Joy, Joy

Now I find that the monster project is to be live at midnight, and not tomorrow morning, and there are 23 more changes, mostly in the copy.

RIP Steve Mizerak

The CNNSI article

I got his "Pool the Master's Way" videotapes in the early 90s, and to date, they were the best instructional investment I've ever made, and I have dozens of instructional tapes and DVD's over the years. They improved my pool game several hundred percent.

Yet more

I'm nearing the "Vomit With Rage" stage of my workday. More changes!?!

My head explodes

I've been up for two days, it's due in two hours, and they're still making changes to the project!?!?!?!?!?!

UPDATE: Made it with 20 minutes to spare. Yay me.

Things I don't believe in

A list of things I don't believe in, for no reason other than I find their proponents objectionable, or sensationalistic.

• Intelligent Design theory
• Global Warming
• Public education reform
• Keyboards in rock music
  
• Authenticity as a meaningful part of music
• McCarthyism being a defining moment of American History
• Native American culture being inherently earth friendly
• Anything to do with "carbs"
  
• Apple's vaunted OS stability
• Apple's better "interface"
• Any positive influence of Janis Joplin
• The oft-touted claim by libertarians that 20% of Americans are libertarian also
• "Natural" foods
• Homeopathy
• Divorce being a public/social problem
• Stem cell research being a big deal, for good or ill
• Biomass fuels
• Peak oil
• Addictive personalities
• Chiropractors
  

Yet another new record

I went 60 miles on the Silver Comet with Mike this afternoon. Didn't feel too bad either.

The decaffeinated Steve

So, after more than two weeks of a low-caffeine lifestyle I conclude that the net results are positive.

The good:

• I'm not as moody or edgy
• Apparently I've stopped fidgeting in the evenings
  
• I'm not sleeping any more or less

The bad

• I'm a much heavier sleeper than I used to be (which elevates it to near coma)
  
• My sleep schedule is more erratic than it used to be
• I'm back to having periodic insomnia, though it's not that bad.
  

This happened without me

Rally for national sales tax draws overflow crowd
About 4,500 raucous tax protesters packed the Gwinnett Convention Center on Wednesday night to hear politicians, musicians and talk show celebrities call for the end of the federal income tax and the creation of a 23 percent national sales tax to replace it.

I have yet to hear the logic of what gets taxed and what doesn't, and why the IRS doesn't morph into some national enforcement arm, but it's a good trend.

A couple of classics

News anchor slips up, in a very funny way. And surprisingly, this page of Emo Phillips quotes.

Victory was mine (somehow)

I did the open mic last night at Limerick. I played a rather weak set of Walkin' Cane, my Tom Waits' song, the new one (Left Alone) and Raining this Morning. Somehow I won.

I'm going to be practicing the songs instead of the flatpicking all week now.

Quick Monday round up

• Interesting stats on tattoos (and the people who love them)
• Weddings are costly, asymmetrical boondogles everywhere.
• An inspiring story of a woman donating a kidney to a good friend.
• Creating a 1099 Misc form for blackmail seems about right.
• An interesting chart about the progressivity of the tax code under Bush. One little known fact is that he has actually made taxation MORE progressive, not less, mostly by removing millions of people from the tax rolls. No supply-sider he.
• Dear NSA. Not as good as Postsecret, but similar.
  

The power and glory of YouTube

In case anyone has wondered what I'm trying to do on the guitar, this video of Doc and Merle Watson says it all.

Also, check out these videos of the Velvet Underground (with Nico) doing acoustic versions of Heroin and Femme Fatale in 1972.

Abortion and immigration

A long one.

I predict that soon someone will make some correlation between legal abortion and increased illegal immigration, similar to Steven Levitt's abortion-crime idea as told in his book Freakonomics.

For those of you who haven't read the book it spends a lot of time explaining his theory that abortions are disproportionately had by women who would otherwise bear criminal children (to put it bluntly). Those children are never born, which reduces the number of criminals, which reduces crime rates. He has a large amount of documentation and math to support this idea. Bear in mind that the 80-20 rule applies here, something like 20% of the women who get abortions have 80% of all abortions.

A similar idea (unique to me so far) is that were there no abortion, there would be many more children who would grow up to be low-skilled, low wage workers. That creates an artificial void on the bottom of the income ladder, which the Mexicans and other illegals fill.

