Winter 2011

Added March photos -- highlights include Alix Sorrell's birthday, karaoke with workfriends, a visit from Paul, Mikey Barringer's birthday. FB album here.

Armadillos are DANGEROUS!

Beware, inhabitants of the desert southwest:

"Armadillos have never been among the cuddly creatures routinely included in petting zoos, but on Wednesday federal researchers offered a compelling reason to avoid contact with the armored animals altogether: They are a source of leprosy infections in humans."

Do any Super Friends live in the Southwest? Colin is the only one I can think of.

Article here.

D.C. Trip (March 2011)

FB album here.

re: post below

from the onion...

This is not over.

I know we're all reeling a bit from the supposed release of "President" Obama's supposed long-form certificate of live birth, but this is not over.  Hey Obama, how about these other relevant documents, nicely listed by our friends at Atlas Shrugs, the premier Ayn Rand-inspired conservative blog:

"Where are Obama's 

...........

Occidental College records 

Columbia College records 

Columbia Thesis paper 

Harvard College records 

Selective Service Registration 

Medical records 

Illinois State Senate records 

Illinois State Senate schedule

Law practice client list 

Harvard Law Review articles that were published 

University of Chicago scholarly articles 

Record of baptism

I hope that Trump can get to the bottom of this void in Obama's mysterious past."

Yeah, where's your baptism record?  Where's your boring grad school thesis?  WHERE WHERE WHERE WHERE WHERE?!?!?!?  FAKE FAKE FAKE!!

This blog also points out that this birth certificate is just a forgery anyway, as demonstrated in a poorly written report by an anonymous "expert."  

AND to cap it all off, it's actually irrelevant if he was born in the US because his father was Kenyan, so he had dual citizenship growing up, which apparently means he cannot be considered a "natural born citizen" under the terms of the constitution.

SO DON'T BELIEVE FOR A SECOND THAT THIS GUY IS YOUR PRESIDENT.  RIGHT?  RIGHT?  RIGHT?

iPod Touch 2011

Added photos; now includes a secular Seder and pasty cooking. FB album here.

Also, here's a full three minutes of pasty-making action!

Toivo, The Happy Pasty!

Here's a scan of the cartoon I did from Tristan & Annie's pasty display.

Benevolent Anarchy

Some day this world, now seemingly so composed and eternal, to the edges of every sea shall be merely a tangle of gaping trenches, of crashing walls and broken bodies. Everything must be torn from its accustomed place where it has rotted for centuries, hurled skyward and distributed, cast down again clean as rain, without separate identity. Nothing shall survive that the stiffened hands of poverty have created for the rich and no one shall be left alive except the elect spirits destined to procreate a new world cleansed of cruelty and in justice, ruled by benevolent anarchy.

Panic in Detroit

Michigan State Fair @ The Bell House

There's a bar in Brooklyn that is doing a "state fair" for every state, one per month, and yesterday's was Michigan! Tristan and Annie entered the pasty cook-off and won first prize! Photos here.

Crystal Stilts - Through the Floor

Crystal Stilts "Through The Floor" from Slumberland Records on Vimeo.

Easter Vomit - Rhythm Rock

25 Abandoned Soviet Monuments

...that look like they're from the future! Take a look here.

They Call Him Baby D

Loleatta Holloway - Hit & Run

Hikashu - ???

4:20

Happy 4:20 Y'all

Cucumber Water?

"Paltrow greeted people by the door, holding a glass of cucumber water."
-New Yorker, 4-25-11

Benton Harbor

As you may have heard, Benton Harbor is the first city in Michigan to be declared to be in a fiscal "Emergency" and its government dissolved.

Here's a little thing about that, along with some background on the twin cities. They really did their research and have picked up on a lot of the subtleties that surround the issue of Jean Klock Park. To give you an idea of how prized it is, people in my family cried when the city sold it to the golf course.

Here's a little thing about my twin cities.

