Anodyne
Sunday, July 31, 2011
 
Aw now, now you're just sellin' me a dog-hair blanket.
- posted by cjb @ 5:13 PM
Friday, July 29, 2011
 
The Last Concert Review You'll Ever Have to Read

"Every single person in the audience had cause to be disappointed about something or other. Becker and Fogelberg refused to play the correct imagined set list that each ticket buyer had spent their life savings to hear. They played too many, and yet, not enough of the old nostalgic hits. Casual fans spent the entire show running back and forth to the porti-potties to avoid hearing any music they hadn't heard thousands of times before, while hardcore fans were again deprived of hearing the obscure tracks the sadistic duo played just two nights ago at the Raytheon Pavillion in Podunk Hollow. As the crowd filed out, many dissatisfied concert goers were heard complaining about the sound, the venue, the weather, the tour routing plan, and the fact that Beckstein and Fagan are still alive and working after more than forty years in the music business. And if anyone knows why the band played the theme from 'Taxi Driver' at the end of the show, please clue me in."
- posted by cjb @ 9:00 AM
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
 

- posted by cjb @ 9:31 AM
Sunday, July 24, 2011
 
Dwarf Fortress, via the NYT.  PFB is my own version of this particular game, but if I didn't have the shop, or, as I've said before, if I was still 16 years old, Dwarf Fortress would be the best thing in the world.
- posted by cjb @ 6:27 PM
 
Drone Ethnography, via Bruce Sterling

"I have thirty-five browser tabs open, and each contains a fragment of the drone-mythos. Each is a glimpse at a situation, a bird’s eye view of the terrain. So many channels, showing me the same thing: near-infinite data collection. With the help of Google, I’m drone-spotting—I'm turning a new critical perspective that I'm calling Drone Ethnography, back on itself."
- posted by cjb @ 1:36 PM
 
"Coping with adversity brings opportunities."

Charlie Munger in Pasadena, 1 July 2011.  Lots of wisdom here.
- posted by cjb @ 9:34 AM
 

That 1500-page manifesto? Cribbed equally from the Player's Handbook and "Gamma World." All the 21st century Templar Knight seems to be missing is a 20-sided die. And by that I mean no disreprect to the dead; I'm talking about the paucity of imagination in that so-called call for political and cultural revolution, the inability to look forward, only back.
- posted by cjb @ 9:11 AM
Friday, July 22, 2011
 
Insert in my obituary, please:  "Yelling for society since 1970."
- posted by cjb @ 8:25 PM
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
 

Waste My Time, Please -- special bonus lunchtime edition, and the general tenor of the day

Our man's on his way back to work from the deli, with a coffee in one hand and a croissantwich in the other.  He passes the signboard of a neighboring business, which, seconds later, catches a pretty good gust of wind and topples over.

WOMAN LOCKING UP HER BIKE RIGHT BESIDE THE SIGN:  Hey!  HEY!

CJB:  Yes....?

WLUHBRBTS:  You dropped something!

CJB [checks hands, lunch change]:  No, I'm okay, thanks!

WLUHBRBTS [indicating signboard]:  I said you dropped something!

CJB:  I didn't "drop" anything.  But the wind might have.

WLUHBRBTS:  You could still pick it up!

CJB:  If my hands were free, sure.  Say, you're not holding anything.

WLUHBRBTS:  That's all right.  I'M DOING IT FOR YOU.

CJB:  Hey, thanks for minding my business.  You might want to tilt it a bit, so the wind doesn't get it again.

WLUHBRBTS:  ASSHOLE!

CJB:  Thanks for the feedback  You're a good citizen.
- posted by cjb @ 3:53 PM
Thursday, July 14, 2011
 

Spectral, 2011

"'Each person goes his or her own way. Already, we don't have superstars like Michael Jackson anymore, because people aren't "watching the same channel."' This means that there is an audience, albeit microscopic in some cases, for everything, no matter how obscure or specialized. . . ."
- posted by cjb @ 10:26 PM
Monday, July 11, 2011
 

Soundtrack for tooling around Whidbey Island, a.k.a. Ron Weasley fronting Death Cab for Cutie.  Disclaimer: I probably have a higher tolerance for this stuff than most of the readership.
- posted by cjb @ 9:25 PM
Saturday, July 09, 2011
 

A particularly inspired Walter Becker in Los Angeles, midway through Hey Nineteen:

"You know how hard it gets people. Now I could give you the same cornball rap about bringing your girlfriend down to the Steely Dan show etc, etc, etc. But this is Hollywood and you know in reality things are a lot weirder than that. A more than likely scenario would be you go on down to the disco and meet up with friend triple Z and a small exchange takes place and you bug on out of there and head back to the house in the hills with a package of some kind of newly minted psychedelic that is supposed to be the most incredible aphrodisiac since the beginning of time. In reality it’s a mixture of baking soda and other common ingredients. You don’t know that, so about 45 minutes after takeoff you and your beloved are lolling around on the shag rug looking out at the UFOs coming in for a landing pattern at LAX. Talking about parallel universes and you know you actually have a clitoris in your brain and why don’t we call your sister and stuff like that. Another guy is already heading up with another package of baking soda in case the party starts to sag a little bit. About this time you are getting that dry mouth thing and it could be from sucking on various body parts or it could just be the baking soda. So you go into the kitchen and look for some liquid…"
- posted by cjb @ 4:43 PM
Friday, July 08, 2011
 

Burquitlam Plaza

"The property is a 72,281 square foot neighbourhood strip shopping centre. The plaza is situated on a 7.98 acre (347,609 square foot) irregular site. There are 480 parking spaces at this property providing a ratio of 5.8 stalls per 1,000 square feet of rentable area. Building coverage is 23.7%. The property is also a proposed location for a BC Transit LRT station."

Psst, psst.
- posted by cjb @ 8:42 PM
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
 

- posted by cjb @ 8:37 PM
 

Columbia, 2011
Digitally altered c-print
Edition 2 + 1AP, edition 1/2 private collection, Vancouver, BC

The product of 45 minutes' patient waiting just north of Portland, Oregon, and the first of what might be several pictures derived from my reading of Lewis and Clark's journals.

That foreground water looks deceptively calm, but was repeatedly broken by huge 20+ pound fish jumping, which didn't bother the goose family in the slightest.  The debris-rings in the foreground are traces of the fish's presence; they point to other moments in the continuum of time the picture is a part of.  Photographs, even ostensibly "straight" ones, aren't mirrors.

Digital alterations: clouds (multiple exposures); bugs (removed); exposure.  In this case I think the alterations have aesthetic value, but only insofar as they improve the image's (mediated) transparency.

I didn't spot the picture's secret subject, Mr. Heron, while making it.  But there he is, just slightly above and to the right of that last goose.  OH HAI.
- posted by cjb @ 8:20 PM
 

Thuja plicata, 2011
- posted by cjb @ 6:52 PM
Monday, July 04, 2011
 

- posted by cjb @ 8:10 PM

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