Boxcar Dewey: Trapped in compact shelving

Oh god, I need new pants!

2006-03-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

I now appear to be employed. I am a yuppie. I am a grownup. This hurts my head, so instead I'll put up a picture of Boxcar Spot.

w00t, I say, w00t.

2006-03-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Boxcar Dewey,

Your department recommended approval of your Winter, 2006 request to receive a MASTER OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE and this recommendation has been sent to the Graduate School. Any departmental comments are noted below. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this recommendation, please contact your department's Graduate Program Assistant (staff member) or Graduate Program Coordinator (faculty advisor).

I shall henceforth be rockin' the MLIS. Look upon my degrees, ye mighty, and despair.

This is all.

2006-01-22T21:28:00.000-08:00

If dog did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent him.

(Boxcar Ladyfriend adds, "Which we did. Basically.")

It's strategic, it only looks lazy.

2006-01-20T18:59:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that there's a very palpable benefit to taking a leisurely route through graduate school. In the 6-9 months that have elapsed since the more punctual members of my cohort graduated, they've been out and about getting jobs in what turns out to be a teeny-tiny community of techy librarians.

Good for them. I'm a little jealous of their income and expository-paper-free lives, but not too much.

As it turns out, the jobs that they now have are turning out to be Codd's own social network for little old me. I am connected! I am plugged in! I have connections!

The downside is that they're all intimately familiar with my bad attitude and mediocre abilities. But when an undemanding job comes up, I'm all over it.

On mudslides

2006-01-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

So, Boxcar Irisher is trapped by a mudslide.

Not in a mudslide. It's just that the mud fell over the train tracks and now my workplace is wholly lacking in song (other than the NWA in my headphones).

Also, with Boxcar Irisher out of commission, it's quite clear that there's no-one to comment on my blog.

.

Technology marches onward, stubs toe, goes home.

2006-01-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

From 15 Tech Concepts You'll Need To Know In 2006 in Popular Mechanics:

Metadata
It used to be that a file was just a file, identified by a name and a three-letter extension. But computer storage has exponentially increased the number of files a PC can access. Programs such as word processors currently collect metadata--literally "data about data"--detailing who wrote each file; music programs such as iTunes automatically tag song files with album details from online databases.

*slams head on keyboard*
*gazes at framed portrait of S.R. Ranganathan*
*reads Svenonius and weeps*

Ways in which I have misspelled "colophon":

2006-01-05T15:54:00.000-08:00

(A list by Boxcar Dewey, age 29, grade 17)

colofon
clophon
colophoon
colophone
coolphon
colopohon
colopohn

Things that scare me...

2005-12-21T18:16:00.000-08:00

Now don't get me wrong, I like my knives like I like my women, sharp and aware of French tradition, but one has appeared this holiday season, courtesy of the generosity of my dear sweet mother and stepfather, that gives me pause.

The construction is Japanese damascus and all of that goodness, and the design is all manner of fancified and, I think, fairly comfortable. The appearance is, I fear, more akin to a Klingon weapon or the knife Buffy used to stab Faith in season three.

Witness this:
She's fearful. The knife weighs half again what Boxcar Henkels weighs, and we know how that goes. In addition, as is common with Japanese knives, she's about three times sharper than what I'm accustomed too. Basically, if I blink I could lose a finger along with some perfectly good shallots.

The knife slices raw bacon pretty much with the weight of my hand on the blade. I don't think my fingers are that different from raw bacon.

Time to revisit them choppin' chops.

For further comparison, let's consider Boxcar Ladyfriend's knife. She prefers her cutlery like she prefers most things, pink and supportive of women's health.

Voila:

                   Cockroach and butter churn included for scale.

Boxcar L's knife is, of course, the pink Kyocera ceramic knife with added breast cancer research funding. Nice knife. Perhaps that's why she never cuts herself. ('Cept for removing a single layer of skin every time she busts out the mandoline.) Boxcar H., who's positioned up top of the photo, seems downright trivial in the face of Knife Of Death. Too much time with KOD and I'm liable to try and clean my nails with Pink Knife.

I suspect, once I overcome my fears, Knife Of Death and I will become very good friends. I like to cut things. My mother is very, very good to me.

I'm blog famous. Seriously.

