Thursday, January 27, 2011

SisyphOffice

Belated but necessary 2011 New Year's Resolution.
I've got to stop the boulders from rolling back into my uhhhmmmm office(?).  Hey!  It has a desk (somewhere there) and a chair and a PC, so yeah, it's an office.


Barely.

The Ever-Loving Wife has "volunteered" her organizational skills and her incredible File 13 abilities.  Let's see what a month (or two) will bring.

Note:  These self-incriminating photos were willingly posted.  I am past shame.  I am exhausted pushing the paper boulders.

...well, it seems like I'm not the only guy in need of de-cluttering.  Here's Barnaby Conrad, at home in Cupertino, CA.   Too busy writing, I guess.

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Lucy's Ghost Invades Sportswriter's Soul

"But football decisions are made by General Manager Ted Thompson, perhaps the luckiest and happiest G.M. in sports. This structure allows Thompson to execute decisions, even unpoopular ones, without an impatient, jittery billionaire breathing down his neck."

-From "The Sporting Scene " in this week's The New Yorker.

Dave Zirin must have been hitting the  ol' Vitameatavegamin.

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Monday, January 24, 2011

Bloody Harvesting

I'd heard about this a while back from a cousin in the Old Country but, foolishly, put it in the Vicious Rumour bin as it had a taste of old Yugoslavia nastiness.   I once had disbelieved him about this as well only to find out it was definitely true.

No matter how ridiculous or out the realm of possible human behaviour it sounds, when it comes to the happenings around the Old Country, I should simply nod and accept the truth of it.  The details, as far as the West is concerned, will eventually come out.

Still...harvesting the organs of your enemy is beyond the cruel and the macabre.

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Going for Seven.

The Steelers are in.  The Feb 6th game against the Packers should be a good one, a departure from the majority of Super Bowls when the best games played were the playoff ones to get to the Big Game.  This will be a chance for Pittsburgh to get their 7th Super Bowl ring....

...for those counting, the Iggles are still dreaming of Ring #1.

And this is all good for Pittsburgh, a truly beautiful American city.  Don't beleive me?

Check out these great panorama shots taken by the Pittsbugh Post-Gazette's Steve Mellon.

Last night prior to the Jets-Steelers game, on the water.  (click on the button to enlarge the screen and then "arrow" yourself around.  A beautiful (freezing) night in the 'Burgh.

..and if that was interesting for you, there's Mr. Mellon's views of:
The Andy Warhol Museum
St Nicolas Croatian Catholic Church (my favorite of Mr. Mellon's pictures)
U of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning
Carnegie-Mellon University's College of Arts
Anything that Floats Race on the North Shore
St Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church (version# 2)
Kennywood Park, site of the must-see film Adventureland.


More there if you care to spend your free time.  But, seriously folks,  you've got to get to the 'Burgh to see all of the places in person.

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Sunday, January 23, 2011

All Kinds of "Woman"s



...there's Roy Orbison and some famous friends with his "Pretty Woman"....




..and there's Saad Haroon with his "Burka Woman" (I'm supposing he can't say "pretty" due to heavy veil-age....

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Friday, January 21, 2011

Unhappy Hipsters...Doing One Line Comedy for Those of Us On the Sidelines of Modern Life

Unbelievable: She’d been living in a windowless cell for six years without even an inkling about the movable panel.
(Photo: Eirick Johnson; Dwell)

From this excellent site, Unhappy Hipsters.   NSFW, as you may spit out your coffee on your flat screen, causing it to smoke thereby drawing attention to the fact that you may be enjoying yourself @ work.

TOTH to Execupundit for pointing out this daily treasure.

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

I'm Trying to Friend On Facebook, Specifically...

...this cat, erhmmm, I mean dog.

Chaser is familiar with 1,022 nouns.   That's like more than enough words to have a conversation with me on most days and, being of Slavic origin,  nouns is all I need to converse.  Verbs are better expressed through hand gestures anyway.  With Chaser, I won't have any issues of getting in my opinion edgewise.  Plus, if there's a disagreement, she would simply lick my face and we'd be best buds again.

....although, Chaser may tilt her head and give me the quizzical look that I get from certain folks, like the Ever Loving Wife, when nouns come spilling out my mouth with no topic to seek purchase of.

Wonder if Chaser is familiar with the expression, "Hmmmmmm"

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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Thank You Michael Chabon.

