The Old Grey Lady

"Gail Collins: Well, the good thing about New York is that only half the conversation at any party is about politics. The other half is shop talk, which I really do like, particularly when it’s not my shop and I get to hear gossip about which restaurant is closing next or who’s sleeping with who in the world of post-post Freudian therapy." - Deck the Halls With Joseph Lieberman. Gail Collins, NY Times, 12/16/2009.

Whoo! Good thing the NY Times is still around to provide such penetrating analysis.

Nice new thing -

The Adam Carolla podcast. Great stuff.

What the economy looks like in my neck of the woods.

The AppleBee's across the street went out of business a couple of weeks ago. Apparently they weren't doing enough business, though when I walked by it looked popular enough. I saw people in there. Not enough I guess. A couple of months ago the Mexican restaurant across Hampden from Whole Foods went dark too. Both of these businesses had been in the neighborhood (Tamarac/Hampden area) at least as long as I've been around, ie. 4 or 5 years.

L'affair D'Polanski

Apparently some people think Roman Polanski should be let go and have charges against him dropped because he's an accomplished film director:
http://www.sacd.fr/Le-cinema-soutient-Roman-Polanski-Petition-for-Roman-Polanski.1340.0.html

Fuck him. I liked some of his movies. No movie is so great that I'm going to excuse you for rape though.

Fuck him and fuck everyone who thinks *artistes* should be allowed to get away with shit, just because they might have made a good movie once.

Michael Moore sucks.

I'm against the Iraq war. I want socialized medicine in the US. So I agree with him on at least some policy. (Though I think anyone who ever voted for Ralph Nader is an idiot.)

I don't like his shtick. He takes serious issues, like plant layoffs, and tries to make a joke out of it. I recall in one of his flicks, forget the name, where he gave some coporate spokes-woman a big check for 58 cents (approx) as the Corporate Downsizer Award. She stood there, not saying much, looking at this big guy in his Tigers hat as he gave her the award. It's not funny and it doesn't tell us much about de-industrialization. It's the cheapest of laughs. And, again, I say this as someone who would be very into seeing a real movie about plant closings.

Even lamer is director Morgan Spurlock. I get the joke. Eating at McD's will fuck you up. That's why I don't. And he doesn't either generally. Don't eat hamburgers if you are concerned about your health. What's the big deal?

How these guys make a living with this stuff eludes me. I do wonder where the serious documentarians are. Maybe they aren't *funny* enough to get the eyeballs. Too bad. Like McD's we are getting a second rate product instead of the real.

Letting school kids choose the books they read.

The NY Times article - A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like, by Motoko Rich 8/29/2009, talks about some schools where the teachers are letting the kids pick which books they want to read and there's some discussion about whether this is a good thing or not. On the one side the students should be more motivated to read books if they pick them. On the other side, they'll just read Harry Potter.

From the article:
Literacy specialists say that giving children a say in what they read can help motivate them. “If your goal is simply to get them to read more, choice is the way to go,” said Elizabeth Birr Moje, a literacy professor at the University of Michigan. Ms. Moje added that choices should be limited and that teachers should guide students toward high-quality literature.

It isn't asked why they should be required to read fiction at all. What's the purpose? Who defines what 'high-quality' literature is?

Maintenance Developer's Dilemma.

Too many bugs will make management angry. Too few bugs and they don't need developers.

Fall is Coming - Yes!

Damn. I'm looking forward to Football, cool weather and shorter days.
Nice stuff.

What is wrong with the NY Times?

Thumbing through the mag online this weekend I ran across this headline:

The Self-Storage Self
By JON MOOALLEM
What is it about Americans that makes us store elsewhere all that stuff we accumulate?

Why does the MSM always stucture articles like this -
Who is this 'us'? I don't store shit. Most people don't actually.
Why the emphasis on Americans? People in other countries never store anything?
6 pages on people using storage units?
Why isn't the fact that they don't have space for their shit
an adequate answer? Or the fact that some people are hoarders?

Looking for generalizations/trends is a lazy way of giving some
potentially interesting reporting more *depth*. It's fun to psychologize
though and I'd bet this sort of thing is a big hit with the editors.

Can I talk to you about the report?

So I talked to the Director about the report I had been worried about. He came by my desk, sat down, and we went over what stored procedure we were going to use and how the thing should be layed out, and I pointed out a tricky pivot table like section that was possible technical snag. We were in agreeance pretty much for all of this.

Turns out the team lead misunderstood what the issues were. Maybe he doesn't understand Reporting Services well enough.

It's all good though it does disturb me that if management gets an idea in their head they can wreck the whole project real quick...

