House of Dioxin

just don't drink the fun out of it

2010-02-08T03:53:06Z

Interesting interview with David Harrington of Kronos Quartet. He's much more engaged with the questions than you see in a lot of these Q&A sessions. I was particularly interested in the stuff about covers, about the ways in which orchestras playing the classical repetoire could (and could not) be considered cover acts. Esp. interesting because I think the first thing I ever read about Kronos was about their version of "Purple Haze" way back in the 80s. Kronos will be playing at Duke later this year. Not sure what's on the program but I'm definitely looking forward.

On a completely unrelated note: WHO DAT!

would a cow even eat an orange?

2010-02-06T20:45:21Z

I'm still not convinced that the lawsuit seeking to overturn Prop. 8 in CA was the best idea. OTOH, who cares what I think? My rights are not being denied. Anyway, saw a couple of interesting takes on what's been going on so far. Slacktivist argues (pretty convincingly) that what's driving the pro-Prop 8 crowd is an impulse to bully, to throw their majority weight around and deny that there are any such things as rights for minorities. What's that you say? What-stitution? Constitution? Never heard of it.
Meanwhile, Laszlo Thoth looks through the transcripts of Perry v. Schwarzenegger for an answer to the question "how does allowing gays to marry harm straight people?" I must admit that I was somewhat surprised that plaintiff's attorney (that is, the guy arguing in favor of Prop. 8) was unable to answer that question. Seems rather central to their case. You'd think they'd have prepared an answer. I mean, I wasn't expecting a good answer but I was expecting something beyond "Your Honor, my answer is: I don't know."

on the windup wrrld of the nervous tic

2010-02-06T01:30:23Z

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 31 jan 10)

el Arte de la Elegancia :: los Fabulosos Cadillacs
Nasil? Ne Zaman? :: Hardal
Bollyhood Bass :: David Starfire
Agua del Pozo :: Alex Cuba
Nueva America :: Quiero Club
the Prester John Sessions :: Tommy T.
Watina :: Andy Palacio & the Garifuna Collective
Para Siempre :: Miramar
I'll See You in Cuba :: Pablo Menéndez & Mezcla
Mwanzo :: Sauti Sol

this week's video feature: Sauti Sol

i don't see you out walking children in nature

2010-02-04T03:27:33Z

Today was the big melting -- sunny for most of the day and up in the 40s. As an aside, one way to tell that you've had a lot of frakkin' snow is when it's day 5 and it's been sunny and in the 40s twice plus rained all of one of the other days and your front yard is mostly still covered in snow. I've enjoyed having snow on the ground. Sure it's starting to get pretty raggedy by now but it's a nice change of pace. But I'll be glad to see it gone just so I can stop hearing people bitch about how badly the city/state/whoever has handled snow removal, street cleaning, school closings, etc. And how snow apparently magically disappears after 2 days up north. Or something. I had a longer rant about this in mind but I think it must have melted today...

go into the kitchen and thaw out some ice

2010-02-03T03:10:23Z

I've been trying to keep up with the fracas going on between Macmillan and Amazon. I mean, mostly it's just a couple of big business fighting it out which, right, why should I care. Here's a good overview from Charlie Stross. Also the expected witty and insightful ranting from John Scalzi. I've been thinking about why my sympathies pretty much immediately went to the Macmillan side. I mean, I use Amazon all the time and am generally pretty pleased with the overall experience of shopping there. It wasn't until I read John August's take that things snapped into focus. Amazon's strategy of de-listing all books published by Macmillan in both electronic and print forms is, in fact, a dick move. It's such a dick move, in fact, that it almost renders the merits of their stance moot. I kinda don't care whether the Amazon case has merits because they way they handled it was so classless and petty and just, well, dickish. It's not like I'm gonna start boycotting Amazon but I am planning to spend more time researching my buying options in the future and not just use them as a 1-stop all purpose shopping location.

what's a squirrel going to do with a nickel?

2010-02-02T02:15:35Z

These messages are brought to you by the spliintered utility pole in my neighborhood: 1) the roads are not as clear as you think they are; 2) you don't drive as well as you think you do.

people don't always speak in direct quotes

2010-01-31T22:21:14Z

Okay, so forget anything I said yesterday about the quality level of in-snow driving around here. Those observations were, it turns out, overly influenced by a sample group limited to anyone who happened to drive past our house yesterday. First, late last night we saw a couple of people just down the road having to push out a car that had gotten stuck in the snow (looked like they were going to fast and skidded into the heavier snow on the shoulder). Driving around today I saw multiple cars fishtailing, a car that had been rear-ended, a guy skidding out on his scooter and (to top it all off) someone took out a utility pole just up the street. I think it was just telephone lines.There were people standing around watching and no one seemed to be in a panic and there were no sparks coming from the downed lines. But the road was completely blocked and I had turn around and take the long way (down to Sparger and back out to Hillsborough) to get over to the radio station.
I think what's going on is that the roads are in an extremely variable state. Most of the main roads have been plowed, there's a pretty good amount of traffic, and the sun has been out all day. So there are stretches where things are mostly clear and open. But every road I was on today had a stretch, and they sometimes came up without warning, right after a curve or something, where that changed and there were slush piles or the amount of clear pavement was down to just tire tracks or (in spots where the road had obviously been in the shade all day) where nothing had melted and it was just a big sheet of packed-down snow. So if you're going out. pay attention and watch out for other drivers who might not be.

getting an inch of snow is like winning ten cents in the lottery

2010-01-30T23:04:27Z

Whee... snow!

