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The Nation's most dangerous cities for 2009 just came out, and can be found here: http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2009/CityCrimeRankings2009.htm
1. Camden, NJ
2. St Louis, MO
3. Oakland, CA
4. Detroit, MI
5. Flint, MI
6. New Orleans, LA
7. Birmingham, AL
8. Cleveland, OH
9. Jackson, MS
10. Memphis, TN
Orlando is 17th. Atlanta is 18th. Nashville is 56th. Chattanooga is 62nd. Huntsville is 95th.
The safest city? Colonie, NY.
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Posted using TxtLJ
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Nov. 1st, 2009 @ 10:49 am
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Internet out again, second service call tomorrow. Wtf comcast |
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I went to the mall for lunch and saw that the old Disney Store, which had been vacated for a year or so, was filled with the wares of the calendar and board game kiosks that are usually in the aisles around Christmas time. I hate to say it, but that store is more interesting now than it was back when Disney was there. That's a reflection on the shift of the stores to all kiddy stuff. However, back when the Disney stores had more collectibles and had the big screen running and the big plush mountain, it was wonderful then.
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Tonight was monster mud night! Take plaster, add paint to suit, and douse burlap strips in it. Place them on a shaped chicken wire frame and you've got a simulated rock face. Even totally washing my hands afterward, they still have a bluish-grayish hue.
I also put up some drywall to appease the fire code gods. So much for spooky exposed studs.
So there's a guy working on the haunt who has some sort of fake English accent that slips back into normal when his defense is down. The last person I knew who faked an English accent had some pretty weird things going on underneath the surface.
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Posted using TxtLJ
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Oct. 18th, 2009 @ 03:22 pm
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Comcast internet out last night and again this afternoon. Wtf |
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The company that produces Monster Energy is using the legal system abusively against a smaller brewery in an unfounded trademark dispute:
It's a shame, I like Monster Energy Drink.
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Oct. 12th, 2009 @ 10:36 am
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| » "Shit my Dad Says" |
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Stolen link from Kiran:
Shit My Dad Says
I agree: funniest stuff I have seen today.
Oct. 6th, 2009 @ 03:06 pm
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| » Jay-Z "Death of Autotune" |
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The dirtiness of the instruments really gets it for me. Maybe the instruments are themselves sampled, I don't know, but I'm all for dirty analog music no matter where I find it.
Oct. 5th, 2009 @ 01:49 pm
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| » <3 |
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Oct. 1st, 2009 @ 02:09 pm
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| » Movies in 60 seconds! |
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There are a lot of movie synopsis type videos out there, but I found this series quite hilarious!
28 Days Later
Kill Bill (1 & 2)
Forrest Gump
Sep. 30th, 2009 @ 10:04 am
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| » Museum Day! |
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Saturday, September 26th is Museum Day. Museums (including the Space and Rocket Center) are giving away free tickets! Go here to get your free ticket, usable only this Saturday:
http://smithsonianmag.com/museumday
Sep. 24th, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
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| » cough |
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Okay, I'm beyond thinking the cold is lingering on...I think this is ragweed allergies. I need to go get that doctor's allergy test that is supposed to get rid of this crap.
Or maybe I still do have the cold...wow, it'd be hanging on if it was.
Sep. 23rd, 2009 @ 07:36 pm
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| » The Lost Symbol |
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Dan Brown came out with his third "Professor Langdon" novel, The Lost Symbol. I'm not the most avid reader in the world - I read brain candy and Wired Magazine, and LJ. Since The DaVinci Code was a pretty good book and movie, I figure the next Brown book should be more of the same.
( cut for minor spoilers )
I'd say if you liked The Davinci Code, go for it. If you thought the previous book was merely okay, then this is more of the same plus some, and should probably pass it over.
Sep. 21st, 2009 @ 10:41 pm
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| » Constellation |
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So Rob just reminded me Con*Stellation was this weekend. I think I am too sick and recovering from con crud to go anyway, but what really mystifies me is that I had no idea it was going on this weekend. That's pretty amazing for me. No mentions on anyone's LJ, no mass mailing or spam, no flyers that I could see (though I haven't looked at the Bookmark board lately).
