rhizomat

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 00:08:58 GMT

one more thing

Pardon my language, but that fucker George W. Bush must go. The most meaningful thing you can do to enable his removal from the White House is to involve yourself in a voter registration drive. Take 15 minutes, do a web search, and educate yourself on the number of disenfranchised voters in this country. Yes, homeless people can vote, illiterate people can vote, even former felons can vote by taking certain logistical steps.

If you live in Austin, Texas Bruce Elphant, the Pct.5 Constable, will deputize you to register voters! It's fun!

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 00:01:37 GMT

Hello. I haven't written in months - I've been working a lot is all. But, my summer doldrums are over, I'm busy, reasonably happy, and reinvigorated by the fall(ish) weather. I'm planning on taking my sabbatical in early November, and don't plan to return to work until the end of January. I realized a few days ago that this would be longest period of time I've been free from work/school, etc. commitments since about age 14. It's time - I normally just sort of cheerfully get out of bed, take a shower, and go about my day, but lately I am tired, bored, and disinterested in "furthering" my "career." I really just want to goof off! Soon.

I've been taking advantage of the hours I must spend in front of the computer by ripping my CD collection to a 200GB external hard drive. It's a bit of a slog, but the only way I could see to reasonably manage 1000s of CDs. I'm looking forward to putting all those damned little jewel cases in a closet in the coming weeks. Today, I took delivery of a Cd3o, a little server which hangs off my home wireless network, and serves .mp3 to my stereo...pretty cool.

That's all - I've read about a dozen really good books in the past few months, but I've no time to review/discuss/analyze here. Perhaps I'll do that in the near future (i.e. October). In the past weeks, I've purchased tickets to upcoming shows by Ornette Coleman, Laurie Anderson, Morrissey, and Siouxsie Sioux, so I'm looking forward to much good live music in the coming months.

I'm planning to do some serious travel during my sabbatical, and one of my goals is to get this site into shape, enabling me to post pictures, journal entries, etc. here as I move about the world. We'll see...

Until next time, readers. Be well.

Mon, 31 May 2004 17:19:55 GMT

This weblog software isn't working too well lately, which is why I'm unable to correct the misspellings in the previous (Saturday) entry.

Anyway, it's Memorial Day. My girlfriend works for a non-profit that doesn't support WAR (the killin' kind, not the band), so she doesn't get this day off. She gets Cinco de Mayo off instead. Cinco de Mayo is fine day to have off, but as I recall it does mark the anniversary of a victory at war, does it not? Oh well - it would take paragraphs for me to unpack the cognitive dissonance, arrogance, and downright stupidity of the upper management at her job (I used to work there myself, so I know this firsthand).

I don't do much memorializing myself on this day, but I do spend some time thinking about my grandfather, who was a decorated veteran of both WWII and Korea. I liked him a lot, and although he died a very long time ago, I still have very fond memories of summers spent on my grandparent's farm in Valley Mills, Texas.

It is now 12:15p, and I have already made the custard for a chocolate/hazelnut gelato, and prepared a Jamaican Jerk marinade for quartered chicken. All that good stuff is now sitting in my refrigerator, marinating and/or chilling, in preparation for a feast this evening. I think I'll just roast a few ears of white corn on the grill, along with the chicken, and leave it at that. Nothing fancy. I listened to my new copy of Bitches Brew while cooking, so I've had an extremely pleasant morning. I so immensely enjoy the rhythms of cooking, I honestly can't think of a more relaxing, meditative, and restorative way to spend my leisure time. I'm frequently thankful that I enjoy cooking so much more than actually eating what I cook, else I would weigh about 200 lbs!

Sat, 29 May 2004 18:10:21 GMT

The Tower Records in Austin is going out of business and everything is on sale. Needless to say, I've been doing a little stocking up. Here's what I've acquired so far:

Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom
Dusty Springfield - Dusty in Memphi
OutKast - Stankonia
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Vashti Bunhan - Just Another Diamond Day
Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
Fela Kuti - Zombie
Thelonious Monk - Straight, No Chaser
Thelonious Monk - Monk Alone
Sun Ra - Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapry and Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow
Ornette Coleman - Tomorrow is the Question
John Coltrane - Ascension
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
John Fahey - The Legend of Blind Joe Death
Harry Partch - Delusion of the Fury

Definitely the most music I've ever purchased in one go, by a long shot. That was fun, though. I got all that for less than $250!

Wed, 26 May 2004 01:22:03 GMT

I got promoted today. Well, I suppose I should bring my gentle readers up to speed. I finished school, I accepted my old job at my old company, but I'll be taking on a greatly expanded role beginning next month. So, today I was promoted to a position in line with my new job responsibilities. I normally don't care too much about this stuff - to be honest, I don't have to, because my excellent boss cares about it for me - but I wanted this one, because the demarcation between my old job title and my new lends me the authority I need to do the things I've been asked to do. So.

Still, this is a big one - a big step in my career, my job title, my income, and my reach. I wish I had someone to celebrate it with, but my girlfriend is out of town on business, and I don't feel like calling up a friend and accidentally engaging in something like gloating. So, I'm thinking about buying myself a present - a Tag Heuer Kirium Midsize Steel chronograph, to be more precise. Boy, the internet is really dangerous when you've had a beer or two and are in a celebratory mood! I could have this watch sitting on my doorstep tomorrow afternoon, you know? Speculating on this watch has caused me to realize how weird I am about money. I have absolutely no doubt that I spend $1,044 (the best price I can find for this watch on said internet) every two months in books, CDs, fancy restaurant meals, and the good olives, cheese, and bread I indulge every time I go to the market. But still, I hestitate. Maybe it's because I'd have to get some nice clothes to go with it!

