Thursday, December 08, 2005

Why fluffy isn’t fido

The Miracle of Science

The Dog Genome Project is powering ahead, hoping to divine the secrets contained within doggie DNA.  This is actually pretty interesting - dogs are unique critters in so many ways, because of their thousands of years of alliance with us, and because of the effects of selective breeding over most of that period.  No animal has the range of variation that dogs do - from chihuahuas to St. Bernards, from short haired dobs to long-haired afghans.  And not just physical variation - the difference in temperaments found in German Shepherds, Terriers and Retrievers is striking to say the least.

Researchers have catalogued the genome of Tasha, a boxer, and are publishing the results in Nature.  Earlier victims include Genome Project scientist Craig Venter’s pet shadow, as well as eight other breeds and samples from a gray wolf and a coyote.

As a result [of the large differences between breeds], some breeds are predisposed to conditions such as heart disease, cancer, or blindness, and identifying genes responsible for diseases or traits should be much easier to do in dogs than man.

The sequence of 2.4 billion DNA “letters” records the genetic recipe, or genome, of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris), which consists of 19,300 genes - roughly the same number as that found in people. The team also sampled the genetic recipes of 10 dog breeds, the grey wolf and the coyote, pinpointing 2.5 million differences in a single “letter” of genetic code, which serve as signposts to physical and behavioural traits, as well as diseases.

...By tracking evolution’s genetic footprints through the dog, human and mouse genomes, the scientists found that humans share more ancestral DNA with dogs than with mice, confirming that dog genes can be used to understand human disease. They also found that selective breeding has shuffled large blocks of DNA code among dog breeds, which should make it easier to find the genes responsible for body size, behaviour and disease.

Soon, we should be able to purchase glow in the dark accessory poodles for nitwitted bimbo celebrities.  But more important, with the knowledge gained we may be able to design superior fighting dogs to help us in the coming war with the giant fighting robots.  We can count on the allegiance of the canines - they’ve stuck with us this long.  The cats, though - I’m not so sure about them.  They’ll probably be the first to welcome our new robot overlords, so long as they can eat the scraps after the robots destroy us.


Posted by Buckethead on 12/08/05 at 07:20 PM
The Miracle of Science • Permalink

Sevens

Just So You Know

Johno didn’t tag me, the bastard, but its been eating away at my brain and so here is my sevens thing, for your edification and (hopefully) amusement:

Seven things to do before I die:

1. Found and operate a bookstore/bar named the “First Federal Bar, Grill and Seminar.
2. Get a novel or non-fiction book published.
3. Jump out of an airplane.
4. Become curmudgeonly.
5. Become the all-being, master of time, space and dimension.
6. Then go to Europe.
7. Walk on the moon.

Seven things I cannot do:

1. Play basketball.
2. Bake Bread.
3. Focus.
4. Remember what I’m supposed to do without a list.
5. Fly.
6. Paint.
7. Sing.

Seven things that attract me to my best friend:

1. I am not so judgmental that I would put one friend above another.
2. 
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Seven things I say most often:

1. “Just a minute!”
2. “What?”
3. “That’s weird” (this is only at work)
4. “No.” (to son)
5. “No.” (to wife)
6. “No!” (to dog)
7. “So this one time, at band camp…”
Seven books (or series) I love:

1. The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkein
2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (and part of Time Enough for Love) by R. Heinlein
3. Good Omens by N. Gaiman and T. Pratchett
4. Dune, by F. Herbert
5. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
6. The Stars My Destination, by A. Bester
7. Leaves of Grass, by W. Whitman

Seven movies I watch over and over again:

1. Incredibles
2. Monsters, Inc.
3. Iron Giant
4. Finding Nemo
5. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
6. Nightmare Before Christmas
7. Some stupid Thomas the Train Engine Movie

Seven movies I would watch over and over again, if my son wasn’t watching one of the movies listed above:

8.  The Blues Brothers
9.  Tombstone
10. Animal House
11. Galaxy Quest
12. Blade Runner
13. Fifth Element
14. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead


Posted by Buckethead on 12/08/05 at 06:45 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Evidence of sanity in the Democratic Party

Partisan PoliticsWar

Go read Joe Lieberman’s oped in the Wall Street Journal.  It’s a good read.  Pulling out of Iraq now - or even declaring a hard timetable for withdrawal - would be stupidity of the worst kind.  Those who argue for it constantly proclaim that Iraq is a quagmire, a Vietnam.  While simultaneously doing anything in their power to ensure that it does.  Remarks like those from DNC Chair Howlin’ Mad Dean the other day, saying that there’s no way we can win - this on the eve of important elections in Iraq - are, if not treason, colossally defeatist and wrongheaded.

While I was for the libervasion of Iraq from time immemorial, not everyone agreed.  That’s fine.  Even if, like Johno, you are a little iffy on the reasons we went into Iraq, and unsure whether it’s all worth it; the only sane way to look at it is that we are there now, and must craft a policy that maximizes our chances of success.  As Johno said, “You break it, you bought it.” Immediate pullout is the farthest from that ideal as I can imagine.  Especially considering that we are closer to success now than at any point since 2003.  Withdrawing our troops, and allowing the collapse of the provisional government would sacrifice any credibility we have in international affairs.  America’s ability to accomplish anything significant, let alone worthwhile, would be gone for the forseeable future.  Of course, if that is your goal, then a lot of this posturing makes sense.


Posted by Buckethead on 12/08/05 at 06:00 PM
Partisan Politics • War • Permalink

Architectural Excrescences

Perfidy Attacks

I was walking over to the post office on 14th street, and my eye was caught by this ridiculous building. 

stupid

Whatever possessed the architect to include one (1) column, and that at the very top of the building?  Hey!  It’s classical!  Of course, he got the proportions of the column wrong.  And it’s stupid.  Neoclassical design can result in some impressive, and beautiful buildings.  This is just neostalinist pancake architecture lite.  Crap.


Posted by Buckethead on 12/08/05 at 05:55 PM
Perfidy Attacks • Permalink

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

ProNaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo

Now that the National Novel Writing Month is over, by more than a week, I propose the Procrastinator’s National Novel Writing Month, which shall last until further notice.  Now that that administrivia is out of the way, on to the status of my novel.  Before the end of November, I had actually finished an additional five thousand words beyond the 4300 or so I had already posted.  As the deadline approached, and dark forces beyond my control converged upon me, I realized that I had made a great mistake.  Several, actually. 

First, I picked as my topic something that required altogether too much thought.  The storyline involves several things that I have been thinking about for a long time, and therefore wanted to get exactly right – details of space combat, to be sure; but also issues revolving around the singularity, artificial intelligence and the nature of first contact.  Getting things exactly right does not interact well with wanting to get it done in thirty days.

Second, I started an impossible recursive exercise wherein the things I wrote in the five thousand words I didn’t post required changes in the four thousand I did, and vice versa, ad infinitum.  I have largely resolved those issues now, but now is December.

Third, I picked the wrong month to write a novel in.  A variety of outside influences militated strongly against any possibility of finishing the novel in the agreed framework.  Work, vacations, and finally solo child rearing while my wife was in Kansas are all killer when you’re trying to write.

Fourth, I procrastinated.  Not as much as you’d think, but I didn’t make terribly efficient use of what time I did have.

Now that I have resolved most of my philosophical difficulties, and now that many of the other impediments have at least lessened, I plan to start posting the rest of what I’ve written, and move on to finish the story.  I plan on getting the up over ten thousand words posted within a week or so, and somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand words a week thereafter until the damn thing is done.

As for the fate of baby, I’m not altogether sure what will happen in the end, but at least I know how it will happen. 

Thanks all for your patience, and the kind words you’ve already given. 

