Month: April 2010

Upcoming changes

meta

Because Blogger is discontinuing the service I use to publish my posts, I’m moving the underlying publishing tool to WordPress, which will give me the same level of control that Blogger is eliminating.

At any rate, the deadline is approaching: May 1st is when I expect to start. I’d love to make the change completely transparent to you, my handful of readers, but you may notice a change in how the site looks at the minimum. I’m taking the opportunity to update the look a bit, although it should still retain whatever tiny bit of branding I’ve established over the years: two column layout, black background with white text, Futura logo, and the Moon somewhere on the page.

There are some features I want to add, too, and hopefully there are WordPress plugins that will enable those features.

At any rate, this is a warning that for the next week or so, I will probably not be posting much, if anything; the more posts I put into Blogger, the more I have to move over and import into WordPress. I’m reducing my workload; need to focus on the back-end stuff.

Feel free to read my Twitter feed if you need your daily (hourly, minute-ly) fix of Brian.

Monday morning bootleg Thom Yorke

General

Since I haven’t blogged in a few days, and it’s Monday, here’s some bootleg video, of Thom Yorke and Atoms for Peace covering “Love Will Tear Us Apart”.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xhON-JjCn0&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

…and even though this isn’t from Coachella, it reminds me that Mr. Yorke and the AfPs played Coachella this year, along with a metric ton of talent.

Man I wish I had gone to Coachella this year. I can’t wait for more bootlegs to pop up.

Outside, we talk

stripclub

She and I walk outside, past the bouncer. Night has long since fallen. Once the door closes, I can no longer hear the beat of the music inside; all I can hear is the whoosh of traffic on the highway.

She pauses at the stairs, balanced on her 8″ heels. Her chestnut hair, long and wavy, frames her dark eyes. She’s dressed for work, in a black bikini top, lacy black and white panties, with a filmy black wrap tied in front covering her.

She holds out her hand. I don’t get it at first and she looks at me, expectantly, amused. I hold her hand and steady her as she steps down and gingerly, with small steps, walks to the wooden picnic table that is there for smokers. I realize that it must be difficult to walk in those shoes on such uneven asphalt.

She sits on the table, facing me. Lighter in her right hand, she ignites her cigarette and puffs.

I stand there, facing her, in my jacket, t-shirt, slacks. My fedora, short-brimmed and sweat stained, shields my eyes a little. My hands are fists in my jacket pocket. I shiver. I’m cold.

She’s not looking at me. She’s staring past me at something else.

“I’ve got a… weird birthday coming up,” she says into the night air.

“You’re going to be 29?” I ask, deadpan. I do deadpan well. I remember learning, many years ago, about the concept of vanity from my mom and my sisters and so many other women.

Her eyes flick towards me and a smile infinitesimally crinkles the corners of her lips. “I love you.” She has matched my deadpan.

My eyes smile. The moment lingers.

I push my fists deeper into my pockets.

“Greenberg” (2010)

movies

All I knew going in was that it starred Ben Stiller and that I had heard positive things about his performance. I wasn’t sure if it was a serious role for him, or a comedy. I like Ben Stiller, generally, but about the most serious role I’d ever seen him in was the excellent (and filmed in Portland) “Zero Effect”, playing straight man Steve Arlo to Bill Pullman’s autistic and zany private investigator.

So last weekend, ignoring the awesome weather, I bought a ticket for a matinée showing of “Greenberg” to escape for a bit.

I was the only person in the theater.

Have you ever watched a comedy by yourself? You know a movie is funny when you laugh out loud and there’s no one else around. For some reason, our being in a group of people makes laughter more likely; likewise, being alone seems to make laughter less likely.

As I sat in the theater, alone, and watched Greta Gerwig as Florence, housekeeper/assistant to a rich and apparently high-strung couple, I wasn’t sure of the tone. It all felt so natural and understated. There were no laugh lines. Just people going about their business.

When the Greenberg’s leave for their vacation to Vietnam, and Florence gets a call from her boss’ brother, there’s no indication of trouble. But… it was Ben Stiller. And he was being very Ben Stiller-esque.

