburger killing the plate. Midnight Meals. mmmmmm. We stagger back home like drunk ass mofos. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Dec 16 23:45:03 PST 2002 Love, Music, Wine and Revolution. What a concept! I still can't get enough Magnetic Fields. Kim & Eliane's Friday the 13th party was pretty dope. The theme ... Night of the living dead. Go as a famous dead person, somehow incorporating cause of death into the costume. I was the radio star plastered with radio stickers. Raka was video with a cardboard cutout of an MTV screen. Video Killed the Radio Star. Clever, eh? A little too clever almost. Interestingly, I DJed my entire set using Final Scratch and it worked out extremely well. Final Scratch is the veritable schitt, to quote Drezz. Using your turntables and vinyl as an interface to scratch and spin digital music from your computer. Mad! |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Dec 16 01:54:45 PST 2002 Listening to 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields ... it's an absolutely fantastic album. Love is funny. Love is tender. Love is bollocks. Love is pathetic. Love is lovely. This album somehow taps into the essence of love without being cheesy, or overly earnest. It made me cry. These weren't tears of joy or sadness. They were tears of something more elemental ... love perhaps? I have so much love to offer the world, and yet no one to offer it to. Undirected, unrequited love. And in the absence of a recipient, I direct this love towards myself in the form of narcissism. I buy myself ultrahip thriftstore jackets and cooler-than-thou messenger bags and bumblebee socks and supafresh sneakers. As the fortune cookie said "The best kind of love is self love". Yeah! |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Dec 13 12:29:47 PST 2002 It's Friday the 13th y'all!!! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Dec 11 19:15:36 PST 2002 Unveiling my top 11 album list for 2002 ...
|
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Dec 10 23:58:34 PST 2002 I think my single greatest creative talent lies in the ability to come up with interesting titles for various things. I wonder if they have jobs for people with a strong titular bent? Looking back on the week ... techno at the DNA thanks to Triet. Run into Zack Norwood. Damn .. I haven't seen that boy in years. He looks like a cross between Castaway and Mountain Man these days. Drinks with Elaine and her friends at Bruno's. Pleasant conversation, even if the evening is somewhat uninspiring. Shalini is in town and I spend Sunday afternoon with her. She is dating a white boy, which is normally not a big deal, but this is Shal. Anyway, it's good to see good people finding other good people. And it's even better to see race as being a non-issue in such matters. Then skating ("away on the thin ice" - can't resist the Tull reference) at Embarcadero. Playing empath to both Raka and Danan somewhere in there. Phew! I have more or less exhausted my social reserves by this point and I still have to DJ this party at Adheesh's. I dread it. And it turns out to be fantastic. I meet A___a. It's been a while since I've met someone who is completely free of cynicism. She is an I/ENFP. She is adorable and charming and funny and creative and warm and interesting and unpretentious and disarming and pretty. She is who I used to be a few years ago, and could have been if life had taken a couple of different turns. I think I'm in love!!! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Dec 04 02:34:51 PDT 2002 Apparently alternaporn is all the rage these days. It's porn meets art meets feminism. Liberated women posing nude, and celebrating sex and sexuality. I guess nerve has been doing this sort of thing for a while now, but it's good to see more people catching on to a healthier take on the s word. Honestly, most conventional porn sites are kinda repulsive, not to mention horribly exploitative. I never quite got the whole "plastic blonde with fake tits sucking off this scary looking dude and getting spunk all over her face" thing. Alternaporn is the reclaiming of the female body, by women and for women. I'm not thrilled about the term alternaporn. Still sounds kinda dumb to me, but I guess you can't win 'em all. Not so random thought: I feel like a lesbian trapped in a man's body. The classic Steve pickup line actually seems to have a nugget of truth in it right now. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Dec 03 18:01:49 PST 2002 I wish I was little bit taller, I wish I was a baller, I wish I had a girl who looked good I would call her I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat And a six four Impala Actually, I wish I were a better writer. This is what I call a meta-entry ... an entry about previous blog entries. So, as I read through this journal, I can see that I am capable of moments of brilliance. But I am also responsible for stuff that absolutely makes me cringe. Somehow, my metaphors seem a bit unwieldy. My sentences are either too long or too short. Things don't quite seem to fit. I try being all grandiloquent (like now), but it almost feels like I'm quoting a GRE word list ... which I'm NOT!!! The apposite phrase always seems to be on the tip of my tongue, and yet it remains elusive. Maybe someday ... Don't get me wrong. I still think I'm da bomb. I just want to be a nucular bomb. Well, I'm anti nukes, so maybe just good old fashioned dyn-o-mite. |