However, I did see several mentions of AWA. Funny how they hit on the same weekend.
Sep. 19th, 2009 @ 03:35 pm
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| » Calorie Density |
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I bought a sack of potatoes a few days ago to start trying to eat lighter. Not necessarily healthier or with more greens, but just with less calorie density. Knowing that processed grains (breads, pasta) may have as much caloric density as meat means my all-spaghetti diet is kaput. ;)
So I'm trying to find foods I like that aren't that dense, but that I can fill up on. Googling diet sites show that meat is near 2-4 calories per gram. Vegetables are 0.4 - 0.8 C/g. But veggies don't satisfy. What could I do here? Potatoes, perhaps. Potatoes are 0.76 C/g. I could bake potatoes and eat them all day.
So last night I ate two baked potatoes with hot sauce and salt, with a banana on the side. Not bad. Then I got hungry at 9pm and didn't have anything else in the house so I made two more. Ugh. Now I'm tired of baked potatoes already, and I have half a bag left. But really, I'd have to "break the monotony" with something just as light. Interspersing baked potatoes with hamburgers doesn't seem very healthy.
I suppose I just need to cook them in different ways. I'm using a crock-pot to soften up some pork today and will probably mix it with BBQ sauce and hot sauce, then place a serving of it in each potato I bake.
There's a part of the caloric density movement that I find tough to really figure out, though: wheat. You do want to eat "whole grain" wheat, but processed food increases caloric density. Whole wheat bread is pretty bad, no matter that the whole grain is used. But unmilled bread is pretty lumpy and nasty. And even then, the lumpy bread may still have just too much processing to be undense. So how do you serve unprocessed, whole grain wheat?
Note to self: pick up BBQ sauce on way home.
Sep. 18th, 2009 @ 09:52 am
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| » More Disneyworld news |
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Fantasyland expansion that is mostly princesses? Well, I can understand, whatever sells. I like the Dumbo expansion; maybe they could have performers in the staging area? Characters dressed as clowns, animatronic elephant trunks?
Star Tours II a pod race? Lame. I know they would eventually want to upgrade it with prequel stuff. I'd have preferred a space battle - they had plenty of those in the prequels. It just seems to make Star Wars so...mundane.
http://community.livejournal.com/disneyworld/1319511.html
Sep. 14th, 2009 @ 08:48 pm
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| » The Princess and the Frog |
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They disabled the embed function of this Youtube video, but it's a video of Disney explaining the bad guy (Dr. Facilier) they created for The Princess and the Frog. It's wonderful to see Disney 2-D animation again - it's a unique style that you can tell; there are no equals!
Go see!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRX_LnZ586Q
EDIT: The voice of Dr. Facilier is the same guy who did the voice of the cat in Coraline. What an awesome voice, he probably had the best performance in Coraline, IMO.
Sep. 13th, 2009 @ 09:29 pm
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| » 9 |
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The weekend was good. I went to see Kiwi but spent most of the weekend still recovering from con crud.
We saw '9' on Saturday. (spoilers ahead) It was okay. Lots of visuals, but not enough characterization. I just didn't care for the little sackboys enough. The climax was too Deus Ex Machina. I'd love '9' as a television series, or perhaps if they make sequels we can get into the surviving characters more...except the whole neatness of the numbering system is destroyed since half of the little stitchpunks were destroyed. The dialogue was cliche. The concept was wonderful, but they just didn't do enough with it. Oh well...pretty pictures.
I survived mostly on comfort food this weekend because of my sore stomach. I am afraid that I'm going to gain back the weight I lost from the cold this week. I could stand to lose a few (dozen) more.
Sep. 13th, 2009 @ 05:51 pm
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| » I made a funny |
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Brody's Corollary to Godwin's law: Admitting to atheism while debating in an argument unrelated to religion automatically makes the debate a draw, as opinions over religion quickly consume the original debate.
