Archive for August, 2008
August 31, 2008 at 2:59 pm · Filed under Natural World, Politics
First Gustav information resources, then a few words about a self-selected brand of idiots.
RESOURCES
MSNBC - Visual Gustav tracker It’s headed jus ot the left of the Mississipi and New Orleans may avoid a direct hit.
NOAA’s tracker over the last 24 hours seems to show a faster moving eye of the storm than was Katrina. Faster and more powerful, but it was the sustained power of Katrina which I recall many felt broke the levees and ultimately caused the most damage. It also seems to showw it veering left to more hit the Louisiana / Texas border.
This forum, calling itself the Gustav Information Center, is collecting a variety of on-the-ground resources and other published reports. Including this perhaps unfortunately titled photo, “Crazy Beach Experience” which just seems to be the exact opposite, a regular beach scene, complete with swimmers and casual beach goers..
There’s the Gustav Reporter, which for some reason is coming out of the Chicago Tribune ???????? There’s also a Twitter feed of their / one guy’s posts. The guy seems to be enjoying it just a little too much.
More to add if they’re useful / different.
A UStream live feed of reporting in the region.
Now onto the less useful:
WILLFUL SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR
I had an idiot Republican ask, generally, so what’s the big deal about Gustav, why are people talking about it? Now I didn’t know he was an idiot Republican until he replied a couple more times to my questions. Before he did that I just thought he was a generic idiot.
It seemed about the dumbest sincere question I had heard in months. This isn’t to hold the idea that all or even the majority of Repblicans are idiots but it brought back with sickening clarity those of the GOP who tried to explain away the horror of Hurricane Katrina as saying the only people to blame were those who were suddenly homeless.
This question, pre-emptively substituting “Gustav” for Katrina made my stomach churn and flip this morning. And it made me angry as nothing I’ve read in the last few weeks had.
As a result of Gustav, people are likely going to die and a region of our country is going to be hurting regardless. As well, Katrina, showed a clear time when government failed. The reply I got for this was the person asking me if I was one of those people who thought the government caused 9-11?
What?
What?
On top of the glassy-eyed non-sequitar was the implication, that in fact, no the government did all it could and didn’t fail at all. This guy, all hopped up about the RNC convention this coming week - which he’s going to - was trying to say that, no the federal government under Bush acted fine and perfectly in response.
What a !@#$% dunce, low-class ignorant patsy. First of all, I had just said government and never specified at what level. State government in the immediate aftermath, of course, deserves some of the blame of what happened. They seemed disorganized and stupified and provided almost no leadership.
But there were those who, in the aftermath, tried to say that the federal government appropriately took a back seat and correctly did as little as possible. Nevermind that what they finally did was also done as incompetently as possible.
I could go on, but this isn’t to rehash everything that happened then. At the time there was talk - from Republicans - about abandoning New Orleans and not rebuilding it. In other words, writing it off as a bad region that will always face such travails. At the same time, Aug. 2005, the big push - again from Republicans - was that we as a country should do all we could, everything we could, kill our soldiers for the cause - to rebuild Iraq.
So give up on Americans and American soil to “save” another region which we’d screwed over for decades? The dichotomy made me lose all respect for anyone who held that belief. Unfortunately, it seemed a hefty swath of the population.
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August 31, 2008 at 10:25 am · Filed under Family & Friends & Me, Natural World
I went to bed early Friday night and very early Saturday night for two, likely related reasons.
I had one of my rare headaches, though it started out as a mild neck ache. As I write, it still throbs a little on the opposite side, the right, from where it started at the base of my neck down and behind my ear.
Unfortunately most if it is due to the new chair at work, which pretty much just needs some adjusting I think but I haven’t got around to it, yet. Or, to be more accurate, I got myself crossed legged on the floor to try and adjust it and couldn’t immediately figure out how with the levers and the dials, the latter of which seemed to do nothing so they’re in actuality probably the key.
Heh, actuality.
I’m an awkward size for most desks. If I get a solid chair to sit up straight I’m way too high and spend all my time looking down. If I have a chair which eases back enough where I’m eye level, I have to scootch the chair right in to see some of the small print (7 pt in some cases) I have to type in.
I think the solution is to fix chair to stay upright and put more reams of paper under the dual monitors.
So it’s my problem, i just have to find the right setup but I’ve been so enthralled with the new job that I really haven’t noticed. But Friday it came to a head - my head and that’s because Arizona had a storm.
STORM MEDIA
i heard various voices on Twitter and the like say it was the worst they’d experienced. I believe that to be the phenomenon of dramatizing the latest. A storm in Eloy (about 60 miles south of Phoenix) was the worst I’ve been through. Lightning popped less than half a mile away, often. i could see it on the flat coming up from the ground. Also, the wind blew some vehicles over and due to the old, poorly kept up house we (at the time) were living in at the time huge billows of dust came inside. I have the dirty pictures (heh).