That may be an overstatement. The project manager is a pragmatic guy and so is the DBA. And everyone wants this to work out if only to keep their jobs..

Another nice thing is that I'm not even working on it. The guy in the next cube is. So that's happening too. Nice all around.

Derision And Mockery As A Sales Technique.

Over the past like two weeks I've had salesmen try to push something on me and they have both used the same technique. They make an inquiry, asking me if I want something free, I say no, and they act shocked.

The first instance was at Wells Fargo. I was despositing a check and making a withdrawl. The teller typed in the info then stared at her computer screen for a minute or two. Usually I do this sort of thing at the ATM and it takes maybe a minute. I don't stare at the screen quizzically. After this pause, she looks back at me, wide eyed and 'serious' and says that I have an older type checking account and I can get a newer one.
"What would that get me?"
"You would get free checks and cashiers and free stuff."
"No thanks."
"You don't want upgraded checking?" She said, her voice rising somewhat to indicate surprise and disgust, as if there was something wrong with me for not taking up this offer.
"Nope." I said, going for a flat affect, trying to indicate I want to leave and I have no interest in the pitch and I was offended enough by her approach that I was no longer going to be nice.

The second instance happened today. It was about 5:00 pm. I was sitting at my computer browsing the internet and I hear knocking at the door. I assumed, correctly, that it was a guy trying to give away the paper (Denver Post). I answered the door, and some guy in his late twenties to mid thirties, dressed in t-shirt and jeans and affecting an energetic demeanor, said,
"Hi! I just wanted to know if you had been getting your paper?"
"No. And I'm not interested."
"You don't want a free paper?"
"Absolutely not." I said.
"Wow! Turning down a free paper?" He said, as I shut the door in his face.

I don't have problem being asked if I'm interested in a companies product. I do have a problem with the sales technique that tries to maniuplate me into buying their stuff by semi-concious social cues.

I don't want free 'stuff' from my bank and I'll never, ever, pay for the Denver Post (I might read it for free off the internet though).

Devious motherfuckers.

Misc.6/28/2009

Not much going on. Work is going fairly well. We have stuff to do but we aren't getting slammed. I'm working on an upgrade to an existing report. The director had some ideas about how this needed to be done. Implementing his ideas will make the project harder, less reliable, and will not imho, add much value to it. But, he's the type of guy who doesn't gets pissed when people disagree with him. So it's going to be done his way because people don't want to have to look for a new job. Fair enough. This doesn't really bother me. It's part of the job. It took me a while to get to that attitude though. I care enough to make sure the project is successful enough so that I can keep working. Other than that I'm not invested in this stuff...

I'm still working on reading Paradise Lost. Still stuck on Book 9. Nothing happens as far as I can tell.

Also reading The Wanderer (AKA Le Grand Meaulnes) by Alain-Fournier. I'm on page 70. It's going a little slow too. Maybe I need to read more thrillers. Least shit happens in them.

Paradise Lost

It was going along pretty good then I got to Book 9. Not sure if I'm going to be able to get past this. I am having a hard time figuring out what is going on. I have Spark Notes to help me though. Haven't given up yet though.

I've found the criticism of PL to be interesting. There's some speculation on who was the model for Satan - Cromwell? They talk about what life was like back in Milton's day - the English Civil War, the restoration of the King (I think that happened.) Milton was a big advocate for free speech but seems to have lacked a sense of humor. Lots of interesting stuff.

Dis-aggregation.

Read an article in Vanity Fair last night about Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the NY Times, by Mark Bowden. It was very interesting.

The article talks about how Sulzberger has not been able to make the Times financially successful in the internet world.

Former editor Max Frankel had some ideas about the future role of newspapers, "“The second idea was much more important, and came a little later,” Frankel says. “I wrote that one big coming threat posed by the computer was disaggregation: the Internet disaggregates the hunt for information. The need for information would survive the advent of the digital era, but the package offered by The New York Times might not. So how do you protect the package? What was so great about The New York Times was not that we offered the best coverage in any particular field but that we were very good in so many. It was the totality of the newspaper that was a marvel, not any of its particulars. The Web threatened to break that up. One way to weather this, which I suggested, was that we needed to pick the fields in which to be pre-eminent. If you want to have the best sports package, then start hiring the staff and make yourself the best go-to place for sports information. If it is business, or politics—whatever—pick one and make yourself the best, or make a strategic alliance.” This is the approach taken by ESPN.com, by Bloomberg.com, IMDB.com, Weather.com, and a multitude of others. Any one of dozens of sites specializing in, say, politics or the arts could have been taken over and built up around the Times’s expert staff."

I hadn't thought of that. Why should you get movie reviews from the same place you get sports stories?