2005-12-19T21:36:00.000-08:00

A smart-ass remark of mine on a discussion board was singled out as groovy and succinct on a blog that's pretty dang important in a fairly big field. It was a comment I wrote in the first third of my morning cup of coffee and the snark was strong in me. However, the substance was pretty strong as well. I am pleased.

Unfortunately, I'm not willing to divulge any specifics in this venue on account of the account I posted under is one who's anonymity I value. It's sort of too bad. If you know me in real life, ask and I shall brag. The google bots must forever be disallowed, I fear.

On that book that I hate.

2005-12-17T00:22:00.000-08:00

So there's this book about being a professional cook in, like, a restaurant and all of that. It's a poorly written book, being not so much a narrative as a rant, and speaks of a wholesale appropriation of Hunter Thompson's persona*.

I read the book a lot. I hate it, but it reminds me that no matter how much I enjoy the fantasy, I do not want to be a cook. It's not for me. That's why I'm in grad school.

One would think that trying to make money playing music would be enough punishment, but I still want to be a chef. It's all pathological and shit.

The good news is that Boxcar Ladyfriend has told me that, if we're ever really, really rich, I'm allowed to lose a fuck-ton of money starting my own restaurant and running it into the ground. It's a job for which I'm clearly unqualified, but as an expensive hobby... I'd have a great time.

In real life, I'll just look forward to the next time I get to cook boxcar ladyfriend dinner. I like it that way.

I do want a cooking video game, though.

*Oddly, my first banker's name was Hunt Thompson, never "Hunter," I wonder if that was a coincidence or not. My current banker's name is Michele-with-one-l. What is it with my bankers and funny names?

CIPA-dee-do-dah

2005-12-14T15:13:00.000-08:00

Like all librarians I am required by ALA regulation to have an opinion on CIPA, also know as The Children's Internet Protection Act. Now, I think that protecting the Internet from children is a noble cause, but acting as Boxcar Research Assistant caused me to actually read the text of the law.

The short version is that schools and libraries are required to install filtering software on computers used to access the Internet so that ~~unaccountable private companies with dubious political agendas can censor the net~~ children are not inadvertantly or deliberately exposed to pornography at the library.

These filters are called TECHNOLOGY PROTECTION MEASURES [The caps are sic and wrong.] The law states that "The term ``technology protection measure'' means a specific technology that blocks or filters Internet access to visual depictions that are-"
...
(C) harmful to minors."

One way in which "harmful to minors" is defined is:
"any picture, image, graphic image file, or other visual depiction that--
...(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to minors."

Hm. Taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value to minors, eh? This clause seems to cover a great deal of content. The DaVinci Code, for example, I would have no problem arguing lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value to anyone, especially minors. I realize that it's not a picture, but you see where I'm going with this.

According to my reading, CIPA permits children in public libraries to access only graphics that have value. No more Garfield cartoons is what *that* means. This opens up a whole new branch of librarianship, doesn't it?

On sharp things.

2005-12-14T01:53:00.000-08:00

This evening over dinner, conversation turned to firearms. It happens. However, I'm doing my best to transfer the fascination my inner ten-year-old has with firearms and other dangerous things (Dude! You can, like, start a fire with a magnifying glass!) to kitchen equipment. This is generally successful.

*fondles garage sale food mill in vaguely salacious manner*

At any rate, one of my friends, whom I shall now term (and likely get smacked for later) Boxcar Irisher, informed me that she'd had an epiphany that a really sharp knife is about all one needs for cooking. This is, of course, true. Knives and heat are what turn ingredients into food. Sometimes, and I'm looking at you puffer fish, one doesn't even need heat.

It's odd as before I started cooking I did that thing I do wherein I read and read and read about a subject prior to actually undertaking the task at hand. Thus, before Boxcar Ladyfriend and I undertook to learn me how to make food that's, like, edible, I'd read all about the importance of good knives and stainless steel cookware and fond and stock and all manner of good things.

Making pesto with a knife instead of a food processor was a mistake, particularly when one is plagued with the carpal tunnels. Had I read a little more I'd have found out that pesto and pestle share an etymology. Oh well.

There's much to be said for figuring things out, though, and I regret that my book-larnin' got in the way of my own realization of some fundamentals of food prepartion. Oh well. On the upside, next time Boxcar Irisher comes over for dinner, I'm going to encourage her to try out one of the fancified knives Boxcar L. and I keep in the knife block. I suspect it'll make her happy, and that's the point of cooking, no?