Before I start though, I’m gonna go read Ian’s forklift racing story.


Posted by Buckethead on 12/07/05 at 08:08 PM
NaNoWriMo • Permalink

One more thing for disaster junkies to obsess about

Just So You KnowWar

Like myself, of course.

A nuclear device detonated at an altitude of a couple hundred miles over the middle of the United States would essentially drop us back into the pre-industrial age.  EMP, or electro-magnetic pulse, is a well known effect of high altitude nuclear explosions.  The result is that electrical and electronic equipment gets fried.  Without electronic and electrical equipment, we have… nothing.  Given that over the last fifty years, every article of technology we have has become deeply intertwined with electronics, removing all that juicy, productivity and life enhancing stuff leaves us with what we had in, say, 1800.  In 1945, we would have been much safer from EMP, given that most of our industrial infrastructure was mechanical, and not so vulnerable.  Now, only the most heavily shielded electronics would survive.  The effect will hit even deeply buried electronics, and having something turned off is no protection either, since the pulse naturally effects the wiring - the fact that there is power in it or not is irrelevant.

All ill-intentioned non-denominational agrarian reformers need to commit this perfidy on the peace loving folk of our nation is:

  • A nuclear device, available at special terms from the worker’s paradise of North Korea,
  • A medium range ballistic missile, such as a Scud, of which there are thousands throughout the world,
  • A moderately large freighter, to get within a hundred miles or so of the American Coast, and provide a stable launch platform, and
  • The aformentioned ill intentions

An attack of this nature could conceivably cause vastly greater casualties than exploding the same device in, say, downtown Manhattan.  While the immediate casualties resulting from an EMP blast might be as low as zero, the after-effects would be horrific in the extreme as all of our distribution, communication and power systems are knocked completely out.  Imagine New Orleans after Katrina, nationwide.  The worst thing about New Orleans was the fact that thanks to its geographical isolation, it was difficult to get aid into the city effectively.  When everyone is out, things could get very bad.

The loss of food distribution, in particular, would be the most dire possibility.  With vehicles no longer working, food stays in warehouses.  And no major city is more than three days from starvation, thanks to the large scale implementation of highly efficient, but fragile just-in-time inventory schemes.  Everyone is without power, and the capacities of work crews to fix things would be swiftly overwhelmed.  So you have Katrina combined with the great blackout.

One thing that would still work though, is guns.  Make of that what you will.


Posted by Buckethead on 12/07/05 at 07:25 PM
Just So You Know • War • Permalink

Hatefulness

Holy Shit!

As has become a holiday tradition since the arrival of my son, my wife and I are eagerly planning for maximally efficient use of the time that we will be able to foist our beloved offspring off on relatives and go do something by ourselves.  This time is especially precious, since it involves free day care.  When you have paid babysitters, you don’t really relax, and you certainly can’t take your time.  A better situation is using friends as babysitters - more confidence in the outcome and a much lower cost.  Of course, you can’t dip into that well too often, or it will go dry.  And even then, you don’t dawdle much while out and about.

Leaving the spawn with grandma, however, is ideal.  Grandma would likely kill for the opportunity to spend time with her only grandchild.  Grandma is upset when we take the boy back.  So time constraints are no concern.  And grandma probably takes better - or at least more attentive - care of the boy than we do.  For these reasons, holidays are special.

Mrs. Buckethead and I both love movies.  And not just the part where reflected photons representing ordered patterns of information enter our brains through the mediation of our retinas.  That, we can experience in the comfort of our living room.  We love going to the movies.  We love the big screen, and the speakers set to eleven (twelve during the previews), and the black juju beans stuck to our feet, and the tacky feel of the floor thanks to geological layers of spilled sody-pop and rancid popcorn butter, and the shriveled up hot dogs, stale nachos, flat fountain drinks and highly ergonomic yet mysteriously uncomfortable seating.  We love old theaters with ratty curtains and antediluvian movie posters, and we love the new ones with stadium seating and torus screens.  We love watching previews, and the wonderful sense of possibility and wonder that only one in a thousand movies ever deliver.

