mojo jomo

Currently listening to tool’s new disc “10,000 days” and Gnarles Barkley’s album “St. Elsewhere”.

Yeah, gonna have both in the car for awhile.  Think St. Elsewhere on the way to work & 10,000 days on the way home.  At least for the next week or so.

Wish I had more to report.  Lots of stuff going on in life right now, but much of it… isn’t for personal blogging.  Ask me if you happen to read this and want to know.

Liam has been dreaming about riding his bike without training wheels.  Put in an hour or so on Sunday working on it.  He’s getting there (and getting dinged up a bit… but a boy needs a few scrapes now & then), I expect him to put it all together soon.  Hope he learns how important it is to not just WANT to know how to do things in life, but to enjoy the process of mastering a new challenge.

Just finished the OCA exam, passed with flying colors. The extra week of studying paid off, I felt much more confident walking into the exam center.

Sweet. Next stop, OCP.

Our bowling team got swept last night. Ouch. I bowled pretty well, but when it most mattered in the 10th frame of game 2 & game 3, I choked.

In game 3, when I could have given us a large enough lead to get the win, I missed the pocket long on the right. Ended up with “summer teeth” left, and couldn’t pull of the spare….ended that game with a 183 — too bad it was a waste.

Maybe next year.

Perhaps the most obvious media screwup in my lifetime.

Some bad, and yes some very very bad stuff happened in the aftermath of Katrina — but it appears that we were misled on exactly how bad things got.

To start with this story from the LA Times

Quote:

“No air conditioning, no sewage … it was not a nice place to be. All those people just in there, they were frustrated, they were hot. Out of all that chaos, all of these rumors start flying.”

Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron, who headed security at the Superdome, said that for every complaint, “49 other people said, ‘Thank you, God bless you.’ ”

Endquote.

Wow.

Here’s another from the same article Quote:

Ed Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.

“We had to convince people this was still the best place to be. What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people.”

Endquote.

Of course. Fox & CNN can’t sell toilet paper by saying it, but you know this is true — at a very basic and fundamental level most Americans are decent human beings who do rise to the occasion. (Yes, I do actually believe that.)

Here’s another story along the same lines from
NOLA.com.

Quote:

“Some of these guys look like thugs, with pants hanging down around their asses,” Maj. David Baldwin said. “But they were working their asses off, grabbing litters and running with people to the (New Orleans) Arena” next door, which housed the medical operation.

End

Sheesh. It’s pretty obvious why CNN/Fox/etc told the “story” that they did. Perhaps it’s easier to do the job of reporting when you don’t bother to check the facts? Perhaps it’s easier to sell soap and cars by playing on bigoted attitudes and the somehow-still-everpresent fear of race riots?

…This doesn’t excuse the delay in provding help by anyone from the mayor of NOLA up to and including the POTUS… but here we are stuck to a tar baby…this myth of poor black people turning into animals at the first sign of danger.

Are we capable of ever growing beyond this?

Some good news from the new president of EMU. One is that he appreciates the power of metaphor, and apparently is rather decisive.

Also, Citino’s gonna be on the radio:

“Robert Citino, an award-winning history professor, appeared on the
History Channel July 31 to discuss Japan during the last eight months of
World War II. One of the nation’s recognized authorities on military
operations in both world wars, his seventh book, “The German Way of
War,” will be out this fall. You can also hear him discuss the atom bomb
on WAAM Radio (1600 AM), Sunday, Aug. 7, 7-8 p.m.”

So I went to a travel agent. Started talking. Good guy named Kevin that Larry pointed me to at STA travel.

Found a few things I want to see if I’m going to Puerto Rico, and would be really disappointed if I went there and didn’t check them out. I’m feeling that if we go without more fully thought out plan, we’re going to miss some very cool things — though it would be worth it just to get a chance to relax in paradise. What bothers me is this uncomfortable feeling that I’m going to spend a bunch of $$ and miss something important if I don’t do some research.