Pau. Or perhaps POW.

2005-12-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

Done with the quarter. It has been tiring and I feared that an independent study would end with a resounding smack upside the academic head. Turned out instead to be a mellow Hawaiian "pau." That's nice. At any rate, I've turned in right around sixty pages this week, some of which weren't just pictures.

Now I'm tired and at a bit of a loss as to what to do with this stuff they call free time.

Went to the record store the other day

2005-12-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

I came home with three CDs:

Black Sabbath Paranoid
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Nocturama
and George Jones Walk Through the World With Me

This seems to say something, but I'm not sure what.

Oh, that injury toll.

2005-12-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

For reference, it is rarely a good idea to cook after a couple of manhattans. It's probably yet more rare for it to be well-advised to dice potatoes after a couple of mahattans. Worse yet is if you choose to demonstrate proper knife technique to your long-suffering ladyfriend. The reason that this is worse is that such hubris no doubt offends the hard-drinkin' king of the cosmos which causes him to send a nine-inch Henckels chef's knife to Earth along with hopes, dreams, movies. This is not, in and of itself, such a bad thing, but if the aforementioned German steel plunges to Earth through one's nail and the tender flesh beneath it becomes, to say the least, embarassing.

And I can no longer claim that no librarians were harmed in the making of this soup.

Thanksgiving: The Injury Toll

2005-11-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

Boxcar Ladyfriend and I made Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. I don't suppose we were alone in this endeavor, but it was the first time we'd done turkey and pie and everything else without parental and grandparental supervision.

We spent, all told, about twelve hours in the kitchen waving various razor-sharp knives about with the slicing and the dicing and such. There was one injury sustained.

Boxcar L. got a freakin' paper cut while opening a bag of stuffing.

Lest one take one's self too seriously.

2005-11-09T23:40:00.000-08:00

So I'm engaged and I get to be married to the bestest girl EVAR. This is great. However, I'm realizing that while this is far and away the most important thing in my life, it's pretty trivial to other people. I mean, most people get married at some point or another and, at some point, one reaches a saturation point of caring about other people's marriages.

My friends care a lot, as do hers, but J. Random asshole on the street really doesn't.

This is okay. Actually, it's a good thing. The world doesn't revolve around me and my intended because we're getting married. My world revolves around it, to be sure, and it should for the rest of my life, but it's not that exciting for people who aren't invested in us. Again, this is a-ok. It just poses an adjustment to me. I mean, can't this random person on the street see that I embody the greatest love of all human history?

Of course not. It's just a wedding.

To everyone else, that is.

To me...

it remains...

everything.

Fuckin'.

A.

If what the evolution-deniers say is true...

2005-11-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

...and biology and evolutionary theory are the intellectual equivilent of religion, does it not then follow that biologists are now tax exempt? This is good news for my buddies with the PhDs in zoology and, I expect, will have quite the effect on the portfolios of Zymogenetics investors.

I'm just sayin', is all.

Dear Boxcar Sho~Bud,

2005-10-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

I realize that you've been very good to me, never breaking a string and staying in tune that one hellish rehearsal in an unheated storage unit with an ambient temperature of 25 degrees or so, but... Well, there's always a "but" isn't there?

We've both known that you're an old guitar, vintage even, and that you can be heavy and tempermental and a little eccentric. In spite of this, I've tried to be good to you. I keep you in fresh Jagwire strings (mail-order from Michigan!) and I tune you as best I know how (Mean tone now) and I bought you an ATA-spec road case to wheel you to shows.

And we do get to play shows! Sold-out rooms and empty dives and good shows and bad, we've been through all of these.

We've agreed that, when I get money, you get to go into retirement and stay home while I carry a lighter and smaller guitar to shows. And I'll introduce you nicely to your new brother, Boxcar Williams, and make sure you get along.

But, so help me, if you don't stop breaking knee-levers hours before CD release shows (necesitating frantic phone calls to Nashville and hours underneath you with a wrench and a file and enough profanity to make a sailor blush) I will "retire" your sorry ass to eBay!

With the love that a man feels for his steel guitar,

~Boxcar Dewey

Speaking of scholarship...

2005-10-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to all the Information Scientists (Read that in a big, booming voice), if you wish to retain academic credibility, under no circumstances begin your scholarly work with the following sentence:

Memory is "the faculty of retaining and recalling things past" (American Heritage Dictionary, 1969)...