The storm Thursday lasted a long time and involved sustained lightning ripping into the clouds with a deep thunder that sounded comforting to me, almost like a satisfied cat purring.
I don’t have TV now so couldn’t watch anything. I did listen to infrequent updates on the radio but no one seemed super excited. I got most of my updates from other PHX Twitterers
THE DRIVE IN
I left early for work Friday morning because I wanted an early start on something due that day and because I had hours to make up from leaving early the day before to drop a friend off at the doctor’s office.
Immediately i heard that traffic lights were out in certain areas. I wasn’t sure if it was along my route but I quickly found out they were - they ALL were - as I came to a stop behind an SUV truck. I always like seeing what’s ahead so dislike following big anything where I can’t see. And I couldn’t see what turned out to be a long line of traffic.
Followed by another. And another.
I had to cross four temporary four-way stops which meant a lot of delay.
I’d just hear don the radio the “correct” way to navigate a four-way stop intersection. The advice included not crossing at the same time as the opposite traffic coming your way. Which is bullshit as that would seem a perfect time because the traffic the other direction already can’t go anywhere.
The thing that got to me was people following closely behind the guy in front as it was their turn to go. I flashed a finger or three because that was SO obviously causing the delays.
That and these intersections weren’t just eight lanes of traffic but 20 lanes coming together at once.
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August 26, 2008 at 6:41 am · Filed under I Wrote It
[[PROMPTuesday]]
It fell.
Or rather the egg was hurled, mightily and with great glee, if little foresight.
That’s not quite how Jeannette phrased it when she ran up the stairs to confront the egg tosser. Not in her head anyway. Due to an ill-timed trip at the top step her anger dissipated. That and the boyish grin she stared into when someone took her arm to help her up.
Early 30s, egg tosser. She’d never seen that in the classifieds, and to the best of her knowledge there was no InstantEggLove.com
Dave looked at her and winced inwardly as she looked like shit. Outwardly he offered, “I feel like shit. I’m sorry.”
In return that anything-but-bold statement got one of the strangest looks he’d ever seen. Lustful. Amused. Pathetic. Pissed. Yeah, mostly pissed. It was one of those looks usually received after months, if not years, of knowing.
So he said nothing else, because, after all, he was near the edge of the roof of his friend’s office. He’d been - and still was - waiting for Gail to finish her morning and head to lunch.
Jeannette was brushing her skirt off, though there was nothing there. She looked back and wondered what and why she had run up the stairs. She’d expected a child and had readied rightful wrath. But instead, trip and fall said it all.
She turned her back and walked away, if only to forestall the awkward silence she could already feel developing.
“Oh my god.”
Matted hair at the back, white and yellow goo on her red blouse made Dave instantly resolve to never throw eggs again. Not sure why he had today. They’d been in the refrigerator as he grabbed a soda. A compulsion that continued without thought until faced with the consequence.
His snort-laugh-gargle - what the hell was that sound? - spun her back around and she felt her hair, a sticky mess, slap her back.
Minutes later, she found herself in a store, looking at his wallet.
“Here, you’ll look bet. .um, good in this.”
And he was right. He’d just bought her clothes - with impressive acumen - and swept one shelf of hair care products; she’d spotted maybe one that she used.
Jeannette was late for where she’d been going. Now she had a new blouse on and was headed out the door. Where, on the threshold, she promptly tripped again.
“Motherfuck!”
Jeannette left with egg on her face - but he had her number.
August 24, 2008 at 7:01 pm · Filed under Family & Friends & Me, Photography
___
My camera situation? Pretty dire. Pretty down and out in Beverly Hills. Pretty ghetto. Pretty rotten egg. Pretty not pretty.
I have 10 film cameras mostly old, most don’t take 35 mm film. But I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about the wonderful world of digital. Is there anything worthy in the world that ISN’T digital these days?
Well, yes, anything worth taking a picture of as it happens. Funny how that works, isn’t it. Discussion for another post, another time.
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August 20, 2008 at 1:22 am · Filed under Quote
“Coffee is for utility, tea is for serenity.”
— Me, today .. um, yesterday
August 17, 2008 at 3:59 pm · Filed under Family & Friends & Me
After a time of freelancing and nothing fulltime, a time that went on for too long, I walked out the door last Monday, Aug. 11 to the strains of “Begin the Beguine” by Cole Porter, courtesy of iTunes shuffle.
Because the guy I was replacing had not left yet to return to graduate school I was only there for a few hours for a couple of days last week, scratching the surface of how the job, the interactions, the computer set-up, the rhythm works.