Aug. 31st, 2009 @ 10:19 am
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| » paradigms for openness |
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Over on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) animecat's LJ is an entry talking about some idiot giving her a hard time on FA. In the replies, I said something about being open, and how it is different between real life and the internet. I thought I might talk a bit on it more here.
Most brick-and-mortar stores are nominally open to the public. They are private property and they can shoo anyone off that they like, but for the most part anyone can walk into a Walmart and browse. Within our society, most people are likely to behave.
Now take the internet. It's wild, wide open, full of anonymous people who get bold in their safety. The internet, in this instance, is not analogous to the real world, and I think that eventually, publicly accessible websites will eventually be replaced by closed communities, with the exception of commercial, advertising enterprises.
The reason I say this is because we are still operating on the old model of openness. Let everyone see what I have done! Those who like it will stay, while those who don't will go away. On the internet, people will insult, steal, vandalize, and harass in a way face-to-face society does not. The internet does not have the evolved standards of behavior that society does. We try to enforce artificial standards, and they help to a certain degree. Written humor in an email needs a smiley, else your insult might be taken seriously. However, there just hasn't been enough time to evolve universal standards. New internet users pop on all the time, unaware of the rules. There will come a time when everyone will be connected, more or less, and the community will "raise a child" by way of imparting netiquette on them. But unless there is such a thing as a driver's license of internet use (or even for just certain parts of the net) this sort of thing will continue to happen.
To take a different approach to it, it could be that the relative safety of Western civilization is a new paradigm not yet mandatory, and castles, door locks, and gated communities are the norm. The internet may not be a new Wild West, but just business as usual in the real world. Outrage at cyber-rudeness may merely be the reaction of a soft, overly sensitive population. But I do feel that if our gentility is the new paradigm, then it is the way things should be, and we should work towards making other environments like this.
Aug. 28th, 2009 @ 10:24 am
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| » Bookcases! |
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Aha, I finally got three pretty sturdy bookcases from hawthornegem, with help from ludicrous_box. They're sitting in my hallway right now, but they will be moved to the back room tonight. Thanks Lira!
Also, we sat around talking until 1am after the work was done. So tired.
Aug. 25th, 2009 @ 10:38 am
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| » Dentist and yesterday's shopping |
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I wend do go ged a re-filling on my back molar today. I had do ged four Nobocaine shods! Hey, I'm a big guy. On de way back to work I was singing along wid de radio:
I WANNA KNOW WHAT LUB IS
I WAND YOU TO SHOW ME
I WANNA FEEL WHAT LUB IS
I WAND YOU TO SHOW ME
LEDS DALK ABOUD LUB
*********************************
Yesterday, I went shopping at Kroger's. I saw the Coca Cola with sugar (instead of HFCS) in the Mexican food section. Well heck, everyone always talks about getting the good stuff, so I got four of them, and after a few hours in the refrigerator, I popped one open.
A quick Google Search shows that Coca Cola replaced sugar with corn syrup in 1985, which means I would have been 12 or maybe 13 the last time I had a sugar Coke. As soon as I tasted the Coke, I remembered that this was the way Coke was when I was young - more of a drink, less of a "liquid candy" (in the words of Honest Tea). It's true I may be getting just as many calories and grams of sugar, but the less sweet, more robust flavor makes it all worth it. I can't remember a specific memory of drinking the old Coke, but I think I'll be raiding the Mexican food aisle more often.
Aug. 19th, 2009 @ 03:22 pm
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| » McDonald's |
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The McDonald's near the corner of Jordan and University is completely torn down in order to be rebuilt! I saw them blocking it off for the past week, I thought a little reconstruction was coming, but not an entire rebuild.
I usually wouldn't care about a fast food restaurant, but this is the closest McDonald's to UAH, so I did go in there a lot back in the 90's. I hadn't set foot in it for years, but still. It just seems weird.
Aug. 19th, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
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| » WDW |
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A coworker is taking his wife and two kids to Disney World tomorrow at 5am. He remembered that I was a WDW fanatic and was asking some last minute questions. That just made my day. I'm always offering people my 'expertise' about the subject. I'm just glad I could put it to use.