It just looks stupid. Almost as stupid as the Homeric nuptial ode, "Webster's Dictionary defines wedding as 'the process of removing weeds from one's garden.'"

Down on my neologisms

2005-10-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

Whilst in the library this afternoon, Boxcar L. discovered a lovely fact about financial aid. I, being both gentleman and scholar, suggested a high five. Libraries, even those frequented by undergrads, necessitate a certain moderation of volume and exuberence. We therefore merely touched our palms together in a symbolic suggestion of a convention high five. The process was strangely reminiscent of a "golf clap." This invention--this library five, if you will--gave birth to a new word, a new concept, and--dare I say it?--a new paradigm of librarianship.

Today was born: the Li-Five!

Building my brand identity

2005-10-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

So, as regards my naming convention (Boxcar Fido, Boxcar Sho~Bud, and Boxcar Ladyfriend), it seems there's a little prior art.

Behold: The Boxcar Children Cookbook!.

The fucking fucker is fucking fucked.

2005-10-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that putting out a record is an incredible pain in the ass? Because it is--even at my rinky dink level.

Let me explain:


[people]
    [vocations]
        Graphic designer
            rt: Production manager

vs.

[people]
    [vocations]
        Hack steel player
            uf: non-designer, non-production manager, lazy bastard,
          poor organizational skills

Guess to which category I belong?

My apologies, it appears that I've been spending far too much time with the Art and Architecture Thesaurus of late.

Not to anthropomorphize or nuthin'...

2005-10-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

...but my MP3 play hung on my was to work this morning with two seconds left of Guilty Conscience on Eminem's debut album. Maybe my iPod has issues with my taste in music?

Love in the age of teh intarwebs.

2005-10-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

Last night, in a tender moment, I said to Boxcar L., "You pwn my heart."

There was a pause before she replied with the words I shall cherish forever, "All my base are belong to you."

I Love Stock.

2005-10-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

We decided to have potatoes for dinner last night and I had a flash of inspiration. It's cool enough to use the oven again, so roasting is the way to go. However, last time I roasted potatoes, they weren't as flavorful as I would have like. Taking Julia as my inspiration, I generally add butter to combat this problem. Boxcar L sometimes has a problem with this. Therefore, I concocted a new recipe.

Step one: Boil up some beef stock.

Step two: Dice some red potatoes and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Mix in some diced shallot because what's the point of cooking without shallots?

Step three: Pick some rosemary from your backyard.

Step four: Arrange the potatoes in a roasting pan with sprigs of rosemary beneath the potatoes. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on top. Not much, just a little bit to add a tiny amount of fat.

Step five: Pour about a half-inch of stock over the potatoes.

Step six: Pop the pan in the oven at 375 until the potatoes look cooked. Baste every ten minutes with the stock in the bottom of the pan. This will become progressively more challenging as the potatoes absorb the stock. When the potatoes are done cooking, turn the oven up to broil to finish with a nice crust.

Step seven: Serve the potatoes to your girlfriend and inform her that, despite the rich and beefy taste, the potatoes are hellaciously low in fat and are, unless you're one of those Atkins types, a treat both healthy and delicious.

I love stock. It does wonderful things. The potatoes are infused with the rich flavor of the stock and rosemary. They have a lovely brown crust on them and are fluffy in the middle. Best of all, they're not a big greasy mess. Just a flavorful mess, really.

Nerds in flight.

2005-09-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

Boxcar L and I have been working on our proposal to build a taxonomy for the Urban Archives for the past week or so. We were exchanging emails and writing various sections. Her sections always used the term "controlled vocabulary" to describe the taxonomy/indexing language/controlled vocabulary/whatever. I generally prefer "taxonomy" because, well, I've got a soft spot for Linnaeus. So she writes to me:

"You keep writing "taxonomy" where I use "controlled vocabulary" -- we should probably stick to one term."

One probably needs to be a librarian (preferably an indexer or cataloger) to appreciate this joke. Boxcar L assured me that it is, "Ha! MetaFunny! In two ways!"

Stamp selection says so very much.

2005-09-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

Today my catalog from Knife Merchant arrived in the mail. They are a discount kitchen goodies company. Nothing too exciting there, except that, when the catalog arrived, it was in an 8.5"x 11" first-class envelope adorned with:

Twenty stamps with trees and "USA NONPROFIT ORG" printed on them.