Therefore, every holiday we drive out to Ohio, spend some time with the family, inhale some turkey, and bolt for the nearest cinema.

So there I was, trolling the internet, reading movie reviews and contemplating the ideal mix of movies to take in.  Kong is certainly at the top of the list.  We will probably have the opportunity to see one, and possibly two, additional movies.  Which to choose?  Narnia has been on the radar screen for quite a while now, and so I was checking out what people thought of it.  Generally positive, I found.  Most reviewers felt that the director did an admirable job of representing the Christian themes of the book without descending into preachiness.

Then I ran across this.  A review in the (surprise!) UK Guardian entitled, “Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion.” I can see that those who are not religious, or at least not Christian, would not be ‘for’ the Christian allegory that is central to the novel, and therefore the movie.  Well enough.  Christian themes abound in many great works of literature, and most people who aren’t disposed by faith toward those themes learn to get along, just as Christian readers by and large learn to cope with the non-Christian themes that can be found damn near everywhere else.

But this is a rather strong reaction:

Narnia is a strange blend of magic, myth and Christianity, some of it brilliantly fantastical and richly imaginative, some (the clunking allegory) toe-curlingly, cringingly awful.

...Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus’s holy head every day that you don’t eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion’s breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.

...Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right.

Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, “There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory.” Well, here’s my huff.

Lewis said he hoped the book would soften-up religious reflexes and “make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life.” ...So Lewis weaves his dreams to invade children’s minds with Christian iconography that is part fairytale wonder and joy - but heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.

The fact that a movie that is, more than anything else, a children’s fantasy, woudl provoke this sort of vitriol kind of amazes me.  Especially in light of the fact that the writer also acknowledges that

Most British children will be utterly clueless about any message beyond the age-old mythic battle between good and evil. Most of the fairy story works as well as any Norse saga, pagan legend or modern fantasy, so only the minority who are familiar with Christian iconography will see Jesus in the lion. After all, 43% of people in Britain in a recent poll couldn’t say what Easter celebrated. Among the young - apart from those in faith schools - that number must be considerably higher. Ask art galleries: they now have to write the story of every religious painting on the label as people no longer know what “agony in the garden”, “deposition”, “transfiguration” or “ascension” mean. This may be regrettable cultural ignorance, but it means Aslan will stay just a lion to most movie-goers.

This hatred of Christianity is ironic, too considering that most of the left, and in all likelihood the author of this review, would condemn any who criticised, say, Islam in even the mildest terms.  And even more ironic when that Islam, in its extreme form, has resulted in much death and violence - actions antithetical to the Christianity she attacks.

Remarkable.


Posted by Buckethead on 12/07/05 at 05:48 PM
Holy Shit! • Permalink

Supremes: No Longer Necessary to Choose Between Paying the Loans or Starving

Just So You Know

Because you can starve, you slacker. 

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the gubmint can seize a person’s social security benefits to pay off defaulted federal student loans.  Sorry, brother- it’s dog food and the Goodwill dumpster for you until those loans are settled.*

There is no mention though of being able to opt in to a social security payoff plan.  I figure it like this: I don’t believe I’m getting one red centavo of social security to begin with.  Either the whole program will be defunct, or the retirement age will be like 104 before I can apply.  So I would welcome an opportunity to affirm, today, that I authorize the US Department of Education to take the x-thousand I owe you out of my social security benefits. 

Please? 

Let me keep the coupla hundred I pay you monthly and you can have everything I’ve paid in so far.  That’ll about even us right up, and if it doesn’t, help yourself to the difference when it’s my time to collect.

*Apropos of an earlier post, the man in this suit worked at the post office yet was carrying $77k in student loans.  To paraphrase Bluto Blutarski, “Seven years of college down the drain.  Might as well join the fucking post office.”