Aug. 12th, 2009 @ 04:08 pm
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| » Why the future of the internet is not socialistic. |
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(This post follows the accelerating technology post, but isn't really related.)
In relation to my previous thought of subsidizing coding, comes the growing consensus that the digital world is becoming more socialistic. "The New Socialism" article makes this argument well.) Is the need for a supported effort of coding a piece of this new socialism? Yes. Is this the future of the digital world? Only until the point that anything comes along that can compete.
Assuming capitalist enterprise is allowed to flourish, it will do so. Someone will eventually build the better mousetrap. That an "industry" relies upon volunteer work says more about the desire of the masses than the actual sustainability of the working model.
Say there springs up a movement to have a "car making bee", where local makers help each other building cars for one another. The concept is neat. You may even save money that would be going into a big company's pocket. But that's all you'd be saving. In fact, you're losing the savings that come from mass production of a product. I think you would end up ahead, as an individual, but on the whole we'd be using up more resources and being very inefficient.
Using volunteer efforts for anything is very inefficient, but it is free. But because of the Industrial Revolution, people can mass produce an object, make that process more refined and efficient, and end up making people lots of money, or saving resources, or whatever good karma you are looking for.
This has happened in almost every American market because we let it. The result is that America led the way in prosperity as we became fully industrialized.
Now overlay the brave new world of the internet over the fundamentals of capitalism. Don't look at the record or television companies stuck in their old ways, just think about the driving force of capitalism - "do it better".
The internet is too new. It hasn't been done better just yet. Or at least, not completely. Sure, we are beginning to sell online downloads of things, but that's the old method. There may be some fair way to distribute money. I am sure someone will find a way.
Until then, we do things collectively. We make as much stuff under a CC license as we can afford to. We share. We become the cloud. I think we do these things because there lacks a viable alternative. At some point, someone is going to find a way to make money off of these products AND make it better than the current method. I don't know how. Nothing seems better than free, right? but I feel confident that someone will find a way.
So the new communal atmosphere is here only because that is always the start of things. I think the internet is this way because no one has solved it yet. I think someone will, and then the real opportunity for entrepreneurship will begin.
On a side note, I think that that is the course of human groups in general - start with the love, go to organization, then comes people capitalizing on the existing system, then revolution when the divide becomes too great. Socialism, capitalism, revolution, repeat.
Aug. 10th, 2009 @ 02:42 pm
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| » This morning |
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First Day of School! Which means the streets are filled with busses. There's this lot on my way out that the busses go and aprk after all the kids get dropped off. So if I leave my house after 8 (Hey, I can do 830-5 with a 30 minute lunch, it's cool) I see lots of yellow.
Just past the bus lot, I was driving behind this car doing about 45 when his front left wheel completely came off. Immediately there was a loud scraping as the axle scraped the pavement. He barely was able to pull off the road. I pulled around easily enough; I wasn't in danger or anything. The tire, however, kept going, bouncing down the road about twenty feet up at its highest, then on the sidewalk, then the oncoming lane of traffic. It eventually it crossed over again and came to rest on the sidewalk. I drove about 20 mph behind it, watching the whole thing. It was a guilty pleasure, following the tire, wondering if it was going to hit that car or that fence. Luckily there were no pedestrians anywhere.
If the tire had been on fire, that would have made my day.
Aug. 10th, 2009 @ 09:11 am
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| » GI Joe |
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GI JOEEEEEEEE
Pretty awesome, I must say. New term: "nostalgia boner". Though the whole incestuous relationship between good and bad guys was ridiculous (Duke/Baroness/Cobra Commander/WTF), the rest of it they pulled off very well. The Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow rivalry was spot on. I liked what they did to Destro - equal parts faithfulness and extrapolation. Zartan was even better here than he was in the cartoon.
The power suits were new to me, but the ability to run down a speeding car was really awesome. I'd like to see a whole movie based solely on people in those power suits.