But was it funny? Or was it dramatic?

As the story progressed, and the 40-something Roger Greenberg displayed familiar entitled nice-guy behavior towards 25-year-old Florence Marr, I felt awkward and creeped out. Greenberg’s advances seemed predatory and both amply telegraphed and yet hidden. His passive-aggressive actions towards Florence, as well as towards his closest friend, Ivan Shrank (sad-faced Rhys Ifans), made me wince.

Around halfway through the film, I had the realization that this awkwardness is similar to what I feel watching Steve Carell on The Office. And that sometimes, it makes me laugh.

Is that what they were going for? I still can’t tell.

As a movie, I enjoyed it, though maybe “enjoyed” isn’t the right word. Stiller’s performance of a man who has deep issues with self-esteem and emotional expression was spot-on, though painful to watch – a pain that I sometimes express as laughter, because why not? I can’t believe he just did that!

I sought out the trailer after the fact, to see if I could discern if the movie was being marketed as a drama or as a comedy or something in-between, a “dramedy”. But given the generic trailer, I still could not tell.

Here, watch the trailer and judge for yourself.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=059skh1bn8Y&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1]

Show and tell

General

“Let’s move this table out of the way,” Kevin said. He rolled over in his hospital bed and shoved the rolling table aside, while I scooted my chair closer.

I held up my iPhone so both of us could see the screen. I poked and prodded and showed Kevin a little trick; setting Spotlight search so that Application results were at the top of the list, and turning off unneeded results like Mail or Podcasts to speed up search, so that he could use Spotlight as an application launcher, as I’ve been doing ever since I accumlated more than 3 screens worth of apps.

It was a small moment in my visit. The dark hospital room, late at night. Him laying in bed, in scrubs, unshaven, tired but still alert.

I felt the sadness at his illness, which seemed vastly unfair for a man six years my junior. I could see that he did not want to be alone, but knew that I had to leave in less than 20 minutes, to ride the bus back to my side of town. I knew that he was an extrovert; he drew energy from interacting with others, nearly my opposite in that regard.

I felt the long years we had known each other, and the laughter we’d shared, and the occassional bitter words that estranged us for a long-but-short time. I fretted about the effect of all this on his wife, and his children, so young to be exposed to a truth about life’s ebb and flow.

And I remembered a nerdy chubby 12 year old, so many years ago, showing off something cool when his 6 year old friend came to visit. The 12 year old me, patient but excited, explaining the intricacies of some electronic doodad he’d been given, sharing with the 6 year old Kevin, and then the two of them making up stories about it and losing themselves in play for an afternoon, until his parents came in to tell him they were going home.

Some things never change, I suppose. Except that the past gets layered on top of current events, shading what’s happening. Those layers are what we call nostalgia.

The fear and anger at what the near future holds, though – do we have a name for that?

No president should have these powers

General

I know this news came up an epoch ago in internet time (last week) but in the interest of demonstrating consistency in opinions (which is apparently not required of more highly-paid pundits) and in fulfilling my duties as a blogger, I would like to state here and now, that I am appalled, ashamed, shocked and a bit frightened that it appears President Obama, a man I supported for the presidency, has authorized the death, without due process or trial, of an American citizen.

If you read the above link, from the Guardian, a newspaper from the United Kingdom, you’ll learn that the person who has been given a death sentence by the elected head of the now aptly-named Executive Branch, has been “linked” to a failed plot to bomb an airplane full of innocent victims last Christmas. The person, one Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in New Mexico, which makes him nominally eligible to be elected to the same position that Barack Obama now holds – although I doubt Anwar al-Awlaki would make it past the arduous primary process, regardless of how socialist/communist/fascist/Democrat our country has become since November 2008.

This is the logical endpoint of the rise in Executive Branch powers that have been claimed going back several administrations, administrations of both Democratic and Republican colors. To be sure, a craven former official from the 43rd president’s administration would not go on the record with his or her name, but did attempt to avoid any shadow of war crimes prosecution by pointing out that there appears to be no record of the 43rd president ever taking this particular step. Oh, would that there would any shadow of war crimes prosecution in our country.

