September 2007 Archives

Corner of 1st Ave and Pike St, Downtown - Sep 27, 2007

Know Your Asshole Footprint (Vanity Fair online)

My footprint is pretty good, although I fail on being able to describe my job in two words or less, unless you want to be really vague with "graduate student" or "research scientist".

Meet the new fosters, Docee and Putz (name change pending.) These two have a sad story - their previous guardian lost his home (apparently due to a fire, but details are sketchy) and because he was in a halfway house program he had difficulty locating a new abode. They served as his service cats (specific reason unclear, but maybe for anxiety or similar social issues) but he was forced to take them to the Seattle Animal Shelter because he couldn't sufficiently care for them. It's quite brave for him to do that in the face of what must have been a lot of difficult emotions, and the shelter agreed to hold them for some time while he attempted to locate a stable housing situation. Unfortunately they are very shy and stopped eating at the shelter, so they were fostered out to a woman who already had several foster cats, and were forced to stay in her garage. They started eating again, but it was quite cold in there and not an ideal location, so the shelter sent out an SOS to find new digs. Enter me and my bleeding heart :)

It took them a few days to adjust here as well, but now they're very friendly to me, and Docee is a total lap cat (which is why I can't get a good picture of her!)

Docee, a tabby mix

Putz, a dilute tortie

Taken Sep 26, 2007 (click images to enlarge)

Will Sheff of Okkervil River, from an interview with The Believer:

[A] couple months ago I tripped and I smashed my face up and I really fucked up my glasses and I haven't been able to close them since. And I caught my eye and smashed my lip up and I got this deep-tissue bruise. And it was the first time I felt a very severe degree of pain out of nowhere, really suddenly--this is long after I wrote "For Real"... But there was really no mistaking it. That was a very real sensation. You have these moments where you're like--Do I like this girl? Do I love this girl? Or do I just like her? Do I want a ham sandwich or do I want a turkey sandwich? Are my political beliefs just somebody else's beliefs that I've simply adopted or are they what I really think? But when your head is smashing into the concrete you don't have that kind of question about whether it's a real sensation. And ultimately, that’s what's going to unmake us all--smashing up against the physical reality of death and decay, and being unmade.

Another strange thing about Queen Anne - we get solicitors at the door at least once a week, and usually for "urban welfare-to-work" programs selling overpriced magazine subscriptions or other similar things. I can only assume they think everyone on the hill is filthy rich and needs more reading material.

I remember getting the occasional solicitor in Wallingford, but they were usually associated with the campus or progressive groups like the Equality Alliance trying to bulk up their mailing list and donation rosters. Here the only organization like that was the Sierra Club a few months back.

I didn't realize just how peaceful the boat was in comparison, although there we just got a weekly dose of all-ages hip-hop and salsa instead.

Since I apparently can't get off my duff to write up some album reviews, I'll at least go through what I've been listening to while working on the thesis revisions. Daytime it's been whatever is on KEXP, but their evening shows (especially early in the week) aren't my forte, so then it's CD time.

Yesterday:

• Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World


• Matthew Good Band - Underdogs


• Akron/Family - Love Is Simple


• Arcade Fire - Funeral


• Juno - A Future Lived In Past Tense

Today:

• Pela - Anytown Graffiti


• Matthew Good - White Light Rock And Roll Review


• The Wrens - The Meadowlands


• Rilo Kiley - The Execution Of All Things


• James - Whiplash

We'll see if I can actually keep up on this, and if any trends become evident. I can already predict a few, but it's kinda cheating to guess about myself.

Jasper Jenkins and the Thesis of Doom - Sep 25, 2007 (click image to enlarge)

This is Vinnie. He was our neighbor's cat when I lived in Wallingford, but he often came to our back door and yowl at us "with the voice of angels singing", as Mike used to say. Here he was lounging on our lawn next to the garden, probably hoping a few eco-avenger rats would come out of the trees for a snack.

Tragically he was killed by a car a few months after this picture was taken. Moral of the story? Don't let your cats wander the neighborhood when there's an interstate on-ramp across the street!

Wallingford, Seattle, Washington - Aug 26, 2003 (click image to enlarge)

Those of you who aren't reading this via the RSS feed might have noticed a very slight change to the layout - there's a new navigation box on the top right that links to a few other parts of the site that I've been woefully neglecting (not that the blog has been getting all that much attention either, but it's a relative measure.) Like my early post here committing myself to making an entry every day for a full month, this is mostly an effort to shame myself into getting some of these other things dealt with.

