It’s cold and wet and raining here. It was grey most of the day, but that didn’t bother me. Can’t have sunshine all the time and bit of clouds makes you appreciate the sun, you know?

But now it’s night, been raining for hours, the backyard is flooded again and it’s time for the rain to stop, the cold to get outta the air and for me to go to bed.




Notes:
ExpressionEngine 1.4 is out, along with the new free version ExpressionEngine Core. I really like what this company is doing for CMS systems. Want to get more into building sites using EE this coming year.



Leo Mcgarry died. Yeah, that was just character, but John Spencer played him so well, you forgot it make believe. Magic.



Christmas is almost hear and the world seems to be slowing down, as people concentrate on the holiday as opposed to everything. I usually hate this time of year due to the rampant commmercializism, but this year I discovered that I like making mix CDs for people. It’s inexpensive, yet thoughtful and requires a bit of work on my part to make it good for someone. This is great.


and I’m out…

Morning means coffee. It wasn’t always like this and has only been the case for the past 2 years or so. Perhaps longer, perhaps shorter. I’ve tried tea, and it’s fine on occasion, but it’s too pleasing and demur. Coffee is not, but neither is bold or bitter per se, though it has some of those qualities. Instead coffee, as I see it (and you may see it differently) simply is. It’s not a morning jolt or caffeine high, though it can do that to. It’s a warm thick liquid that gets into your bones. It is your mother’s kitchen on a winter morning, warm and welcoming, rich with smells that strike the right chord, remind you of the good things in life. What I’m talking about here is real coffee, not that hazelnut flavored crap that tea drinkers have infected the world with. This is the strong, dark stuff that you can’t drink too much of unless you want to spend an hour on the toilet.

This is morning, warm and welcoming, before you got out into the bitter cold.

Richard Pryor died today. Not sure what he died from, didn’t even know he was sick, but there you go. He was 65, a kinda young death.

He was funny as hell. There’s no other way to say it. My earliest memories of him is being onstage, doing standup and just saying one thing after the other that was stomach hurting funny and yet true, even if they weren’t true, like a good storyteller he showed you how he saw the world and opened your eyes.


Eulogy, by Richard Pryor (from …Is It Somethin’ I said? album)


“The ultimate test is…whether or not you can survive death. That’s the ultimate test for your ass, ain’t it? So far, don’t nobody we know, have passed the ultimate test. Least of all this nigga layin’ here. Cause this boy wasn’t shit, I’m a tell ya that much right off. I saw him kickin’ his momma’s ass over there on 47th. And if you think we gonna bury you with those diamonds and shit on, you got another thing comin’.”


Choice quote:

“Niggers be holding them dicks too, jack. Some white people be going, ‘Why do you guys hold your things?’ Say, you done TOOK everything else, motherfucker.”

Came across threw quotes about time this week. There’s not particular significance to it, no mystical meaning from the cosmos.


But.


It stops and makes you think you know? One of those moments when you pause and look back and realize think about living as opposed to just living.


The three quotes:


Time goes by so slowly, from Madonna’s latest “Hung Up”.


Time never dies, from the soundtrack to the movie Before the Rain (more details)


Time destroys everything, from the film Irreversible, which I haven’t seen, but want to see, but don’t want to see, due to its grapic nature.

I was born in New Orleans and spent my first 5 years there. Then we moved away and I wound up growing up in Baltimore, MD. Since my mom and dad and stepdad were born and raised in NO, we would sometimes visit the city. These memories are dim, half formed. There was my god sister, Dee, cousins named something I can’t remember, that I played tag and other games with. The urban city was different from the grassy suburbs I usually lived in and I didn’t like NO as much. Their customs and daily life seemed so different and unlikable from mine that I never really grew close to them.Combined with the infrequent visits and there was little growth in those relationships. Eventually they withered and died. As I grew older, NewOrlean was a place that I sometimes visited to bury relatives. Eventually there was no one left on my mom’s side to bury and I no longer talked or kept in contact with my dad’s side.


And then Katrina came.


My grandmother’s house is underwater and destroyed. Family members are scattered throughout the south. and the city I never cared much about and in many ways hatedquitely calls to me.

It bothers me that grandma’s house (on my mom’s side) is gone. She was a gone person and there are some fond feelings there. I can’t remember memories exactly, but I remember and feel warmth. Our ancestral home is gone and it’s doubtful that it’ll come back in any form or shape. These concerns also came up when grandma died and I wondered what would become of the house. I don’t want to see the house go to pieces and want to see the house go to some family use. But I’m not sure what and noelse in the family seems to be concerned.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue asked the state’s schools to take two “early snow days” and cancel classes Monday and Tuesday to help conserve gasoline as Hurricane Rita threatens the nation’s fuel supply line.

