| October and November 2011 mix |
[May. 18th, 2012|01:20 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | cdotm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Yello - Ciel Ouvert | ] |
Rapid fire! Another old mix uploaded, covering the onset of winter. Lots of songs about being cold.
01. Omala - (Theme From) Cockroaches
02. ConSono - Winter Tale
03. Coil - Out in the Cold
04. The Tear Garden - With Wings
05. Ataraxia - The Bay Is White in Silent Light
06. Cranes - Adoration
07. Helmet - Complete
08. Massive Attack - Paradise Circus
09. Elsiane - Paranoia
10. Audra - Life on This Planet
11. Gang of Four - She Said "You Made a Thing of Me"
12. Lucciana Costa - Pictures on the Walls
13. The Hungry Ghost - Evil Never Dies
14. Chants of Maldoror - Sometimes a Poison
15. Einsturzende Neubauten - Marsch derer die sich wiedernehmen was
ihnen sowieso gehoert
16. Sol Invictus - A Ship Is Burning
17. Bauhaus - Spirit in the Sky
( are you familiar with the laws of nature? ) |
|
|
| August and September, 2011 mix |
[May. 13th, 2012|09:32 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | cdotm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Talking Heads - Stay Up Late | ] |
Very old mix, newly uploaded to sendspace. I like this one.
01. Pascal Comelade - Sense El Resso Del Dring
02. Jane Birkin - Je mappelle Jane (avec Mickey 3D)
03. The Adverts - Fate of criminals
04. The Legendary Pink Dots - Friend
05. Aphex Twin - Avril 14th
06. Larsen - Mother
07. Soma - Arcane
08. Faith and the Muse - Annwyn, Beneath the Waves
09. The Sisters of Mercy - Poison Door
10. Massive Attack - Group Four
11. Public Image Ltd - Open and Revolving
12. Talking Heads - Stay Up Late
13. Blackbird Raum - Catherine's Wheel
14. Trampled By Turtles - Wait So Long
15. The Skids - Animation
16. Newtown Neurotics - No Respect
17. Tuxedomoon - No Tears
18. The Tiger Lillies - Bad
19. Pascal Comelade - Sardawa Dels Desemparats
( Contemporary. Anti-Soviet. Apple Pie. ) |
|
|
| Bike notes of no consequence |
[Apr. 26th, 2012|10:31 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Eat Your Make-Up - Cats (Definitely Insane) | ] |
- I bought a bike computer last July. Today it ticked over 800 miles. I'm on pace for a 1,000-mile year, which is more than I'd have guessed.
- In the clearest sign yet that it is time for this semester to end, I yesterday left my bike unlocked in the rack by the library. It sat there from 8:30 - 2:00, free for the taking, and nobody took it. Good job, people!
- When I first moved to Minneapolis, hostile drivers used to scream at me a lot. A few times people stopped, or chased me down, to scream at me. (Never for doing anything in particular-- just for being a bike on the road.) The climate seems to have improved a lot, and I haven't been yelled at or threatened in years. Today, as I waited at a stop sign, crossing to the entrance of a heavily used bike trail, a couple of guys in a crappy car yelled at me to "use the fucking trail, asshole." I don't miss that. (I'm kinda curious about the psychology of anti-bike yellers. Almost invariably it's multiple 20- or 30-something guys in a crappy car. Why do they do it?)
- On the opposite end of the spectrum... I wish I could air a PSA for gracious misguided drivers. It would say this: please follow the rules and don't try to do cyclists any favors. Most of all, when you get to a four-way stop before an approaching cyclist, go through. It is your just and wholesome prerogative. Besides, if you sit there, planning to wave the cyclist through after he or she stops, then he or she has to stop, and that sucks. |
|
|
| Pillaging nature with goodmanbrown: dock greens |
[Mar. 25th, 2012|11:03 am] |
We're into our second week of highs about 30 degrees above normal. Some trees are putting out buds, the grass is greening, and some shoots have already started up. I was happy to see, last week, that one of the early risers is dock, a plant that's on my to-do list for this spring.
There are lots of varieties of dock that go under the name of "yellow dock," for its yellow root, or "curly dock" for its wavy, lasagna-noodle-edged leaves. All these varieties are supposedly edible, so I didn't put a lot of effort into figuring out exactly which kind grows around here. (Though I suspect it might be "yard dock.")
Dock is another plant with a two-year growth cycle. A basal rosette stores energy in the root for the first year, and in the second year it sends up a tall stalk and flowers. Last year's stalks stay up through winter and turn dark brown. Come spring, you can walk through a field, identify the dock stalks from a pretty good distance, and know exactly where to look for this year's basal leaves.
( my earliest foraged meal yet ) |
|
|
| June Mix & July Mix |
[Feb. 25th, 2012|09:51 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | cdotm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Vanishing - Terror, I've Been Dying to Meet You | ] |
In an effort to catch up to the current calendar year, I'll post some mixes without comments. Here's June 2011. It's a pretty straightforward mix of familiar bands, or at least familiar sounds. Pay special attention to Corde Oblique's brilliant cover of Radiohead.