It was only mornings. So now I’ve had a few days off and it seems like months since I’ve been there, because I REALLy want to be there, working. However, I return tomorrow, starting my new coffee addiction - I’ve never ever drunk it daily on any sort of routine but I’m about to start because it seems to work for everyone else.
I return tomorrow for my second first day, and I’ll have my own desk space and I’ll get my hands on the keyboard and get it all going. And I’ll be on … much … bigger … monitors. Yeah, plural.
(Somewhere, soon I think I’ll have more fun if I have a “this has nothing to do with my employer” type disclaimer somewhere on my site(s). It’s never been a problem, before, period because I know better, but still, I think I’ll put one up for once, just for that “extra layer of comfort.”)
August 16, 2008 at 5:46 pm · Filed under Music, Playing Cards
I’ve never liked Radiohead very much, but this is called “House of Cards.” Americans seem enthralled with once-earnest British Isles bands, long after they’ve gone stale (U2 anyone?)
August 16, 2008 at 11:30 am · Filed under I Wrote It, Ideas, Quote
When you take away options, stranger things happen.
That’s the quote that came at the end and the takeaway from my dream earlier this morning that ended about two minutes ago. It involved several different scenes, this dream, but ultimately it seemed to be about making a person more deperate as he was hounded and accused and victimized by the people around him, the people closest to him; except for his parents. Though even them too as he could detect they expected absolutely nothing out of him anymore except survival. And at times, they thought perhaps that too was making his life worse.
It involved a grown man being late for school and classes; but miles upon miles to walk.
This man, this person constantly assailed, nevertheless walked by both a grimy, oiled quarter on the ground, then a shinier nickel a little farther up the hill, knowing kids who walked the same path would get more joy out of the discovery.
It involved me, or someone I thought for awhile was me, sitting in a car with my laptop, the one I currently own, the one I’m currently typing into. Someone else had carried it, walking away from the house, still typing away. And the WiFi had lasted an extraordinarily long time but at the corner, it ended and the guy carrying the laptop had to turn around. But, in the nature of dreams, with seamless yet also abrupt merge, it was me, suddenly in the car, in front of a strange house, with the plug cord snaking out across the sidewalk but only because it was snagged on something in the round-top cement wall. It seemed I was doing some kind of surveillance, discovery for someone else. It felt like it was on the right side of the law, or at least the right side of justice, trying to find the truth no one else was looking for.
Trying to return someone’s options.
It involved a hippy looking guy in a nice car, a Skylark or an Oldsmobile of some kind pulling into a parking spce in front of me, only then to imediately pull out again, or start to before seeing me walk behind him. I said something mildly uncomplimentary to him, but only mildly, after all he had stopped without me having to shout.
My brother walked out of jail, with two swollen bumps on his side, near his hips. He was shirtless. There was another bump on his forehead and a cut on his lower face. Except it was my face. Except I knew it was my brother. And I knew he wanted to tell me what had happened to my glasses, which were supposed to be on his face. No, my face.
He was about 10 people back in a very narrow corridor. I, he, was about a head taller than everyone else, as we often are, and people were being released. He’d only been there overnight, or maybe a couple of days. There was only doubt, I thought in my dream, because the cuts seemed to be fresh but healed as if they had happened a little while ago. But as he walked through it was my face and he walked past me with a small smile, ready to explain but knowing now wasn’t the best place. He stopped a little farther on as I let him walk past me and seemed to either insert or take something from a column in the wall.
There was tension in the city, though I don’t know where, and something was about to happen. But then I woke up, so it didn’t.
August 14, 2008 at 8:20 am · Filed under Music
(First published at Desicritics.org, Cross-posted also at ThePodcastBlog.com)
A lot of new music gets by on just being new - for about two or three listens. And then it fades away. The best thing about these guys, the band Telescope, compared to others, is their sincerity. Lead singer Seth Holland drives crackling sincerity through every word and the musicians emphasize the erupting emotions.
The 10-track album, For The Rest Of Us — download it free for the moment — is packed with self-described power pop. Think Candlebox, or a hugely more meaningful, less cheesy, Hootie & The Blowfish. Or a talented, cringeless Jonas Brothers.
Overall, Telescope's music is lighter melodic rock rather than the heavy side of things. I'm not sure if they amp it all up live, but if they do, the songs have the strength for different interpretations.
Their most popular tune, "Stormy Weather," brings to mind the mid-90s band, Live. The song is a very mellow, bare-boned production that naturally brings the lyrics and what's being said into focus.
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August 12, 2008 at 4:56 pm · Filed under Music
Driving music to me has to be something catchy, sometihng that sounds good loud and, obviously in an enclosed space. It also has to be fast paced. You need to want to head bang or sing along or tap your fingers on dashboard, legs or steering wheel.