We're about ten years out from the big 20 inch blizzard which is the biggest storm we've had since I've been living here. Last night and today's storm didn't come close but it came way closer than any other FWDFA(tm) event we've had in the last few years. I think we ended up with about 7 inches. Would have been more except it changed to sleet for most of today. Major bummer that it started early last night and we had to cancel our reservations at Panciuto. But we didn't have to go anywhere today so we could just stay in and make biscuits and watch old movies and burn up a bunch of wood in the fireplace.
It's been pretty quiet out on the road in front of the house. No one's done a 360 or sailed off into a ditch. But I did see plenty of cars driving down the road with their entire rear windows covered in 5+ inches of snow. And it's not like this is a southern thing. I used to see that all the time up in NYC. Perhaps the theory is that if some goes out of control and is about to ram into you from behind, you're better off if you don't see it coming.

by the time I got there it was sublimed

2010-01-29T02:53:03Z

This morning was one of those days when XDU feels like my own personal playground. There hasn't been anyone on the 5-7am shift before me in at least a year so I'm always getting there and powering the station back up. But when I checked email before leaving this morning I found a note from the 9am DJ saying she was out of town and hadn't been able to find a sub. So it was: drive to station, turn on all the machines, play music for 2 hours to whatever random people happened to be listening, turn off all the machines and leave. Still, it was fun. It's pretty much always fun. And, hey, I managed to get thru the show without mistakenly playing any indecencies over the air (which is a good thing).

In other news, Frozen White Death from Above(tm) panic in full effect, y'all. Which rather sucks, as we're supposed to be going out for Sarah's birthday dinner tomorrow night. Maybe we'll get lucky and the storm will slow down and things won't get all snowy (or wintry mixish or whatever) until later. I'm thinking that Saturday's planned excursion to China Palace for lunch w/ Phil, S, D, and Sta Salsera is probably not gonna happen. But we don't need to figure that out now. As one of our number pointed out earlier, if the weather is bad we'll all be trapped in our homes watching the internets anyway.

my family heirloom is a neon beer light

2010-01-28T01:53:37Z

Okay, so today's Dinosaur Comics just cracked me up. Off to the catapubmarine!

Also, can your heart stand the horrible truth about unhappy hipsters

use the water from the flood to put out the fire

2010-01-27T04:23:47Z

Stephen Worth, the director of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, has been guest-blogging over at boing² and last weekend he did a series of posts on music. Specifically, great American music from the 20th century. Including clips of Armstrong (w/ the Ambassadors), Leadbelly, Buck Owens & the Buckaroos. Lotsa good stuff and definitely worth checking out. It's funny, though. I agree with his basic idea that most people just don't know anything the vast amount of great music that's out there. But the way he made that point rather bugged me. Just a little too much "oh these damn kids with their microstep and their dubtech and their emohouse." And get off his lawn. I just think it was lazy writing to use his young interns as the example of incurious people with limited musical tastes. Most people, whatever their ages, are incurious and have limited musical tastes in some ways. For example, even a well-intentioned set of recommendations might miss out on huge genres of music from all around the world.

we're smuggling beer

2010-01-26T04:35:15Z

Here are some interesting final thoughts on Conan O'Brien from Bomani Jones, who has a different perspective than any I've seen elsewhere on the intertubes cos he himself was recently fired (when one of the local sports radio stations bought the other one last year, they ended up cancelling a bunch of programming, most of it local). I was surprised, at first, that O'Brien was able to take the high road. But it was really an impressive way to go out. Over the weekend I caught up with the live blog that AV Club did and some of the folks on there just seemed to have been completely confounded by Conan's decision to stay classy. Personally, I could've done without the ending jam on "Freebird" (it's just one of those songs I never want to hear again) but I certainly can't begrudge him his self-indulgence.

Oh, and remember, no kicking penguins.

come on in & pull yourself up a chair

2010-01-25T05:10:00Z

I think it was on last Thursday's Tonight Show when Pee-Wee Herman came out to explain the whole Conan v. NBC fracas (using a plush giraffe & NBC logo, Optimus Prime and "the bad guy from Avatar"). I'd heard a while ago that Reubens was bringing back Pee-Wee but that was the first time I'd seen him in character since forever ago. Turns out he's doing the Pee-Wee Herman Show live on stage in LA. No word on any tour plans so I bet that the only way to see the show is to go out to Cali. Oh well. There's also a spiffy Pee-Wee Herman website. (Note: will play the theme song at you, but you can turn the sound off if you're at work or you've already memorized all the lyrics).

scream real loud!

just naming random alphabetic letters

2010-01-24T22:51:01Z

So this weekend's mostly been a festival of slacktacularity. Well, I did get one of the household tasks at the top of the list done. And reviewed a couple of CDs. But other than that, not so much in the way of productivity. Well, I did do some shopping. Including a stop at the farmer's market to get some pie from Scratch to celebrate National Pie Day. Altho why National Pie Day is not on Pi Day I couldn't begin to guess. And I suppose it all might have something to do with the mad social whirl that's been whirling (party last night, brunch this morning, dinner at Watts tonight.
Speaking of which, Watts and many other Triangle restaurants are participating in Dine Out for Haiti. If you can't make it anywhere tonight, there's a bunch of places participating tomorrow as well.

there's not much of a future in being an elf

2010-01-22T03:23:32Z

Been thinking that I should be recording these last few nights of Conan O'Brien on the Tonight Show. Just to see how much of an FU he'll have for the ad wizards at NBC. But of course, here in the age o' the internets, I don't really have to do that since Gawker's very thoughtfully done all the heavy lifting for me with Late Night Wars, their compilation of all the wacky hijinks.

And speaking of all things intertube-tastic, here's some of the oddball goofiness that... well, I don't think you can say the 'nets created stuff like this but 20 years ago this would have been in a zine and probably only 114 people would ever have seen it. But now we can all get a chance to bask in the wonderfulness that is America Bowl.