01. And Also the Trees - Dialogue
02. The Chameleons - Home Is Where The Heart Is
03. Nature and Organisation - Wicker Man Song
04. Ataraxia - Zelia (The City in the Sea)
05. Ikon - Subversion
06. The Creatures - Killing Time
07. Siddal - The Women of Mercy
08. Corde Oblique - Jigsaw Falling Into Place
09. X - The Unheard Music
10. Opera De Nuit - Jeu Damne
11. Mellonta Tauta - Estrella
12. Sieben - Fountain of Youth
13. Zola Jesus - Run Me Out
14. Marbre Noir - Salvation Rites
15. Asmodi Bizarr - Raum Und Zeit
And here's July 2011. This one's more eclectic. From Diskodiktator's samba cover of a S.P.O.C.K classic to Icekalt's ridiculous industrial/rap fusion, there's something for everyone.
01. The Vanishing - Terror, I've Been Dying to Meet You
02. Seventh Seance - The Incision
03. WeltenBrand - The White Horse of Lochgass
04. Babyland - You Will Never Have It
05. The Kills - Satellite
06. The Legendary Pink Dots - Under Glass
07. Play - In My Mind
08. Birdeatsbaby - The Trouble
09. Everson Poe - Fawn
10. Peter Murphy - The Prince and Old Lady Shade
11. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Hammer Song
12. Billy Bragg - Sexuality
13. Quelles Paroles - Trieste
14. Diskodiktator - Never Trust a Klingon
15. Jessie Evans - Is It Fire?
16. Icekalt - Stiller Sturm |
|
|
| Squidly, April 2000 - December 2011 |
[Dec. 21st, 2011|06:10 pm] |
Squidly died yesterday, after nearly twelve years of adorableness.
Gabriel found Vector in a parking lot in 1999. After a year of trying to keep up with him, we decided we should get him a brother. We visited the cat shelter in Albuquerque a couple of times, and from the dozens of cats there we easily settled on Squidly. He somehow managed, all at the same time, to adhere to your shirt with his claws, knead you with his paws, and bury his ears in your neck while purring at top volume. Who could pass that up? He was also strikingly pretty: a uniform charcoal gray with alert green eyes and maroon pads on his feet.
The volunteers at the shelter called him "Garfield," a ridiculous name that was never going to stand. But once we got him home, his cat name was obvious. In those days, his favorite-- his only-- sleeping position was on his side, folded in half at the belly, with his head, his tail, and all four paws twined together and trailing off, like a squid cruising the ocean.
From a calendar kitten, he turned into kind of a strange little cat. He had too many teeth. He carried all of his weight around his haunches, so if you picked him up under the ribs, as you would a normal cat, he'd cartwheel, asswards, right out of your hand. He barreled everywhere, front legs shoulder-width apart, like a bear. Though he was generally reclusive and quiet, he could scream like a brood of abandoned infant banshees when he wanted to. Every time Vector looked at him with the gleam of the hunt in his eye, Squid screamed like that.
He usually refused to poop in his litterbox. Instead, he'd poop just beside it. It took me years to figure out why. Turns out he was finicky about clean litter. When he needed to poop, he usually peed first. He would bury his pee, step out of the box, turn around to go back in, then stop short, as if to say, "gross! Somebody peed in this thing!" And so he pooped, carefully and conscientiously, just outside the box.
More than most cats, his personality was immediately transparent to visitors and strangers. Even to cameras. In my favorite picture of him he looks slightly confused, but not worried about it. He's sitting in the middle of the floor, tolerating all this camera rigamarole, waiting patiently for the ear-scratching he rightly expects will follow. Sweet-tempered and content.
By the time he turned six, he'd grown into the ultimate lap cat. He wanted to be left alone, to nap and to watch the happenings, for about 23 hours a day. For the other hour, he wanted to sit on laps and purr. It is largely Squid's doing that I've continued, for four seasons, to watch football. For some reason, on Sunday afternoons, he was reliably in a lap kind of mood. If I turned on the game, he'd crawl up to my lap by the end of the first quarter, and stay there to the end.
Since moving into a house with Crystal, more than a year ago, I spend most of my time working in my study. Squid set a permanent camp in a gap between books on my bottom shelf, just in front of a heating vent. We put a blanket down for him, there, a long time ago. For the last two weeks he has hardly left it. I keep glimpsing him out of the corner of my eye. When I look over, the bare stretch of shelf looks huge. Squidly was definitely not that big.
He died at the vet, under mild sedation while they tried to drain fluid from his chest. The last couple of weeks were tough for him. He'd lost most of his typically prodigious appetite, and he couldn't do much without running short of breath. I'm glad, though, that he got to see at least part of one more finals week. Over the last few years, he'd establishing something like a tradition of rolling around on top of my papers, and curling up beside me when I lay on the floor to grade. We did a bunch of finals together, yesterday, before I took him to the vet.
Crystal and I buried him the backyard last night, wrapped in his bookshelf blanket, with a can of wet food for better times.
I can't believe he died so young. But he was a wonderful cat, and there's no question that, had I known, when Gabriel and I picked him up at the shelter, that he was bound for a short life, I would have jumped at the chance to take him home. |
|
|
| Machine of Death |
[Nov. 4th, 2011|01:15 pm] |
Guys!