Denver Blizzard. Friday April 17, 2009

Nice. We can use the water. Plus they let us out of work at three. It's Sunday now, sunny, warm, and the snow is melting fast. When I went out on the patio to see how cold it was I noted it smelled like pine trees. It had kind of a fresh quality. Reminded me of camping out. Very nice.

Now I'm thinking of going camping this summer. Hmm. I have next week off. Maybe I'll go for a hike. El Dorado canyon perhaps...

Paradise Lost

I'm on book 4, around line 160. I'm kind of enjoying it. I like the writing style but I am having trouble following the action. For example:

164: Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
165: Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.
166: So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend
167: Who came their bane, through with them better pleased
168: Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume,
169: That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
170: Of Tobit's sone, and with a vengeance sent
171: From Media post to Egypt there fast bound.

Satan's enjoying the smells of Eden. Milton compares this experience to some other literary/historical characters I am not familiar with - Asmodeus, Tobit, Media (is that a character?). That said, the scene seems interesting. Satan was reminded of how things were when he was an angel. He was taken by how lovely Eden was. He thought about going back and asking for forgiveness. Good stuff.

Anyway, I'm hoping to make it through this whole thing even though the writing is half opaque.

Masterpiece Theater

Let's see how this goes. I've got 3 books - The Art of the Tale - An International Anthology of Short Stories (~800 pages), Gotham Writers Fiction Gallery - Exceptional Short Stories Selected by New York's acclaimed Creative Writing School (~300 pages) and Paradise Lost, by Milton. I'm going to try and read them all cover to cover over the next few months. By the end of the summer I guess.

So far I am having mixed results. I've read John Leonard's introduction to Paradise Lost, and some spark notes stuff on it, but haven't started the poem itself. It's a little less than 300 pages. Hopefully I'll be able to understand it.

The Art of the tale isn't starting out so good. I just read The Sacrificial Egg, by Chinua Achebe, and The Bound Man by Ilse Aichinger, both of them not very good.

In the Sacrificial Egg a man, Julius Obi, lives in a port city, Umuru, in Nigeria and pretty much nothing happens. It's about 4 pages long. Oh yeah, he stepped on a 'sacrificial' egg in the road towards the end. Not sure what that meant.

In The Bound Man a guy wakes up to found himself tied up, apparently the victim of a crime. He manages to get himself to his feet and hobble down the road. He tries to get to the nearest village. He meets up with a traveling circus and joins them, becoming The Bound Man attraction - "Ladies and Gentleman, the bound man!" He stays with the circus for a while, the whole time he is bound. This was about 9 pages.

The Gotham Writers Workshop's Fiction Gallery is faring much better. I've read two stories from it First Confession by Frank O'Connor, and Brownies by ZZ Packer.

First Confession is about a young kid who's facing his first confession at church. He's scared of going to hell and his sister keeps reminding him of all the 'sins' he's committed. Unpretentious, humorous slice of life. Told in the first person.

Brownies is about some girls at a Brownie camp. The girls are black and they have an incident with a group of white brownies. It's largely humorous and told in the first person as well.

So, one story where nothing really happens, one derivative Kafka absurdity, and two semi humorous recollections. I'm batting .500. Not bad.

RIP - Rocky Mountain News

The Rocky Mountain News had it's last edition last Friday. I feel for all the people who are now out of a job, in particular the ones who weren't the writers, just the average Joe printer or whatever.

That said, I didn't generally read it. They were offering damn near free subscriptions last fall. Actually had people going door to door in my apt, (which is against our rules and possibly illegal) last fall. Guy knocks on my door and said I could get the RMN free for six months or something. I just told him I wasn't interested and closed the door.

The paper kind of sucked. The endless coverage of Columbine, Elway, that dead Boulder girl Jon Benet Ramsey and whatever other local disasters. Mike Littwin and Tina Griego - politically correct shills. You knew what their opinion on anything was before they did. I need this shit? What wasn't this crap was AP wire stuff and ads.

All that said, a general purpose Denver news web page might be worth checking out.. I'll have to see what's out there.

Black History Month.

In honor of black history month, enjoy this slice of history about the Old Negro Space Program.

Yes We Did!

Listened to the radio at work as Obama got inaugurated today. Awesome. Best possible way to start the new year.

Hasta Bush.

If I could go back in time and tell Bush supporters what the world would be like after 8 years of his presidency I wonder what they'd say.

Fiction

The NY Times had an article recently with some stats from the National Endowment for the Arts saying that fiction reading is increasing for adults. In 2002 the % of adults in the US reading literature was 46.7, in 2008 it was 50.2. 1982 was kind of a high watermark with 56.9.