We could still do it, but T is willing to alter plans and go to San Francisco instead — which will be fun, a chance to play with some ol’ friends… but I wonder how much actual relaxing I’ll be able to do.

Cause that’s what I really need right now, some space to sit and think about nothing and everything. I wonder that I’ll find that space in SF.

It’s not that my life is too complicated right now, it’s just there’s no time to sit and trip (no not that kind of trip) about where I’m at and who I am and why I’m here. I used to take a yearly vacation…it’s been about five or six years since that’s really happend. Going to Anaheim or Orlando for work doesn’t count. Those days are more stressful than the average day…

I just want some MF’ing fun. Is that too much to ask?

/sigh

K, here’s some options, as I see’em:

Guess what, it’s not that warm in PR — note the current conditions for San Juan. The RECORD for SJ is 94F. The range is 77-87. That I like.

InterContinental San Juan Spa Resort and Casino – 7 days, ocean view, including airfare: $1,847 (that’s for 2 people). Here’s a link: to a page describing the hotel.

That, I like. Close to San Juan, on the beach. Sounds like a vacation.

There’s also the Westin Rio Mar Beach resort. More expensive (room with an ocean view and a king size bead is $2870. That includes airfare.

Simple fact. We need to make a decision. By 8pm tonight.

Wow I have a lot of different passwords, and a lot of different accounts.

I’ve written on this topic in other places before, but today I can’t seem to remember one…

There has to be a better way to do this — passphrases would be a start. Why limit yourself to a string of letters and numbers 6 to 8 characters long? In the day of 32 and 64bit computing, it seems rather ancient to be using such a small bit of information to secure your identity, your bank account, and your life savings.

Check out the email I got from DJ Spooky this morning:

Hey people – I have a special event I want to invite you all to. It’s the
20th Anniversary of outdoor concerts at Central Park, and the folks at
Sumerstage asked me to curate an event. I thought about it, and in light of
my new album project “Drums of Death” I decided to go for another one of
those hybrid situations I love to create.

So here’s the deal: I asked two of my favorite groups, the mC5 and the Sun
Ra Arkestra to play at Summerstage. They both are legendary ensembles – The
MC5 has had an incredibly influential trajectory over the last 30 years,
and they remain to this day, one of the wildest rock groups going. Their
late 60’s style of rock and politics has more relevance today than ever
before. You can hear Beck’s sampling of the MC5 on his last album, or the
influence they’ve had on everyone from The Hives to Bad Brains…

And of course, if you’re on this email list, I’m sure there’s no need to go
into the history of the Sun Ra Arkestra’s influence on group like Sonic
Youth and me… And Suphala is an amazing South Asian percussionist and
all I can say is she ROCKS!!! Tabla meets computer code!!! It will be a
great show.

All I can say is that the show will be amazing, and promises to be a
beatiful day out in the park. I hope you all can make it. It’s free and
starts at 3pm. I’d suggest that you get there EARLY!!!!

Details:
http://www.cityparksfoundation.org/index1.aspx?BD=18238

I hope to see you all at the show. It’s a historic event for NYC.

thanx,
Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid

Yeah, would be nice to see the MC5 before I die. Owell. Maybe in my next life. (Actually I have a hunch I’ll be in the Sun Ra Arkestra in my next lifetime).

“‘I’ll show you politics in America right here,’

‘I believe the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.’
‘Well, I believe the puppet on the left is more to my liking.’

‘Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding up both puppets!’

‘Go back to bed, America, your government is in control. Here’s Love Connection, watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer.’”

Haven’t written much in awhile, but there’s been lots to say.

Sad about the Pistons tonight, but the Formula 1 race this past weekend was so much worse.

150k people gathered to watch the pinnacle of technology and skill at the Indy motor speedway. They have a road course that uses part of the Indy oval — the final turn (turn 13) that is actually the first turn on the Oval caused a big problem.

