May 2012

New Music

By in music

I found a couple of music-related links yesterday, so let’s make it Music Thursday:
1. There’s a new recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations out, recorded under a Creative Commons license–which means you can download everything for free (including the score), or just listen online at opengoldbergvariations.org.
2. I  read about Nick Waterhouse in my round of blogs, and listened to nothing else for the rest of the workday (sorry, Bach).  He’s a young kid who’s found a horn section and is doing his best to channel 50’s and 60’s R&B, down to recording and editing everything on analog and overdriving the mics. I know it sounds like it could be hipster-ironic, but it’s just really great music–plus, his blog has so many clips of forgotten 45s.
Here’s the “official” video  from his first album, Time’s All Gone, but you can find more of him on YouTube or Spotify.

Living With Ideas

By in quotes

My favorite singer Neko Case is working on a new album, and NPR is tracking the progress of it through some interviews. In the first interview (that you can read here), she talks about living with unfinished songs and what it’s like:
“Because when they’re not done, the songs, they’re like little nuclear reactors that are throbbing in your suitcase. And you’re like, ‘When’s that thing gonna go off? Is it just gonna die out? Is it just gonna poison the groundwater? What is that thing doing in there?'”
I think that description’s pretty right on for living with anything creative/life-shaping that isn’t ready to become something yet.

Still Hiking

By in hippies, nature, quotes

“As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.”

John Muir from Journal, 1871.


(The view from as far up Thaynes Canyon as I got yesterday. I still sometimes sing this song to myself when I have to turn around.)

Friday Unrelated Information

By in Friday Unrelated Information, space

1. It’s a long weekend, hooray!
2. Have you been following the launch of the Dragon capsule from SpaceX? Something American-made is back in space, and it’s been successfully captured by the ISS! I’ve been getting my news from Bad Astronomy. 
3. From the creator of last week’s hit, “Lazy Harp Seal,” I give you “Cat Licking a Hamster.”

Colonies in space!

Happy Birthday, Bob

By in Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan and his magnificent haircut turns 71 today.  I was going to pick a favorite video to share, but I really can’t–and with Bob, you either like him and you know the song or you’re not going to listen to one in the first place.
(Although in my search for a tune I remembered him getting “Soy Bomb”-ed at the 1998 Grammys. Soy Bomb!)

Re-Reading The Dharma Bums

By in hippies, Kerouac, quotes

I’m not doing so well on my goal to read a new book a month, but I’m hoping to catch up by the pool when it’s full summer. In the meantime, there’s The Dharma Bums to re-read. This is from their backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevadas:
Now the mountains were getting that pink tinge, I mean the rocks, they were just solid rock covered with the atoms of dust accumulated there since beginningless time. In fact I was afraid of those jagged monstrosities all around and over our heads.
“They’re so silent!” I said.
“Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin.”

Tuesday Project Roundup: Done!

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

I finished the tunic! I’m pretty happy with it: there’s a big Liberty print, the sleeves are really well cut, the collar looks kind of 60s retro, and it’s DONE
Fabric:  Liberty of London seasonal print lawn from Purl
Pattern: Wiksten “Tova” tunic
Level of completion: DONE! 
(I talk a lot about my productivity going to hell, but I looked back at the “sewing” tag and I’ve been getting one project a month done for 2012. So I guess it’s not too shabby.)

Shelves!

By in the precious

It took over a year for me to get it done, but I now have shelves in the garage. (I feel like Elwood in my favorite clip.) Look at the storage capacity–a cat and a bucket!
Just kidding, I started filing it up:
If you’re thinking this looks similar to the other custom, well-built shelving unit my dad put in the basement last year, that’s because he built this one too, and did a similarly excellent job. Thanks, dad!

Friday Unrelated Information

By in Friday Unrelated Information

Do please try to work out for yourself a little personal philosophy and DO NOT, repeat DO NOT be so bloody vulnerable. To hell with God damned “L’Amour.” It always causes far more trouble than it is worth. Don’t run after it. Don’t court it. Keep it waiting off stage until you’re good and ready for it and even then treat it with the suspicious disdain that it deserves. 
“Gay husbands” give the best advice, don’t they? 
2. Here is a song about a lazy harp seal, who has neither a job, nor money, nor camera, nor jacket. It pretty much made my week.

Skyler

By in Skyler

He continues to be the cutest baby in the world:
That is all.
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