He himself has said it; and it's greatly to his credit.

Hello friends.

When, in the course of human events, a certain blog author gets himself written out, the winds of change, as they say, must blow. I simply don't have the gumption, wherewithal, the energy, to keep maintaining this blog at the whirlwind pace I've been doing so for the last ten months.

So, given all this, I have decided to resign, effective immediately.

There are all sorts of reasons, I suppose. Too much of my life that interests me is stuff I just can't post. The stuff I can post just doesn't interest me all that much. I could keep writing stuff about which songs I like, movies I've seen, but there are other outlets for this and, let's face it, those are the least interesting posts.

It may be the case that after a month or so away, I decide I want to get back into it. In which case, I will. It's possible that I just need some serious time away from this thing. So, if you're keenly interested, I urge you to check back periodically. I won't shut the thing down, or anything like that. But I will stop posting, at least as far into the future as I can see.

For your further blog needs, I suggest you take up this or this.

With that, I bid you farewell. I close with the following lines:

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
-P. G. Wodehouse

He smoked a big cigar and drove a Cadillac car.

There's this dude who parks in my parking spot all the time. Freaking pisses me off. All the time he's parked there. And it's not like he doesn't know it's my spot. It's not like he doesn't know that he's not supposed to park there, because most of the time, not all the time, as soon as I pull in, he comes out and moves it. But still, it's the principle of the thing. So today, when I got home, this jackass is parked not only in my parking space, but he's taking up my space AND THE SPACE NEXT TO MINE. Well, this was too much to take. I yelled at the guy a little bit. I felt a little bad, but then I thought: no. This guy's a jerk, and I just gave him what for. Serves him right. Next time I'm having his ass towed.

We had the first lecture today in the class I'm TAing. It sounds like it's going to be a reasonable amount of fun. I like teaching this class anyway; it's pretty easy and surprisingly rewarding, given that logic is essentially like math; you can see students' lights go on. And the students for this class generally appreciate you more than classes where they have to write papers. In those cases, they have a tendency to think they're doing great work. When you tell them they're crazy, they get pissed. Here, they know they don't have any idea what they're doing, and it's pretty easy to explain what went wrong. So the pressure's off, at least as far as the students are concerned. Also, doing section is fun, because any sentence can stand for 'P' and 'Q' - I generally like examples that have something to do with international intrigue or superheroes - Superman vs. Dr. X. (Although I don't think Dr. X is a real Superman villain; I think he's a fake Mr. Show Superman villain, but I like the moniker, anyway.) Section's also pretty easy generally. Usually students just want you to do examples on the board, for the most part.

Alright. That's it for tonight. Tomorrow, I'm going to give you the rundown on Nixon's Final Days.

Weekend Wrap-Up

Hey. This weekend was, well, interesting. Started out with a meet-and-greet with the new graduate students in the department. Turns out I was able to neither meet nor greet any of them, given that they seemed to be huddled around, talking to themselves or one other graduate student. Oh well. Who needs 'em?, I say. Immediately after that I hitched a ride out of town (well, not hitched so much as drove) and went up to Redlands, to hang out a bit with my dad. That was fun, but Saturday was a little bit exhausting given the scope of the tour of this little town my dad took me on. Had a pretty nice lunch, though. It's funny to see people come introduce themselves to my dad, given that he's something of a big shot in that town, now. Oh well. There were a lot of funny things going on.

After coming back home, I wandered for several hours around the Adams Avenue Street Fair yesterday, which was super-cool! It started with a delectible pancake breakfast and an hour or so spent wandering around all the booths. Man, there must have been fifteen hundred booths full of a lot of cheap crap, although some of the stuff was relatively interesting. It was strange: you had your standard street fair jewelry dealers, face-painters, t-shirt sellers, jamaican head shops, etc., but you also had booths for, like, mortgate companies and chiropractors. Like three booths offering a "Free Spinal Analysis!". Weird. For lunch I had a freshly made corn dog and some really interesting juice from a Mexical juice vendor; basically it was cantaloupe puree with some water in it. Very good.