Some parts (especially the photo gallery) have an urgency in that the current location of a lot of my pictures is the free space that UW provides all students with. Since my tenure there is rapidly drawing to a close, this all needs to be moved elsewhere before it gets removed.

I did a fair bit of work last night in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, and hopefully I'll have more updates as I find myself needing breaks from thesis rewriting chores.

I've realized that I haven't done any music reviews since very early on in the existence of this site. Part of that stems from the time required to hunt down the album art and a link to Amazon (or the artist's webpage) due to my poor laptop being a bit on the elderly side.

However, upon further review I've decided that all of that is just superfluous garbage that either distracts from the review or masks the inadequacies of it, and if you're really interested in the album you'll know where to find it. (And if you really don't, Google is your friend.)

Anyway, I've picked up quite a bit of new music since those early days, so I'm going to make a goal of doing at least one review each week until I'm satisfied that all the good, under-hyped music that I've got here gets a wee bit more attention, at least for my two readers to appreciate. Tonight's review focuses on Feist's new album, The Reminder.

Take one part Cat Power, one part Sarah Harmer, and one part Sarah McLachlan, blend them together and you've got a very lousy, but typical, review of Feist's music. Instead I'd prefer to actually talk about it some. Feist's musical style on this album ranges from quiet folksy numbers to full choral sing-alongs. Her earlier work focused more on the former, so it seems on this album she's experimenting more with different instruments and arrangements. Some of the songs work quite nicely (1234 is quite catchy, and also apparently the backing music for the new iPod commercials on TV) but in some cases she seems lost in a sea of other noises. This is unfortunate, because her signature skill is her almost-quivering vocals, that ring out beautifully on the quiet, acoustic numbers. She has a slight vibrato in her singing that gives a haunted quality which shines when you can hear all the echoes and harmonies. Many of the early tracks feature her alone or with one or two accompanying instruments, and it helps connect this album to her acoustic work on her previous album, Let it Die (there was also apparently a remix album between these two, but I haven't heard anything off of that and folk remix albums are often ... well, let's just say "interesting".) The new album abruptly shifts gears with the track "Sealion", which features a much more upbeat tone with a full chorus chanting backing vocals. On this track she disappears into a cacophony of other voices, and although it's one of the most upbeat tracks it also feels the most out of place. From here the album takes a less moody tone and transitions into further upbeat works (the music, if not the lyrics) and it's as if she had an epiphany part-way through writing the album, as it shifts from quiet, lyrically-driven, introspective works to lush, instrumentation-driven, pop music. It's an interesting transition, and she almost pulls it off with the way she laid out the album, but there are still a few abrupt transitions such that it doesn't quite flow smoothly from start-to-end.

Statbox -

Artist: Feist
Album: The Reminder
Genre: Folk Pop
Rating: 7 out of 10
Purchase Again?: Yes
PWKPW?: Maybe

Why a maybe on the PWKPW? Unlike with a lot of artists where I purchase follow-up albums without even hearing them first (often within a week of their release), I bought this partially because I liked her earlier work and partially because I heard two tracks on the radio, but I didn't buy it until today and it's been out since May 1. One big factor in its favor? It was on sale for $9 at the local independent record store.

All in all it's a pleasant album and there are a few tracks that will get stuck in your head, but it's not particularly groundbreaking. My mother would probably enjoy it (and she's no doubt seen the iPod commercial) but I doubt it'll make a very big splash on commercial radio, in part because Apple doesn't actually acknowledge what the music is during the ad.

Went for my first run in a very long time today. I've been exercising some since my last real run at the Rainier-to-Pacific Relay in 2005, but it's mostly been biking or running due to other activities like soccer (which also ended some time back when the team folded.) After a mile and a half (in about 15 minutes) I felt like I was going to collapse onto my front porch. We'll see if I get my stamina back up before the temperatures get too far back down.

On the bright side, my new tiny MP3 player worked flawlessly and was a lot easier to run with than the heavy old Jukebox Zen, so perhaps that will help motivate me somewhat.

My mom beat me at Wii Sports bowling, having never played the game before.









Three times in a row.

In my defense, every game she bowled was 150+, and we also tied once with a score of 171 each.