I'm kind of surprised it's that high. I know a few people who haven't read any fiction since school, where they were forced to. My guess is these are the basic reasons why:

It's Boring.
People aren't really like that.
They don't write simply or clearly.
Don't like being lectured to.
Books are too long and there's too much other stuff to do.

Best Reads of 2008 - in no particular order.

Fiction
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fences - Play, August Wilson. An African American family in what might be Pittsburgh in the 50s.'
Until Gwen - Short Story, Dennis LeHane. Mystery. Hard boiled. Contemporary lowlifes.
The Fishing Boat Picture - Short Story, Allan Sillitoe. A marriage and divorce seen from the distance of years by the post office working husband.
The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller - Short Story, Allan Sillitoe. Reminiscences of a childhood friend.
The Man in the Overstuffed Chair - Short Story, Tennessee Williams. Semi-fictional account of author's restless father.
The Glass Menagerie - Play, Tennessee Williams. Family drama.
Nobody Will Laugh - Short Story, Milan Kundera. Showdown in Academia.


NonFiction
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Last Shot - Book about Coney Island kids hoping to become college basketball players, Darcy Frey.
The Old House at Home - Essay/Article about the bar McSorley's in Manhatten, Joseph Mitchell.
Trucking Through The Aids Belt - Article about a riding through East Central Africa in 1993, Ted Conover
Klosterman IV - Collecion of articles by Music Critic, pop culture observer Chuck Klosterman.
There Are No Children here. Book about two kids Pharoah and Lafayette Rivers growing up in the Henry Horner homes in Chicago during the early to mid 1980's. Alex Kotlowitz.

Definitions

A few = 3-7
A couple = 2-4
A handful = 3-10
Several = 5-10
One = 1
A lot = more than 5
Almost = > 75% of the way there
Not bad = better than the median
Always = undefined
Never = undefined
Forever = undefined
Sometimes = more than once, less than 100% of the time

Random Thoughts on Moth Balls

I was just checking out my closet. Wanted to clean off my glasses so I went in there to get this cloth I use to clean them, it's some special micro fiber thing. Anyway. I got a whiff of mustiness. Didn't really smell bad and I thought about how I don't really clean the closet, at most I just throw shit out of it. Then I remembered moth balls. I remember running into them sometimes poking around when I was real young, but I never used them as an adult. Never occurred to me. I wonder if this is because I live in Colorado and not Massachusetts. Maybe moths aren't so much of a problem here, because of the climate perhaps. Maybe they aren't so much of a problem now. Have they eradicated this nuisance with pesticides? (I do remember seeing a lot of them on occasion, not that they bothered me. I recall being in New Haven and they would kind of hover around. They might have come out at twilight. Recall going through one neighborhood and people had posted some sort of anti-moth trap on trees. I think it might have had pheromones or something to attract them and kill them.) Maybe moths have been proven not to eat people's clothes. Maybe mothballs have been proven not to work. Maybe they do and everyone still uses them but me. If that's the case I can't say I've been bothered by the lack of them. Of course I don't use irons either, maybe I'm just slovenly.

Timothy Egan VS Joe the Plumber - "I don’t want you writing books."

Wow, Timothy Egan's op-ed/attack on Joe the Plumber was the dumbest thing I've read in a long time.

From the first few paragraphs, "The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet?

I didn’t think so. And I don’t want you writing books. Not when too many good novelists remain unpublished. Not when too many extraordinary histories remain unread.
...
Joe, a k a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, was no good as a citizen, having failed to pay his full share of taxes, no good as a plumber, not being fully credentialed, and not even any good as a faux American icon. Who could forget poor John McCain at his most befuddled, calling out for his working-class surrogate on a day when Joe stiffed him.

With a résumé [sic] full of failure, he now thinks he can join the profession of Mark Twain, George Orwell and Joan Didion."

I don't see the logic in any of this. Apparently Joe the plumber is planning to write a book and it could potentially sell a lot of copies. Why should this bother Egan?

Because some other authors are unpublished and unread? Would they be more likely to be published or read if Joe doesn't write his book? I doubt it sincerely.

Because if Joe gets published, and gets paid for it, he will be in the same profession, at least for a time, as Twain, Orwell, etc? What's the problem here, if you can't write as well as Twain you're not supposed to write?

Because Joe is a plumber? Is he supposed to know his place, which is apparently the toilet? (I like how Egan uses fixing a leaky toilet as his example of what plumbers do, as opposed, for example, to fixing the kitchen sink. People shit in toilets. In some cultures it's the work of the lower castes (i.e. people not fit to associate with) to clean and repair them. Would it defile the New York Times best seller list to have Joe's book on there?)