Watched the season premiere of the West Wing, which was disappointing in the extreme, and then took in My Best Fiend. It's funny; I guess I was expecting something different from MBF; Kinski didn't come across as that crazy a lunatic. I mean, he was clearly a lunatic, but I wish there was more footage of Kinski and less footage of Herzog talking about Kinski. Herzog himself comes across as a bit of a loon, especially where he's talking to the camera during the filming of Fitzcaralldo, suggesting that nature was awful, that the jungle was a place only of disgust and murder. This is also a little ironic because Herzog himself describes at least three separate threats/plans to murder Klaus Kinski. Maybe he was spending a little bit too much time in nature, or something.

Just like you would to your girl or guy.

Signs that today is the First Day of School:

1. Traffic going to campus is at a complete standstill for about ten miles around La Jolla. Luckily, I got into the car early enough that I could listen to NPR rather than the crappy local San Diego show These Days, during which if I hear another use of the words "attorney", "pension", or "vibrant San Diego (BLANK) scene", I'm going to choke the person in the car next to me. (Who is within choking distance, given the absolute traffic standstill.) I mean, that show is bad. Yesterday they had something called the "Film Club of the Air", where two film critics got together to talk movies - they were constantly interrupting each other and neither of them seemed to have researched the movies they were talking about at all: "Oh, he played which character in that movie? Huh, I didn't notice..."

2. The City of San Diego starts construction on a bunch of streets around campus. This is a common problem around many college campuses in the US. It happened all the time when I was at Tufts. When the relationship between the school and the town is not at its best (as it is right now, given the fervent conservatism in many local political entities, and the belief that most colleges are havens of liberal academic elites), the school usually runs the show, given that most of the time it's an insitution of international reknown that lends some credibility to the city's existence. Anyway, one way that cities often stick it to the school is by starting a bunch of construction at inconvenient times (like the first day of school). Welcome back, jackasses.

3. The line at the coffee place stretches around the corner and is going nowhere. All these new freshman feel like they have to prepare themselves for the first day by purchasing half double-decaf half-caf mocha lattes with extra raspberry flavoring, gumming up the works for those of us who only want a stinkin' cup of coffee.

4. The new students are dazed, confused, and look like hell. I mean, I saw this one girl walking to class today in, I'm crappin' you negative, a pair of tweety-bird slippers. Slippers! I'm not one of those people that says you have to dress up for class. I'm not strict. I, often, don't really dress up for class, and I'm the one teaching it! But, I mean, slippers? Why slippers? Why not flip-flops, sandals, anything! It seems like to pick a pair of slippers rather than, say, flip-flops, means you're trying to set a personal precedent: "I don't care what you think, I'm going to come to class dressed however the hell I want. Pajamas, a bathing suit, a pair of velcro pants, whatever." And that pisses me off just a little.

5. Dale's pissed because last night he tried to go to 7-11 to redeem his "Free 1 Liter Dr. Pepper Product" cap, and was charged 19 cents. Well, that's not a sign that it's the beginning of school, per se, but it is a sign that society is headed toward a breakdown.

Best news I've heard all day.

This is some really good news for you burrito lovers out there.

More tomorrow. Sorry for the long delays. Getting back into the school mode, and such.

You know your culture from your trash.

Hey all. It's been a while, I know, but lest you think I've nothing left to say, think again. First, I had a hell of a good time in the Twin Cities. Normally, I'm given to calling that area just "Minneapolis", but since my kind and gracious hosts actually live in St. Paul (actually, a suburb of St. Paul named after a tree, somewhere between Maplewood and Woodbury), I've got to be more inclusive with my language.

I arrived last Sunday, Klaus had to take a shift at his place of employment, so I hung out with the Lady Klaus and Mugsy, heir to the house of Mayerling. Mugsy has developed into quite the mutterrer; he always seems like he has something to say, but just hasn't developed the neuronal structure to actually put them into English yet. But he's quite the happy kid. Which, I have to say, is a little contagious. Metaphorically speaking, of course. But he's actually literally contagious, given that I think he gave me some sort of cold while I was there. But that's largely beside the point. Anyway, the accommodations were exceptional. I had a working bed, massage table, personal sauna, full bar, and unfettered wireless internet access to the world outside. If you're ever in the Maplewood-Woodbury area, I highly recommend it.

