Category: general

Where I put something when I’m too lazy to categorize it.

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perfectly pastoral


Tonight, I took Keaton to the suburbs.

No, seriously, it was awesome. Around 7pm, I decided we were going to go for a walk. I got together all my baby-walking gear (bottle of water, sippy of juice, long pants for Keaton in case it cools off before we get home, and the iPod for dad), and we struck out. I decided we’d walk over to see Pat & Cynthia, friends of ours who live nearby. It was a great walk, we passed people waving from trucks, fatsos jogging off college and Big Macs, skinnies jogging because they “enjoy it,” and were even serenaded by a highschool girl practicing her flute on the porch. It was perfectly pastoral: manicured lawns and American flags in the sun, music wafting from open garages where men tweaked their “project” cars, wanna-be longhairs skateboarding around in the cul-de-sac – like walking through some sort of modern-day Mayberry.

On the way back, after some make-nice at our destination, we retraced our steps, now in the shade of the trees and houses as the sun slipped away towards eight o’clock. About two-thirds home, I saw a man hugging a woman on the curb. She craned and kissed his cheek, he said something I was too far away to overhear, and she walked off across the street to her car, fumbling for her keys in her purse while the man just stood and looked on. As I neared, I greeted him, “How ya doin’?” He looked at Keaton, smiled, and replied, pointing across the road towards the girl, “I can remember when she was like that.” I laughed and bent close to Keaton to jokingly say, “Don’t you ever grow up like that, OK?” “Bye-bye,” she replied (as she often does). The man and I shared a laugh, and we walked on. Yeah, then the “Beatles'” remake of Lennon’s “Real Love” demo came on, y’know, the one from the Anthology series… I totally almost cried.

Today, I took I “longish” lunch (again, I have this sense of entitlement about deserving a little “break” from work these days) and went to a local steel place with Anthony. We were pricing out the metal we’d need to build me a “Santa Maria style” pit barbecue. I’ve written about my fascination with these types of “old school” grills before, and had been planning to buy one in preparation for the Summer this year. Lately though, I began thinking about just how simplistic the things are in construction. I floated the idea to Anthony the other day that we could likely make one ourselves on the cheap.

See, Anthony not only has the tools, a plasma cutter and welder and various others, but he’s mechanical. So, in essence, I asked if I could help while Anthony makes the thing – knowing full-well that he’s always looking for excuses to use his gear. Plus, I want to take the chance to learn how to do some simple welding and cutting and metalwork. So, we drew up some plans, mostly based on this BBQ, and calculated what we’d need. About $150 later, we’d picked out all our material and were paid up. We’ll go back and pick up the goods on Wednesday, after it’s all cut from stock and set aside for us. Then, we’ll go to work. With luck, the thing could be done in a weekend or two. Now to get some high-temp paint, find a source of aged oak, and I’m good to go.

Well folks, that’s about it for tonight. I have dishes to do and I’m right up against my 9pm blog-stop deadline. Have a good one, goodnight.

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leafy aisles


Evenin’ folks, how you doing? Me, I’m fine. After a quick jaunt to Germany, I’m back in the good ol’ USofA, where you can eat bison burgers and own guns and have two cars per family. Traveling: blah. Although, one more trip to Shanghai and the flight home to Christmas should get me to Premier Executive on United, which comes with some perks. For me, traveling for work is nothing but a skymiles chase, if not a skymiles obsession. It’s Sunday evening and we’ve got the house open for the nice breeze to waft through. The Decemberists have shuffled up in the iPod, Sharaun finished cooking pork chops and is playing with Keaton on the floor, and the smell of spices and fried meat is hanging in the air – it’s heavenly. While I was gone, Keaton decided she’d abandon crawling altogether for walking, and she’s ambling about the room with a plastered-on smile. Like I said, it’s heavenly.

Today after church, I went up to one of the local mega-ultra warehouse stores that specialize in home and garden sundries. We actually have three of these stores within a few miles of my house, just in case one 100,000sqft+ home and garden center isn’t enough for your discerning American tastes. I had to go solo, as Keaton was sleepy and needed lunch before going down, and Sharaun was in charge of that. My mission: buy some decorative landscape-type plants to adorn the mulch “planter” areas in our backyard. I’ve been asking Sharaun to go with me and pick out plants for a while now, but some sort of schedule misalignment or previous commitment has always prevented it. I got up there, got myself one of those large flatbed carts, and proceeded to wander around the garden section. I paced up and down the leafy aisles, chose some plants I liked, and cursed myself for not knowing the measured area I was intending to plant.