Damn, they’ll do anything in this state not to teach kids. Considering that Georgia TIED for last place with South Carolia in SAT scores, you’d think that they wouldn’t let the kids out of school for ANYTHING. But no, they cancel school at the hint of gas shortage. Ironically it was announced on a day when the kids only had a half day. All it managed to do in Savannah was create a short gas panic as people feared the worst. Meanwhile, Rita didn’t do as much damage as feared.

I’m trying to find a good argument for doing this, but it just seems silly and short sighted, unless the governor is trying to make up for money spent elsewhere. Even still, this is a crappy way to do it.

Made a post to askmetafilter.

Working on this site to make it more…you know.

Looking through Mperia to buy music, updates as I go along


Analog Girl is almost there, but I’m looking for someting a bit more solid/traditional and uptempo. Love the textures though.


Got “$8.00 of wack ass shit” from Puddin’ Head


Brat works well for Rockabilly silliness.


Always more room for Aza, an tribal/African sound.


Come back for BadaBingBadaBoom.


Nice vocals from the Hurricane System with bluesy/rock/roots feel.


Ah ha! subthunk was what I started out looking for: uptempo dance/club.




Note to self: find an easy way to make a mixtape of the songs I bought, with links back to the artists, so you could easily listen/buy.

It’s like nothing America has seen, and it could have been worse. The response of some of the people left behind The government response was terrible on a local, state, and federal level.

Having been born and spent some time in New Orleans (NOT Nola, ok), I got mixed emotions. Yeah, there was rich culture to the city, but the poverty, corruption and segration was too much. As a kid, it was always a distant place we traveled to for visiting relatives, which wasn’t always fun. As an adult, it was place I traveled to alone to bury relatives. There hasn’t been anyone left for me to personally bury, but now there’s lots of people that need burying and saving. The scope of it all is overwhelming and most of us aren’t even THERE.

Links about Katrina:
The Times-Picayune in New Orleans
Surviving New Orleans to keep your internet company running

flickr stream

AP zoomable photo of New Orleans

Images from Getty

Washington Post photos

Wikkipedia entry on Katrina

Timeline of Fema funding under Bush Administration

Technorati tags for Katrina

Not a bad, just a I’m-off-but-have-to-do-all-these-things-I-don’t-want-to-do. Responsibilities and what not. Did manage to join a fingerprint database though. It bothers me, but it’s more a philosophical bother: it’s so fucking stupid. Since I know my fingerprints are in the database, I know to be extra cautious when robbing that bank i.e. the smart people (the ones really motivated to beat the system) will find a way around this, as they always do.

I wonder how many databases my prints will eventually get into. Where they’ll go, what sort of crimes they’ll be cross checked for: high profile or baffling murders or that car ring that the cops just can’t crack. Naturally, I’m looking at this personally, but these searchs won’t be, it’s just a search.

No, I could not have gotten my license renewed if didn’t give them a fingerprint. I thought briefly of refusing, but then I couldn’t legally drive in the US. Which is kinda tempting at times, but that’s the point. The government put people over the barrel and most of us recognized the pratical aspects, said “fuck it” and went about our day. Nothing really changed when giving the fingerprints, I’m not suddenly a government guinea pig as they test new drugs, there are no men in suits watching over me, but, but, but….It feels wrong, like taking a brick from the wall and putting it in the road to hell.

Do I own my fingerprint? DNA? If so, how and when do I lose the right to it?

Why the American comic book industry is going to hell. and this too. Where’s a magic sterilizing wand when you need it?

The other reason is that people can find what they want. Case in point, my wife: She’s not a big fan of comics, but she doesn’t hate them either. Just never got intook, which is fine. But for some reason, she got interested in monthly comic book called “Girls”. No idea why she got into it, since it seemed to be all the stuff she disliked about comics, but she called it good fluff, and who couldn’t use some fluff every now and then. By sheer luck, the first 3 issues were in the store which she quickly read. Then she got annoyed that the4th issue wasn’t available and wouldn’t be for several weeks, in July. She felt gyped. So in July, we checked out at the video/comic book store where we got the first three issues. We never found the fourth issue. NEVER. I suggested she ask for it and she shrugged her shoulders, saying it wasn’t that important. She lost interest and moved on because it wasn’t worth her wild to hunt down a comic, when there were so many other forms of entertainment in easy reach. Can’t blame, you shouldn’t have to go hunting for people when you want to give them money. Even though I AM into comics, I’m not a collector, needing to get every issue. In fact, I hate monthly issues, preferring Graphic Novels which give me a chunk of reading that resolves itself when I’m done. No hunting down back issues, side issues or cross over issues. Just a (hopefully) good story at a good price.

On the upside, there’s plenty of reasons signs that comics aren’t going to hell.