Archive: March 2009
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Mar 27 09: Fixed(?)
If you’ve been having trouble leaving comments here over the past few days, try again; I think I fixed it. Of course, it always worked fine for me, and for at least a few others, so it hasn’t been easy to test for fixedness. Consider this an invitation — one even more blatant than the existence of the comment function — to speak up. (And if you get an error, can you shoot me an email and let me know? Thanks.)
Mar 19 09: Frak me. (Sir.)
Huh. How did I let this get permanently relegated to the “Drafts” queue? In honor of the Battlestar Galactica finale tomorrow night, for which Hugh and I are bouncing up and down like overcaffeinated eight-year-olds in anticipation, I give you this flashback to August of last year, which those unfamiliar with BSG may not get much out of:
Yeah, so I finally knuckled under and opened the shiny box of heroin labeled BSG, and now Hugh and I are obsessed. We’re somewhere in Season 2 at this point, burning through it as fast as Netflix will let us, and wow, it really is all that. Stress TV though it may be.
Anyway, that somehow led to my finally seeing the below, which in turn led to me trying to stifle the Snorty Laugh™ at my desk. It’s yours now. Yeah, it’s another mashup.1 Just click PLAY already.
1 See also this one, which is genius.
Mar 17 09: Tagged
Got my new Tom Bihn Smart Alec today, to replace my old one, which was mauled by a ferocious beast. Am quite pleased, although the redistribution of pen slots et cetera will take a day or two to get used to.
I initially learned about Bihn’s bags in 2004, when BoingBoing pointed out their care-instructions label. At the time, the last two lines of the label’s French text read:
We are sorry that our president is an idiot.
We didn’t vote for him.
(Much as I found the sentiments laudable, that only got me as far as the website; it’s the excellent laptops/backpacks/messenger bags that got me to make the buy. Highly recommended, honest.) Anyway, I checked the tag in the new pack. Reflecting the changing times, the new tag’s French text is merely a translation of the English care instructions. But at the bottom it says:
Siquid mantica non capit, domi relinquendum est.
Is there a classicist in the house?
Mar 10 09: The Sound of Water
A while back, I saw this most excellent ad for the Chevy Malibu. I mean, it didn’t make me want to buy a car, but it was conceptually fun, visually well-executed, and had this fabulous song going in the background. Maybe you saw it? It was the one with the baby and the robots and the pasage of time.
After a couple weeks of seeing it go by during MythBusters, I couldn’t get the tune out of my head. A little Googling and it turned out to be Oren Lavie’s song “Her Morning Elegance,” from his debut album, The Opposite Side of the Sea. And I found me an mp3 of it, and listened to it two or three times, and bought the disc.1
I like the album a lot. It’s dreamy and sweetly melancholy and pleasing to listen to, like the rain outside the window when you’re at home on the couch in sheepskin slippers and, I dunno, maybe Sense and Sensibility cued up on the teevee. Some of the songs are more successful than others: his lyrics are sometimes clever and sometimes a little too much so. The instrumental arrangements — and this is an album that relies heavily on strings and wind instruments and a real piano and a vibraphone, even — are really good. “Her Morning Elegance” is the undeniable gem of the disc, a fast 3/4 tune that makes you want to dance down the sidewalk on your way to work. Or it does me, at any rate.
And then a little while ago Mason-Dixon Knitting posted the video, and it’s superb. Here: enjoy.
1 Note to the RIAA: Oren Lavie made money off that unauthorized mp3, and so did you.
Mar 4 09: Fun With Cimicidae
And today, on Things You Didn’t Know You Should Be Freaked Out About: Bedbugs!
Oh, but I hear you say it: we are New Yorkers, and we already know about the whole Bedbug Thing. In the 20th century, bedbugs went from rather common to almost unheard of in much of the industrialized world. But over the last few years, a combination of increased international travel, the disuse of DDT, and increased resistance to the weaker insecticides used instead has led to their global resurgence. They hide in folds of fabric, they hide in suitcases (and the baggage-return conveyor belts at airports), they hide in the upholstery of the furniture you find on the sidewalk, and then they move into your house. Getting them out again is a massive undertaking. And then there’s the itching and the scratching and the welts and the oh my god they’re sucking my blood while I sleep and suddenly we’re all losing our minds. They’re running amok in Park Slope.1 We are already freaking out about bedbugs. Those of us who are prone to (a) worry, (b) hypochondria, or (c) itching are just about out of our heads.
Ah, but did you know this? They’re hiding in the crevices of the wooden benches on the subway platforms.
So don’t sit down, folks. And for god’s sake, stop scratching. You’re fine. Maybe.
(Thanks [I think] to Sari, for bringing this to my attention.)
1 The bugs, not the Brooklynites.
Mar 3 09: That New-Page Smell
Hey, look! He redesigned the blog! And the search function’s fixed, and stuff!
Was getting really really bored with the old look. (For one thing, I’ve embraced title case for blog heads once more. It’s the little things that bring us joy, you know? Sooner or later I’ll have to get around to bringing the old heads up to code.) Anyway, we’ll see if the freshly wiped-down tables are any inspiration to serve stuff up more reliably.