Secret Cobra base? Check. Some zany plot using science-sounding gobbledygook to take over the world? Check. The Pit? Check. Aircraft carrier? Check. Not many of the combat vehicles were like their toy counterparts, though I did like the new, improved S.H.A.R.C.s.
All in all, I would very much like to see some sequels come from this, with more characters. I want to see Clutch! And Bazooka. And the Fridge with a spiky football on the end of a morningstar! (No. Just kidding on that last one.)
Aug. 8th, 2009 @ 06:06 pm
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| » Found over on Quasi's LJ |
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EDIT: Also, , but I'm nicer than that.
Aug. 7th, 2009 @ 10:13 am
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| » software |
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I believe in accelerating technology. I cannot say whether an actual Singularity will come to pass, due to limited resources, but the innovations that point to a Singularity are a Rennaisance of technology in their own right. One of the areas I have thought of is the large gap between hardware and software.
We can make computers faster and hold more data, exponentially. However, the software hasn't kept up. The potential of, for example, a computer program that is one Terabyte in size has not been demonstrated. What would it do, if we had an executable program that size?
When the Apple opened up the ability to create downloadable applications to the iPhone, that was a step in the right direction. We had this wonderful piece of technology with so much potential. But Apple couldn't keep up with filling in the uses of the technology - no one can. People still write programs for just about all platforms, because they have to.
This could be an argument for open source, but I'm not against trying to make a buck either. We worry about subsidizing the automobile industry, but I think we should be subsidizing software coding.
I had an idea for a website from way back; I wonder if it will ever come to be. I wanted to call it "What Can We Do Now?" It would start in the middle of the page with a big circle saying, "What Can We Do Now?" Branching off from that circle are realms of technology: biology, industry, communication, etc. Within each of these realms (say, industry) comes even more categories: durable goods, food production, power generation, construction. You would traverse down these categories until you found a specific topic. On this topic (page) you would find an overview of what we have accomplished, and links to articles and further reading. Obviously, the categories are just examples.
For example, under industry -> construction -> bridges -> cement, you could find a brief timeline of the history of cement, a chart of the compression strength of cement over the years, a blurb on rebars, another blurb on new materials, and links to the latest in cement dicoveries.
It's like the Slashdot or Kurzweil RSS feed of the technologies, but categorized and archived. Obviously, some categories would have more articles than another, or require more attention as new discoveries are being made every day. Obviously, it would require work. Stick some forums and links in there, and bam - neato resource. I'm not sure if it would be an excessively popular website - undoubtedly Wikipedia would contain all the information this website could contain, just categorized differently.
Or! Maybe the website could just be a Wikipedia interface. The point is, keeping track of our advances is a job in its own right.
Aug. 6th, 2009 @ 09:20 am
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| » GIMP sucks |
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So I make an image in GIMP 2.6, save it as a .psd to keep the layers, and now it can't open it again.
GIMP cannot open a file it created itself. Stupid crap.
Jul. 31st, 2009 @ 12:49 am
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| » Calories spent drinking ice water |
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So I asked the question a while ago, how many Calories are spent drinking ice water over room temperature water? So heck, I guess I'll do the math myself.
( mafemaxics )
So there you go. You burn 7.8 more Calories if you drink a glass of ice water over regular water. Raising the temperature of ice water to body temp alone burns 15.4 Calories, not counting the energy needed for digestion.
Jul. 22nd, 2009 @ 05:39 pm
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| » Rape |
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I've been writing and deleting a million things to say about a discussion on "rape culture" over on Jason's LJ (geminiknight). I wrote about 10 different comments and never sent them. And then I wrote about 3 different LJ posts and never sent them as well. There's just nothing I can say that someone won't misinterpret, get mad over, or inaccurately portray my position on it. There's too much to say. Men are evil? Women whine? It's evolution? It's morality? Women's lib is good? bad? irrelevant? My response is to not respond - the issue is too complex, and one-entry answers would woefully misrepresent anything I want to say. I could write a book, and it would be brain blowing. But I need to stop because MY brain is overheating.