They also have to go well together; one song has to sound good leading into th enext. Sometimes this can just ruin things. It ca be a case of graduation, from one style of music into the next. Some - a lot, most - work well. Some just don’t.
Tears For Tears, No Doubt, Siouxsie And The Banshees, even most Fatboy Slim - none of it works for driving music.
I had all the above on the CD I’ve been recently listening to in the car and, though I didn’t at first, I started to fast forwarded over all of them. Out of 17 tracks that I put together, I ended up listening consistently to about five of them.
Until this year, I had been listening to a lot of sports talk and poli-talk radio, and hadn’t needed tunes, much. But the music will always catch you.
So last night, I shuffled and juggled and ripped CDs I own trying to find songs that would work together.
Megadeth, with its pounding guitars and drums is a sure winner, guaranteed along with old-school Metallica to make you discover you’ve accelerated 15 mph without noticing. A few Justin Timberlake songs - pretty much the four I can stand - are also surprisingly effective at making the journey cruise on by.
So for 0811008Drivemix I narrowed it down to the following:
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August 11, 2008 at 9:00 am · Filed under Quote
There IS a difference between exulting despair and despairing exultation.
“Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.”
- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Mont Cristo via Dirty_Snowfake, (via into) (via antoinetta)
August 10, 2008 at 2:49 pm · Filed under Photography
photo by Temple A. Stark
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August 10, 2008 at 2:24 pm · Filed under Photography
This is what faced me when I looked out my back window.
photo by Temple A. Stark
Before I could grab the camera and snap, the sign that was up on the wagon, that would have made it a better photo fell. It says, “Toxic Waste.”
It appeared there overnight. I got close enough to see the fallen sign also said “Stay Away, Stay Away.” It’s written on the back of a box for a half rack of Natural Ice.
And if it wasn’t for my new neighbors I wouldn’t have been very freaked out at all. And I would have gone up and fixed the sign and taken another picture.
But our new neighbors have new cars coming in and out frequently. Yesterday morning two women I hadn’t seen before came out and drove away in a car with an obviously very flat front tire.
And at some point I’ll call the police on them, I have no doubt. But I didn’t want to deal with it all today. A little while later, I saw the wagon moved up behind a car that had been parked there, nearer the neighbor.
There was also a big splash of white powder I noticed when I took the first picture.
photo by Temple A. Stark
August 10, 2008 at 11:16 am · Filed under Playing Cards
I collect playing cards, and that’s a big reason i did the test. My selections were … Hearts most chosen … … King of Hearts … Ace of Clubs … Queen of Diamonds … Ace of Spades
Only element of the following has any basis in possible current or future reality.
What Your Playing Cards Tell About Your Future
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Right now you are focused on your internal emotions, including a bit of pain and suffering.
Your emotions are currently tied to an influential man in your life. Someone who has the power to change your life for the better.
Your closest friends bring you high social status. You run with a popular, wealthy, attractive crowd.
The near future will bring an outgoing, flirtatious woman into your life. She will be alluring and fun - but ultimately dangerous.
Beware of some very bad news. This may mean the loss of someone close - or the loss of a close relationship.
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August 8, 2008 at 11:52 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
When the Olympics are held in the United States or Canada, or London or Australia, the overridsing feeling an observer gets is one of desperate, depressing commercialism.
I don’t know, there’s a certain too-rigid structure in China - but there’s so much history, tradition and they treat things seriously - other than the military. It gives the Olympics more heft in my eyes.
So at this moment on the USA Network I am being introduced to women’s fencing and it’s the sabre competition. I won’t go into the usual complaint that coverage is to USA-centric, but I do wish there was a much more rounded approach to coverage. After all, this is a gobal event.
I fenced in college for one elective. I loved it becauxe of my reach. The riposte and perry and lunge, words we all know and use - bu tnot in there correct context.
In the padded suits they all look larger than they are.
I want to watch the womnen’s sccer USa vs. Japan but I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall asleep befor eit starts r soon after. i oly had about 90 minute sof sleep last night.
I didn’t bother watching the Opening Ceremonies. It’s seriously boring, and its one occassion where still photos rule over video.
I’ll post more on sources n how to follow the Olympics that come from different countries, as well as the best of the best. ….
UPDATE - Groan - they just showed three American victories in a row - and nothing else in fencing. Now it’s to women’s air rifle. .. And what’s with all the women’s events up first?
UPDATE2 - Ah, I forgot. Watching on DISH Network there’s an enhanced interactive element to the coverage, including athlete bios, medal counts - eventually and video highlights and more. I don’t have a phone line attached so I miss a lot of enhancements that are offered through that.
The University of Alaska-Fairbanks has one of the best rifle programs in the USA? Who knew.The G,S,B medals are about to be awarded from this air rifle competition. They’re shooting at a target about half an inch across from 33 feet away. Awesome.
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