Monday Klaus had to work again, so LK and MK and I watched Army of Darkness and, after Daddy got home, Bubba Ho-Tep. It was a Bruce Campbell marathon, done for a partly self-serving reason, because as a housewarming gift, I had gotten them his autobiography, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the Lady Klaus didn't know who BC was. Good times, I think, were had by all, but I'm not totally sure about that.

Tuesday I was thinking of getting a little work done, Klaus dropped me off on his way to a dentist appointment, and I tried to work a little bit on my dissertation, which wasn't all that successful. I spent most of the time at Panera Bread Company browsing through a Werner Herzog website. That night we watched Yojimbo, which was much better than I was anticipating.

The following day, we all hung out for awhile, we went downtown for lunch, and I happened to dine two tables down from my high school trombone-playing nemesis, John Trantor. Actually, he wasn't really my nemesis, as I'm sure he doesn't have any clue who I am. He was the "good player" when, as a young lad, I headed off to my first year of Midwestern Music Camp. I was thoroughly intimidated by him, as I should be. Apparently he's a professional now, which is a tough gig to get, I hear. Thank God I'm doing something where I could possibly make some money: philosophy. I didn't say anything to him, and the only reason I recognized him was the Lady Klaus's firm belief that we were sitting next to Hugh Laurie. Not so, but would that it would have been so.

That night we went to Minneapolis to have a few drinks with Christa. This was fun, and I proceeded to have waaaayyyy too many drinks. Normally my drinking is cut a little short by me opening my big mouth all the time, but as I really didn't have much to interject into the conversations between Klaus, the Lady Klaus, and Christa about people they used to work with, I spent a lot of time opening my mouth and pouring bourbon in it. We didn't get to go sing karaoke, like I desperately wanted to, but it was a good time anyway. For a more detailed version of events, visit Christa's site.

Hung out Thursday, stayed up late playing some video games, which were liberally interspersed throughout the week. Friday I went to a Twins game, my very first game at the Metrodome. Man, that place is loud. Loudest baseball game I've ever heard, and I've been to Fenway Park several times. Once when they were playing the Yankees! Anyway, it was fun, but the Twins lost in 10, which was disappointing to the Mayerlings. After a delicious breakfast the next day, sitting next to a fellow who looked a little bit too much like Klaus Kinski, I hopped a plane and arrived back in San Diego at 9:40 pm on the dot. Or somewhere roughly around the dot.

I took a few pictures, and I'll post some if I get them developed, and if they come out, and if I get them in an electronic format. All big 'if's'. I'm headed off to bed now, a little pissed off that some asshole in a Mitsubishi Montero Sport parked in my parking spot. If it's there in the morning, I'm havin' that sumbitch towed.

The Spanish and Indian Home of the Heroes and Villains.

I'm back, baby.

More tomorrow.

That ain't Lake Minnetonka.

I'm off to Minneapolis tomorrow at 4am. Sounds early. And it is. I'm going to go to bed pretty soon, in a feeble attempt to pre-empt the super-tiredness tomorrow. It won't work.

Here's something that's marginally interesting. Apparently, there's some company out there that developed a piece of software that tells you whether a song is going to be a hit or not. Don't know how it works, really, but the website has some psycho-babble/jargon on it. I wonder if there are materialists or dualists behind this website. My guess is the latter. Which makes me think the software doesn't work. But you never know.

I had a busy day today, laundry and the like. Started watching Le Cercle Rouge, but decided to get the aforementioned jump on sleep. Well, best get to it. My posts might be somewhat sparse in the coming week, but you'll deal. Somehow.

More Quick Hits.

Just one more.

Did anyone know that David Byrne has a blog? And if you read a little, it's incredibly insightful and interesting? Especially his post about Grizzly man.

Cool.

I've never seen this movie before, but you gotta hand it to the Criterion people. Awesome cover.



Sorry for the multiple short entries. I'll focus more tomorrow.

New iTunes.

Has anyone else downloaded the new version of iTunes? My reaction is, well......mixed.

Wha happened?

This is a little shameless, I know. But the dude is fat.

Great bolshy yarblockos to you!