Northgate Target, Sep 15, 2007

All three cats got adopted at the event last weekend! The kittens went together within the first five minutes of the event, which was awesome for both reasons, and Mishka was adopted right at the end of the event (officially, fifteen minutes after the event was over, but we were all willing to wait for that.) Once the kittens were gone, she curled up in a heap and slept for about three hours straight. These two shots were taken while her new human was filling out the paperwork with the shelter employees.

Miller Community Center, Capitol Hill, Seattle - Taken Sept 8, 2007 (click images to enlarge)

The setup: My mom is visiting for a few days, and KEXP is on while we're having breakfast. DeVotchKa's How It Ends comes on.

My mom: "Is this a CD?"

Me: "No, it's the radio."

Mom: "Oh, I don't remember hearing any ads so I assumed it must not be the radio. Who is this?"

Me: "DeVotchKa." (and if you were listening you would have heard me enunciate the extra capital letters.)

Mom: "It's nice. Have I heard it before?"

Turns out that she had - she saw Little Miss Sunshine, where the band's music was prominently featured. But, like most of America, probably never before then and not again since.

If you play it, they will come.

Matthew Good, 21st Century Living (from the album Avalanche):

Ambition, ambition's a tricky thing
It's like riding a unicycle on a dental floss tightrope over a wilderness of razor blades
Ambition can backfire
Ambition means more
Ambition means faster
Ambition means better

I wonder if you can sup--
Can you supersize ambition?
Does that make you ambitious if you supersize ambition?
Around here, our ambition hurts more than it helps
Around here our ambition throws an non-perishable item in a donation bin at Christmas
And it pats itself on the fucking back because it thinks it's done something decent.

(There's a YouTube video of it being performed after the break...)

So I'm sitting here half-watching the Seahawks game on TV while doing some other work, and so far there have been two commercials for UPS featuring music by the Postal Service, and an ad for the NFL featuring a song from the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack... both albums that I own.

I know Moby made it cool to use real music in ads a few years ago, but seeing as I've barely watched television since then I wasn't aware that it had evolved so much.

However, I'm unsure how I'm supposed to feel about this - do I cheer ad agencies that have a vague sense of musical taste, do I boo musicians who sell out, or do I support businesses who decide to do this? I can't really hold the musicians accountable for wanting to earn a reasonable living (though they could probably make more careful choices about who they sell out to), and I don't particularly care about UPS or the NFL as a business, so I guess that leaves me happy that advertising agencies are willing to obtain good music. I only hope that they don't do it because they figure most people don't know the origin and therefore it's still "anonymous background music", only with a hipper beat.

Griffin in one of his new hangouts - the top of my camping pack. Sept 2, 2007 (click image to enlarge)

Author’s note: this got unexpectedly long, so you might want to grab a coffee and clear the next half-hour of your schedule before proceeding. Consider yourself warned.

It occurred to me the other day that I was nearing the seventh anniversary of my arrival in Seattle. I used to mark the passage of time by the annual return of Puyallup Fair commercials (it vaguely rhymes with "gallop", as the awful ads that also feature rhyming on the word "pal-pi-tate" constantly remind you...), but since I stopped watching TV a few years ago I’ve been forced to pay more active attention by other means. This year, it also had me thinking back on my goals when I first came, and where I ended up.

From CNN.com today:

Californians left in dark as heat wave continues

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Parts of Southern California sweltered in triple-digit temperatures on Monday as a heat wave stretched into the seventh day and contributed to power outages that left thousands with without air conditioning.

Frankly I'm not sure who to point at on this one. Seriously, who thought it was a brilliant idea to build a massive metropolis with tens of millions of people in a desert? Then who thought, after all the brownouts and power disasters there a few years ago, that the infrastructure was still okay? And who in their right mind complains when the inevitable then happens?

This ranks up there with the morons in Arizona who complained that their new McMansions out in farm country smelled too much due to the farms nearby were *gasp* doing farm-related activities!

Stay tuned for next week's exciting article about the rising number of cougar attacks in sprawling exburbs (or whatever they're calling suburbs of suburbs of suburbs these days.), or next summer's "sharks attack swimmers in Florida" story, right next to the "fish populations still in decline" story that doesn't think to make a connection.

Jasper on the counter in the head of our old boat - Aug 27, 2006 (click image to enlarge)