With op-eds like this, it's easy to see why the NY Times stock is junk.

Existentialism

"I like “Milk,” which has a strong, showy, often moving performance from Sean Penn as Milk and one gorgeously directed and choreographed sequence — shot by the great cinematographer Harris Savides — in which Josh Brolin, oiled in flop sweat and hair grease as Milk’s killer, Dan White, walks alone through a series of grim institutional corridors that put the killer’s existential isolation and desperate journey into bold visual terms." - Manohla Dargis, In the Big Picture, Big-Screen Hopes, December 18, 2008.

What does 'existential' mean in that sentence?

New Senator Kennedy

Fuck No. Biggest thing Caroline Kennedy ever did was have a father who was a president. No more Bush's, Clinton's, Kennedy's or the rest. At least Hillary and G.W. had to go through an election, CK just wants to get appointed.

Whither Local News?

Tough times in the Denver area for the news crowd. The Rocky Mountain News is going on the auction block and Ernie Bjorkman is getting laid off. Bummer.

I don't generally read the Rocky Mountain News. Well, I read it sporadically, but I never subscribed and haven't bought it in the stands in some time. They used to have copies at Duffy's and when I'd go in for Happy Hour I'd read it there. I read it on the internet sporadically. The web site probably isn't getting enough ad revenue to justify it's expenses.

Here's an interesting point from the article, "The Rocky and its rival, The Denver Post, have struggled with sagging income - including the loss of an estimated $100 million in classified advertisement revenues."

Lotta $. Big chunk of that is probably craigslist. I'm surprised classified ads were such big business. I remember back in Fort Collins, there was only one paper, the Coloradoan, and it straight up sucked, but you would have to get it if you wanted to check out the classifieds.

Too bad for Ernie Bjorkman. I watch the local news less than I read the local paper but I thought he was cool. The article said he had been studying veterinary technician stuff. That's pretty cool. Guy's up for some change. Impressive adaptability on his part.

A while back the local 'alternative' paper, WestWord gave up on having local movie reviews and started carrying the ones from other papers. To that extent, they aren't even a local newspaper.

The thing about WestWord, while I am on the subject, is that it generally has just one main article and that one is way too long to bother with. Unless you are involved in whatever the issue is. I don't know why they do it that way. Authorial vanity I suppose.

Denver Open Media

Mostly I think it's lame. Tonight I caught a bit of a show that seemed be about health insurance and people in Colorado. Interesting. Just had interviews with people who had health issues and were dealing with how to pay them. One woman had cancer and was out of work and was spending a big chunk, if not most, of her money on treatment.

I liked the fact that it was just these people talking. No Michael Moore trying to make jokes. No perky news reporter.

Good work DOM. From a guy who mostly doesn't appreciate what you do.

Note - I was watching around 6/7 pm Tuesday. Didnt' see any notice on the Comcast listing, and the DOM website, afaict didn't have listings period. I have no idea what the show was, who did it, etc.

Yes Man

"A man signs up for a self-help program based on one simple principle: say yes to everything... and anything. At first, unleashing the power of "yes" transforms his life in amazing and unexpected ways, but he soon discovers that opening up his life to endless possibilities can have its drawbacks. "

God that sounds bad.

Lunch cheap and easy.

1. Homemade bean and cheese Burrito
1 tortilla. Cost - $.13, Calories - 170
1/5 can of beans. Cost - $.30, Calories - 80
1/20 package of Mexican Velveeta cheese. Cost - $.19, Calories - 70
Total - Cost $.62, Calories 320.

2. Ginger Ale
Cost - $.40, Calories 140

3. Bag o' Carrots
1 Carrot, julienned (cut into sticks) Cost $.10, Calories 30

Totals
Cost - $.62 + $.40 + $.10 = $1.12
Calories - 320 + 140 + 30 = 490

Notes
This assumes you have access to a microwave for 1-2 minutes to reheat... To make the bean burrito you want to steam the tortilla first, otherwise it's not as pliable and will rip, tear, whatever. Steaming it makes it much easier to deal with.... I used vegetarian black refried beans. The numbers may slightly change for other beans but they should be close... It takes like a little less than half an hour to make 5 of them, including cleaning... I listened to the podcast In Our Time on my iPod shuffle during the time. The discussion was of The Great Reform Act of Britain. Very entertaining... Aside from being cheap, healthy, (the only cholesterol comes from the cheese) and easy to prepare, it's very tasty. Ginger Ale isn't over-sweet like most sodas. Carrots are crunchy and make a nice companion and you can eat them as the burrito cools after you nuke it.