Posted by GeekLethal on 12/07/05 at 05:04 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Learning or earning?

Filthy Lucre

As the other Ministers are aware, I’m running about 0-30 on trying to get a new, better job.  A job so new and better it would allow me to leave both my crappy part-time gig and my somewhat OK full-time position far, far behind. 

But after so many interviews, so many resumes, and so much bullshit all ‘round I’m just tired.  Bone tired.  I’m tired of working so much, I’m tired of getting nowhere, and I’m tired of being desperate for something to shake loose.  I’m of a mindset now such that when the ad for the New England Tractor Trailer School comes on tv, and the burly fella asks, “How do 18 wheels of adventure sound?”, I say to myself, “Wwwwelll...he’s probably asking rhetorically, but still...not so very bad, maybe.”

Don’t misunderstand: I have nothing against people who actually work for a living.  Truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, soldiers, and anyone else who has a bona fide reason to be tired at the end of the day has my respect.  But what I’m thinking now is that it’s utterly contrary to everything I was taught: the less capable took the vocational courses, went to the voke high school, and ended up driving trucks all their lives.  The talented kids took the college prep curriculum, with advanced-placement everything, and went to “college”.  That was when “college” meant a single, mysterious place of enlightenment and fun and learning, not at all what it actually was.  Is. 

The college bound were to look forward to big salaries doing...something, presumably garnering absurd salaries simply by virtue of being educated, while the vocationally-minded could look forward to soulless drudgery, finally ending up as morsels for Moloch.  And every person, written tract, or other signal from broader society reinforced that attitude.  Shit, even the stupid board game Life, remember that?  Remember how you had very little hope of making the big $$ and “winning” unless you went to college?  Even the little kids playing that game got it.

Only problem is that none of it is true.

Do you know who, in your neighborhood- yes *your* neighborhood- is most likely to have a net worth of $1 million?  It’s the plumber.  Do you know how much CDL drivers are making?  About 1/3 less than I do, but I’ve been in my current position for five years, and I was in school for six before that.  CDL drivers have been earning in that 11(!) year span.

So with all this stuff floating around in my head- the sense of failure, the frustration of not being able to improve my lot- I also ran headlong into the deeply rooted idea that I’m supposed to be rewarded with the big money and fabulous prizes by virtue of my education.  Real life since commencement, however, ought to have dug up, peeled, boiled, and devoured that deeply rooted idea by now, but there it was.

And that got me thinking, again, for the thousandth time, whether all that education was really worth it.  Yes it was cool to learn and all, but I could have read all those books for nothing had I been that eager to learn.  And what did I really learn?  In all that time, I could have been earning.  At the very least, I could’ve cut my losses with a BA and found work; as it was, I had to have a master’s, so started my working life at the age of 28(!) with decent student loans.

So I want to ask you, all seven Ministry readers: was college, either undergraduate or grad school, worth it for you?  Do you regret going?  Would you have been better off now if you had then been earning instead of learning?


Posted by GeekLethal on 12/07/05 at 12:17 PM
Filthy Lucre • Permalink

Monday, December 05, 2005

Stop! Hesitate and listen!

Music Wonkery

I had a fascinating conversation at a party this weekend with a linguist (an, of course, cunning linguist) about the unrecoverability of the meaning of words as used in the past. These days policy wonks encounter that problem when fighting over Constitutional originalism or the like… for example, in asking what did “liberty” mean to that document’s drafters? Given that historians can point to perhaps a dozen mutually distinct meanings of “liberty” as currently or then-recently used circa 1787, this is an important question. Unfortunately, that wisdom does and forever will remain, unrecoverable. This is, of course, a problem.