I hate shopping for plants alone. Every time I pick up something and think, “Hmm… this would look nice I think,” I hear Sharaun’s disapproving voice, “Oh, babe… why’d you pick those?” It can be ultimately distracting unless I’m 100% confident in knowing exactly what I want and aren’t seeking approval. Otherwise, I’m just walking around wanting to have her there to say, “What about this?” In the end, I gave up – simply quit. I had a flatbed cart with plants and I just stood there staring at it until I’d convinced myself Sharaun would hate every one of them… and I just left it there and walked away defeated. It’s not that my wife is that imposing a force, but I do want her to be happy with our yard, especially if I’m going to pour my own sweat and energy into dressing it out. To fix this, I plan on taking a morning off this week and planning a family outing to get this thing done. I mean… once I have the dang things, all I have to do is dig ’em into the dirt, right?

Unrelated – I watched this guy’s blog entry shoot to fame last week, making the rounds on all the hottest social bookmarking sites and eliciting praise from all sorts of web denizens, and I thought: what’s my one post? Do I have one that’s good enough to blow up like his did? Admittedly, he had a great story to tell… but I think some of mine are OK too… right? If you’re a regular reader, and have a favorite, drop me a line so I can add it to the list of “greatest hits” linked at the top here… OK? Thanks.

Goodnight.

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62% drunk and full


Second night in Germany :: Last night in Germany. Short trip, writing with heavy, drunken fingers. Outside my hotel window rises a chorus of drunken German men singing at an open-air eatery, no doubt they’re all smoking: so Europe it hurts. I did some quick math today at the bar: of my time in Germany, 3hrs was spent presenting, and probably 2hrs in “prep.” That’s 5hrs total of work. I slept for 6hrs last night, and will get about 5hrs tonight. The other time was spent eating and drinking. This means that my trip could be summarized as such: working – 12%; sleeping – 26%, drunk and full – 62%. Man, that’s pretty good math for 2.5 litres.

I honestly don’t have much to write, I had this big ambitious piece asking why Christianity seems to be the only religion which “evangelizes” to such a high degree – but there’s no way I’m polishing that in this state. So, instead, I’ll post some quick images from the trip. Nothing fancy, mind you, I left the “real” camera at home with Sharaun so she can document Keaton’s each and every day (a far more worthy cause), and had only my 2MP cellphone with which to document my short stay in Bavaria. But, I did manage to get some decent shots, I reckon. Check it:



The “pork platter” at the local bar: pork sausage, pork liver “dumplings,” pork leg, pork chop, and back-bacon. (Portion for three, but comical when posed as a meal for one.)



4.5L “jug” of dunkles-bier from the local bar. Oh good God…



I really appreciated the pork platter…

Well, yes… I should be getting to bed then, shouldn’t I? Seems I am due to be off to the airport at 6am tomorrow morning, 200km/hr on the autobahn again. I really should get some sleep before I leave, of course, that’s after I call the wife and flip back and forth as fast as possible between the porn channels (which give you a ~2sec preview each time you pass by them) to try and catch an entire scene. Germans sure do love their porn…

Goodnight.

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on the strasse


Feet on the ground in Duetschland. Picked up my Mercedes E-class and hit 200km/hr on the autobahn between Munich and the hotel. Sunroof open, radio tuned to the local “hits” station. Funny what you’ll listen to when the alternatives are slim. I found myself quite enjoying some Prince and Fine Young Cannibals. Well, OK, I really only enjoyed the Prince – I was just too damn nervous to fiddle with the radio while going 200km/hr. It’s a gorgeous day here in Bavaria, the sun is out and the sky is blue. Germany is is just as gorgeous as I remember it being last year this time. I honestly think I could pick up and move here, I really like it that much. Maybe it’s the German bloodlines of my family calling me home, but this place is like fantasy-land to me. Meat-loving, beer-loving people who enjoy being outdoors, driving nice cars, and value efficiency. Yeah, these are my people… where do I sign up?

The flight was so-so. I sat next to a hulking German man who kept trying to elbow his way into my space. I also got screwed with a window seat, which, actually, didn’t end up that bad as I could lean my head against the wall and try to sleep. As for sleep, I got a little, but it was less than ideal. The movies they were showing were still the same batch I saw going to Shanghai last month, so I tried to nap then. Finally, for some reason, I wasn’t in much of a music mood. I couldn’t find anything that sounded right, nor that I wanted to listen to. Finally I settled on making a playlist of a bunch of Silver Mt. Zion albums and just putting it on random. And, some eleven hours later, it was over.

