Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
It's my brother Robert's birthday, and I've made him a mix.
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02:07:39 PM,Wednesday 30 April 2008
After Dances of Vice at the Montauk Club (co-founded by the founder of the Pratt Institute!) on Saturday. Photo by Steven Rosen. You can see my insanely awesome spirit level tie bar, but not my equally awesome compass and thermometer cufflinks (all birthday presents from K.) It was a lovely night.
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(9)
12:45:44 PM,Tuesday 29 April 2008
Still obsessed with this song. That's about it.
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03:30:11 PM,Monday 28 April 2008
This picture makes me happy.
Via Grinding.
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09:23:40 AM,Wednesday 16 April 2008
From "Kiss Me, I'm An Abbatoir Worker" to "The Person Wearing This Sweatshirt Is A Soft Drink And Syrup Making Machine Operator", this is exactly what the internet is for. (May require IE tab; didn't work in Firefox for me.)
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(5)
10:57:04 PM,Saturday 12 April 2008
"Capital percentages" came out "calipersages".
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(2)
10:55:08 PM,Friday 11 April 2008
"Pro bono basis" came out "borough bon jobation". Whuh?
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(2)
07:09:43 PM,Friday 11 April 2008
Cross-posting a comment I made on UrsulaV's Taxman print, which I ordered a couple days ago. She got an unexpected bill from the IRS and decided to sell limited prints of this painting until April 15th to cover it. She's currently up to 65 orders, and blogged:
"No artist in the history of the world has had a kinder or more generous pack of friends (or else a whole lot of you are as weirdly fascinated by plague doctors as I am, or possibly both...)"
I wrote:
For me, it was an uncanny synchronicity; I had a plague doctor guarding my dorm room all through college, but the dot matrix printout of the old woodcut picture was wearing out by the time I graduated and I never got around to finding a better quality print. So I had to go about six years without a physical manifestation of what I've come to consider my personal totem.
He looks so sinister, but he's a healer -- from a distance, with a stick. He's this absurd, alien bird-creature who smells like vinegar, and whose face has been copied for Carnival and Commedia Del Arte masks, reducing the whole horrid history of the Black Death to a sort of leering joke. But something about him symbolizes invulnerability and courage to me. When you're wearing a medieval biohazard suit like that one, you probably won't get the plague; even if you think it's the vinegar keeping the miasma away and it's actually the leather robes and gauntlets keeping the fleas away, the end result is the same: you're safe. On the one hand, you go around with a face like that and you terrify people out of their skins. You barter your humanity for the sake of your own safety. You become a symbol of the plague. On the other hand, you can walk into hell, do what good you can, and come back unscathed.
I know the Taxman print is a more light-hearted spin on the subject, but somehow it still cut me to the quick. Because this is the first year I'm really supporting myself as a freelancer. I'm paying back my loans, I've found a job I love, I'm hustling for new work all the time and still somehow staying afloat. For the first time, I'm sending in money to the IRS rather than getting back a refund. And damnit, it feels good. Sure, it stings like a mofo to have to pad that fat savings account and then drain it in one leech-like motion into Uncle Sam's coffers, but it means I'm doing what I want to be doing. It's the final conversion of my adolescent "When the apocalypse comes, I'll save you all!" complex into "Hey, the apocalypse ain't here right now. Let's hope it stays away. Meanwhile, I've got us covered."
I'm a freelancer working to support my girlfriend and my cat -- and my government and my fellow citizens. When he gets here, The Taxman is gonna go right next to my desk to take my pulse from time to time, waggle his stick, and remind me that this whole being a grown-up thing isn't anywhere near as boring as it sounded ten years ago. It's actually pretty kickass.
Also, a ferret wearing steampunk goggles. I mean, dude.
