Author: elvis

Our job is to think critically and rationally

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God, this is what we all need to be saying every time someone says ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’. It makes me want to fucking scream; They win when we panic. The fucking win when we panic. Here’s a snippet from a great piece on Bruce Schneier – go read the whole thing, it’s worth it, but […]

God, this is what we all need to be saying every time someone says ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’. It makes me want to fucking scream; They win when we panic. The fucking win when we panic.

Here’s a snippet from a great piece on Bruce Schneier – go read the whole thing, it’s worth it, but here’s his key point.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn’t engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn’t write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn’t use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we’d reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It’s time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation — and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

It’s this line that most speaks to me; “Our job is to think critically and rationally“. And this isn’t just something that is true in this context; this is something we all need to learn how to do, all the fucking time.

As usual, props to Cory at BoingBoing for pointing this out.

It’s the shrinkage

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I started with a new therapist this week. I don’t know why I’m saying that, other than that it’s true, and that it’s the sort of thing I tend not to ever say in a public forum. for some reason it seems like a good idea, though, to simply say it. It’s not the first […]

I started with a new therapist this week.

I don’t know why I’m saying that, other than that it’s true, and that it’s the sort of thing I tend not to ever say in a public forum. for some reason it seems like a good idea, though, to simply say it.

It’s not the first time I’ve done this; I’ve tried a couple times, with varying degrees of success. So far, I guess, so good, I didn’t feel any immediate desire to take this latest head-shrinker out with an angel/24 style head-twist-neck-snap move, which is what happened the first try. Well, ok, I didn’t actually do that, but I sure thought happy thoughts about it. The second try, last year, was a bit better, though I think these things have a shelf-life and I stopped when the cons began to out-weight the pros.

But you know, sometimes the loose bolts in one’s head need to get screwed back on and tightened down.

I feel incredibly exposed talking about this. And odds are I’ll take this entry down in only minutes. But it just seems kind of important.

Tattoo Action Items from the Boss Man

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My boss, Jeff – well, my boss’s boss’s boss now, but nevermind – my boss just walked up to me and gave me an action item. “Get a backpiece,” he said. The backpiece. I tried to find this on wikipedia and couldn’t (I should go add a page for it). Best I could do was […]

My boss, Jeff – well, my boss’s boss’s boss now, but nevermind – my boss just walked up to me and gave me an action item.

“Get a backpiece,” he said.

The backpiece. I tried to find this on wikipedia and couldn’t (I should go add a page for it). Best I could do was a page at BMEZine. They state it simply enough as ‘a large format tattoo substantially covering the area of the back from the nape of the neck to the buttocks, typically of a unified design theme or concept.’

That’s not the whole story though. Because for those of us who are largely covered, or plan or hope to be largely covered, the back is the showpiece, the feature. It’s The Tattoo.

The body is a strange canvas. It’s curved and elastic, it ages, it changes. It moves. This makes it a difficult surface upon which to paint a masterpiece. It’s both what makes tattooing so alive, so beautiful, and what makes the tattooists’ job interesting and difficult.

How often – monthly, weekly, daily – are they confronted with a request for a tattoo that simply won’t work in the chosen spot? Tattoos that are too big, or are the wrong shape; things that will break up or distort due to the skin’s motion. Things that don’t line up with the bone structure or muscles. How often does a customer come in with a design for a band that may work on a football player’s heavily muscled arms but which won’t fit on a bony bicep; which may work on a giant Samoan calf but won’t fit on a slender runner’s tapered leg.

The body isn’t symmetrical; arms and legs are not cylindrical.

Thus the tattooed, and the tattooist, try to fit what is desired, envisioned, requested, onto a space that isn’t the same as the artist’s canvas, the computer screen, the sketch-pad. We must wrap the last supper so that Bartholomew is next to Simon; we must turn the Aztec calendar from a disk to a curve, like a swordsman’s shield. And as artists, tattooists must also be 3-D modelers, turning a flat-rendered design into something that wraps and winds and lives in three dimensions.

But there’s one place that isn’t so much like this.

The back.

Read more “Tattoo Action Items from the Boss Man”

Tremulous Antenna

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I just picked up another of those wonderful BBC live recordings. Though if you’re not a Be-Bop Deluxe fan, this won’t be that interesting. I’m a huge Fan – Be Bop Deluxe is just about my favorite band of all time; I think Bill Nelson’s a brilliant writer, a brilliant lyricist, and of course, a […]

I just picked up another of those wonderful BBC live recordings. Though if you’re not a Be-Bop Deluxe fan, this won’t be that interesting.