The problem gets worse when dealing with “Old English,” which the aforementioned linguist maintains isn’t English at all. (He is, by the way, a medieval literature scholar too, if that matters). The precise meanings of any word more complicated than “hill” or “tree” cannot ever be discerned, and who is to know whether “tree” didn’t carry some tactit freight that the slender documentary evidence cannot reveal? As an example of how alien, how unEnglishlike Old English is, he pointed to the first word of Beowulf. The word is “Hwæt!,” meaning “Pay attention! Listen up!” Today, it is meaningless except insofar as it reminds us of our own “what?” and related interjections.

I don’t know whether “hwæt” is a cognate or a false cognate of our modern “what,” but I do know one thing. That rap guy Li’l John is a canny deployer of anachronism.

Consider. In his productions, Li’l John frequently makes use of the interjection, “What!” At first blush, this and his other trademarks “Yeah!” and “Okay!” (as so ably parodied by Comedy Central’s Dave Chapelle), seem to be pure solipsism, nonsensical sounds valuable for their noise and rhythmic utility only. Not so. In truth, every time Li’l John says “What!” he is really saying “hwæt!” in the finest bardic tradition, urging us the listeners to stop and pay attention to the story he has to tell. “Hwæt!” is the hook, demanding our attention. “Okay” and “yeah” are similiarly weighted, not merely noises but coming as they do on the heels of the grab for our attention, they become epistemiological affirmations of the mores of the replendently hedonic life Li’l Jon leads. Not for him, the 9-to-5, the retirement account, and the ten o’clock bedtime, and in the face of this powerful refutation of how most of us structure our lives, we cannot help but feel those lives a little poorer for the comparison.

Seen in this light, Li’l Jon’s simple rhymes about women and clubs and skeeting transcend kitch and pop and slip across the transom of meaning into a dialectical relationship with Strunk & White linguistic proscriptivism. “Hwæt!,” he says, “pay attention! For we of Atlanta have arrived and are determined to leave our lasting imprint on the culture and folkways of this great land!”

Walking the line between ludic and ludicrous, hysteria and history, metaphysics and mondegreen, Li’l John has ridden our unwitting and slippery relationship with our own unrecoverable linguistic history to the top of the charts, entreating our respectful attention with every “hwæt!” and grunt. Hats off to Li’l John, bard of the moment. In guttural interjections, he speaks for us all.

Please, take a moment to savor the interplay of sense and nonsense, the rich imagery, the complicated rhythms and rhyme scheme, and oh! those kennings!, in the Li’l John & The Eastside Boyz classic, “Get Low:”

3,6,9 damn she’s fine give it to me sock it to me 1 mo time
Get low, Get low, Get Low, Get Low, Get Low, Get Low,Get Low
To the window(To the window), to the wall, (to dat wall)
To the sweat drop down my balls (MY BALLS)
To all you bitches crawl (crawl)
To all skeet skeet motherfuckers (motherfucker!) to all skeet skeet got dam (Got dam)
To all skeet skeet motherfuckers (motherfucker!) to all skeet skeet got dam (Got dam)

Shorty crunk so fresh so clean
can she fuck that question been harassing me, in the mind
this bitch is fine
I done came to the club about 50-11 times
now can I play with yo panty line
the club owner said I need to calm down
security guard go to sweating me now
nigga drunk then a motherfucker threaten me now

And then more like that, except profoundly unprintable. “Hwæt!,” indeed. 


Posted by Johno on 12/05/05 at 12:04 AM
Music Wonkery • Permalink

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Carnival update

Just So You Know

The Carnival of the Recipes #69 is up, an appetizers bonanza. I also missed last week’s edition, which had the theme of spicy foods. It burns, burns, burns, that ring of fire. Check them out!