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Dec 01 08:57:10 PDT 2002 Well, she doesn't like me. I finally spake my heart, and while she didn't quite feel the same way, I feel relieved at having said what I've been feeling for quite a while now. (Not sure if all the parts of speech are in sync, but we'll let that slide). My heart feels like it has a hairline fracture. You can pretty much continue using the fractured component, though every once in a while you bend it the wrong way and owwww! Fear of rejection is overrated. I've been hiding behind it for way too long. I'm going to make forthcoming my middle name. I think I missed my window of opportunity with her a long time ago, because of my pussyfooting. Oh well. She was quite nice. Smart, pretty, knows her music, has a little star tattoo on the back of her neck, has an amazing sense of style. And I really, really respect the fact that she didn't feed me any lines when I finally told her. It's too bad things didn't work. Like I said before ... sigh ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Sat Dec 01 00:32:36 PDT 2002 *sigh* |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Nov 28 18:13:45 PDT 2002 Foucault's Pendulum is an absolutely amazing book and Umberto Eco is a fountain of erudition. I was poking around the web, searching for references to Foucault's pendulum, when I found this site describing the physics of such a device. It reminded me of why I fell in love with science a long long time ago. Most kids seem to develop an aversion to all things science at an early age. Sites like this come as a much needed breath of fresh air. |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Nov 26 14:51:11 PDT 2002 Back from the East Coast. I was at this nerdfest in Baltimore ... I live such an exciting life!! I had just about given up on Baltimore, when J No, Steve Mock and I discovered The Good Love Bar and Sonar. The Good Love Bar had this very trendy post pomo feel to it (in a good way) ... interesting lighting, coffins for tables and underground hiphop. We almost ended up at this horrible fratboy infested shitpop/dance place, before we found Sonar. Sonar blew my mind though. Cute grrl DJ playing jazzy DnB ... my heart went flutter flutter. Did the whole DJ chat with her later. I'm an (ahem) DJ from San Francisco ... we should hook it up if we ever find ourselves on opposite coasts again. Emails are exchanged. And I'm back in my room masturbating to hotel porn (Just kidding ... geez!!!). Hung out with Ashish in the ATL. Back in the Bay on Sunday night, where I go straight from the Airport to the Ruby Skye to watch Thievery Corp. Rebecca is there. As is my competition. My heart is going flutter flutter flutter flutter flutter. The competition seems to have backed off though, and I'm never sure about these things, but I think she likes me. So we'll have to see how things play out, but it's really all about potential. Me feel happy. |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Nov 11 11:51:35 PST 2002 Dave Eggers, you make me wanna blog. I haven't written much here lately because I haven't felt like there has been much to write about. Or more accurately, I can't bring myself to write about the banal tripe that constitutes my life (see last blog entry). But, half way through A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I feel like an inspired man. I am filled with ideas and visions. I want to do something meaningful with this 25 year old mind/body. I am the bullgod (umm ... ok whatever). Seriously though, the gears of my brain are hard at work. The inchoate seeds of a something. I wish I could be more descriptive, but such is the nature of ideas that have barely reached germination. The "something" is, as yet, formless but soon ... soon ... In all honesty, it is a relief that I can still feel this giddy sense of optimism. It means that life hasn't passed me by. It means that I am too young to be bitter and too old to be angst-ridden. I am twenty five ... hear me roar. I do find myself being a lot more opinionated, and intolerant of certain things, though. Looking down on the world with a detached air of superiority. What irritates the hell out of me, you ask? ...