A sticker justifying their use of bulk rate stamps.

And one (1) Elvis stamp, young.

I somehow suspect I'll be doing business with this company in the future.

My Very Special Lady

2005-09-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

See that? Boxcar Ladyfriend is now in the process of being upgraded to Mrs. Boxcar Dewey. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I'm the one being upgraded--it's very exciting. I proposed on her birthday and she went for it. The photo was taken at Richmond Fontaine's CD release show at the Sunset.

The show was a good time. I got to wear my spankin' new shirt. Also, my guitar player made it through the entire set without tearing a single string off his guitar.

Of yard sales and broken dreams...

2005-09-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

I found my way to a yard sale the other day. I picked up a food mill for a dollar and, at fifty cents each, a copy of Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, O'Reilly's Web Design in a Nutshell, a book on Web usability design, a book by Neil Postman--whom I'd confused with Neil Gaiman--and a dog-eared copy of Modern Recording Techniques.

Tucked inside the work on recording music for a living was an application to work at a coffee shop. Such are the realities of the music business, I guess.

On the bright side, I've got a food mill! Here come the pureed soups.

Secondhand Consonance

2005-09-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

I walked into my neighborhood secondhand CD store on a whim today. I walked out with Bruce Kaphan's Slider: Ambient Excursions for the Pedal Steel Guitar, The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 4, and Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Concerto. Fiscal irresponsibility aside, every time I walk into this record store, I find at least two obscure CDs for which I've been searching .

I asked the cashier where the store gets their inventory. He informed me that they just buy from walk-ins. I told him, "Wow, I think that there's some guy who owns every obscure CD I'm interested in and is selling his collection piece by piece."

The cashier responded, "Oh yeah, that's Don."

I guess I was right.

If I were a Dominatrix...

2005-09-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

...I would have a website with dozens of pop-ups and instructions that You Will Accept My Pop-ups, Slave!

You tuned who with the what now?

2005-08-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

Like many steel players, I worry about systems of temperament and the proper way to slice an octave into twelve notes. To say nothing of the womanly virtues of a given key. As a direct result, I dragged Boxcar L to a performance by Phillip Arnautoff, a composer and player of a half-sized cello and a devotee of Harry Partch, a well-known (!) microtonal composer.

The cellist began the recital by explaining his instrument and giving a quick overview of various and asundry ways in which his sixty-nine note scale can be used. He referred to the currently prevalent system of equal temperament as "democracy gone mad."

I laughed out loud. I was the only one. Boxcar L got the joke, but did not find it as funny as I. She is a remarkable woman in so many ways.

On the way back, she asked if there was a graphical representation of various intervals in various temperaments. There is.

Behold! The One-Footed Bride!

Makes perfect sense, doesn't she? Not so much? Okay, from the beginning...

Music is composed of notes and intervals. A note is simply a pitch and an interval is the distance between the pitches. A chord is three or more pitches played at the same time. There are complications, of course, but that'll do for now.

The important intervals in a major, or "normal," chord are the third and the fifth. The perfect, Pythagorean ratios of these two intervals are 5:2 and 3:2 respectively. Notice any problems there? Particularly as regards a larger than average amount of prime numbers in those ratios?

Sticking to the ratios yields very pretty chords, but only in a single key. Oops. As a result, composers elected to utilize the procrustean trick of stretching the intervals, especially the third, to a middlin' position that sounds good enough in all twelve keys.

Fortunately, the web gives us a thoughtfully laid out comparison of systems of temperament. Lovely. Take the time to listen to the equal tempered and just intonated scales melodically. The J.I. scale is all pretty and happy making. The E.T. scale is not.

In real life, barbershop quartets gravitate toward just intonation, which is why the chords they sing have such a lovely quality and resonance. Pianos are tuned (with rare exceptions) to equal temperament, which is why they make my head hurt.

Anecdotally, shortly after I switched my pedal steel back to just intonation, I was soundchecking at the Night Light up in Bellingham. The room is acoustically gorgeous and has the perfect amount of natural reverb, especially when it's empty (as it usually is when I play the club). I tuned up and hit a few chords to set my level.

The pure perfect chords left my amp, bounced off the back of the club and seemed to resonate for days. The sound man looked up at me and said, simply, "Holy shit."