I find debate on this issue is like spitting in the ocean.
Jul. 20th, 2009 @ 03:37 pm
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| » 4th |
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Had an interesting fourth. Like last year, we all met at Bridge Street for a Red Robin/fireworks-watching good time. Stuffed myself on a burger and garlic fries. We sat in the back of Kiran's truck (and in folding chairs) in a sort of impromptu tailgate while watching the fireworks, nearly overhead.
On the TV in Red Robin, I saw that Steve McNair had been shot and killed in Nashville. That's a stunner - "Air McNair" was the quarterback that took the Titans to their only Super Bowl game so far. Personal connection - Steve McNair was my sister's next door neighbor when he was the Titans quarterback and she was married to her rich ex. She even met him once.
Jul. 5th, 2009 @ 01:00 am
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| » s&g's |
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Had a nice evening of my usual Wednesday night San and Greg's, but this time here_bemonsters joined me. We talked about the usual - exes, goals, sex, politics, religion, philosophy. Good times.
Jul. 2nd, 2009 @ 12:56 am
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| » What the heck is going on? |
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Saddam was more afraid of Iran than the US, Iraq had WMDs, he wanted to ask for President Bush's help to defend against Iran... Crazy stuff from declassified FBI files.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/06/24/2009-06-24_former_iraqi_leader_saddam_hussein_feared_iran_more_than_us_secret_fbi_files_sho.html#ixzz0JSXqYAJ1&D
Jun. 26th, 2009 @ 11:24 am
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| » MJ |
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For all the talk of celebrity death trifectas, this is the first one I have ever witnessed. Doubles I see all the time, but never a triple. Can you name any other triple?
But otherwise - yeah, pretty momentous day. Watching videos on MTV.
Jun. 25th, 2009 @ 08:03 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Jun. 16th, 2009 @ 07:50 pm
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| » too old! |
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As evidenced here, you know you're getting old when the nostalgia memes on Livejournal are after your time.
Hey, Gen Y. No nostalgia for you yet. We Gen Xers haven't finished making Transformers movies yet.
Jun. 11th, 2009 @ 12:47 am
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| » LJ Friday! |
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Look at all the pretty people with a tag list. I want a tag list! But you have to pay for an LJ. 8 years with an LJ and I've never paid for it. The sensible part of me doesn't want to start now. But I envy tag lists. And multiple icons. I could do without picture storage, my pro-level Flickr page works just fine (which I DO pay for). I don't want to pay money for simply making my blog prettier. Whatever happened to my HTML-wielding greatness?
I'll probably cave. Someone gift me a paid account before I feel bad for paying for it myself. Please!
*******
In related news, I had been going back and voyeuristic-ly reading people's earlier entries, so I figured I needed some of my own medicine and looked at my own early entries.
I was angry in 2001. I was snobby, snarky, profane, simultaneously defending and lamenting my disbelief in God, and really not that self-reflective. I didn't write long essays in LJ like I do now. I didn't love properly, I didn't stop and smell the roses. I was a little bastard before I met Renee (moreso than now. Hey, quiet, you.) I've been shaking my head at my former self so much my neck hurts. It's embarassing.
Sometimes I wonder if I am better off deleting those entries which a) I do not believe anymore, b) cast aspersions upon my sterling character as a paragon of virtue amidst these troubled bloggers, and c) make me blush like a little schoolgirl upon merely seeing them again. On the other hand, it's nice to know where you come from, and how humbling circumstances can make you. Maybe I'll put everything on private, and merely have them there for myself to agonize over whenever I want to partake in any self-hate.
********
I am so ready to drive to Atlanta.
Jun. 5th, 2009 @ 03:20 pm
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| » Random day |
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( Scrubs alignments )
Jun. 4th, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
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| » The Pursuit of Baguio |
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EDIT: I recently found out the word is spelled "Bagiuo", and that I was mis-remembering the spelling and pronunciation. Post corrected.