I’m a huge Fan – Be Bop Deluxe is just about my favorite band of all time; I think Bill Nelson’s a brilliant writer, a brilliant lyricist, and of course, a true guitar hero.

Of all the bands out there I wish I’d had a chance to see, they’re at the top of the stack, behind only possibly XTC. So these live recordings are like unwrapping forgotten xmas gifts.

Thus i give you Tremulous Antenna, a live recording from (I think) 1976.

It’s a stripped down version of BBD, without the heavy layer of production they often had in the studio; and unlike their classic Live in the Air Age, it covers most of BBD’s lifespan, with songs like Third Floor Heaven from Axe Victim, all the way up to Superenigmatix from Drastic Plastic.

It’s got some of Bill’s best guitar playing from the era, from when Bill was still willing to play guitar hero; it’s got a band where you can actually hear Charlie Tumahai’s bass playing, and better yet, his backing vocals, which never seemed to make it onto the studio albums.

There are some down sides; it’s a BBC studio recording so sometimes it’s sonically imperfect, and worse, Andrew Clark’s keyboards sound incredibly dated, a tweaky synth sound that was fresh and cool in ’76 but which sounds a bit like a toy keyboard today. Yet one has to remember the era and the limited options available to a keyboard guy who didn’t want to travel with a truckload of gear ala Rick Wakeman.

I’m a completist type, though, so for me this is a must-have (And yes, I know this is a re-release of a slightly older disc called ‘Radioland‘; this is re-mastered, sounds vastly better and has MUCH cooler packaging, so it’s the one to buy.)

And because I love you all, samples are here.

Oh my sweet Veronica

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Veronica Mars season two is getting released on DVD monday the 21st. At last. I was still watching season one when season two started and wasn’t able to catch up, so I’ve seen not an episode of it. On the other hand I’ve watched season one through at least twice, and some eps I’ve seen […]

Veronica Mars season two is getting released on DVD monday the 21st.

At last. I was still watching season one when season two started and wasn’t able to catch up, so I’ve seen not an episode of it. On the other hand I’ve watched season one through at least twice, and some eps I’ve seen three or four times.

At last. Season two. Come to daddy, Veronica!

Elvis was a Spy

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Today is the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, and I wish I could find the whole lyric to Elvis Was a Spy by the Frontier fuckin’ Wives, one of my favorite bands ever. Best I can do is to say here’s the song (this was broken when I uploaded it in aac/m4a, I just changed […]

Today is the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, and I wish I could find the whole lyric to Elvis Was a Spy by the Frontier fuckin’ Wives, one of my favorite bands ever.

Best I can do is to say here’s the song (this was broken when I uploaded it in aac/m4a, I just changed it to mp3 so it should play now).

Elvis was a spy
And he died on his bathroom floor with his pants at his ankles
Poisoned by the russians ’cause he took all thier girls
and left them at home with nuthin’

My pal Lex was in that band, and in the heyday of San Jose’s 80’s music scene, they were the band. The one everyone wanted to play with, hang with, be friends with. The tiny recorded output does them no justice, they were awesome, yet as with so many, missed the window, burning out just before the record companies looked to the bay area and found acts like green day, primus, smashmouth, etc.

I miss ’em.

Hello Bankruptcy!

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When you finally get ready to buy your hello kitty guitar, here’s how you’re gonna pay for it. Because you know, debt and bankruptcy are so adorable! (props to boingboing, i guess, though I’m a bit queasy from all the sugary-sweetness)

When you finally get ready to buy your hello kitty guitar, here’s how you’re gonna pay for it.

Card

Because you know, debt and bankruptcy are so adorable!

(props to boingboing, i guess, though I’m a bit queasy from all the sugary-sweetness)

24 gone horribly wrong

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I hate to use the phrase jump the shark. It was clever when someone coined it but it’s one of those things you hear all the damned time. People will say it every time a show has an off episode, or because they’ve decided it’s not cool to watch that show anymore, or because something […]

I hate to use the phrase jump the shark. It was clever when someone coined it but it’s one of those things you hear all the damned time. People will say it every time a show has an off episode, or because they’ve decided it’s not cool to watch that show anymore, or because something changed in the show. They seem to miss the concept that it’s not just a slight change; jump the shark means a show gone utterly, disastrously wrong.

Yet, that term applies to season three of 24.

