Archive: September 2003
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Sep 24 03: out to lake
Greetings all—Paul and I are with the Phillips clan in Craddock Manor, a rental cottage on the shores of Smith Lake, VA. (NB: the website doesn’t mention the spectacular decor. For instance, the sad-clown painting over the wet bar.) We’ll be back at the end of the week; I don’t intend to spend much time online so long as the weather is lovely and the water still. I may even go water-skiing…
Sep 20 03: wow
Switcher’s reason #251: Apple peripherals may not have an L-shaped enter key, but they’re much more stylish, and also way cheaper.
Updated: Okay, that was much funnier when the keyboard’s list price at Amazon was $1,000,000. Never mind.
Sep 18 03: tilt-a-whirl
Feeling angsty about the state of the world you live in? (Of course you are. Who isn’t?) Looking for a quick way to blur your blues away? There’s always the Mormon Spin High.
The MSH was the way the Mormon kids back in high school achieved altered states of consciousness. Well, except for those who opted for the more traditional methods available to high-schoolers; everybody knew that nobody Went Bad like a Mormon Gone Bad. Achieving the Mormon Spin High is simple:
- Stand directly under some kind of tall, high-contrast object located in a relatively obstacle-free area. A streetlamp at night in an empty parking lot is a good choice.
- Tilt your head all the way back and stare at the object.
- Twirl around and around as fast as you can for a minute or two. Keep your eyes on the object.
- Stop abruptly. At this point you will typically fall down.
- Feel your mind flung off into hitherto unreached parts of the psychescape by the inertia of the sudden halt. Eventually, it will come back.
- Repeat as desired.
Don’t have a streetlamp in an empty parking lot handy? Perhaps because there’s a hurricane destroying your city? Then try a virtual spin high instead. Yes, here are a couple of things guaranteed to make your head spin around so fast that an altered state is induced:
- The Rotating Snake Illusion, hosted by Akiyoshi’s illusion pages. I’ve seen this site referenced by various folks lately and wanted to be sure you saw it. That’s how nice I am.
- OBJECTIVE: Christian Ministries, on the other hand, will make your head spin in a whole ‘nother direction. I first stumbled upon this site some while back. Every now and then you find someone new who has just seen it for the first time, and the reaction is almost invariably the same: Is this for real? To which my answer is: No. I think.
It’s a pretty jaw-dropping site. I’m also fairly certain that it’s a hoax. It’s a vast, brilliant, stunningly detailed hoax—the tone is credible, and it goes on forever in a dozen directions—but a hoax nonetheless. It’s a hoax that somebody has put a lot of time into.
I think. I hope. I’m almost completely positive.
To be sure, the hoax-or-not question has spawned some considerable debate. And a testament to its genius is how very few people are ever willing to go past “I’m practically sure that this is not for real.” This guy, responding to O:CM’s howlingly funny article about how Apple Computer is basically Satan incarnate, is one of those rare absolutists. He’s pretty convincing. A number of people suspect that its sole purpose is to drum up publicity for Landover Baptist, which is most definitely a hoax. Pretty canny. I love that explanation.
Oh, and there’s also the thong. That’s kind of a kicker. And the Creation Science Fair! That bit is genius, and the one that often gets people’s attention in the first place. Oh, it’s fabulous.
Perhaps it says something about the Christian Right in America that the unwary, and even the semiwary and the mostlywary and the completelywary, find the site so hard to completely disbelieve. Or perhaps it says something about our opinions of the Christian Right in America, that we are unable to define the limits of what we believe ‘them’ capable of saying and doing and thinking. Perhaps both of those phenomena should tell us something. Regardless, Objective: is a great source of laughs, if you’re willing to negotiate the strange sick feeling that comes with it.
And isn’t the strange sick feeling what a good spin high is about?
(Thanks to Robert at Pure Land Mountain for reminding me that I had O:CM in my ‘for the blog’ folder. Don’t miss the youth ministry and the member bios on O:CM if you’re going to go poking around in there.)
Enjoy your evening, and spin safely.
Sep 15 03: wet people fun
So. What do you get when you cross about a million dollars’ worth of fireworks, a Chinese ‘explosions artist,’ the Central Park 150th Anniversary, four to six minutes’ elapsed time, and, um, a lot of soggy weather?
As it turns out: not much, unless you count a whole lot of soggy, vaguely underwhelmed New Yorkers.
I went with Sari and Jilly B (returned from her Hungarian exile at last) to see “Light Cycle,” a fireworks performance in the Park by Cai Guo-Qiang this evening. We were careful to check the hotline before we went, because the weather here in the City has been unfavorable for outdoor events of late. But the hotline said no no, everything’s going to go off as planned unless there are low clouds or heavy rain. At 6:00, the clouds weren’t so low, and the rain was sprinkly when it fell at all. So off we went. At 7:15, when we entered the park, things were really no different. The show was going to start at 7:45, so we figured we were in the clear. We made our way to the Sheep Meadow and plunked ourselves down on the grass. At 7:30, a few drops fell, but we had umbrellas, and we curled in beneath them, and the sound of the rain pattering on our little nylon shelters was kind of soothing. Several hundred cityfolk sat around and tried not to get too soggy as they waited to see a ‘thousand-foot wheel of flame and light’ appear. (Visions of the Eye of Sauron gazing balefully down upon Midtown danced in my head.) We tried hard to ignore the ceiling of dark clouds rapidly crashing down from on high. A single bat darted in and out of the trees.