"Baguio la la la la
There is good in every bad thing
Joy in every sad thing
Baguio la la la la" -- Baguio, the Addrisi Brothers
This is a quote I have added to my bio on the profile page. (Why I don't have an actual bio is a mystery.) The word "baguio" (BAH - gee - oh) has been lodged in my brain for most of my life. It is very similar, phonetically, to my grandmother's maiden name (Boggiano), though the etymology is not connected in any way. My grandmother had an Italian name, but "baguio" is a Filipino word. When I joined Second Life (Way back in 2004, an eternity for the internet), the limited number of last names you could choose irked me, but when I saw that I could choose the name "Baggio", I grabbed it. Thus, Brody Baggio. The first draft of this post also spelled it "baggio", but I guess that is an example of how faulty memory is.
When I was growing up, my parents had a nice collection of 70's LPs. Styx, Moody Blues, Kansas - I grew up on some really awesome music. Among their collection was an anachronistic self-titled disco album: The Addrisi Brothers.
I don't expect any of you to remember the Addrisi Brothers, except maybe wildbilltx. Their biggest hit was "Does She Do It Like She Dances". They also wrote "Never My Love". Their sound was rich, low, and sensual, much like Isaac Hayes, but more melodic.
In retrospect, it was probably just as comical as Isaac Hayes, too. The album cover was the two brothers walking out of a pool, their shirts open, chest hair flowing out, sulkily looking at the camera. I was too young to really laugh about it, get weirded out by the overt sexuality, or jealous at their swarthy good looks. I just listened to the music.
The majority of the album was love songs, and I don't remember a thing about it. However, one song on the album was a non-single called "Baguio". It seemed inspired by island Pacific music, with a soft tribal rhythm. The beginning of the song was spoken word over this rhythm, talking about how Filipino people feared cyclones, which they call baguio. The song was slightly menacing, but also ethereal and emotional. The verses talk about the danger and fear of the baguio, and people's reactions to it. The lyrics eventually turn inward, talking about praying to God for strength. In the end, the baguio is a metaphor for cleansing the soul and weathering life's challenges. It ends with more spoken word, telling of the aftermath of the cyclone, saying that "life is more beautiful than before". It is at the same time an awkward, yet beautiful song hidden in the later tracks of a barely-successful 70's disco album that was never re-printed.
Lately, I've been wanting to find the song again. I've been singing the chorus in my head. I've been believing the words, even getting emotional over the meaning it has had in my life without me even knowing. I searched YouTube, Emule, and Amazon. I searched on Google. It just doesn't exist in mp3 format, at least not in the "cloud".
It is quite possible to find the song, either in my parents' collection (in my Mom's possession right now) or in a used LP store somewhere. I also have been eyeing those turntables with the USB cable for converting mp3's they are selling at Target. I might have to make the mp3 for myself, if I must. I'm afraid the song may not be as cool as I once thought, much like watching the old Voltron cartoons. But that's not going to stop me!
Jun. 2nd, 2009 @ 05:03 pm
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| » Stolen from Wes Wilson's Twitter |
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http://the350project.net/
What 3 independently owned businesses would you miss if they disappeared?
If half the employed population spent $50 each month in locally owned independent businesses, it would generate $42.6 billion in revenue.
$68 of every $100 spent at locallly owned, independent businesses returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. Compare this to $43 of a national chain and nothing from online sales.
Pick 3. Spend 50.
http://the350project.net/
My 3:
- Sam and Greg's
- The Fret Shop
- Po Boy Factory
On a related note, I had no idea Frizzle's was local. It looks so...polished, so chain.
Jun. 1st, 2009 @ 12:48 pm
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Mom: here's those Crape Myrtles I brought from my house.
Me: Mom, they're sticks.
Mom: They'll live.
Me: Mom, you're digging a hole in my yard and putting sticks in the ground.
Mom: This is all you need, just keep it watered over the summer and they'll start sprouting leaves. You might get a few feet of growth each year.
( ONE MONTH LATER: )
May. 31st, 2009 @ 09:56 pm
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