Speaking fog flying: Sometimes I wonder, as the plane I’m sitting in banks for a hard turn and I can look down the length of the wing at the near-perpendicular ground below, how come the thing doesn’t just “slice” through all its lift and simply fall out of the sky. I had a friend once who was fascinated that ships as big and heavy as modern-day aircraft carriers manage to float. To her, something that heavy just shouldn’t float. That’s kinda like me with airplanes. Although I learned in school just why they really do stay in the air, I’m still amazed that they actually do. A little floating village, brilliant.

Well, it’s time to off and get some beer at the local brewpub down the road – I’m tired of waiting for my fellow traveler to wake up so I’m just gonna go get it done.

Until tomorrow sometime then.

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wash for show


Made good on my promise and stayed home from work today. Too bad, though, that it did not excuse me from working. In fact, I busted my butt today at home working on material for the presentation I’m giving Thursday in Germany. It’s coming together, but it’s still in the “gathering content: ugly” phase, and I have all the “content defined: window-dress” work ahead of me. I’m not too worried, as I have tonight and the plane trip over, plus about 24hrs on the ground in Germany prior to the actual meeting. I also found time to mow the lawn, something I had to do prior to leaving unless I wanted to come home to the Serengeti. And, once again, lawn mowing becomes blog fodder – although this time for a slightly different reason.

As I pushed the lawn mower around the grass, cutting in vain a living growing organism which would just grow right back again, I couldn’t help but notice the activity across the street from me. My neighbor, whom I’d never really noticed before, was out washing her car. My neighbor, whom I’d never seen before, was wearing tight black pants, a pink shirt, and had her long blonde hair up tied up. My neighbor, whom I’d never seen before, was reaching and bending and stretching in all the ways that one would reach, bend, and stretch while washing a car. Now, I set the scene like that because I wanted to acknowledge the fact that, yes, I noticed. What red-blooded male wouldn’t. I mean, my neighbor (whom I’d never seen before) seemed to be in her thirties, and quite well-maintained physically. So yeah, I noticed. But, I didn’t ogle. Well, until… that is… until…

While I was first noticing my neighbor, I very distinctly saw my neighbor notice she was being noticed. In fact, several times, when I made a neighbor-facing pass across the turf, I caught her watching me to see if I was watching her. Now, who was really watching who is hard to say, but I got the feeling that I was not being watched because I was watching, I was being watched to see if I was watching. What I mean was, this wasn’t a woman casting nervous glances over her shoulder to see if the masher across the street was mentally undressing her, this was a woman who was stretching and bending and reaching and knowing she was watched. Again, I have no real proof, but check out this.

As I once again turned to cut a swath that cast my eyes in her direction, she offered a short wave and a smile – a gesture which I returned, all neighborly-like. Then, much to my surprise, she walked away from drying her car. She walked up into her front lawn, where the sprinklers were sprinkling. She stood there, in the sprinklers, and began to untie her hair. Once her hair was down she shook it out, first side-to-side and then up-and-down in some slow-motion head-banging action. As she tossed her hair around, she held her hands out to gather the spray she stood in. She took her hands and proceeded to wipe her face and hair. All the while, I was trying not to fix my gaze on this display.

I’ll admit, it was hard. Here was a scene right out of a movie, here was a my neighbor standing in her sprinklers tossing her hair around. What’s more, she waved to me again; in the middle of all the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue posing. That wave sealed it for me: she was putting on a show, for my benefit. I was even more convinced as she began to set about seemingly pointless yardwork which required her to do yoga-like feats of bending and squatting and stretching. Yes, my friends, this was a peacock’s plume, a lizard’s throat-thing, a cricket’s call… I was being courted from afar.

Now, this doesn’t just happen to me. I mean, I’m not exactly the picture of a hot young Latino gardener. I admit, my voluminous t-shirt could’ve adequately hidden my gut. Plus, we were at that special distance where you can’t quite make out the definition on someone’s face, and I had a blue bandanna tied around my head (hiding my growing baldness). Furthermore, I don’t think you could see the yellow armpit stains from that distance, especially as they were obscured by my mowing posture. So, perhaps, just perhaps – she mistook me for a strapping young buck out displaying his ability to work. Either that, or it’s one of two things: I gravely misinterpreted the situation or she’s seen me around and has had enough time to fall madly and secretly in love with me.

In the end, I chose not to mate with the female. I mean, the circuits in my male brain which were programmed when my ancestors still lived in caves and wore animal furs were all lit-up and green for “go.” But, the more refined gentleman in me decided to pass on this opportunity. Good to know I still got it, though.