Shit, I know, I know, that I’ve said this before, but try as I might, I can’t find a link now. I’ll update this if I find it (or if someone finds me saying the opposite) but let me clearly state my position on whether presidents who swear an oath to uphold the United States Constitution should be able to imprison, or restrict the free speech of, or assassinate, or plant evidence on, or abridge our freedom from state religion, or in any other manner restrict the rights of American citizens: No, they should not.

No president should have the powers that I’ve seen presidents use for as long as I’ve been watching presidents. And that goes for ones I voted for just as well as those I did not. I draw the line. I don’t care what the rationale is. I don’t care if they’re “keeping the country safe” or “protecting our national interests” or whatever bullshit reason they give.

No president should have these powers.

Update: I found a post where I made my position clear, although it does not explicitly mention political parties. In September 2007 I wrote, in regards to electing Steve Novick to the US Senate (my emphasis added):

“Steve Novick is on the side of the majority of Americans and Oregonians on many issues: universal health care, getting US troops out of Iraq, returning to the 500 year-old principle of allowing all humans the right to challenge their accuser in court (habeas corpus), and holding the Executive Branch accountable in order to prevent future administrations to abuse the powers Bush/Cheney have claimed in their devastating terms in office.”

If that’s not clear, I will make it clear now: When I wrote those words, I meant to include all administrations, Democratic, Republican, Whig, No-Nothings, Teabaggers, you name it. No president should have these powers.

Race for the Roses 5K 2010 Results

General

So I ran this 5K last Sunday.

There was some trouble with TriMet – MAX trains were backed up and blocked by the race route. It made me get off my train and walk across the Steel Bridge; it cost my friend Shawn some stress since he was on a train with closed doors within line of sight of the convention center.

But that was just a minor hiccup, and soon my friend and I stood at the starting line, waiting for the race to begin. The weather was perfect: around 50° F, a little wind, but no rain and plenty of sun to cheer up the competitors.

I told Shawn (though I’m not sure if he heard me) that if we got separated during the race, that I’d wait for him at the finish line on the right hand side. I wanted to push myself, to see how close I could come to my personal best today.

I started strong, and for at least the first mile and a bit more, when I turned to look, Shawn, who was running his second race ever, and his second 3 mile run ever, was right there next to me or a few steps behind. I thought he did very well!

I did not take a walk break until just past the 2 mile mark, feeling a small bit of shame for having to do it. I walked a few more times on the final mile-plus; but looking at my Runkeeper stats, even with the walk breaks, I was still faster than 10 minutes per mile! And my first two miles were a tick or two better than 9 minutes per mile. To put this in perspective, today’s time is my 6th best 5K time since I’ve started running races in 2004.

I’m pretty much a 9 minute miler for the 5K. I’d like to be an 8 minute miler, but I suspect that time and my weight are working against me. I can’t de-age, but I can lose weight. I can also work on my upper body strength, which more than one person have told me will help my breathing and endurance.

Race for the Roses 5K 2010

exercise

I ate some peanut buttered and jellied toast and a cup of coffee to break my fast. In a moment I will hop into the running clothes I laid out last night. I’ll strap on my iPhone armband and Timex watch (I always have a backup plan) and walk down to the bus stop, which will eventually take me to the Oregon Convention Center, site of the Race for the Roses 5K.

This has always been the fastest course for me; in three previous outings, 2006, 2007 and 2009, I’ve averaged 28m 54s chip time, and logged my fastest-ever 5K, my personal best, in ’07: 27m 12s.

It would be awesome if I could make a personal best today, but if I think like that then the negative voice kicks in and tries to tell me no, I can’t.

Here’s the pushback for that fucking negative voice: I’ve already this year run two 5Ks under 31m, and both of those had more hills than the course today. And I’ve been training hard with a focus on speed for the last month and a half. My friend Shawn will be at todays race, and last time we ran together, we spurred each other to run just a bit faster than we each thought possible.