Times New Viking: Dancer Equired

One of the coolest bands in the Midwest is releasing a new album next Tuesday; NPR has it streaming here. Tristan and I have seen them a handful of times and plan to catch them again when they come to town. My perception is that they stay pretty independent of the indie mill and just keep their nose to the grindstone.

Twitter

does anyone have twitter? i just joined after years of resistance, gotta prove my social media skills.

http://www.twitter.com/dasburmeister

Moth Joke

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Is this guy the weasely-est chickenshit schemer or what? Listen to his spin starting at 1min 40sec.

good old days

Brother, I Am Your Brother

When you look at a man who hides behind his face, the Old Man used to say, let me tell you that that man is no good. He is either a spy or a swindler. On the other hand, if you look at a man whose glance tells you, Brother, I am your brother -- watch out. That man carries a knife on his person somewhere.

Video chat with Adam

Skype/FaceTime

Does anyone have either Skype or FaceTime? Please list your username in the comments section!

Notions of Personal Time (Part 2)

NOTE: I'm not trying to be academic here, just typing out loud -- didn't go back to proofread or revise.

Carlie, I thought this video was so good I'm re-posting it! I find it a little weird that he breaks it down based on Catholic vs. Protestant -- I find the equator fact more interesting... I prefer to think of the Mediterranean (as well as the Caribbean) as separate cultural spheres -- that is, deviating from grouping cultures by continent.



The reason this was on my mind is because I'm listening to audio lectures about the Incas who, as with the Sicilians (per the video above), didn't have a word/concept of the future. I've also heard of a tribe in the Pacific that has no expression for the future OR past. Rattling around my brain was how that applies to people's personal narratives.

Tristan -- when I think of a thematic (or "cloud", to borrow a concept that's sprung up in the age of the internet/computer technology era [has it changed the way we conceive of existence?]) notion of personal time, I'm think of something free-associative (like those cloud representations of tags on websites). Not structured, but finding meaning out of the chaos and inaccuracy (but emotional relevance) of memory. Like, if you sat down to tell your life story would you tell it linearly or would you clump it together? The Incas didn't keep track of time, so when they told the Spaniards the history of the empire they would tell it based on the importance of the region, then start over with the next-most important region -- so the Spaniards were unable to structure that history in their mold because they lacked any corresponding dates between regions! It didn't make sense to them, but it did to the Incas...

One movie that I think is told in the thematic mold is a Mexican film from the 80s, a biopic of Frida Kahlo called Frida, Naturaleza Viva -- it's on YouTube, first segment below. It's structured by her lying on her death bed in pain remembering small and big meaningful moments. And I think people tend to think of One Hundred Years of Solitude as a cyclical mold (which I find very useful for conceiving of family histories, just as in the book).

Tyvek - 4312

Scion A/V Presents: Tyvek - 4312 from Scion A/V on Vimeo.

Michigan Vacation (December 2010)

I was home for the holidays for the first time since moving to NYC; the occasion was a visit from my cousin Rafa. Highlights include a family reunion of sorts with our cousins, a day trip to Frankenmuth on Christmas Eve Day, my 10-year high school reunion, and a retreat/sleepover at my dad's place. Videos below, FB album here.

We had to take Rafa to Meijer's; he especially liked the lobsters.


We played in our cousins' new rec room.


Son muy bailadores.


This was my first time meeting my cousin Keegan.


Everybody's got a little Santa in them...


My cousins presented a holiday recital.


Keegan was sitting on my lap and wanted to tape the recital; this video cracks me up.


Oh, to be a kid again!


For lunch at the Bavarian Inn we chose this whimsical dining room.


Ordering is easier said than done!


What a fun little town!


Inside Bronner's, where Christmas never ends...


Heading home for Christmas Eve.


We dropped Rafa off on the Michigan Flyer at about 11:00.


Chicha's traditional greeting.


A walkabout with Dad.