Well, it’s 10:30pm and my workday is over. 7am to now, working pretty much solid but for a few short meetings, a lawn-mowing, about an hour-and-a-half of play-time with Keaton, and some quick meals. I figure it was well over a 12hr day, and I’m tired for it. Yet, still I have to pack, which I’ll likely put off until tomorrow morning… and still have plenty of work to keep me busy on the plane…

Until Germany then, gutenacht.

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on the eve of travel


Sunday night and I’m supposed to be headed downtown to see a sweet concert we’d all been looking forward too. But, alas, the sweet concert got canceled. Needless to say, we were all (those of us who’d scored tickets to the sold out show) quite bummed. However, I can’t help but think this is an example of divine intervention. See, I leave for Germany on Tuesday. Flying out for a breakneck four-day trip where two of the days will be spent traveling. Back into the heart of Bavaria for handcrafted beers and wonderful sausages.

But, as fun as it sounds – I am going for a reason: work. And, this time, that means I’ll need to give a presentation to a customer while there. Being that I’m presenting a world away in just a few days, you’d think I’d have some content written, reviewed, and practiced. Truth is, I haven’t done slide-one. I knew this coming off Friday, and kept telling myself I’d have to knuckle-down and do some work over the weekend, but I very knowingly ate up all my weekend time doing all things not-work instead. So, when the show was canceled, it was like God giving me my work time. Now, I can solve my problem of having to have 90% material sent out before my 7am PST meeting tomorrow. Thanks Lord, now I can work ’til midnight.

It’s OK though, because I’ve already decided that work owes me tomorrow. Not just me, but my family too. Yep, work owes me some time with them, since work’s taking it away with travel quite a bit lately. So, I’m calling in my debt, and work’s gonna make good. More specifically, I’m taking the day “off” tomorrow. Sure, I don’t really mean taking a vacation day – but I do mean a nice “phoning it in” day spent working from the couch with a bluetooth headset. It’ll be good for me before I go, spend a day with Sharaun and Keaton – even though I’ll likely be distracted – should be worth it.

I did some things today, so it was OK. First, I shaved off my beard. Completely shaved off my beard, gone. I saw two people who I’d just seen the other day (when I was still bearded), and they didn’t even notice. Not that I did it (or didn’t do it) to get a reaction, just that it obviously meant more to me than it did anyone else. When it was gone, I actually regretted it – my face looked young and fat and the faux-chinline the hair give me was gone. Now though, I’m already used to it. So much for my fantasy of having a bushy beard at the Arcade Fire show (which, come to think of it, was a pretty odd fantasy). Also today, I planted some fruit trees. It’s something I’ve wanted to do, and I ended up putting in a plum, apricot, and orange. With the dirt like it is here, just digging the holes to plant trees is a workout – pummeling rocks with the breaker-bar and whatnot. I also watered the garden, which is doing quite well. Here, some pictures:

Before I go, I’ll drop a link to Keaton’s gallery, which I’ve updated for the first time in a while Enjoy some new images here.

Goodnight.

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death becomes me


Hey blog. Long time no write. First, Monday was claimed by a grandparent-funded date-night in Oregon. Then, Tuesday fell victim to the senseless timesink of travel back home to sunny California. So, another two nights with nothing new to say and no time to not write it anyway. I won’t say it’s not a trend – it’s totally a trend. But, things move on.

Like for instance, Anthony came over tonight. We were putting together the early versions of our late-summer plans for hiking the John Muir Trail. Fifteen days. The kickoff to my two-month paid-vacation, which my workplace allots its employees every seven years. Yes, the hike to end all hikes – the hike that will most certainly kill me if I can’t stick to the training Anthony and I have planned. But, as “getting fit” is among the top things which I am self-conscious about – I shall say nothing more about it. So, let’s move on to today’s music-centric blog.

Every once in a while while listening to the iPod on shuffle, a track from one of my old favorites will come up. More specifically, a track off the a compilation called DJ’s Delite Volume 1: DJ Vibes.

Seems like a simply statement right? But wait, there’s a massive story lurking here.

Back in highschool I got into “techno” music (and by this generic classification I don’t mean 4/4 “house” music, but more the wild ’92 breakbeat scene). From there, I naturally branched into the jungle scene – which, for a year or so, I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But, as jungle turned darker with the Chicago scene, I went looking for more of the jangly piano-and-sample stuff that first attracted me to early breakbeats. I ended up at happy hardcore… which some may laugh at now, as the present has cast it as probably the most universally hated genre of music in the history of music. But, that didn’t matter to me then. And, for those who understand, let me clarify that I was not into the pointedly-crafted brand of saccharine happy hardcore which later came to typify the genre, I think of myself as being more into the “happier” side of jungle and breakbeat – not that syrupy fake stuff that most people think of as happy hardcore now. Annnyway… back to DJ’s Delite.