And I’m dedicating this race to my friend, Kevin, who is in the hospital and hoping to get better and go home soon.

With all those facts behind me, I bet I rock the course today. Watch and see!

New Radiohead song

General

Via Pitchfork comes video of Thom Yorke debuting a new Radiohead song at some event I didn’t go to on a coast I rarely visit.

Luckily, some bastard videotaped it so we can all share in the thin reedy voice and angsty melody.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdSTzTRYN_o&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

Wow. I feel sadder already.

Make no mistake, I will listen to everything Thom Yorke and the boys record. I mock, because I love.

Moving to WordPress

meta

So, the publishing function I use in Blogger is going away. I could continue to use Blogger, I suppose, after the deadline of 1 May 2010, but I’m not happy with a blogging solution that doesn’t let me publish on my own server and have access to the file system. Call me a grognard but that’s what I want, even if I’m not as technical and can’t make use of all of the cool stuff that having this level of access entails.

I’ve been meaning to switch my blogging software to WordPress for a while now; it’s open source and therefore allows me all the more chances to fuck up my blog in ways many and varied. I could customize to my heart’s content, tweaking each little individual feature for hours and hours. Do I want to customize the URLs for my posts? Sure! Do I want to tweak the “theme” and layout? OK! Do I want to add features based on my tags (called “categories” in WordPress)? Fine! And plug-ins galore.

The Blogger deadline, therefore, became my impetus to finally start figuring out WordPress and how to get my blog moved over. Ideally, I’d be able to export all my old posts and comments, and import them into the WordPress software, then republish using WordPress, using my style sheets and layouts and whatnot. Of course, there’s a little bit more to it than that, and in the meantime I’ve had the idea to redesign my blog and make it more standards-compliant, and and and… Of course, what could be a simple task is turning into a giant project with lots of individual pieces, all of which need to be done by me and only me.

And I have a month to do it. Nice.

I barely have the energy to write posts on a regular basis and now I expect myself to step up to all this? Who do I think I am?

I’m an unpublished writer. I’m a happy guy, lately. I’m the guy who loves learning new stuff, that’s who. And I’m the chief content provider, technical support, editor, publisher, research staff, and marketer for this here blog.

Yesterday, I began the process by installing a test version of WordPress on my main machine, the New Sexy Thing that’s no longer new but still sexy (to me), my trusty MacBook Pro. Which entailed installing MySQL and mucking about on the command line, too. And then tried using the “Import” feature of WordPress to simply move my posts over. It seemed too easy to be true, and sure enough, it was. I was using an “old” version of Blogger, one that WordPress didn’t support. I had to export my posts and then import them into a “new” Blogger blog, then import them. Figuring that out took several hours and lots of Google searches and several tries where some, but not all, of the posts would import and then freeze up. Ugh.

Eventually I got all my posts into WordPress. But not the comments. I have no idea how to import only my comments. Even though the help files say that any duplicate posts and comments are ignored if you keep trying, that only seems true for posts, and not comments. I can get about 50 of my comments imported (there are ~1200 total over the 6 years I’ve been blogging), and each subsequent attempt just duplicates those 50. Argh.

It makes me sad to contemplate losing the comments. I still have time. If anyone can help with sorting out the comments from an XML file and figuring out a way to attach them to the correct posts in WordPress, I would be much obliged.

Next steps are to find a theme or customize a theme that looks like Lunar Obverse. That shouldn’t be too hard. Then go through and make sure all the links in the old posts work, add titles to the posts that have no titles, and finally move all this over to my actual, internet-facing web server. No problem, right?

I’d like to find a way to consolidate some of my various social media outlets into one page, like a stream that shows all my Tweets, Flickr pictures, blog posts, Tumblr posts, things like my Runnkeeper updates, etc. That’s down the road, though.

You, the reader, won’t see any changes while I muck around, and I’ll give you a warning before I make the move, but let’s set a soft deadline of 1 May 2010 for all this to happen, OK?

And maybe once the mental pressure to switch is off me, I’ll start blogging again more frequently.