Actually, I just found out I can't buy a "guaranteed authentic" and fully-warranteed Tag on the internet. Price of watch just increased by $700! My readers would be amazed how much web surfing I do while writing these entries. I always have about five Explorer windows going at any given time.

So, I don't know about the watch - do I even want to wear a watch? Maybe this isn't a "starter watch" - what if I find it deeply annoying to have a big chunk of steel on my wrist, to always be asked what time it is, etc? What if I get mugged? But there is definitely a present in my not too-distant future. Maybe I'll just by a few new CDs...

Anyway. Enough about my consumerist urges, which I have so infrequently (books and CDs excluded) that I don't mind too much writing about them here. I got an ice cream maker for my birthday, and I have made some excellent ice cream, readers! At first, I wasn't too thrilled about this device - I like to cook, really cook - and so far I've returned every "labor saving" type device I've received to the store (and there have been many), and exchanged them for a new saucepan, or roasting pan, or something. But, you have to cook a good custard to make a good ice cream, and making the custard is exactly the sort of cooking that I find infinitely absorbing, relaxing, and meditative.

The custard involves heating your milk and heavy cream over a low flame, and infusing that mixture with the flavor that you want your ice cream to take up. On Sunday, I made a ginger ice cream, and the smell of the sliced ginger infusing the milk was just exquisite. While that's happening, you whisk together egg yolks, sugar, and a bit more cream. When your milk mixture has completely taken up the flavor of your chosen ingredient, you "temper" the egg mixture by slowly stirring about a 1/2 c. of the warm (not hot!) milk mixture in, then adding that back into the saucepan. This prevents the eggs from curdling when added to their warm milk bath. You stir that, constantly and slowly, over a low flame, until it thickens. Then it's strained, and put into an ice bath. THEN it's cooled for a long time (4-24 hours) in the refrigerator. Only at that point is it time to dump that mixture into the machine, where it's churned and aerated for about 30 minutes. Then back into the freezer for a few more hours. While I was churning my ginger ice cream, I dropped a bunch of chopped crystallized ginger into the "ingredient spout. Boy, was this good ice cream - I've had to refrain from eating all of it in one go.

The really, really excellent thing about this ice cream is that I can control the amount of sugar - I don't really like commercial treats, because they are just to sweet for my taste. This ginger ice cream was spicy and creamy, with just the slightest hint of sweetness. I used a very scant 1/2c. of sugar to make about 1.5 quarts.

Thu, 13 May 2004 01:34:39 GMT

bad

I don't know, I like the internet. I think the internet makes me smarter, in some sense. At least better informed. I like reading book and record reviews, weblogs, political commentary, etc. on the internet. I look at nytimes.com or cnn.com, every day around lunch time, just to see if the world's ended while I've been attending to the business of my life. I like amazon.com, because I'm all about deciding that I want - I don't know - AMM's Les Stances a Sophie, or The Congos' Blood of The Congos, or Esther Averill's long out of print Jenny's Birthday Book (for my niece) at the drop of the hat, and hey presto! there it is at my door, a few days later. The three items I just mentioned are, by the way, obscure and previously near-inaccessible. I learned about them on the internet, and I procured them there. They are all good things, sweet and beautiful things, and my life is in some small way better for having them. Here, now.

But again - I don't know. Should I be able to watch a video of an American getting beheaded by five hooded Iraqis, or a reporter getting his throat sliced by Islamists? I can watch these things, you know. I don't watch, but I choose not to. I wonder if these things should fall within the realm of choice.

But. Here, now - things are wrong, things are going wrong. The world is officially a bad, dark place, and the men and women we elected into office seem to be the harbingers of the here, now, of the moment bad.

Honestly, I thought, when things went wrong in Fallujah - I thought, that's bad, but here we have four mercenaries who died doing their capitalist, for-money job. Not to say that any singular human death doesn't represent some infinite, ineffable loss, but these men were not soldiers. They were mercenaries. I honestly don't feel that I can hold some deep moral opposition to say, Soldier of Fortune magazine, then wring my hands and weep over the men who make the life choice depicted within that particular publication's pages. These men made the cold, capitalistic, profit/loss spreadsheet calculation, and they happened to come up in the red. That's very deeply too bad, but nothing more, really, in the larger scheme of things. I'm sorry, and I'm saddened. But, as my grandfather used to say, it just don't signify. If you make the conscious career choice to go over to a war zone and stand around in a flak jacket holding a gun - well.

But that's me. I wasn't born in some shithole mountain town in West Virginia, and I never contemplated joining the US armed forces, or a private "security force," because I never had to. Such a thing would never have crossed my mind, ever. So yes, I speak from a position of absolute privilege. I know exactly one person in the armed forces, and he's so brainy that he's got a desk job in DC for the duration, doing computer security work. He's just not expendable.

Well, I'm rambling. I guess I'm trying to say that I feel it deeply wrong that these high-mountain, uneducated privates are being court-martialed for dragging Iraqi prisoners around on a leash, etc. The pictures of that torture (and I strongly believe that the media should call it torture, rather than abuse - I considered cancelling my New York Times subscription over this) sickened me, but I think it's endemic, and goes all the way to the top.

I'm not too smart about this stuff. Last Friday, my mom had a party for her boss, who's a high-powered attorney here in Texas. We were talking about this stuff, and I mentioned that Rumsfeld had apologized for not taking the issue of the torture of Iraqi POWs all the way up to the President. This very smart man just laughed at me - I mean laughed right in my face - and said "plausible deniability!" We'd had a drink or two, but I still felt like an idiot. Of course Rumsfeld is the fall guy here, protecting his boss from culpability. Why doesn't the media call him on this; why doesn't Congress call him on this?!

Maybe I should just go off and watch these videos. Maybe I should just stuff myself with the immediacy of sudden, violent death. Maybe I should just get used to it. You know?