First let me say – Jack is still fucking Jack. Jack is the man, and it doesn’t matter how bad the show gets, he’s still Jack. Jack Bauer wasn’t addicted to heroin, as they say; heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer (and I must give props to my sweet-as-sugar ChelseaGirl for getting me to watch this show; she gets every bit of the credit).

But after watching two spectacular, addicting, irresistible roller-coaster seasons of this show back to back (and almost without sleep, that’s how bad it is watching this show, you just can’t put it down), I hit a wall at season three.

I could go on and on with this – the list of things that went wrong is amazing. Every single episode had something that started my eyes rolling, and this is a show that generally makes little things like logical inconsistencies irrelevant.

But – my god. It starts right from the first episode; a pointless partner for Jack, his teenage daughter somehow become, not just a staff member at CTU, but a high-level computer expert. A baby out of nowhere. President Palmer, the two-legged Muphasa, suddenly a weak and indecisive leader. A love interest who turns up in one episode to die in the next. An entire sub-plot (mexican drug-lords) which boils up and then evaporates pointlessly long before mid-season. A killing that makes no sense whatsoever, just because it means we get to see jack suffer a little more. Tony, the guy who almost turns Jack in for breaking the rules in seasons one and two, suddenly become mister fuck-the-rules-it’s-my-wife in season three.

By the end of the second episode, it had become clear something was horribly wrong. When the baby showed up, it seemed it’d dug deep. And yet it slides, and slides, and slides, digging deeper into the ground with each episode, to the point where you think it can’t get worse and it does.

I went from the point where I could not wait for netflix and had to rent at my local blockbuster, to the point where I kept saying god, how can we still have three more disks to go before it’s over?

This, my friends; this is the shark. Watch as we jump over it.

And so I finished it, and I can say, it did get better, pulling out shards and slivers of the old 24 with the last two episodes, and finishing with possibly Jack’s most gut-wrenching moment ever.

And I fear. Can season four go lower? God, it can, can’t it?

There’s a bright spot; season five, which I watched in real time and which hooked me, is truly great teevee. I can’t say if it’s as good as thefirst two, or better. Yet it stands out as a brilliant season of teevee. So I know it’s not a loss after season three. Yet, I wish for season four to start with a bobby-ewing-in-the-shower. Please.

Warn me, someone. Is season four as bad? Dare I put it my netflix queue?

stolen moments and entries unfinished

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I keep figuring I’ll get some time, soon, to get progress on blog entries. And now, I’m starting to think that’s not true and i’ll never have anything to say ever again. I’ve got these entries started on movies, teevee shows (and why 24 went from best to worst between seasons two and three). On […]

I keep figuring I’ll get some time, soon, to get progress on blog entries.

And now, I’m starting to think that’s not true and i’ll never have anything to say ever again.

I’ve got these entries started on movies, teevee shows (and why 24 went from best to worst between seasons two and three). On books and the new rings I just got from the brilliant Julian Lamb that I need to review. On tattoos (wanted, gotten), on guitars and my desire to start taking lessons again (so that I will have an excuse to buy a new guitar).

Seems like I ain’t gonna get that time i keep thinking I’ll have, not in the near future. Today i managed to grab an hour sitting in a bar reading a greg rucka novel and and sipping a guiness, and it felt, for a little while there, like i was on vacation, just having time utterly to myself. All too soon though my phone rang and it was time to go pick up my daughter.

On the other hand, I’m making serious progress on a blog template i’m co-designing with another blogger, so it’s not like it’s all work and no play (because i’m geek enough to find that entertaining). So it’s not like my entire output of energy is being sucked down a black hole. Not every ounce of it, anyway.

Pleasure in the small things, I keep thinking, and eventually this gets better. I’m hoping.

Right?

Rock Star 6767

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If you’re as hooked on Rock Star as I am, you should follow Big Dave Navarro’s blog, 6767. He’s got some commentary going that’s dead on about the issues with this season (though i think he’s still holding back a bit, you can tell by his body language that he’s frustrated with things, i think […]

If you’re as hooked on Rock Star as I am, you should follow Big Dave Navarro’s blog, 6767. He’s got some commentary going that’s dead on about the issues with this season (though i think he’s still holding back a bit, you can tell by his body language that he’s frustrated with things, i think much more than he says).

I keep meaning to post a summary on this show, both what I’m likin’ and my frustrations, but as usual, I can’t seen to line up the time and the inspiration together, they’re on opposite ends of the wheel. It’s been like that now for a good couple months, time and inspiration chasing each other around the tree. If they get faster maybe they’ll turn into butter.