I’m spending this week working up a version of my usual sourdough with blue cheese and walnuts, based on one in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice... I’ll surely report on how that went. I also need to work on tweaking my wild-yeast sourdough recipe for flavor and consistency. I need to figure out how to balance acetic and lactic acids better to achieve a more rounded flavor, and I’m thiiiis close to adding some commercial yeast into the final dough build in order to promote a faster rise and a more vigorous oven spring. Since I don’t have a half million dollars to blow on a giant professional oven with steam injectors, and the oven I do have is halfway for crap, I guess I am reduced to cheating to produce consistent results that are better than acceptable to the eye and tongue. Also, my starter has been sluggish recently, taking hours and hours to raise feebly even when fed up to full strength vigor. It’s probably just the weather, or cosmic rays, or the trilateral commission meddling again, but whatever it is things just ain’t hitting it right now. Hence the desparate thoughts of cheating.

Watch this space, because I’m sure that by February I will retract every sentence of the above and reaffirm my loyalty to the wonders and ineffable magic of wild yeasts and bacteria in all their perfection. I’m a caviller. I cavil. And waver. And vacillate. Not to mention hedge, snipe, kvetch, whinge, and bellyache, and dither, scruple, flip-flop and shilly-shally.


Posted by Johno on 12/04/05 at 11:50 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Sevens (meme thingy)

Perfidy Responds

NDR tagged me, so here I go.

Seven things to do before I die

* Own a bakery. Successful bakery.
* Learn to read and speak some form of Chinese.
* Visit China and Mongolia.
* Buy and enjoy the living shit out of a cabin in a remote area of coastal New England or Eastern Canada.
* Have kids and raise them to be impossible.
* Write and publish a book.
* Do a wanderjahr starting in Alsace and proceeding in a giant circle through central and southern Europe, through the Caucusus region into Turkey and the Caspian states, into Asia probably skipping Iran, on through to Afghanistan and Pakistan and back again through the -stans into Russia, Poland, and Germany and finally ending with one gigantic crazy party in Amsterdam. Johno isn’t messing around.

Seven things I cannot do

* fix a car
* laundry
* balance a checkbook
* play baseball
* write dialogue
* water ski
* be a salesman for my living

Seven things that attract me to my best friend

* She’s fiery and wickedly intelligent and calls me on my bullshit.
* Have you seen her? She’s hot!
* Hot, I tell you!
* She is willing to let me do the things that she doesn’t understand.
* She appreciates wine, food, books, music and films in different ways than I do, and likes to share her experiences.
* Her loyalty to her friends.
* Our deep mutual appreciation of Neil Young.

Seven things I say most often

* “Hey, man”
* “Marginally acceptable”
* “I swear to God”
* “That’s just how I roll”
* “Does whiskey count as beer?”
* “Fucken A!”
* “I could make this.”

Seven books (or series) I love

* “The Long Goodbye,” Raymond Chandler
* The Lord of the Rings
* “Le Gout du Pain” (A Taste of Bread), Professor Raymond Calvel
* “Maus,” Art Spiegelman
* “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck
* “Lake Wobegon Days,” Garrison Keillor
* The “letters” sections of “The Atlantic Monthly,” “The Economist,” and “Penthouse.”

Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would watch over and over if I had the time)

* The Godfather
* Young Frankenstein
* Clerks
* The Big Lebowski
* P.C.U.
* Them there Lord of the Rings movies
* Good Will Hunting

Seven people I want to join in, too
Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc, Happy, Bashful, Grumpy, Sleazy (no really… I’ll update this with real people when I have a moment...)


Posted by Johno on 12/01/05 at 06:34 PM
Perfidy Responds • Permalink

Root Down

Music Wonkery

If there is one hip-hop group that sorely needs a catch-all beginner’s guide, it is Philadelphia natives The Roots. For fifteen years they have been putting out challenging, often cerebral albums in a wide variety of styles to great critical but limited commercial success. But, sort of like the catalogs of other challenging artists, say Bob Dylan or Frank Zappa, it helps to have a roadmap before you dive in. Is John Wesley Harding or Blood on The Tracks right for me? Hot Rats or The Yellow Shark? If you start in the wrong place, you might end up turned off to the whole enterprise and your life will be just a shade poorer for the lack of it.

