Winston's Diary

I've just purchased a new vehicle. It's a 96 Suburban with 207,000 miles on it. I'm not concerned with losing resale value due to modifications and would like to make the interior interesting and possessed of enhanced functionality. Does anyone have any cool ideas for modifications I could make on a small budget?

Started with cardio. Weights later this week. Half hour of hard cardio isn't bad for the first day back. I had forgotten how much I love/hate it. The sensation is so loathsome/seductive...

A very gracious and generous friend gave me two tickets to see excerpts from a couple of early Baroque operas. The operas from that period are very distinctive and quite different from the classical and romantic period operas that most people think of when they think of opera.

In any event, partially due to isolation and partially due to a holiday weekend that has drawn most of my usual suspects out of town, I've got no one to come with me to the opera. Going alone means no one to talk to during intermission or discuss it with afterward as well as being a terrible waste of a fairly expensive ticket.

So come with me. If you don't know opera, you'll get to experience something new. If you do love opera, you're in a for a wonderful time. The pre-show talk starts at 7pm. The whole thing is taking place at Jordan Hall in Downtown Boston. I plan to drive in and park there and will happily provide a ride there and back again. Oh, and don't be concerned about dressing up too much. I plan to "go bohemian" which means to not dress up and pretend that that decision is indicative of something other than laziness.

Don't make me bring a total stranger.

Interesting implications on self-awareness if true.

I've had "Hallelujah" by Nick Cave stuck in my head all day and it won't go away no matter how many times I listen to it.

Not even NNNAAAMMM! can chase it away.

I suppose I might as well go with it.

"Tears are welling in my eyes again
I need twenty big buckets to catch them in
Twenty pretty girls to carry them down
And twenty deep holes to bury them in. "

Given that there are so many different days to do things like talk like a pirate or dress like a zombie, or whatever. I think there should be an international Talk Like Ricardo Montalban day where people spend their time talking about how Kirk has become an "Admeeerahl" and debating the merits of fine corninthian leather.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Titan-Missile-Base-Central-Washington_W0QQitemZ190132455924QQihZ009QQcategoryZ1607QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This is what I want for my birthday, in case anyone wants to know.

Just listen to this.

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/05/20070517_a_main.asp

Entirely work safe. From NPR.

It seems they've made a movie out of one of my favorite short stories of all time.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0768212/

I'm hoping very, very hard that they don't do to it what they did to The Sound of Thunder.

There seems to be an advance showing this sunday. Anyone want to go?

http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/10/15/fat_guys/index.html

Work safe.

"I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, "I love you madly,: because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows" that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly."

-Eco, Postscript to Name of the Rose

Normally, my taste in the mass of music collectively referred to as "classical" is decidedly toward the earlier end of the spectrum. I generally like my music like I like my women: precise, cold, mathmatical, and complex. :) I make special exceptions for some artists and some individual pieces. For example, Mozart gets a special dispensation as does Beethoven. Schubert's "March Militaire" and "Unfinished Symphony" likewise survive in my music collection. Another of these pieces is Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" AKA The New World Symphony. If you think you haven't heard it, you're probably mistaken. It's been in more film and television soundtracks than Carl Orff and Danny Elfman combined. It's also in the background music for the later stages of Civ 4.

Writen during Dvorak's trip to The U.S. in the 1890s, it was composed to evoke the music of both black folk music of the time and native american music, two sounds the composer thought to be strikingly similar. It has a bold and exciting sound to with themes that are striking, evocative, and terrifically catchy. My favorite portion has to be the first movement (Adagia - Allegro molto).which has been in everything from classic westerns to sci-fi to Ren and Stimpy to video games. If you haven't listened to it, I recommend that you spend the ten minutes. You'll likely enjoy it. The only risk is that you might end up with it stuck in your head at 2 in the morning like I've got it now.

This evening I went to see "Renaissance," a French science fiction film. It was an animated feature that used motion capture to give a very interesting look and feel. It's been referred to as "The French 'The Matrix.'"

