Antisocial Media

Turns out the "Add Image" window was opening behind the open FireFox window rather than just popping right out in front. Better than nothing! Here's two of me and housemate QueenE from the day we were both nerds, accidentally. Evildoers! Beware our vigilance! Casual!

This [click on the post title for the link] can't really be called an article; it's more of a stream of thematically linked factoids about one of the late 20th century's perfect objects: the CD. My Dad got the family's first CD player when I was in first grade ('86, I think--I seem to remember it was in the Spring) and I'll never forget climbing up the back porch steps with Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer blasting through the very walls of our house--it was right at the chorus, "Lie la lie [ BOOOOM !] Lie la lie lie lie la lie; lie la lie [ BOOOOOM !]" etc. I read later that they used a ridiculous huge drum that had been installed in the bottom of an elevator shaft in an office building in New York City for that [ BOOOOM !]. I hope they recorded on a weekend. By the time I was in high school Dad's CD collection was the thing of legend. My jazz-loving friends would come over and marvel at it--easy to do, as it covered an entire wall of the ...

So now I can't post photos? Man, Blogger, you are losing Brownie Points left and right this evening. >:(

Fuck. The first half of this post just got bloggered. I can't reconstruct it tonight, or ever probably, but just to provide a little continuity with the surviving portion, I wrote about the death of my favorite PSR professor, Doug Adams, and how taking his class Modern Art and Religion in America changed my life. I will write more about him tomorrow, since I can't do him justice tonight. ....... Doug died in late July, and less than a week after his death I got an email from Gergo, the German Dept. PhD student (and friend of our friend Sabrina's!) who had taken over our Hungarian classes after Professor Mihalik was diagnosed with lung cancer. He said that no-one had expected it to happen, and so soon, but Agnes had died at about 6 that morning, July 31. Agnes was in her 40's, and while Doug's death was expected to a degree, or at least led up to, her death was a total surprise to me. She told us about her diagnosis in class just four months before her death, ...

While I was pretty harsh on Clapton in my previous post, I feel compelled to note that, in my opinion, Duane Allman's soaring slide guitar solo in the second half of the song is one of the most transcendent moments in ...I was going to say popular music, but I think I can lump unpopular music in with that, and declare it one of my favorite musical moments, ever. Here's a photo titled " Wacka Wacka Wacka . Your guess is as good as mine.

In a conversation last weekend (with Frunchy? Damn it all, I can't remember! Sorry if I've misattributed this...) my conversation partner remarked that the hallmark of a good blog is consistency, that one should be able to check it daily and have something new to read. Otherwise there's just no incentive. So forthwith, I resolve to post at least daily. There's always something worth thinking and writing about, even if briefly. So here's a (very) brief bio of Charles Finney, Oberlin Patriarch. I always get a tickle out of the great changes undergone in Christian Evangelism in the last 150 years. And the swap of the core values of the political parties. Next, here's an excerpt from Pattie Boyd's autobiography, from the Daily Mail. In Britain. Pattie Boyd, if her name doesn't ring a bell, is the ex-wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Truly, a modern-day Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel (I knew of some of the others, but had no idea that ...

Last night, in San Francisco's ATampersandT park, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's all-time home run record. Thank God that this media circus can now dissipate. The Chronicle devoted its entire front page to a huge photo of the triumphant slugger, going so far as to replace its banner with a "756!!!" logo. Classy. Lost in all the hubbub was a tiny detail that, for me, sums up the entire Bonds home run saga, and also the Giants' season this year: Giants lose to Nationals, 8-6. Is this not the epitome of the current "There's no team in me!" ethic that permeates almost all of pro-sports? I mean, yeah, great job, Barry, but it's not like y'all are going to the playoffs this year, is it now?

You filter through the last few days at BoingBoing and post the stuff you're interested in reading later! Check out this page of rice-paddy-art! With careful application of different varieties of rice, these farmers transcend the boundaries of their craft! Marvel!!! At the President's grandfather's attempted coup of FDR !!! Here's a cool video-mashup of two of my favorite things: Stop-motion animation and Long-exposure night-time photography ! When Sarah was in New Zealand, Flight of the Conchords performed for her group thanks to ...not nepotism, as I understand, but rather connections. Here they are performing their signature hit, Bowie's In Space . Flying makes me crazy. Here's the president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance explaining why the system we're operating with is inadequate and insecure. Sarah and I have been doing a lot of flying in the past few years, and it seems like every time we set foot in an airport the bullshit gets thick...

Sarah and I landed in Minnesota around this time last night--now she and Areca are out on the town with Suzanne as part of a "Ladies' night out". Me? I've been reading magazines and comic books and drinking a few beers. If Frunch and Gabe had arrived a day sooner I would have had some company, but honestly, I've had a great night. Once we get back to the Bay, expect some great shots of Areca in her wedding dress. Until then, I got nothin'. Lies!!! I got somethin'!!! Here's the link to The Real Taste of Original! , the podcast which I co-anchor with my dear friend and associate, PM Funk--Lord of the Dance. Episode 1 (Mic Check) is the earliest, Episode 6 (Space-Age Bachelor PodCast) the latest. All feature World-class tunes, and Municipality-class banter. Highly Recommended!