Back then, in my head, I was always looking for the next “best mix.” I’ve written about this before, so I’ll let you read that for more backstory. Now, I’m a litle fuzzy on the specifics, but back in the day I somehow ended up with a mixtape from the once-awesome Chicago junglist mecca that was Dubshack. This tape was a recording of a “rave” over in the UK where the music was bouncy, happy, choppy and fun. The DJs spinning were the likes of Ellis Dee, DJ Vibes, DJ SS, DJ Brisk – names I’d never heard of before. The records they played were even less familiar though: stuff by Naughty Naughty, SMD, Omni Trio, Vibes & Wishdokta – nothing like most of the names I’d seen thrown around on mixtapes I had from local DJs. I loved that mixtape. The only drawback, as I thought back then, was the practice of including the MC’s ranting and raving over the entire thing (a common practice in mixtapes from that era of UK shows, but less popular in the US, I think). Perusing the Xerox’d Dubshack catalog, I located and ordered more tapes with simliar DJs and records (but without the MC babbling). One of those tapes ended up being the tape. That tape was DJ’s Delite Volume 1: DJ Vibes.

I wore that tape out. Wore. It. Out. It was awesome to me. It was the best tape I’d heard in a loooong time. Nearly eighty minutes of almost-all good material: fast, choppy, bouncy, sometimes overly sweet… I ate it up. Looking back on it now, it does indeed seem somewhat “too happy,” but I still love it as a mix – aways will. And that’ll bring us back to the beginning of this whole thing: when one of those tracks comes up on my iPod. And, when one does, I get instantly nostalgic for those highschool days. In fact, several times, the single track sounds so good to me that I’ll flip the iPod over to the whole mix and start from the beginning – only to realize, around three tracks in, that it just can’t hold my attention for 76min like it once could. Seriously though, sometimes nothing sounds better than a track off that compilation… all beatsy and sped-up-broken vocally… great stuff.

After writing the above, I realized I have a chance here for an interesting side-story. Some years after getting the DJ’s Delite tape from Dubshack, and after making multiple “backup” copies (as I often used to do with cassettes I cherished), I decided I needed to find a CD copy for archival and longevity purposes. So, I hit the internet (on my Packard Bell with my Prodigy account) to look for some more of this new sound. In my effort to track down a CD copy I ended up blindly sending a mail to the catchall e-mail address of the label that released the original compilation on vinyl: a semi-established UK jungle/happy hardcore label called Rogue Trooper. Rogue Trooper records was an offshoot the longer-established and more well-known Death Becomes Me label, which had pressed several important pieces of wax in that era of electronic music. Or maybe it was the other way ’round, I can’t remember. I eventually got a reply from a nice gentleman in the PR department of DBM Records, and he happily scored me a CD copy of the mix (which I also cherished). The CD was indexed as a single, 76min long, track – all running together, but I didn’t care – I could finally stop worrying about my tape copies breaking or melting. I couldn’t have been happier.

Anyway, in a similar way that my whole Beligan Benefactor story went down, I soon found myself trading more and more casual e-mails with the label’s PR guy. Turns out that Death Becomes Me, until that point mostly a vinyl-format release outfit, was starting to dabble in CD-R-based releases as opposed to factory-pressed CDs, and they were curious about how these new-fangled recordable CDs would hold up to shipping around the world. Somehow, it became my “job” to “beta test” their new CD-R format releases. They would cut CD-Rs of all their new releases and mail them to me, whereupon I would receive and play them for a week or two before reporting back on sound quality, shipping damage, etc.

It was a lot less formal than I make it sound – but what it amounted to was me: some random kid from Florida, getting pre-release jungle and happy hardcore mixes from the then-hottest UK scenesters. I think of it now, and I think how I could’ve used is as my “in” to “the scene.” Between that and my job at the record store, where I was awash in pre-release promos, I could’ve staked a pretty decent claim. But, that’s neither here nor there. Some of the CDs I got were good, some bad, some not-bad-but-boring. Somewhere today at home, I still have a stack of hand-labeled CD-R releases from Death Becomes Me and Rogue Trooper…

Neat huh? Years later still, I’d decide that I wanted to convert that CD into MP3. I took on the onerous task of ripping it, splitting up the long 76min single-track into individual records as best I could by ear, and storing it digitally. And that, dear friends, is the long story of just one album on my iPod – from a random cassette I ordered from a random Chicago mail-order music joint in the mid-nineties to a CD I got direct from the UK to bits and bytes on an iPod. Cooool…

Goodnight.