Month: April 2007

Imus Nonsense

My Pittsburgher bowl cut sister from another mother posted this breath of fresh, fiery air regarding the Don Imus teapot tempest that I have to pass it along. It is a column by Kansas City Star writer Jason Whitlock, and this provides a nice summary of his rant:

“I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.”

Mottos and Axioms

In the last several years I’ve been fond of saying, “expect the worst and everything becomes a pleasant surprise.” Today I was watching a German documentary on Frank Zappa which quoted Frank saying:

Don’t expect friends, don’t expect fun, don’t expect the good life, don’t expect anything. And then if you get something it’s a bonus.”

Is that cynical? I don’t generally think of myself as a cynic. Maybe I’m more of a realistic optimist. I believe the world is terrible, has always been terrible, but it’s slowly getting better in tiny, imperceptible increments. There have been fewer wars than ever before, less famine, more peace, slavery is at an all-time low, and for the most part we’ve stopped sacrificing virgins to appease the rain gods. If these things don’t particularly impress you, then you expect way too much from your fellow well-dressed primates. Perhaps you’ve watched too many movies and TV shows or you were mislead by your culture into thinking that everything is completely spiffy.

Don’t Microwave Lettuce

I got a sandwich from Quizno’s and it seemed strangely cold, as though the toasting process had been completely skipped. So I decided to microwave it for a few seconds just to give it some heat. This was something of a mistake, as lettuce does not respond well to microwaving. It gets limp and chewy. Bleah. I share this with you in hopes that you might avoid my fate.

In other news, I’ve discovered that I may have to re-watch all the movies in my collection, as my new Surround Sound system and widescreen TV make watching movies a completely new experience. I’m seeing new things in the background, seeing more details up close, and hearing more layers of dialogue. I watched Almost Famous last night (technically, Untitled, The Bootleg Cut) and found so much more in the film. My favorite piece of newly discovered dialogue was towards the ends where Jason Lee says “I sound like a dick!” and Mark Kozelek mutters “you are a dick.”

And speaking of the buyer’s market on eBay a couple posts back, I found an original theatrical poster for Kicking and Screaming for just $10.

Typography and Punctuation

I’m really enjoying reading about the histories of punctuation and typography, like the ampersand:

“Ampersand” is short for “and per se and.” I did not know this.

A fun thought is the fact that, without all these little trifling thingys like # and &, we wouldn’t have the Internet or computer programming languages. Because all programming is built on the characters that won’t get compiled as letters. The little scrappy losers of written language, the guys whose names no one remembers (“honey what’s the thingy on the phone dial – is that the asterix[1] or is the hash sign?”) are the guys who built the technology revolution. They’re the Bad News Bears of Language, the Little Engines That Could of Semiotics, the nerds and outcasts who changed the world…much like their programmers.

1.) The use of the word “asterix” or any other erroneous variants of “asterisk” is almost as maddening to me as the use of “expresso.” Or “right justified” when people mean “aligned to the right”.

Thoughts on Garage Sales

I have a lot of stuff. It’s dangerous enough being the kind of person who hangs on to random items because of an emotional attachment, but I’m also the sort of person who constantly wonders about what an item’s future value might be. Consequently I have a lot of baseball cards, toys, comic books and obscure CDs.

In a post-eBay world, what really becomes collectible and valuable anymore? It seems to me that, since the mid-80’s at least, Americans are more keenly aware than ever that the little things with which we decorate our world will have monetary value to others in the future. For example, the baseball card industry exploded in the late 1980’s as more people started to discover that big money was being paid for cards from the 50’s and 60’s – but the thing that made those cards valuable was their scarcity, and they were scarce because few people thought they were worth saving. These days, however, fewer people are throwing anything out. So what’s rare anymore? What toy, card, or comic could ever become the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card?

The temptation to keep an item simply because it might be worth something to someone else is a maddening game. I have rare CD singles by completely obscure acts…maybe there’s an obsessive fan out there somewhere who’d pay money for it?

Fortunately, eBay helps connect me with that potential obsessive fan, but what eBay giveth, it also taketh away, as there is now such a glut of stuff in their database that everything tends to get devalued. Back in the day, I could have sold a Mark Grace rookie card at a local shop for a price based on my buyer’s demand (a buyer could only travel so far and visit so many shops) but with eBay, there are dozens of Mark Grace rookie cards to choose from, so the price drops. Ebay doesn’t increase a supply, but it does facilitate a greater degree of supply fluidity. Add to that a public giving increasing scrutiny to every little potentially collectible knickknack, and you’ve got a recipe for a buyer’s market. Good luck profiting from your massive stash of stuff when it turns out everyone else stashed theirs, too.

Free Music – Jamie Myerson

My hero Jamie Myerson (ambient drum n’ bass producer/ singer-songwriter) is giving away several of his albums for free. I’m not sure what prompted this; maybe I’m on to something with this New Economy business. Maybe in the future, musicians will be able to make profit secondary to their personal satisfaction. Recording costs will drop and distribution will become free and easy. Maybe gigs and merch will become the primary income source for musicians.

Anyway, here’s the link to all the free Jamie Myerson music. Here are some highlights:

Sky City – Ambient drum n’ bass/electronica
Merge and JM Jamie Myerson – Songs w/ vocals a la Depeche Mode
Remixes – Check out David Poe’s “Apartment”
Covers – Great acoustic stuff

Jamie is sickeningly talented and everything he does is gorgeous. Not many people can go from being an electronic music producer to singer-songwriter.