See in F1 racing, they have two tire (or tyre for the Brits) makers, Michelin and Bridgestone that compete and actually have a rather large impact on who is the series champ. Ferrari uses Bridgestone tires and have dominated F1 over the last few years since they’ve teamed up the German (Michael Schumacher) and the Brazillian (Rubens Barichello).

So we’re at the speedway, and there had been some talk of issues with Michelin — two Toyota cars who use michelin tires crashed while testing on Friday. One was a rather serious crash, sending Michael Schumacher’s brother Ralph almost into the wall on turn 13. Keep in mind that this is a *very* high speed banked corner, which might be the highest speed corner in F1.

The day of the race, it appeared all parties had found a way to work things out — all 20 cars were lined up on the starting grid. The grid girls were out, the Colombians were going crazy for Juan Pablo. Somehow it seemed, the powers that be had worked out a solution. A number of people thought that michelin had flown in new tires in from France (they had, but were found to have the same flaws and wouldn’t last the race), or perhaps the drivers on michelin would slow down on turn 13 (which in open wheel racing would be *VERY* dangerous), or perhaps they would allow all drivers to change tires during the race (what a stupid rule, to not allow tire changes! bah). Anyhow, seeing all the cars on the grid, the smell of gas was in the air and we were all guessing who would have the best start, Schumacher or Kimi or JPM or the Spaniard.

The 20 cars on the grid went on their formation lap, a slow speed lap to warm up tires and insure the track is clear. After the formation lap the cars are supposed to come to rest ont he grid, then the loudest sound on the planet happens as they all go from 0 to 180 in the blink of an eye. (Watching 20 cars valued at about 14 million dollars each race for the first corner is…whew.)

As the cars were going on the formation lap, my brother Shane (who flew in from Maryland) was listening to the radio, the kind that can listen in to all sorts of frequencies, and informed me that the michelin cars were going to pull into the pits and change tires.

The 14 Michelin cars pulled into the pits as expected, leaving the 6 Bridgestone equipped cars (2 Ferraris, 2 slow Jordans and 2 very slow Minardis) on the grid. We were very close to the pits — we were all expecting to see a very quick change of tires, the first all season.

Then the bottom fell out. The same feeling I had when the NHL killed this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs. Much worse than when the refs started calling BS on the Pistons in the 1st half — at least they had a fucking chance to play. The 14 Michelin cars were pushed into their garages backwards and we knew something awful had just happened.

The Minardi team boss layed out the situation in a different fashion here: http://www.crash.net/uk/en/feature_view.asp?cid=1&fid=7687

My reaction? I would have cried in frustration if I hadn’t been so angry. What a letdown for my dad — since he’s gotten into F1, I’ve gone with him the last 5 years to Indy to see the race. We (Shane, my sis Tami, my Dad and myself) had a good time apart from the race, walking around downtown Indy and goofing around with the locals.

I think I’m done with Indy. The town is interesting, but I think I’ve seen and done everything there that I’ve wanted. I need to think of some new trip or event to go with the fam…

The weather has been crazy this April and May, wild swings from sunny t-shirt and shorts afternoons turning into sweaters and cords later that day. After so many years here, you’d think it wouldn’t surprise anymore, but of course it gives a certian type of person plenty to complain about.

I try to welcome change, and just try to be prepared for whatever mother nature decides to throw our way.

So T is having some serious problems at her place of employment, she made the Ann Arbor news.

I’m just glad to see how we’ve come together as a team to fight this.

I may or may not post the scoop on this site, it depends on the resolution from the school board & if any litgation is necesssary.

I’ve started to post on a shared weblog with some coworkers here: NoLimitRoofers.net

I’m still in shock that the NHL playoffs won’t happen this year. What am I going to do in May? What?

The first week or two of the playoffs are usually my favorite — at least two games on a night plus an episode of Coach’s Corner on every other night. Lots of molson with lots of friends living and dying with the Wings.

So no hockey this year? No last chance for Steve Yzerman?

Well, fuck ‘em. They may not get another dollar from me, but I do want to wallow in a glass of warm pity for a sec here…