We did crackers with Nancy, her son Nick, and his wife Rebecca. I tried to tape my sister's joke; this is the ensuing communication breakdown.












Too cute!


I took that weird ride which is the high school reunion.


This is actually back in Brooklyn on New Year's Eve, but I figured I'd include it since it basically ends the holiday season.

The Beets: Queens, NY 12/11/2010

Two great songs starting at 11min 11sec. Full set here.

Notions of Personal Time

Say, when you guys conceive of your own personal history/narrative, do you think of it as linear, cyclical, randomized/thematic (cloud-like), or multiple simultaneously?

Rainbow Valley Remembrances

i think 96 was the last year and it was like up to 5000 ppl showing up it was crazy sheets of acid every where drum circles bands camping they wanted like 20 or 30 bucks a car load to get in but if you had no money they would let you slide cops could never come in cause it was private property but they would line up outside for miles

More memories on a pro-Marijuana forum here.

Theatre Bizarre

Has anyone heard of this theme park/cabaret/party that happens in Detroit around Halloween? I'd sorta like to go! Here's a little video on it that shows how devoted people are to their costumes:

OSU!

Personas

Wanna see yourself getting Google'd? Here's the link.

Abe Watch

Asking the tough hypotheticals! (He's the final commenter, whose probing questions are left unanswered...)

Prussia @ Brooklyn Bowl

One of my favorite Michigan bands came through town a couple weeks back. They played a free show at a bowling alley that has a separate stage area; unfortunately, it was almost totally empty. It was a great concert, though, because they got to stretch out and play a bunch of songs (including a cover of Monkey Gone To Heaven!), plus they were on a great sound system (which unfortunately overwhelmed my camera). Below is one of their new tunes.

Taints

Taint size.

Related (jump to 2:50) "It's insane, this guy's taint!"

Friends

From Cometbus #54:

I wasn't desperate anymore to convince everyone to think or live exactly like me. In fact, I was grateful for our differences. I was thankful we had made different choices in life and taken diverging paths.

"That's what friends are for," I thought as I began to drift off. "They offer us windows into worlds we wouldn't otherwise get to see. We can experience the roads not taken, vicariously."

Retro Video Game Deaths

I Spit On Money

My mother brought the lonely visitor coffee and tobacco and he rolled a cigarette and sipped and smoked, and then at last, sighing sadly, he said, My white horse which was stolen last month is still gone. I cannot understand it.

My uncle Khosrove became very irritated and shouted, It's no harm. What is the loss of a horse? Haven't we all lost the homeland? What is this crying over a horse?

That may be all right for you, a city dweller, to say, but what about my surrey? What good is a surrey without a horse?

Pay no attention to it, my uncle Khosrove roared.

I walked ten miles to get here.

You have legs.

My left leg pains me.

Pay no attention to it.

That horse cost me sixty dollars, John Byro said.

I spit on money, my uncle Khosrove said.

He got up and stalked out of the house, slamming the screen door.

Tight Connection to My Heart

Bob Dylan's 1980s output is an hard thing to make sense of.  His horribly shitty Christian period came to an end in 1981, after which he released 1983's Infidels, which was seen by many as a return to form.  I find it only mildly interesting, but it has a couple OK songs.  In 1985, he self-produced Empire Burlesque, which critics to this day seem to love.  Bobby started wearing a sport coat and adopted mid-1980s record production conventions, with reverby drums, background singers, and synthesizers galore.  This is one of my most disliked albums, and I cannot understand the appeal.  The songs for the most part suck, and while some Dylan albums are bad in an almost charming way, this one rings absolutely hollow and does not stand the test of time.  But he made a wonderfully bizzare video for the single:

The album does stand up as an interesting cultural artifact, I guess.  After this, he made a few more really bad albums before Daniel Lanois whipped him into shape for 1989's Oh Mercy, which is really good.  That's my take on Bob Dylan in the 1980s, but really I just wanted to post this video, which I never knew existed.