Exciting news!
I sold my first science fiction story. It's titled "Conflagration," and it'll appear next year in an anthology titled "Machine of Death Volume 2."
This is super cool because:
- The anthology has its origin in an old Dinosaur Comics strip.
- Volume 1 launched the same day as Glenn Beck's latest book, and outsold it on that day. Beck complained about it on his radio show.
- Crystal likes volume 1.
- These anthologies are edited by Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics) David Malki ! (of Wondermark) and Matthew Bennardo (who had the cover story in Asimov's a few years ago).
- Though the full anthology won't be printed for a while, they've printed a promotional booklet featuring selected stories from volume 1, as well as two "preview" stories from volume two. "Conflagration" is one of them.
- In fact, they'll be giving the promo booklet away at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis this weekend. Sadly, I won't have the time to go pick one up to confirm my story is in it. But assuming it is, other Minneapolitans will soon hold in their hands something I wrote and say, "what the hell is this? Some kind of story?"
- Etc. |
|
|
| I'm covered in beeeee facts |
[Oct. 22nd, 2011|06:42 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Witchcraft - Queen of Bees | ] |
Last weekend Crystal and I took the "Beekeeping in Northern Climates" short course through the U of M extension. One of the co-instructors is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. It's a mad world.
It's unlikely that we'll be able to keep bees any time soon, which is a shame. They need a fair amount of attention and stability that we'll be hard-pressed to provide for a while. But I'm pretty fired up to keep a colony someday. It would be a great way to learn all kinds of things, and those little beasts make a huge amount of delicious honey.
So I don't have any bees. I do, however, have loads of bee information. Here are two tidbits I liked.
1. I knew that workers are female, and drones male, and that drones don't really do anything other than fertilize the queen. I assumed that drones fertilized the queen in their own hive. I never stopped to think that that would entail that bees be fully inbred, since after the first generation the drones are, themselves, the sons of their hive's queen. That level of inbreeding is hardly unheard of (the varroa mites that kill bee colonies, for example, are close to fully inbred) but it's rare.
In fact, bees aren't inbred at all. The drones from various hives all gather, at a particular time of the year, in a drone congregation area. They buzz around in a big sphere of genetic diversity, about 30-feet above the ground.
Virgin queens fly to the drone congregation area and, over the course of a day or two, mate with 10-20 drones from other hives. They store the sperm from all those drones in a special organ that keeps it alive for the queen's entire life. She flies back to her colony, and uses the sperm as she needs it, and never mates again.
2. Though beekeepers have used smoke to calm bees for about as long as beekeepers have existed, we still don't know why smoke calms bees. The instructors of the course separately offered two competing theories.
Theory one holds that the smoke disrupts the chemical signaling of the bees. It effectively disconnects them from the hive-mind, and when they are thus disconnected, they just sort of shut down, or go do their own thing, which tends to be to eat honey.
Theory two, which seems more plausible to me, holds that smoke triggers a forest-fire response. When the bees smell smoke, they drop everything else and go eat honey, to store up energy in case they need to swarm to a different location and build a new colony from scratch.
But for all we know, neither of these guesses has anything to do with the real mechanism. It's a scientific mystery! |
|
|
| I would bike 500 miles, and I would bike 500 more |
[Oct. 8th, 2011|09:25 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Audra - Everything Changes | ] |
In July I bought a little speedometer/odometer for my bike. On my trip back from campus yesterday, it ticked over 500 miles. Not too shabby!
At three commutes a week, this semester is probably a bit below average for mileage per week. On the other hand, the weather has been great, and I haven't had to take the bus once. So call 500 miles/semester average. If that's right, then I've put something on the order of 8,000 miles on my bike since I got it. That's, like, Minneapolis to London and back.
I will celebrate this milestone by replacing my front brake pads and wondering if it's time for a new back tire. |
|
|
| April and May Mix |
[Sep. 27th, 2011|09:50 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | cdotm | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Gil Scott-Heron - Me and the Devil | ] |
I've uploaded a mix covering the spring months. It seemed the right thing to do, now that we've hit fall. Get it while it's hot.
01. The Human League - I Am the Law
02. Pink Turns Blue - Walking on Both Sides
03. Corde Oblique - Together Alone
04. Requiem in White - A Fixed Place of Heaven
05. Vic Chesnutt - Betty Lonely
06. My Bloody Valentine - Map Ref 41n 93w
07. Opera De Nuit - L'Appel du Froid
08. Lamb - Stronger
09. The Dad Horse Experience - Gates of Heaven
10. Peter Murphy - I Spit Roses
11. Adele - Lovesong
12. Anni Hogan - Burning Boats (Foetus Drum Version)
13. Katarina Kovac - Only the Moment
14. X - Nausea
15. Switchblade Symphony - Sleep
16. Bhopal Stiffs - I Came for You
17. Einsturzende Neubauten - Youme & Meyou
18. Portishead - Nylon Smile
19. Birdeatsbaby - China Doll
( random notes, seemingly all about almond ) |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
_goodmanbrown_'s journal