Such are the joys of just intonation.

Watch that capo, dude!

2005-08-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

Affective Key Characteristics

Excerpted from Christian Schubart's 1806 Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst and posted by Bob Hoffnar on the Steel Guitar Forum. Translated by Rita Steblin in A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. UMI Research Press (1983).

C Major
Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children's talk.

C Minor
Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.

Db Major
A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.--Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.

D Major
The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.

D Minor
Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.

D# Minor
Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.

Eb Major
The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.

E Major
Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.

F Major
Complaisance & Calm.

F Minor
Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.

F# Major
Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.

F# Minor
A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.

G Major
Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,--in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.

G Minor
Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.

Ab Major
Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.

Ab Minor
Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.

A Major
This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one's state of affairs; hope of seeing one's beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.

A minor
Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.

Bb Major
Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.

Bb minor
A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.

B Major
Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.

B Minor
This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones's fate and of submission to divine dispensation.

See? It all makes sense now, doesn't it?

Doing my best to keep her.

2005-08-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

As the end of the quarter drew near, Boxcar Ladyfriend was swamped with work and I was done with mine. Before leaving in the evening, I stashed the following in the fridge for her to find:

Leftovers Salad for Food Nerds

Leftover Ahi
Half a leftover yuppie tomato
Spinich

Slice the ahi into sashimi-sized chunks. Sear them in your trusty frypan. Set them aside to cool.

Slice your leftover heirloom or "yuppie" tomato into triangular slices.

Put the spinich in a pasta bowl. Arrange the tomatoes and ahi in alternating spoke-like things radiating from the center of the pasta bowl. Put it in the fridge.

Dressing:

Equalish parts good olive oil and mirin. Add about eight-ten drops of sesame oil and a healthy squeeze of lime juice from a plastic lime. Stir it up and go.

It was a spur of the moment thing, but Boxcar L seemed quite pleased when I got home. She informed me that she drank the salad dressing. I'll go ahead and count that as a win for me.

Suite II in D Minor, Prelude.

2005-08-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am, it turns out, completely obsessed with the Bach Cello Suites. It shouldn't be that awful, I've only got three recordings, Edgar Meyer, Pablo Casals, and Ma. Of the three, the Casals (introduced to me by Boxcar Ladyfriend) dominates. Meyer, who gets credit for playing the bass, seems a little stiff. He's not a fan of the vibrato and it detracts from the performance a bit. Yo Yo's performances seems downright insipid compared to Casals. It's almost sleep inducing. Casals manages to drag kicking and screaming every last bit of music out of the score. Plus, he's got a flexible approach to intonation that I find endearing.

Along with Earnest Bovine and other steel players, I'm hacking my way through the cello suites on my pedal steel (P'raps I should follow my naming convention and call her "Boxcar Sho~bud," but that seems silly). I can get through a couple of measures at a time, but it'll be a while before the album comes out, I assure you of that. What really frustrates is that every note I play is almost entirely, if not wholly, lacking in musical expression. The damn things hurt my head to play on the steel and I forget to do things like include nuance and dynamics. My current strategy is to work through the piece on my recently re-acquired double bass, on which I still read music, and translate the piece by ear to the steel, on which I struggle to read short words in big text. Progress is being made.

What I'm really enjoying is the re-discovery of rubato phrasing and the classical way of looking at a piece that I haven't really dealt with in the twelve or so years since I set the bass down. It's like the compulsories in figure skating, I suppose. If you play the same notes as every other musician, you'd best look for ways to make them interesting. In instruments in the popular idiom (steel, guitar, etc.), I tend to worry more about stringing new notes together than making the notes speaking. As a result, my new hobby is milking more out of the three or so licks I know on the steel. We'll see how that goes.

Let There Be Country Rock!

2005-08-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

So, with a little help from my mother, the band and I finished a record last week. Those are my notes on the left. I came away from the project with a few conclusions.

1. I play much better when the tape is not running.

2. I have very little vibrato when I play.

3. Producers vastly prefer just intonation, even when they're not quite sure what it is.

4. My guitar player is a creative genius, from whom flows melody after melody and riff after riff and solo after solo without him ever being aware that this is not, in fact, how it works for everybody else. It's been a year since I've started playing with him and two years since I first saw him perform and he continues to improve. Usually, I can tell who he's been listening to prior to rehearsal as he picks up other player's styles like most of us pick up milk. The bastard.