Yesterday Math Rock drove down this a-way, and we went over to Lestat's for awhile. Again, that place is decent, but the clientele drove us out; a seriously disgusting dude parked right behind MR, and the stench was overpowering. After that we walked a few blocks to the Adams Avenue Bookstore, where he made a few purchases. I held out for Betty's, because I knew her trashy paperback section was far more swollen. Turns out I was able to pick up The Final Days for a scant $1.65 (plus tax). I think it might even be the first paperback edition. In addition, I found a copy of a Bill Moyers book with an interview with no less a personage than Patricia Smith Churchland! Most of it was a lot of only marginally interesting brain stuff, ("Moyers: Have you ever held a brain?") but there was an interesting tidbit in the back where Moyers and Churchland are waxing extemporaneously about the relationship between brain studies and ethical theory, and she says (I'm paraphrasing, but it's pretty close): "Learning how the brain works won't tell us which moral system we ought to live by." Which is, of course, true, but a dictum she appears to have given up in recent years.

After that, I did a fair bit of reading and finished watching Throne of Blood, the Kurosawa remake of MacBeth. Be quite honest with you, I think the fact that I know MacBeth so well took something away from that movie. I don't know. It certainly didn't have the power of Ran, in my view, but this might be just because I haven't read King Lear.

After that, I went to up La Jolla and watched A Clockwork Orange with MR and the neighbors. I don't really feel like I saw it, though; there was a fair amount of background play-by-play happening, which always puts me in kind of a bad mood while watching movies, but I guess A Clockwork Orange is not the kind of movie that it's really easy to get absorbed in the first time. It was definitely more disturbing to me now than when I was watching it in high school; maybe that's a sign of maturity. Or something.

Today started out well enough; slept until 9, went to get coffee, made myself some oatmeal for lunch. But it took a turn for the worse when I tried to return the movies to the post office for their speedy trip back to Netflix. Now, all I have to do is drop these things in an outgoing mailbox. Which we don't have in our apartment complex. And, apparently, of which none exist in a ten-block radius of my apartment. I mean, really. I didn't want to walk ALL THE WAY down to the post office, which is a reasonably time consuming hike, and I knew there were no other mailboxes in that direction, so I decided to go west, which was just as long a walk, if not longer, just to find a freakin' mail drop box! Where I come from, those things are popping out of the woodwork! My kingdom for a dropbox!

Finally I found one, and it was across the street from this cheesy antique store I like to browse in sometimes, equipped with a coffee cart. I looked around at some hiddeous antiques for awhile, and then decided to order an iced tea. Well, the iced tea took a little while to brew, so I sat around, looked at the newspaper (which I found very interesting, because even the arch-conservative San Diego Union-Tribune was posting an editorial that there had to be an independent investigation of the Katrina debacle), and then picked up my iced tea. A few blocks later, I realized that I hadn't paid for it, and apparently the server forgot as well, because I lingered a little while before I took off. So I drudged back, expecting showers of praise and thank-yous for walking all this way back to give me my two bucks which I completely forgot about, but, alas, I got nothin'. She even tried to overcharge me! The nerve, I tell you. I decide not to steal something, and nobody showers me with the praise I deserve. What's this world coming to?

Disturbing.

Again, I reiterate my commitment that this thing shan't be political, but I can't resist the following.

This is from a NYTimes story. "Pelosi" is Nancy Pelosi, House of Rep.

At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had ''absolutely no credentials.''

She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown.

''He said 'Why would I do that?''' Pelosi said.

'''I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'''

Wow. That's astonishing.

The Ontology of the Dive-Bomb.

Boston has a lot of dive-bombs. You know what I'm talking about. It's that sound that a guitarist makes by scraping his pick along the length of the three bottom strings. Sounds like a jet engine. Do it with the right pick, the right strings, slap a little 'verb on it, and you'll have the Londoners running for the basement. Most electric guitar players have occasion to do one of these things every once in awhile. But Boston is loaded with 'em. "Peace of Mind", especially.

Now, I had endeavored to count the number of dive-bombs in this song, thinking it would be, oh, six or seven. But I was immediately struck, while listening, with the classic ontological problem. How does one individuate a dive-bomb? Especially with stereo sound, counting dive-bombs becomes tricky: does a single pick-scraping count as a dive-bomb, even when it's just part of a multi-dive-bomb stereo attack? Or is that whole package to be counted as a single dive-bomb?