|
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Oct 25 23:02:12 PDT 2002 Half finished entry that I really don't have the desire to finish anymore: Yesterday was weird. Good weird, but weird. I felt this really strange high, which, I imagine being on coke would probably feel like. I was completely tweaked and yet had this eerie sense of calm. A weird (that word again), jagged sort of self confidence. Here is how I managed to achieve it: Caffiene: 1 cup of coffee + 1 tall can of Arizona Ice Tea + 1 cup of chai Loopy Allergy meds: 1 pill of Benadryl Natural High: The programmers zone and the subsequent feeling of "It Works!!!" The excess caffiene had me all tweaked out, the benadryl |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Oct 14 23:48:17 PDT 2002 Transcript from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart June 7, 2002 Players, in order of appearance: SC - Stephen Colbert, correspondent JB - John Banzhaf, ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) SC: Why shouldn't people be allowed to smoke where they want? JB: Why shouldn't people be allowed to masturbate where they want? |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Oct 07 11:40:32 PDT 2002 Tru Dat, Tru Dat!  Thanks to Tatsuya Ishida of Sinfest |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Oct 04 14:25:08 PDT 2002 O moral principle, I have forsaken thee! I was having a protein craving. I was in a sushi restaurant. I believe the elements were conspiring against me. The allure was too much for me. Vegetarianism be darned. Tai, hamachi, sake ... I wolfed them all down. So succulent, so delectable! Sushi is a vile seductress. I still believe in the idea of vegetarianism though. Even if I occasionally cheat, a primarily vegetarian diet is still better for the world. Sustainable food production. Less unnecessary cruelty towards animals. And if done properly, a much healthier alternative. Honestly, given how easy it is to be a vegetarian around Berkeley, it's not a very hard choice. I've now been officially been saving the world for a year and a half ... Margaret, Robin, Mukul, Danan ... thanks for showing me the way! |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Oct 02 12:54:35 PDT 2002 Somehow this entry got munged, except for the list part. This is stuff I should be doing cos I am a lazy ass slacker, so remind me
|
|
The Daily Dump: Sun Sep 29 02:43:05 PDT 2002 Aaaaah ... tired beyond tired. Numb. My brain feels a bit mushy. David Lee Roth covers the Chemical Borthers and Lords of Acid. WTF????!!!! Late night TV is weird. J5 is cool. Ballin', Shot Callin'. Damn ... just spent most of the day helping Tobias move. Moving is a bitch, but Tobias now lives in this totally sweet place in the city. Did I mention that I'm extremely tired? Just typed C-x C-s instead of :w ... ok ... I'm goi ... ZZZZZZZZZ |
|
The Daily Dump: Thu Sep 26 17:21:23 PDT 2002 Ok, ok ... ignore the previous entry. NSync really doesn't deserve any kind of respect, period. Though, for a while I thought I was onto something there. From now on I will stick to critiquing the things I know and love, or the things I love to hate ... IDM, DnB, Emo, Garage Rock (NeoDefArt as some people like to call it), Cerebro-Hiphop, Indie Pop ... basically all the requisite music-nerd hipster stuff. Not that I would ever claim to be one or anything! I'm more of a cultural observer, a dabbler at best. I'm like Girl in Cat and Girl. I'm into the idea of a counter-culture because it keeps our bones strong and healthy ... a bit like milk. But I can't be a scenester because, well, that would mean I'm like everyone else in the scene. I must always be my own special snowflake. I'm also full of shit ... I love it! |
|