At 7:43:30, the rain began to fall. Hard. Undaunted, the first volley of fireworks went off. Bright; brief. Loud. Not bad. And then a moment’s pause. The ‘luminous halos’ stage was next. For a single careless moment, a steady stream of water ran from a vane of my umbrella and straight down the back of my neck. It was cold. A flurry of the same small white rockets went off, pacing out a small circle above our heads.
Wait. Was that the halo? Was…no, wait…
The focus of the fireworks suddenly shifted to somewhere north of us. We could hear dozens of tiny, very expensive explosions thumping back at us from the surrounding apartment buildings. A stand of trees in the middle of the Sheep Meadow’s northern border obscured most of the sights from most of the people, so we were treated to the spectacle of several hundred people with umbrellas dashing to the Eastern side of the lawn, trying to see around it: a swift herd of tall black jellyfish, squishing gently as they passed. Actually, that part was pretty good.
A nondescript volley of white lights started up, and lingered over the Great Lawn for a long minute. Then the low rainclouds went dark again, and stayed dark. Most of the crowd started clogging the muddy gates to the Meadow. A surprising number remained, motionless, staring up above the treetops, waiting for something cool to happen. They held their video cameras at the ready. The rain puddled in their shoes. The park grew quiet.
Jill and Sari and I, meanwhile, went hunting for pizza. When we found it on Columbus Avenue, it was crisp and hot, and not soggy at all.
dead people fun
Via the lovely Lynne: After Life. Photography by Jonathan Clark of the four seasons, as seen (mostly) in Streatham Cemetery, London. The photos are lovely by themselves; many of them have been tweaked with subtle flash animations, some of which are moody or mysterious or atmospheric and some of which are kind of cheesy. When faced with the latter, just enjoy the photograph. Some kind of nice music, too.
Sep 13 03: shameful confession
Okay, I’m a hopeless geek. After reading today’s FoxTrot, my first reaction was to grab a writing implement and solve the word problem.
I just had to get that off my chest. Thank you for being there for me. Whoo, I feel so much better now.
Oh, and one orange costs 18 cents. (Highlight the text to read it.)
Sep 11 03: another 9/11 entry
It’s a beautiful day in NYC. It was going to be a beautiful day then, too.
Whoever you are, reading this: I wish you peace.
Sep 10 03: terminus est
The final NYC flash mob is tonight. As with the last two, I won’t be there. I’ll be at Juilliard instead, working on the Bernstein Kaddish Symphony. (Bringing to mind a t-shirt worn by members of the Smith College Glee Club some years back: “I Can’t. I Have Rehearsal.” But I digress.)
I’ll be sad to see them go. NYC can use all the good-natured public surrealism it can get. But the handwriting’s been on the wall for a while, as its New Thing publicity has waned: Cheesebikini?, former Nexus of All Mob Reportage, didn’t mention on the last NYC mob at all. Even the mob invitations themselves commented on a strange backlash: a disdain for the mobs—events which were designed to bring large quantities of strangers together—because, well, so many people were going to them.
So. Thus endeth another fun idea. Perhaps the mysterious “Bill” will revive the list someday (although he says it won’t happen anytime soon, if it does at all). Perhaps somebody else will begin a new list. But in the mean time, DaDa will need a new pair of shoes.
Sep 8 03: cutie du jour
There now. Isn’t she a reason to start your week with a smile?
Avery Elizabeth Drew, aged 4 months, who has in the past few days been introduced to the wonders of (more or less) solid food. Compare this image to that of May 4 if you need to further understand why I’m so over the moon about it.
Man, I gotta update the photo gallery.
Sep 7 03: news from abroad
If you don’t have enough to read already: three blogs of note, from various continents otherwhere than this:
Alejandro is back in Antarctica for another year. He used to swim with us. Woe unto any man who falls prey to Alejandro’s deadly Flirtation Rays. There is no defense.
Meanwhile, there’s an expat in rural Japan who has interesting and/or lovely things to report. A while back, he became a grandfather to an unexpected pair of twins—the birth was expected, but the double nature thereof was a surprise—and just the other day he built a stone wall. I can’t remember his name; furthermore, it appears that Blogger has temporarily crippled his publication, so you’ll have to find it out for yourself. I found him via Kathryn Cramer.
And then there’s Salam Pax, of course, but you probably heard about him already.
Sep 3 03: 31
Today is my sister’s birthday. She’s 31. I think she’s aces.
I spoke with her this morning. She was planning to take her daughter (Avery, now aged 4 months) for a walk later, if the rain let up. I still haven’t gotten entirely used to the idea of my little sister talking like a mommy—but she’s taken to the gig so naturally that I’m sure I’ll come ‘round. Besides, my niece is the coolest little dumpling on Long Island.
Happy birthday, B.
david?
Who is David? I’m not sure either, but I seem to be getting his naked-lady come-ons. At some point during the last couple of weeks, some enterprising jerk’s robot linked my personal email address with the name “David” and (I assume) sold the combination to net-based euglena far and wide. Tigertech kindly filters my incoming mail for spam, but I still get…oh, between two and five emails a day to the tune of “hey david, filthy virgins now” or “david, XXX movies…oh yeah.”
David, if you’re reading this, let me know and I’ll be happy to forward stuff to you as it comes in. Actually, no, I wouldn’t. Never mind.