So, like all good metaphysicians, I decided to multiply the number of entities in order to make individuation easier. I call an entity a "dive-bomb" when it is a single pick scraping across a set of strings, or the aural equivalent (so this could be the same pick-scraping as occurred earlier in the song, but copied-and-pasted; two dive bombs, one pick scraping, one aural equivalent to the earlier pick-scraping). I call something a "dive-bomb event" when one or more dive-bombs are used to achieve one coherent effect in the course of a song, say, when two stereo dive-bombs are used to signal the shift from verse to chorus. In "Peace of Mind", it's unclear whether most of the dive-bomb events cover two or three dive-bombs. For the sake of being conservative, I'll assume two. (Although I think there's a decent aural case to be made that the dive-bomb events go "L-R-L" rather than just "L-R".) In "Peace of Mind" I count five dive-bomb events, comprising a total of nine individual dive-bombs. There is one dive-bomb event that has me a little puzzled. It occurs at 2:48, and there are what sound like dueling guitars playing the main melody in thirds. But after this line it sounds as though both of the guitars do a dive bomb, one into the right, one into the left, which would be a two dive-bomb dive-bomb event. Nevertheless, they're in unison - and it's one of the characteristic features of this record that one part often sounds as though, rather than being focused in the center channel, it's coming out of both the left and right channel at the same time. So, again, for the sake of conservatism, I've counted it as a one dive-bomb dive-bomb event, although that could be altered. Without those conservative guesses, the grand dive-bomb total would rise to 14.

Which is a shitload of dive-bombs.

Summer begins now.

Turned in grades today. Sweetness. Absolute sweetness. Had a perfect B- average in the class; no surprises. Good experience, all the way around.

Finally, my summer begins. I drank half a bottle of wine, watched a little "Antiques Roadshow" on my brand-new GE Television Antenna. I don't know if I'll have that much to write in the coming weeks, because I'm largely going to be sitting on my ass in my apartment doing nothing.

Smooth.

Comment Spam! YEEHAW!

Most of it is bullshit, but I was able to pick up yet another nutjob alert, although not as violent as this one.

We don't want freedom; we don't want justice.

The final yesterday went relaively smoothly, with the notable exception of a student asking me for an incomplete after he took the final. I mean, I mean, these students, man. They'll kiss every conceivable body part, they're willing to degrade and debase themselves, totally give up their dignity, self-respect, etc. It appears the only thing they're unwilling to do is go to office hours or study. I tell ya', kids these days.

After the final, I graded a few and then decided to treat myself to a novel at the local bookstore to tide me over until school starts, and I have to get back to being productive. So I went to the Bookstar, but nothing jumped out at me. I had no direction whatsoever. At various points, I had in my hand:
Ender's Game
Neuromancer
Bleak House
Hard Times
Brave New World
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a 'B' Movie Actor
Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way

I eventually decided on Deliverance by James Dickey, which is quite interesting, but a little wordy for my tastes. I like novelists to give me the straight dope, rather than dancing around the issue by shoving in a lot of atmosphere, and all that. After I bought the novel, I headed off to karaoke night at the bowling alley with Math Rock and a few of the Turtle's neighbors. It was fun. MR did splendid renditions of "Just What I Needed" and "Sweet Caroline", and I brought the house down with "Proud Mary" and "Purple Rain". I had "Killer Queen" queued up, but we left before it came back around. Man, that place is crowded on Saturday nights. Oh, and by the way, does anyone else notice the huge variability in the quality of karaoke backing tracks? My track for "Proud Mary" was a total embarassment! I didn't even have the intro part where Tina Turner talks over the music: "We're gonna do it nice...and rough..." The horn parts, if you can call them that, were early MIDI at best, and the backing vocals were all female, without the characteristic Ike Turner bass. Also, the lyrics were screwed up. Rather than "pumped a lot of 'tane down in New Orleans" (you know, like "octane", i.e., gas), it said "pumped a lot of pane down in New Orleans." What the hell does that mean?

I'm grading now, which is going ok. I had a scare: I couldn't find a student's final, which would have been an unmitigated disaster, but it turns out it was just misplaced. Whew. Big wheel keep on turnin'.

Dynamite with a laser beam.