To this end, the band have just released Home Grown! The Beginners Guide To Understanding The Roots, Vol. 1 & 2. The two volumes of Home Grown! don’t manage to do the one thing that any introduction to the Roots needs to do: sum up the group’s main accomplishments in a way that is easily accessible and at least somewhat logical. Instead, the group have given us a brilliant mess of mostly rarities, b-sides, live tracks and alternate takes that takes repeated listens to warm up to.


Posted by Johno on 12/01/05 at 06:20 PM
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Chocolate Salty Gollum

Music Wonkery

It’s safe to say that Isaac Hayes is an icon. Ask anybody on the street and that’s just what they’ll say: Isaac Hayes? Why, he’s an icon!” Strange, though, that his iconic status is really for one breakthrough hit.

The wocka-wocka guitar introduction to the “Theme from Shaft” (stream in Windows Media / Real Player) is an indelible part of Americana, evoking on its own the full weight of Nixon-era black America in a way that nothing else can. Everything is in those three minutes: Afro puffs, bell bottoms, leather jackets, giant Cadillacs, endless tracts of run-down housing, pimp chic, Black Power, the Jeffersons, civil rights, Watts, runaway inflation, the defiant and vital parallel popular culture that was coming into its own, the whole enchilada from good to bad. Not many pieces of music can lay claim to carrying the weight of that much history without breaking.

And the “Theme From Shaft,” as overplayed as it might be, really does encapsulate some of what made Isaac Hayes so vastly important to American music in the 1970s and beyond. His influence on rap and on popular culture in general is pervasive even if his career hopes now reside entirely in a poorly drawn cartoon Chef.

But in the end, Isaac Hayes is so much more than that funky guitar and heavy orchestration. Trained to sing and play music in church, he did time in the 1960s in the Mar-Keys and became one of the shapers of the Memphis soul sound as a house player for the Stax label, playing sax on various sides and co-writing a flotilla of songs made famous by Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and others. When he struck out on his own with his 1967 debut, Presenting Isaac Hayes, he combined his gospel training with soul, funk, rock, and even psychedelia to craft a new sound that moved far beyond the concise two-minute verse-chorus-verse exercises he turned out for others.

By 1971 Isaac Hayes was on top of the world, filling stadiums around the country and rising up the charts with “Shaft.” The politics of the time were right up Hayes’ alley: he commonly appeared on stage dressed in a vest of chains and in 1972 would dub himself Black Moses, balancing the gospel, seduction, and street themes his music explored. He would even go on to star in the blaxploitation flick “Truck Turner.” But as the 1970s burned themselves out in a morass of stagflation, malaise, and diminishing returns, so did Hayes’ career.

Splitting with Stax in 1975, he founded his own label and saw some success with LPs like Chocolate Chip. However, after seven years of playing psychedelirocksoulgospel his creative well seemed to be running dry. He tried a disco cash-in. He did duets with Dionne Warwick. He turned to Scientology. And ultimately he settled in as a second-tier has-been, releasing albums of varying quality to little fanfare or success.

It took the off-the-wall proposition of voicing “Chef” on Comedy Central’s South Park to return Isaac Hayes to the spotlight again starting in the late 1990s, advising four cartoon children in the ways of life and love and occasionally whipping out a song parodying his persona with titles like “Love Gravy” and “Chocolate Salty Balls.” Then in 2000, he revisited his greatest success when he appeared in (and re-did the theme music for) a remake of Shaft. If he is not as ubiquitous as he was when a gallon of milk cost a buck, he at least seems to have returned from permanent obscurity.

Right about now would be a great time for a killer comp, a solid two discs with the high points from Isaac Hayes’ iconic (yet ironically little known) career. Into the breach jumps Stax, now owned by the Concord Jazz label group, to release “The Ultimate Isaac Hayes: Can You Dig It?” But is this that killer collection?


Posted by Johno on 12/01/05 at 03:28 PM
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