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I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, and it's all part of my emerging theory on open-source eugenics and artificial evolution, which I'll explain more when I flesh it out.

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On a related note, the pro-choice argument and the usual nativist argument are essentially the same. There is ownership in a country, as there is in one's body. It is up to the owner; the citizens of the country collectively or the individual woman to determine who can be there (to put it crassly). Every child is a wanted child, and every immigrant, is a legal immigrant.

Or that's what I think right now anyway. Thoughts anyone?

Pound for pound photo sites

My favorite is still NashvillePortraits.com. And, as they came up in conversation last night (I think I did a poor job explaining my point but oh well) here are his shots of Guy & Susanna Clark and Townes van Zandt.

To be that good...

Never go to Baltimore

A couple is arrested for asking for directions. Really.

Via the Agitator

The best yet

With the help of the lovely and talented Kathy Leland I was able to get the closest yet to the fiddler in silouette. This is far and away the best batch so far.

She is also, to date the only actual fiddler to model for the fiddler series.

Circle of friends

I often read the surveys filled out by the happy wanderers of MySpace. One of the recurring questions is "Are your friends mostly male or female?".

Were one to put a timer on the amount of time I spend talking/hanging out with people, I imagine I would spend a slight majority of my time with my male friends, but in absolute numbers, I would imagine that two thirds of my friends are female.

Interestingly, while my conversations with my male friends tend to be general purpose, conversations with the female friends tend to be more specialized. Some I talk to just talk to about work, some about art, some about music, some about family, and one I talk to almost exclusively about health and emotions. It's odd when you think about it.

Last night's open mic

Not so good. I couldn't hear my guitar in the monitors, and my playing was a bit off because of it. It was a noisy, but nice crowd. The previous act was having problems too. Evidently the problems were only noticeable to me. I did the usual material.

Science Tuesday

In further effort to drive the biking in darkness post farther down the page I bring you Popular Mechanics interesting article comparing alternative fuels, as well as their article on souping up the human body.

Quotes of the moment

The Duke of Wellington

For a great power there are no small wars

Orson Welles

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.

On England between the wars

The fault was not decadence but the desire for holiness, the belief in sacrifice, and a willingness to serve as the butchered victim acceptable to God.

From the guide to Christianity for the secular

Christians are not easy to understand. To begin with, there are roughly 2,000 years of history to grasp, and certainly more denominations and subdivisions than that to take on board. For people who were raised secular, I imagine it's like trying to understand an opera after coming in halfway before the end: the stage is crowded with people, two of them seem to be dead, a woman is wearing a hat with horns, and everyone is making a terrible racket.

The last man on earth

Having biked the past three days in a row, I had planned to take today off, but late this afternoon I felt full of energy and decided to go. Being a true American, I decided to push myself into breaking a personal record. I went to the end of Conyers and back and then to the other side of Avondale and back, which is a bit over 54 miles; a new record for me.

I rode the last hour in total darkness due to my late start . Happily that part was mostly on the bike path, with very little on the open road, so it was relatively safe.

As I was riding in the deserted darkness, the air cooled (down to sixty degrees), the number of cars declined and the wind blowing over the helmet created a dull roar. The perceptible environment gradually faded away. Coolness numbed the skin, wind dulled hearing, and the darkness removed much of the visual realm. I developed an overwhelming of isolation. There were no people out, very few cars, and no active signs of the human hand. All I could think of was that I was the last man on earth.

It was a gripping and powerful feeling I've never felt before.

Mother's Day 2006

I went to the cemetery for the first time in a couple years today. It was a busy day for that sort of thing (as one would think). Everything is pretty much the same; it's still a tranquil place. To think, it's been almost seven years, it's staggering really.

Friday rapid fire

• Reno 911 is popular in Iraq of all places. It seems they think it's real.
• A nice collection of flatpicking tablature, all in Tabledit format.
• Hounddog Radio seems cool.
• View System Uptime.
• A nice article on using curves and levels in Photoshop.
  

Recording attempts

Last night I attempted to record four flatpick tunes, and eventually to create a Steve French, Musician site on MySpace. I was unable to get the recording levels right on three of them (I blame the Samson digital pre-amp) and I can't seem to get the musician page set up right on MySpace.

In any case, one of them did turn out okay; the volume level is very low (just like me!) but it's not terrible.