Boy did today not work out like I was planning. I was going to get up, burn through a bunch of papers, then enter productivity mode and shorten a couple of papers to submission-to-conference length. I did none of those things. First, I woke up in a very crappy mood. I just couldn't get going. Not even the coffee and spicy jalapeno bagel worked (although the bagel was quite good, I have to say). When I eventually got around to grading (after much hemming and hawing), it was something like 11am already. Ugh. So then, after I had graded three of the ten papers I had to do today, I decided that I would go to a coffee shop, somewhere in Kensington, partly because I like the neighborhood, partly because I haven't yet really explored it (it's about 3/4ths of a mile from my place). Anyway, I got a black cherry soda from a coffee shop, and graded three more papers. Then I looked around in this used Cookbook book store, which was quite entertaining, and this used music store (which was, I have to say, rather disappointing). I also explored the Kensington Video Store, which I hadn't yet done (partly because of my trusty friend Netflix, partly because the KVS has virtually everything on VHS). But I did find a few interesting things. One was a piece of French erotica based on the novel Justine by the Marquis de Sade. Now, this wouldn't be particularly notable, were it not for the cast. Justine's father was played by none other than Jack Palance and, get this, starring as the Marquis de Sade was Klaus Kinski! Hah! Talk about perfect casting. I also saw a short film called "Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe", which is, apparently, really Werner Herzog really eating his own shoe. (It was some sort of bet, I guess.)

After that, I finally got around to eating lunch, and I headed back to my place to try to grade the remaining papers, which I failed to do because I'm convinced that one of the papers is plagiarized. Perhaps I should survey. Not all of the paper is taken, in fact, the vast minority. Nevertheless, there are key passages that are lifted right out of a) Peter Singer's "All Animals are Equal", and b) the Stanford Encyclopedia article on animal treatment. Now, if there were just a citation, I would have thought it totally proper, but there's no citation. Ugh. I'm thinking of just penalizing on the grade.

That put me in a crappy enough mood to forget about grading altogether. I'm going to finish up tomorrow. Anyway, after that I recorded a couple of guitar tracks for a new tune. While doing that, I became convinced that, though I will probably fail miserably, my next karaoke attempt is going to be "Killer Queen". Perhaps tomorrow, at the bowling alley. I'm going drinking at Lancer's later tonight. You up for it? Seeya there.

You know those guitars that are, like, double guitars?

I celebrated pay day a little early this month. Instead of dutifully waiting until the first, I went whole-hog into the "last day of lecture" celebration (31st) by having a tasty dinner at Chipotle with Math Rock and the Turtle, and then skipped over to Tower Records where I purchased "True Stories" by the Talking Heads, and "Boston" by Boston. The first album is notable not only for its musical content, but also for its sociological import: it contains the song "Radio Head", which apparently is the source of Radiohead's name. Now, this song is really cool, and interesting for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it is the polar opposite of the song you would expect Radiohead to be the namesake of. I mean, think about what the song that Radiohead, Radiohead, for god's sake, might have named themselves after must sound like. This song sounds nothing like that.

Boston, of course, is that majestic statement of corporate rock. Quite tasty, all the way through. I'm most impressed, I think, by the vocal harmonies. No hint whatsoever of wavering intonation even for a second. I mean, this guy has either got to be the greatest singer ever, or was produced by someone who definitely knew what the hell he was doing. Or both. But more likely the latter. I mean, he's singing in 5ths almost all the way through! You've got to be right on to manage that one. 3rds can be fudged a little, 5ths are seriously hard. My favorite moment on the record is at 2:28 in "Peace of Mind" when the double guitar line comes back in after the dueling solos. Sweet.

We went back to the Turtle's place and I bored everyone trying to claim that the best music ever written for a video game is the music from Castlevania level 3. That's seriously some good stuff. Check it out here. It's in a bunch of crappy MIDI files, but you get the gist.

After that, I had a few drinks and a gaggle of us watched "Here Come the ABCs" by They Might Be Giants which, I have to say, is to be avoided unless you can't stand going another second without digesting every possible thing that They Might Be Giants has done, or if you're three years old. And as I don't really fall into either of those categories, well, it was a little lost on me. It's nice for the kids.

Worth 1000.

Doesn't that just say it all?