My thoughts:
The good: This film was visually striking. It looks like the Parisian bastard child of "Blade Runner," and "Minority Report" which was then ground up and shoved through a "Sin City" filter and then done in black and white. I mean Black and White. Not grey, not shades of anything. BLACK and WHITE. It had a stark, clean look almost like a moving india ink drawing by a somewhat grittier Nagel. While some of the motion was a bit odd, overall it was beautiful to look at. Gritty and yet sparkling with clarity. Admittedly, it got a bit hard to look at that much BLACK and WHITE after the first hour, but still it gets full marks for artistry.

The bad: On the other hand, the plot was a bit weak. I'd say that it had about 20% of the story content one might find in plot heavy favorites such as "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," another gorgeous film that left me wishing wholeheartedly that it had been about something. The script, I felt, had every bit of the artistry, style, and quality one might find in the 1970s classic "The 36 Deadly Chambers of Shaolin Kung Fu (English dubbed version.)"

To sum up, I felt that this film would have made a great long music video if there had been music, or perhaps a wonderful film short. Unfortunately, once I got used to the visual style I started to become painfully aware of its weaknesses. I spent the last hour resisting the urge to check the time and when the end came, I could not wait to leave the theater.

2 stars for T3h Pr3tty.

Today my new car arrives. The problem is that it all went to quickly that I've not managed to sell my old one yet. I'm hoping to have it sold inside of a week, but given Arlington's on-street parking rules, I've got nowhere to put it in the mean time. Does anyone have a spare parking spot I could use for about a week while I try to sell it? I will be more than happy to pay someone a reasonable fee for the use of their space if they'll let me use it.

Anyone?

Since it seems to be the topic of the moment, I might as well put in my two cents. Before I launch into my little diatribe, I'd like to state that I am uncategorically against any amendment prohibiting the burning of our flag, the flag of any other country, or any other piece of cloth. That being said, I consider myself a patriot (rather than a nationalist which seems to be the recent trend) and have no wish to burn a United States flag, but would do so if I felt it were necessary. "Under what conditions might it be necessary for a patriot to burn a flag?" you ask. I'll tell you. It would be necessary if I felt that by doing so I would risk imprisonment. Yes, burning a flag is offensive. It is offensive to the citizenry and offensive to the government. That is the point. It is my essential right under the constitution to say (and by extension, do) things that are offensive without risk of legal reprisals. It would be necessary to burn a flag to show those around me that their essential rights under the constitution have been legislated out of existence.

It's very easy to say that you support the concept of freedom of speech as long as no one is saying anything offensive. The hard part is sticking to your ideals when someone has something to say or do that is entirely offensive to you. That's when your strength of character is tested and the durability of your ethical fiber shows through. If you believe in freedom of speech but don't think that people should be able to say what they want or do what they want with whatever symbolic thing that they want, then you don't really believe in free speech. The instant a person is not allowed to say what they wish, their speech is no longer free, just mostly unregulated. The first amendment to the constitution does not call for "mostly unregulated speech."

When a law is passed that limits the people's civil rights, it is not obvious until someone crosses the line made by the new law. If we passed a bill outlawing the use of the word "hafftenshlofenlingentotendonberriculous" (which I just made up, by the way) no one would really notice that it had been outlawed because people don't have occasion to say that word. If such a law were passed, I believe that it would be my duty as a member of this society and as a citizen of this nation to say that word as often and as loudly as I could until I was arrested for it. Burning flags is the same sort of thing. It needs to be done if only to make certain that our right to do so is intact. We are not a society that was founded on bowing its head to oppressive laws nor buckling under tyanny. I believe that we have a duty to ensure that our rights are maintained. If a law outlawing the burning of flags passed, I would make the sacrifice that needed to be made to ensure the ideals for which this country stands were maintained. I would be out there burning a flag. Anything less would be unamerican.