I played Cooley's Reel, which is an old Irish fiddle tune in E-Minor. I do it a bit faster than it's normally done, but I think it turned out okay. I originally heard this song done by Steve Kaufman, but the actual music I got from BluegrassGuitar.com. I do both lead and rhythm on the song.

You can download it here (right click and choose "Save As" (Command-Click on the Mac)).

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Eric remixed it for me, which helped the volume levels a lot. The file is updated.

Funny sight of the week

Sadly, I don't have photos, but on my ride yesterday I saw the Avondale PD pull over a group of bikers who turned right on red where it was not allowed. He used the lights and the loudspeaker and everything.

Another open mic night done

Due to the small number of entrants, I wound up doing six songs. They were "Walkin' Cane", It's Raining Here This Morning", "Red Clay Halo", "Ruby Ridge", "Blackjack County Chain" and "Tin Foil and Stone". Tin Foil and Stone was the new song for the week. I think I'm going to work in a Guy Clark song for next week.

What's wrong with German people?

You would think that this article German cannibal jailed for life for 'ultimate kick' couldn't get any stranger after the opening paragraphs of

A self-confessed German cannibal has been jailed for life after a court here found him guilty of murder for killing and partly eating an allegedly willing victim he had met on the Internet.
ADVERTISEMENT

The court in the western German city of Frankfurt found that Armin Meiwes, known as the "cannibal of Rotenburg," killed his victim to satisfy his sexual urges.

Meiwes, 44, immediately said that he would appeal the sentence, signaling another round in a long legal process that has laid bare a hitherto secret market in cannibalism.

but it really does get stranger from there.

A masterpiece

The Phillips/Norelco Bodygroom site. Absolutely perfect use of Flash, video and cleverness. A rare meeting of high tech and high concept.

Funny line

I was reading part of the transcript of Rumsfeld vs the heckler (who's a moderately well known anti-Bush activist, I've heard him on Democracy Now before) here in Atlanta last week. I came across this gem:

CHILD: Mom, do you have an Altoid?
MOM: Yes, I think so. Look in my purse.
CHILD: I don'’t see any.
MOM: Oh, I thought I had some.
CHILD: LYING BLOODTHIRSTY MONSTER!

I've always wondered how is it possible that people can believe the government, particularly this one, is more capable of a grand conspiracy than a grand failure.

Anniversaries of no consequence

• I recently went three and a half weeks without rebooting my workstation, which is possibly an all time record for me. (I usually average two weeks).
• It has been 12 years since I've seen a doctor. Three more years and I'm a common-law Christian Scientist!
  

An odd quote

G.K. Chesterton:

There is more true simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape nuts on principle

Web video is on it's way

In particular there is Video Egg. Very cool.

I stumbled across it via Pamela of Atlas Shrugs. I do have to say that pro-Bush apparachiks with strong New York accents give life a new horror. Hot Air does a better job with both the video and the vitriol.

Granted, I think partisan bickering is a sign of strength and self-esteem, but at some point it gets silly.

Mind altering visuals

Going into a meeting with a large cut on your knuckles is a great way to get people to treat you nicely.

Granted, I told the truth about how I got it (bike wreck) which in and of itself doesn't impress people, but it is an impressive visual aid.

Last night's open mic

It went well. I did Red Clay Halo, Walkin' Cane, Ruby Ridge, Blackjack County Chain, and a new (to me) Tom Waits song.

Day two of my low caffeine life

The goal is to cut the caffeine intake by two thirds, which I'm doing. So far, the results have been interesting.

I'm not quite as moody as I have been, rather I still have the same moods, just not as extreme. I went to sleep a bit earlier than usual last night and woke up a little earlier as well. There seems to be marginal improvement on my attention span too.

Photos from the long ride

I'm a bit tired after my little 53 miler yesterday. The above photo is from somewhere along a little-used side road near Stone Mountain/



The above is the castle of Oakhurst (near Decatur). The below is some stenciled graffiti I saw underneath a railroad bridge in Decatur.

Yet another new record

I went 53 miles, and returned in total darkness. Happily no wrecks though. From Avondale to Stone Mountain to Lithonia to Decatur to Oakhurst to Avondale to my house. Some interesting photos to come, it was a pleasantly introspective ride as well.

Yawn....

My first all-nighter in quite a while. This is going to be an unpleasant week.