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(2)
01:50:34 PM,Monday 7 April 2008
There appears to be a cat in our apartment. We were walking in Fort Tryon Park yesterday and saw some people pointing over the wall at the north end of the Cloisters. Hidden in the reeds was a sly little black and white face who looked up at us for a long, long time without breaking eye contact. We weren't quite sure what to do, but I figured I'd get a little closer to see if it was hurt or anything. He was hunkered down in a bramble bush, and when I finally got close enough to touch him, he rubbed his cheek against my hand and made a whiny little "Meeeooooorrr!" noise. Every time I enticed him out, he'd evade my grasp, but he wasn't holding a grudge; he kept nuzzling my hand and looking up at me as soon as he'd gotten back within the cover of the brambles. Twice I was able to actually grab him, but he was so squirmy, he got away both times -- without the least hint of growling, scratching, or biting. It was getting dark and he kept on bounding into various bramble bushes and hollow logs to see what we'd do, so we decided to let him spend the night in the park. Then this morning we borrowed a carrier from the pet store on Fort Washington and played a little more hide and seek until finally (with the help of a can of tuna fish) I was able to grab him and stuff him in the box. He wasn't terribly happy about his confinement, but when we got home (after stopping at the pet store again for supplies) and let him out into the bathroom, he turned into a complete love bomb, demolishing his food, galloping over to purr and snuzz us, then rolling over and showing us his belly in transfixed delight. Clearly this guy has never met any humans that meant him harm, and we're pretty sure he hasn't been out in the big scary world for very long, either. His back paw looks to be a little tender, but otherwise he seems clean, healthy, and full of the dickens. We're taking him to the vet on Tuesday. We're gonna put some "Found Cat" posters up around the neighborhood, but who knows? For now we're calling him Alcibiades.
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(2)
03:31:56 PM,Sunday 6 April 2008
Yesterday I bought a CD of Cajun-style Bach songs played on the electric cello from a man in Penn Station. Because what the hell else is disposable income for?
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03:05:07 PM,Friday 4 April 2008
Hey, K. and I are in the New York Times!
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02:00:40 PM,Thursday 3 April 2008
Artek and Piffaro in Concert!
Damn exciting, though I don't know if we'll get the chance to go; we're seeing Margaret Cho on Thursday in Westbury, Long Island, and I'm afraid our entertainment budget might be blown for the week after that. Still and all, this city is a wealth.
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03:49:09 PM,Monday 31 March 2008
Realtime AIM!
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(4)
01:25:39 PM,Monday 31 March 2008
My Muxtape.
Click to play. If it doesn't work, try back later; the server's been a little wonky.
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(2)
02:02:55 PM,Friday 28 March 2008
Oh, what the hell. If anyone is interested, I've been keeping a blog preparatory to starting in earnest on Plover, which I've basically been using as a goad to write down the ideas that churn around in my mind every time I find myself forced to work with imperfect software. It's pretty off the cuff (I've got it set to one of my homepage tabs and haven't been allowing myself to close it until I post something, which makes for a pretty scattershot effect) and employs terms specific to my own style of stenography, so it probably isn't too comprehensible to anyone other than me, but here's the link anyhow. Feel free to comment if there's anything there that strikes your interest; explaining this stuff to laymen would actually be really helpful. When I get down to programming the thing, I'll have to know how to describe what I want in exhaustively literal terms.
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12:01:23 PM,Friday 28 March 2008
Looks like Anathem is gonna be sort of a Stephenson Does Leibowitz Plus Platonic Math and Aliens, which is a big ol' OMG YES.
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06:12:06 PM,Tuesday 25 March 2008
Missing the point, exhibit one.
(Spoilers for The Giver.)
One boggles. One has also been listening to a lecture on Nietzsche, on which one is no expert, by any means, but... they kept using that word. One does not think it means what they think it means.
via io9.
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03:31:51 PM,Tuesday 25 March 2008
I want a bonny tardigrade to serve me for a steed.
I'd harness him with watercress and provend him with mead.
We'd leave the hillock for the plain, forth to the desert wend;
from each bright globule of his brow a dock leaf I'd prepend.
His limbs, gone leathery with thirst, would lose their lustrous sheen,
and then I would rehydrate him with pulls from my canteen.
His feet would clasp the dunes beneath, his snout survey the sky,
while I, upon his back, sought out our caravanserai.
Unendingly we'd course the earth, our fortune never fixed --
the West Wind gee, the East Wind haw, and him and me betwixt.
My Octopod Bucephalus, my ally and my charge!
I'd do it all, were he less small, or I less sodding large.