Super-friend DJ PM Funk sent me this article a few days ago, and I finally held down my vomit long enough to finish it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great article--it's the subject matter that is so vile. Johann Hari reports from The National Review's annual cruise , and it's a horrifying, shocking, and devastating story. When PM sent it my way it was with the message "See if you can make it past the second page." I'm glad I did, if only to read about the rhetorical throwdown between Norman Podhoretz and William F. Buckley Jr. It's a testament to how off-the-charts Podhoretz is that he makes Buckley look positively sane in comparison. Long story short, it's a great article, and well-worth the read, even if you do have to shower afterwards.

Only lightly nerdy! Take that, Joe Barry.

I miss fireflies. I miss cardinals. I miss seasons. And man, o man, do I miss thunderstorms. We got a couple of real serious t-storms one of the days we were cleaning out Gaga's apartment. Here are some photos from that evening.

We came into Lansing at a little after midnight. Barry and Sandy picked us up and we drove back down to Jackson. We went to the hospital the next day to see Gaga. I don't really know how to write about seeing her. She looked so different from the last time we'd seen her, at Christmas. Her vitality was gone, maybe everything that made her her was gone, or maybe it was invisible, or resting in a hidden place. She had dozens of get well soon cards taped to the cabinet doors of her room, and framed pictures of herself and her husband, her kids and grandkids and greatgrandkids and greatgreatgrandkids (!) on all the available surfaces. Sarah's sister Rachael made a collage of family photos from the last fifty years. The hospital staff were so kind and conscientious, checking in to see how everyone was doing, bringing breakfast and snack trays, and just being really warm and supportive. Thank God for good people. Gaga died a few days after we arrived, the day before Adam...

Why the Sideways, Blogger? Anyway, Chris Murray's huge face will frighten you into buying a lottery ticket, apparently. Grizzo and Gabe. Sarah and Mt. Shasta, ala Alex Katz. Mt. Shasta.

So I was 0-for-2 in predictions in my last post. No Olympic Peninsula, no GA. When we left Oakland, we drove more than 12 hours up to Breitenbush Hot Springs in southern Oregon, where we tried our damnedest to relax, without really succeeding. Then we visited good buddy Shauncito in Corvallis, where he is finishing his PhD, and living with his PhD advisor and the advisor's family. Great to see Shaun, and wonderful to meet his hosts, but by the time we were driving North, backpacking was the last thing either of us wanted to do, much less any more time in the car, plus Sarah was sick and feeling crappy. So we detoured to Seaside, OR, and a youth hostel we'd stayed at on our bike trip. Man, did we stay there! Four nights, altogether. We cooked, read, hiked, canoed, went out for dinner...really swell, low-key vacation. Where the River Meets the Sea Sunset From the Back Porch of the Seaside Hostel Shipwreck @ Fort Stevens State Park, North of Seaside Sadly, our vacation was...

Yep--Sarah and I are outta heere! We'll be hiking in the Olympic Peninsula, and then in Portland for GA. So, uh...later!

My word! Like Tolkein said, it's dangerous business walking out your front door--you never know where the day will take you. This whole thing has been my first introduction to the "UU Blogosphere", and a good reminder that the creative conflict inherent in forging and leading in liberal religion can be messy business. One point made by many folks I've talked to about this is how different the tenor of the conversation would have been had it been conducted face to face. With some trepidation, given the amount of misinterpretation, projection, and sensitivity that has characterized so much of this online conversation, I offer the following cartoon from Penny Arcade : http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 Just to reemphasize: I am not calling anyone a "fuckwad." I offer the above cartoon because: it's hilarious; and because it is a powerful explication of an internet-characterizing phenomenon. PeaceBang herself, over the course of the last fe...

This is a cross-posting of a comment I left on peacebang.com's recent post about my school, Starr King School for the Ministry. PeaceBang, who is apparently a UU Minister in the Northeast, posted a few days ago an item about my school's supposed "banning" of the term, "brown bag lunch," because of the racialized connotations of brown bags.* Her post was, to my reading, haughty and dismissive, and she seemed awfully pleased with her own wit and ability to take cheap shots at others with little to no basis for her opinions. I think the comments for that post are up to 40, and it's a pretty lively back and forth. So, here is my contribution: "This may not be the ideal forum for “deep, serious conversation,” but one of the cornerstones of Educating to Counter Oppression is the importance of having deep, serious conversations wherever they happen. The status quo of “waiting for the right moment or forum” to engage with these issues too often leads to...

I ran into Becky at the Temescal Cafe today. We were both hammering out our final papers, mine on Jasper Johns and on the movie Serenity , hers on the privilege inherent in agnosticism. This was for her Eth(n)ics of Whiteness class, a 20 pager on the topic of focussing on one of your deeply held beliefs and examining the privileges and assumptions inherent in it. As an agnostic myself I was very interested to approach my beliefs (lack of beliefs? I just don't know anymore!) from this angle. I asked her to share her paper with me when she's finished, and (with her permission) I can present some themes and topics in this website as a digestion. At any rate, I looked up " theism " on wikipedia this evening--interesting stuff. The tidbit that jumped out at me: "The term is attested in English from 1678, and was probably coined to contrast with atheism, a term that is attested from ca. 1587..." Got that? Athiests beat you to it by *almost a century*. Th...