The Daily Dump: Tue Sep 24 23:31:07 PDT 2002 You know how some stuff is so bad that it becomes good. And then everybody else starts to like it, so it stops being funny. But then it becomes permissible to like it, because you know that it is so "bad that it is good", that it is bad and you can be all ironic about liking it. And so on ... I think all of life's stages keep oscillating between two phases: either you think 'NSync is awesome or that they are bollocks. It all depends on what level of enlightenment you feel you are at. As you achieve higher levels of self awareness (read smugness), you activate this binary switch that changes what you think of them. And it keeps going back and forth. My new Instant Messenger nickname is NsyncRulz17. Level 6 complete! |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Sep 20 16:10:47 PDT 2002 Allen's diary says it all. Make sure you check out his profile as well. And don't forget to use "Z" with all your possesives. As in %s/Allen's/AllenZ/g. As in I am a huge dork. :) |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Sep 18 18:12:08 PDT 2002 Stuff like this makes me proud to live in the East Bay ... Guerrilla Drive-In Theatre. The revolution will not be televised! Yosemite kicked my ass this weekend, but it was totally worth it. Busted up my knee in the process of not making it all the way to Half Dome (pics to comes). One of these days, I am going to see a doctor about it. I still don't completely understand my aversion to seeking medical attention, but I think it might have something to do with a shitty insurance plan and the idea of shelling out a bunch of dough just to have someone tell you, "take some advil and ice it". Still, these things have a way of becoming chronic ... |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Sep 11 16:51:39 PDT 2002 Bored? I rediscovered a fun little puzzle thanks to an old friend. Which led to meanderings on quines and good old GEB. Also ... webcomics are fun ... Hey John ScaryGoRound rocks and all, but there is something very delish about seeing the ol' bobbins crew. More bobbins!!! I experienced tingliness in my spine when I saw Tim, Shelley and Ryan kickin it at the Tford science fair. Just wanted to say thanks for bringing them back. -Shrey |
|
The Daily Dump: Mon Sep 09 18:57:46 PDT 2002 I still need to talk about Burning Man, but it seems so overwhelming, and all encompassing that I'll save it for another entry. Needless to say, it was absolutely amazing ... reaffirmed my faith in life, the universe and all that junk. So I sound a bit like a PLUR kid, but really ... it's been a few days since the E wore off and I still feel this way. Speaking of which I finally think I've hit the post euphoric depressive phase ... a whole week later. Wonder what that means? Anyway I think I'll just chill, til the next episode... |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Sep 06 15:37:59 PDT 2002 Quote of the Day: "Jesus was a pedarast, right?" Reference: Ali, Doug and I are sitting around discussing NAMBLA and somehow The Big Lebowski makes it into the conversation. If none of this makes any sense, go watch the fucking movie! It is brilliant and encapsulates an ethos that has been a major driving force in my life. |
|
The Daily Dump: Fri Aug 23 15:29:03 PDT 2002 Happy Birthday Ali. You still my homegirl! It's been a nutty week. - Wednesday night ... saw Cornelius at Bimbos ... He is a brillo electronic musician, but I'm not so sure about his forays into metal. Great show though, and everyone was there... Gagan, Former Will Rice Crew, The Eurofuckers (love 'em to death) and my own little posse (Amber, Lori, Mcube and Rebecca). - Thursday Night ... M3 and I go to the Drag King ball. I must say, I looked very sexy in my nun outfit and Margaret made a pretty dapper priest. Doing the occasional drag thing can be good for the soul. I think not enough guys wear skirts. David Beckham, we need more of you! I ran into Anokhi out there. Second night in a row resulting in random encounters with people I know ... The Bay Area is starting to become awfully small. Not that I mind or anything. So here is what I learned this week: |
|
The Daily Dump: Wed Aug 21 00:37:58 PDT 2002 The weather was actually nice today. Finally hooked up my computer to my decks using this iMic thingy and recorded a pretty tight Missy-Roni Size-J Magik mix. DrumNBass might be a little played out at this point, but I still think that nothing else matches its Supafast-Supachill-SmoothYetFrenetic energy. But I guess overexposure will kill anything, so I'll just wait for the next DnB revival 10 years from now. |