I thought I was being churlish, curmudgeon-like, lacking in empathy....

...and then this write-up in the Atlantic from Mr. Chabon (Tip of the Hat to Michael Schaum over at Bookslut for pointing this article out!).

If I may...
" Obama was figuring himself (extraordinarily, I think) not as the Great Father but, more messily and searchingly, as an imperfectly lowercase father, "shaken from [his] routines ... forced to look inward," struggling in the wake of calamity to reclaim and to strive to measure up to a set of principles the burden of whose observance falls so unevenly on the narrow shoulders of the young. He was, at that moment, talking directly to me.

And yet ... Was it all the weird, inappropriate clapping and cheering? Or the realization that I am so out of touch with the national vibe that I didn't know that whistling and whooping and standing ovations are, when someone evokes the memory of murdered innocent people, totally cool? I never would have thought that I'd spend so much of that solemn Wednesday thinking—first on publication of Sarah Palin's latest piece of narrishkeit about the blood libels, then all through the memorial service—please, I beg you, can you not, finally, just shut up? It was distancing. Distracting. As he joined in, at times, with the applause, the president's hard, measured handclaps, too close to the microphone, drowned out everything else in my kitchen right then, and seemed to be tolling the passing of something else besides human lives. I don't know what. Maybe just my own sense of connectedness to the cheering people in that giant faraway room. I didn't feel like applauding right then, not even in celebration of the persistence and continuity of human life and American values. And then I was ashamed of my curmudgeonliness. Those people, after all, many of them college students, were in a sports arena; architecture gives shape to behavior and thought. Maybe if the service had been held in a church, things would have played differently.
"

The speech and President Obama's delivery was superb and without the spectre of a vulture at a tragedy. I'll go along with Mr. Chabon and blame the venue for the reaction; buildings can take the heat.

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Friday, January 14, 2011

Whatcha doin' on Sunday, from 9:00 in the A.M. (EST) until Noon?

Well, if you're asking yourself this question and you can't come up with a satisfactory answer, how about listening in to http://www.wvud.org/?  I'll be hosting my first "The Morning After" show of 2011, so there should be some new music to throw (gently, of course) in your general direction.  CD's sure to enjoy some airplay include Afrocubism (TOTH to Whisky on this one; another great find), Rebecca Martin, Rubber Soulive, Phronesis, a preview of the new Drive-By Truckers CD, Go-Go Boots, (coming out in mid-February), and the usual cast of musical characters, including Brad Mehladau, Cassandra Wilson, Grant Green, Esbjorn Svensson Trio, & Anders Osborne.

Hope to catch you listening!

For those not in the immediate radio wave reception area (which would probably be the majority of the visitors here), you can tune in via the Internet using this link.   Hope you join in on the calamities sure to abound.

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Twain & Richards - Two Most Enjoyable Blokes

No, it's not that I've disappeared from the Internet...we know that's impossible these days.
 
No, it's not that I've gone to the mattresses, although some mattress time does explain where I've been.

Apologies to my faithful visitors who've come here to find....Nothing.  I've been ensconced with two massive tomes, autobiographies (or allegedly so, both).

One is from the man of whom it was written that the report of his death was exaggerated.   The other is from a man whose death seems both inevitable and impossible.


Like other folks, I tend to keep a pile of books at the ready when insight, relief, or a touch of the mad is necessary to make it through the day/night.   I can't recall the last time that I've enjoyed two books as much simultaneously.  I won't be comparing the two now nor ever in the future.  It was simply a bit of Kismet that they arrived so close to each other (one from that venial sin of self-choosing, the other from an act of Christmas charity from the Ever Loving Wife).   The only similarity I can dare venture at this point is the minute detail of information provided by both authors (never thought I'd use that word with Mr. Richards).  How both can recall so much, specifically the miraculously still living and breathing Keith Richards, is amazing.  Granted, both are probably using the writing license to "extend" facts where story/recollection demands a bit of terra firma, with Mr. Richards' memories culled from a brain that's been taxed to the max with pleasures of the mind-bending sort.

Sometimes, switching from one to the other was like jumping from a train going south to one going north.  Other times, it was like being a passenger on the same train that suddenly changed from a steam locomotive to a Shinkansen.  It's not as if I needed one book to keep the other interesting; both stand up well by themselves.  It's simply that the pure luck of having both available and open at the same time has put a kick start into reading for 2010.

Get on Board!

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