Help Me Out Here

My neighbors want the restaurant next door to my house to abide by zoning restrictions that say it can only have so many seats and can only stay open until 6:30. The restaurant’s owner wants to extend the zoning to add more seats and stay open until 9:00. Several of my neighbors just don’t like the restaurant because they think it negatively affects property values and clogs up traffic on the street. Also, the dumpster is an issue. So they don’t want to give the place an inch. Personally I like the restaurant, and I think 6:30 would hinder them financially, plus I might actually want to eat there around 6:30. So far, patrons have been good about parking on the wider street of Woodlawn rather than the narrow Tyler that most of the neighbors live on, and I don’t smell anything from the dumpster.

My question to you is, do think having a restaurant in a residentially zoned neighborhood would affect property values negatively? Am I the only person that finds it charming and actually a plus? Would you be more or less likely to buy a house near a small restaurant? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

All you lurkers out there who don’t actually know me, chime in. I know you’re out there. Help a brother out.

Please Sir, May I Have Some More?

Hot on the heels of the batch of pictures from last week, here are some new pictures taken over my four-state jaunt last weekend.

Tara pointed out to me recently that I don’t tend to take pictures of people. She’s right[1], and I’m trying to figure out why that is. Lord knows I met some interesting characters last weekend. I guess I just don’t want to bother people to take their picture, and whatever peculiar joy I get from taking pictures rarely arises from posed, smiling[2] shots. I’m still trying to figure out what sparks the “ooh grab the camera” reaction in my head. Looking through my pictures, the one recurring theme is that my subjects either seem odd (weird signs), or one-time-only (cloud formations). Maybe I shouldn’t think about the impulse too much. I might lose it.

1.) Actually the only times I like to take pictures of people are when they’re not aware I’m doing it.
2.) Read: Fake

Tennessee State of Mind

The Superflux crew drove to Nashville last weekend to play a benefit for Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. This benefit was better planned and organized than previous ones we’ve played, but the fatal miscalculation this time was the assumption that, once the activities are over, people would stay for the band. There was a small car show, karate demonstrations, door prizes, and a kid going for a world record of kicks-per-hour (over 2,000). We were slated to go on after all the trophies had been handed out, as we were ostensibly the headliner. But the already small crowd only grew smaller, so we had very few people in the audience. We played a few songs and called it a night. An air of Spinal Tap hung about us.

Immediately afterward I drove to Huntsville, Alabama to attend Amy’s geek-a-thon birthday bash. It mostly consisted of heavy drinking, Eddie Izzard DVDs, and cartoons. It was great. Sunday morning we watched cartoons and ate pancakes. It was how life should be.

On the drive over I realized something. Given that migrating birds fly in a V formation because it cuts down on wind resistance, we can see Nature taking the path of least resistance, yet the outcome is organization. Most of the time the path of least resistance is synonymous with entropy, the tendency to disorganize. Can you think of any other examples of the path of least resistance creating structure rather than destroying it?

Wisdom

This thought just popped into my head:

The universe is mostly nothingness. That should make anything else a pleasant surprise.

Really, the fact that life exists at all should be reflected upon often. Unless your life is one of constant excruciating pain, then existence is preferable to nonexistence. If you expected more, then you watched too much television as a child.

Party Like It’s 29

That title will make more sense after you read Amy’s latest blog entry. Today is her birthday, and she’s having a vast geek-massing party this weekend at her fortified suburban compound in Huntsville, Abalammy. Conveniently, I’m playing in Nashville Saturday night, a mere 2 hours away. So naturally it would behoove me to attend, as my orbit so rarely takes me to such a perigee. I haven’t been out there since the infamous Sub-Appalachian Road Trip of 2001. Yay karma.

“10 Years, Man!”*

Once again, decade awareness sets in, as last weekend I went to Tara‘s 10 year high school reunion in Arkadelphia. I guess she just wanted some backup, so she invited me. Initially we thought we should go in there and make up stories about our lives, but Tara is a horrible liar so we abandoned that idea. It was interesting to watch such a gathering from a distance. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t at least use a fake Scottish accent for the evening.

The attire was “dressy casual,” the meaning of which Tara and I spent far too long debating. Pictures hopefuly soon. We were dressed just a bit better than most of the people there. Initially our plan was to head back to Little Rock after the event, but her mom pulled rank, so Tara stayed in Arkadelphia. I was hoping to have all of Sunday for us to play. We did get to have some brief fun Friday night; I made dinner and we looked at each other’s yearbooks and photo albums. We were supposed to go to the State Fair, but Tara missed her flight and didn’t get in until 10 or so.

Anyway, with nothing to do on Sunday I was a little mopey, so I called Heather and we went to see Domino. If Keira Knightly playing a gun-toting badass doesn’t lift a man’s spirits, I don’t know what will. This movie represents everything that is wrong with American culture, so naturally it was great. Someone in the film refers to a “ferret on crystal meth,” which is actually a pretty accurate description of the movie itself.

* Are you happy now, Josh?

Updates at Google Maps

Last time I checked Google Maps, they were pretty crusty over Europe, but now they’ve definitely improved. Although still without street maps or any kind of text references, the satellite photos of Paris and London are pretty neat. That London link shows St. Dunstan’s, the church featured on the last day of the UK Travelogue.

Something else to check out – the renovation of Battersea Power Station (sans roof). Pink Floyd might recognize it.

Also I realized I hadn’t checked out San Francisco. If you click that link, be aware that I walked from the upper right of your screen to the lower left. Sometimes I impress even myself.

Mathematics is a Hoax

This thought has been running around in my head for a few weeks: Mathematics is a hoax. It is a man-made construct, a product of wishful thinking on the part of humans who want to be able to measure and define things absoloutely. Certainly mathematics is useful for describing relationships between things, but I’ve noticed that the universe rarely deals with the sorts of perfect geometric forms and numerical certainty that we seem to assume exist. The universe seems defined by curvature rather than straight lines. In fact, I can’t think of any case where nature has produced a straight line, a square, a triangle, a cube. Spheres and ellipticals are the rule, not the exception. Pi is a defining constant, and its depths are infinite, and thus never truly absolute.

I’m not saying this as some grandiloquent denial of the discipline; it’s just one of those ideas in the night that makes me wonder. I also have an irrational distrust of protractors. I still have a hard time figuring out how one starting point can have multiple ending points without the resulting lines being the same line (neither intersecting nor being parallel) for at least a while. I think that’s where the uncertainty starts: curvature. The universe would make so much more sense if it were all straight lines and perfect ratios. I suspect many mathematicians think it is.

Ted Greene (1946-2005)

If there were any one person deserving the title of World’s Greatest Guitar Teacher, Ted Greene was the man. You’ve never heard of him (most guitar players haven’t, either), but any serious guitarist with an interest in chord theory has his own copy of Chord Chemistry, a book of spells that continues to delight and disturb novices and professionals alike. I’ve still really only absorbed the first 10 pages. It’s a cavernous tome of chords, and a standard issue field guide at places like Berklee College of Music. I got my copy from their bookstore at the recommendation of Dream Theater’s John Petrucci.

Try not to giggle at the cover:

Ted died last July, and I only found out yesterday. That gives you an idea of just how un-famous he was. He has very few recordings to his name, but he was one of the hardest working musicians and music teachers in the business. That he died in an apartment in Encino gives you an idea of how little money he made.